0:00

Hello and welcome to the perpetual traffic

0:02

podcast. This is a show we talk

0:04

about marketing, sales, everything you need to

0:06

know as a director of marketing, a

0:08

CMO or CEO that's just trying to

0:10

grow your business and ultimately achieve your

0:12

vision. And we do not talk about

0:14

the mating habits of Canadian geese, which

0:16

by the way, are just like outside

0:19

my window here in our little studio

0:22

in Brookline, Massachusetts. Today it's

0:24

just me, Solo. And this

0:26

is our We Love Cosum

0:28

tribute perpetual

0:30

traffic series because

0:33

he's been an awesome co-host

0:35

for the last three years. And

0:38

just to take you a bit down memory lane,

0:41

this today's episode is actually

0:43

a rebroadcast from the

0:45

original episode we did together, the one that

0:47

actually got him the job here

0:50

at perpetual traffic. Not that it was a job

0:52

because we didn't pay him actually anything, but

0:54

what it did do is actually expanded Solutions

0:56

8 quite a bit as soon as he

0:58

came on perpetual traffic to the tune of

1:01

doubling his business he once told me. So,

1:03

which is really kind of funny because we

1:06

now employ one of

1:08

his most important assets at

1:10

Solutions 8, which is John

1:12

Moran. John Moran's now a

1:14

full-fledged member of Tier 11. Thanks

1:17

to Cosum for helping make that

1:19

happen. And he's

1:21

obviously been on the show here quite a bit and will

1:23

be on the show for many,

1:25

many times here forward. So if

1:27

you're a John Moran fan, stay

1:30

tuned for more episodes with him. But today

1:32

is not about John Moran. Today is all

1:34

about Cosum and this very

1:37

first episode that we did with them. And

1:39

yes, some of the things that we talk

1:42

about in today's show are a little bit

1:44

out of date, but they're actually sort of

1:46

come back into

1:48

relevancy because this is

1:51

before Google Performance Max

1:54

started to take over inside

1:56

Google. We've now swung back in the

1:58

other direction that the... Pendulum has

2:00

swung in the opposite way

2:02

so that most of our

2:05

e-commerce customers and John Moran will talk

2:07

about this ad nauseam when he comes

2:09

back on the show, which

2:11

was going to have him back in

2:13

a couple of weeks just to give

2:16

you a little bit more of an

2:18

update. Google Shopping is one of his

2:20

default campaign types that he uses. So

2:22

this episode was relevant three years ago,

2:24

became irrelevant. Now it's relevant again. And

2:27

so I think there is something to that. And it

2:29

also gives you a little taste of what Casa was

2:31

like in his very first podcast episode.

2:33

And he's been a great, great co-host here

2:36

for three years, which will be sorely missed.

2:38

But he will not be forgotten because he

2:40

will still be in our Telegram

2:43

channel or Telegram thread. Make

2:45

sure that you do join that

2:48

over at perpetualtraffic.com/Telegram. I was just

2:50

in there 20 minutes

2:52

ago. There's about 20 other people that

2:54

just joined since the last time I had

2:56

logged in. So definitely come in there, ask

2:59

questions. You've got direct access to me, to

3:01

Lauren, as well as to Kasam

3:03

and then a host of

3:06

other characters from Tier 11, as well as

3:08

some integrators who a lot of you guys

3:10

have asked about how to actually use an

3:12

integrator and how to implement EOS in your

3:14

business. So there's a lot

3:16

that's going on in there. So make sure

3:19

that you do join that at perpetualtraffic.com/Telegram. And

3:21

you can also stay in touch with Kasam

3:23

that way because he's going to be in

3:25

there continuing to be in there answering questions.

3:27

So without further ado, let's get

3:30

into this week's episode. This was episode

3:32

304. So this is almost three years ago now.

3:38

And like I said, a lot of

3:40

relevant things back then that went out

3:42

of style, became less relevant. Now they're

3:44

relevant again. And it also underscores the

3:46

importance of just how much data Google

3:50

has on you as well as every

3:52

other human on the planet. And

3:54

I think Kasam does a great job of explaining

3:56

that and underscoring to you as a marker how

3:59

important it is. to be on that

4:01

channel, to be on that platform,

4:04

not only Google ads, but YouTube and

4:06

everything having to do with organic. So

4:08

without further ado, Cosmon

4:10

and Ralph, take it away. You're

4:15

listening to Perpetual Traffic. Hello

4:18

and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This

4:20

is your host, Ralph Burns, and this is

4:22

episode 304. I'm

4:26

pretty excited about our guest here today.

4:28

We're going to be talking about something

4:30

we've never talked about, and quite honestly,

4:33

I really don't know anything about. So

4:35

I'm going to be going right along

4:37

with you, the Perpetual Traffic listener, trying

4:39

to figure out the

4:41

story behind the story, the tips,

4:43

the tricks, all things

4:46

relevant to something we've never discussed

4:48

here on Perpetual Traffic, and

4:50

that is smart shopping. And

4:53

the results that this guy is

4:55

bringing for his agency customers and

4:57

for lots of different e-commerce

4:59

businesses is nothing short of astounding, and

5:01

I'm not just overhyping it because

5:04

in this show, I think you're going to be able

5:06

to say, well, I've never done that before as an

5:08

e-commerce store before, but I should be doing it, or

5:10

better yet, maybe I should hire this guy to do

5:12

it for me. Really excited

5:14

to have Cosmon Aslan

5:16

here on today's show. Welcome

5:19

to Perpetual Traffic, buddy. Ralph, thanks for having

5:21

me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah.

5:24

So you are the founder of Solutions 8

5:26

Agency. You've been doing that for quite some

5:28

time. We were just commiserating before you hit

5:30

the record button that we first started in

5:32

SEO and gave up on that. Pay

5:34

traffic is a hell of a lot easier than all that.

5:38

So good thing Amanda isn't on today's show.

5:41

She would try and defend the SEOs of the world.

5:43

I then went into affiliate marketing because I didn't have

5:45

any of my own products, and that's when I discovered

5:48

paid ads. But you really

5:50

have been able to dial in this whole smart

5:52

shopping thing from Google, which, like I said, I

5:55

don't really know all that much about it, but

5:57

the results that you've been able to produce for

5:59

your customers. are pretty amazing. So tell

6:01

us a little bit about it, maybe a

6:03

little bit how you got started, why this

6:05

is your specialty now, and give

6:07

the PT listeners a little inside scoop.

6:09

Sure. Honestly, we kind of force-gumped our

6:12

way into it. It was something of

6:14

an accident. We had an e-com client

6:16

that was really aggressive. This

6:19

is right when Smart Shopping rolled out. Any

6:21

agency that's run Smart Shopping hates it.

6:24

You hear people say, oh, I've tried Smart Shopping, it didn't work.

6:27

Just because the way Google teaches you to

6:29

run Smart Shopping is flawed, which I'll talk

6:31

about in just a little bit, but their

6:33

playbook is atrocious. But

6:35

we had this client that had all this money to

6:38

burn, they would be feedback, and

6:40

really reasonable expectations, and just wanted to see what was

6:42

possible. You kind of get their uniforms, but you get

6:44

one of those gems every now and again, who's just

6:46

like, yeah, nobody had it figured out what's going on.

6:49

But he was also very aggressive as far

6:52

as wanting to see new avenues. He

6:55

didn't want to just see how deep the well went. He

6:57

wanted to see new acquisition strategies for the customers. We're

7:00

going around with Smart Shopping, and we had played with

7:02

it a little bit in the past, but never to

7:04

this degree. Again,

7:06

through a couple of accidents,

7:09

we ended up backing into this just

7:12

insanely high-performing campaign. We

7:14

love happy accidents. Love

7:16

happy accidents. What was interesting

7:18

is we thought it was kind of, he's

7:21

in a consumables business. He has a really

7:23

recognizable brand. You've probably heard about him. He's

7:25

been on the radio. He's a male-specific hygiene

7:27

product. We thought, okay,

7:30

this probably just worked because it's a

7:32

very sociable, let's say,

7:34

shareable product. But we tried running it for a couple

7:36

of the clients and slowly, surely, we built this template.

7:40

I showed a case study

7:42

right before the call started. The highest

7:44

return I've seen yet, we have a client that

7:46

just spent over the last 30 days,

7:48

they spent $12,000. They made $1.4 million in

7:51

excess of a 10,000% return I'd spent. Wait

7:53

a second. Say that again. That's so fast. People

7:55

are going to believe it. They spent $12,000. Let

7:57

me pull it up. Number

8:00

So last thirty days. Ah,

8:02

They spent Twelve thousand, Five hundred, seventy nine

8:04

dollars. They. Made one million, three

8:06

hundred, sixty three thousand, two hundred twenty eight

8:09

dollars, and forty four sets. I.

8:11

Think that's an interesting statistics Howard's of

8:13

I remember that a little bit just

8:15

to sit as s not typical like

8:17

ten thousand of surprises. You know that's

8:19

insane is gotta have an amazing business

8:21

model but I've seen consistently. you know

8:23

we've got. I don't know how many

8:25

campaigns and or about between are closing

8:27

our students for anywhere from a four

8:29

hundred percent to three four five thousand

8:31

percent role as depending on the business

8:34

is not uncommon. Was Mark shopping. Him

8:36

and say Google teaches you how to

8:38

do it in the incorrect way which

8:40

is probably the reason why everyone says

8:42

i tried that before doesn't work. Lot

8:45

of people say that about Facebook ads

8:47

to hey you know I tried my

8:49

Google ads over on Facebook. That doesn't

8:51

work either. Very different experience obviously. So

8:53

what did you guys figure out to

8:56

be able to generate these tax returns

8:58

which are just off the charts and

9:00

same First and most importantly she need

9:02

conversions? India Trump before Smart shopping can

9:04

work. Smart shopping as machine. Learning it's

9:06

it's algorithmic and what Google was doing,

9:09

it's is actually terrified. Google has seventy

9:11

million demographic and psychographic profound factors and

9:13

every human on planet to put in

9:15

perspective. And this isn't a not against

9:17

Facebook, it just helps with the comparison.

9:19

Facebook a city Five thousand. Service

9:21

because it's on a date on people to

9:23

has. Exponentially more. And it's

9:25

because Ghouls ecosystems larger. Google Analytics was on

9:28

any I percent of all front facing website

9:30

sorry website you visit goes tracking what you're

9:32

doing. Google knows things like what sickness is

9:34

you have, who's cheating on their spouse, where

9:36

you like to go for fun and it's

9:38

it's Android is an operating system, It's G

9:40

Mail the largest email provider. It's you tube

9:42

secular to search engine roars be a host

9:44

of it's audible. Our schools are my children

9:47

look like it's Google Maps School knows how

9:49

fast I dry weather nice speed of the

9:51

of people think I do a Google search

9:53

engine know Google is the internet. you

9:55

know the go on display network which is ninety percent of

9:57

all internet users on the planet sixty five percent of whom

9:59

a recent daily basis. So it knows practically everything

10:01

about you. There's this really amazing case study

10:04

that's worth Googling. This is

10:06

an April 20th of 2015. Just

10:08

Google the term, Google told me I'm pregnant. This

10:10

is six years ago, almost exactly. Google

10:13

told a woman she was pregnant

10:15

before she knew based only on

10:17

her search and communication patterns.

10:20

So she's searching for stuff and talking in a

10:22

certain way and Google's like, oh, you're pregnant and

10:24

starts advertising to her. And there's an article that

10:26

talks about the case study. It's, it's, it's six

10:28

years ago though. So Ralph, think about the speed

10:30

at which machine learning moves. If Google

10:32

could tell somebody who was pregnant six years ago, what do

10:34

they know now? They know what you're going to buy, where

10:36

you're going to go, what you're going to do. And because

10:39

they're, they're, they're attracting all this data and it's even, you

10:41

know, people who say I've opted out, I just chuckle at

10:43

that. Cause you're like, even if you're not a Gmail user,

10:45

you communicate with Gmail users. So they know what adjectives and

10:47

what adverbs appeal to you. They know, you know, like they

10:50

know roughly your level of education based off of like,

10:52

you know, grammatical context and things like that. So they're, they're

10:54

cataloging all this information on every human being on the planet.

10:57

And then what they do is they look at your site

10:59

and as conversions come in, and that's the key as

11:01

people begin to purchase, Google's like, Oh, Ralph bought

11:03

this. What does Ralph look like demographically and psychographically?

11:05

How do you vote? What do you watch? What

11:07

do you read? Who are your friends with? What

11:09

do you live? Social economically? Where do you stand?

11:11

What are the things that happened to you yesterday?

11:13

You know, did you have a kid that just

11:15

had a birthday? Like really weird, obscure days, 70

11:17

million data points. And then it says, then this

11:19

is the important part. And then it goes out

11:22

and it looks to find more people like Ralph, where

11:25

Google is generally inbound, you know, like, I want

11:27

to buy this product. And then they see your

11:29

ad, smart shopping has turned that around and they're

11:31

now pushing products in front of people based off

11:33

of who Google knows is going to buy. And

11:36

it works. And what's awesome about it is it works

11:38

in a silo. So where historically, if you're, if you're

11:40

in, you know, Amazon search feed or Google shopping feed

11:42

and somebody searching for a product, you're showing up against

11:44

500 other competitors. And

11:46

now it's a race to the bottom price wise.

11:49

Smart shopping is great because you're, you're, you're approaching

11:51

this prospect in, in a, in a silo to

11:53

where you're the only one that they see. And

11:56

you're getting hundreds of thousands of impressions.

11:58

It's, it's a play by numbers. game.

12:00

And so the algorithmic approach to smart shopping

12:02

is unparalleled. I've never seen anything like it.

12:04

It's the closest thing to AI that I

12:06

think humanity has publicly, because there's a machine

12:08

that knows what you're going to buy and

12:10

when you're going to buy it. And that's

12:12

more or less how did I do there,

12:14

Ralph? Is everybody asleep now? No, I think

12:16

they're probably just in awe because I don't

12:18

think those statistics have actually been uttered on

12:20

the show prior. So I mean, 70 million

12:24

data points. I mean,

12:26

that unto itself. I mean, I don't

12:28

know what characterizes is AI, but I

12:30

got to figure that that's pretty much more

12:33

than AI would need. As

12:35

my guess, if we're looking at 55,000 for Facebook or

12:39

maybe somewhere in between there, but that's nothing

12:41

short of amazing. And it's so integrated. Google

12:44

is so integrated into all of our lives.

12:46

Just like you said, even if you're not

12:48

like everything I use is Google, man, I

12:51

use all my Apple products, but all the

12:53

apps that I use are all Google. So

12:56

it's probably even more so with people that

12:58

are completely immersed into Google as opposed to

13:00

people that are maybe still in like, you

13:03

know, Microsoft Outlook and

13:05

then over on Google oftentimes, but

13:07

still like they're able to

13:09

track those people as well and understand

13:12

exactly what those buying behaviors potentially are.

13:14

And it seems like that's really the

13:16

big difference here for

13:18

smart shopping. Tell me this

13:20

though, like people can't figure out

13:23

like what exactly is smart shopping? Let's take

13:25

it a step back. What is it? Where

13:27

do I see it? Is it that thing

13:30

when I do the Google search and it's

13:32

the stuff below that? Is it like, what

13:34

is it? Tell our listeners all about where

13:36

they would actually see it on the internet.

13:38

So you kind of hit the nail on

13:40

the head as far as why it's a

13:42

difficult sale for me because it's

13:45

a disembodied marketing mechanism with

13:47

most advertising products like Google and I

13:50

can answer that question directly. It's really easy. Like,

13:52

oh, you know, for shopping, for standard shopping, if

13:54

you go to Google and you search for a

13:57

product, A bunch of products show up across in

13:59

a carousel at the top. You can click

14:01

on a shopping travelers go shopping

14:03

see that shopping sites Smart shopping

14:05

uses the entire Google ecosystem so

14:08

jemal sponsor promotion suitable display network

14:10

you to a discovery has any

14:12

any seeing. The The. Google

14:15

has at it's disposal all the on

14:17

apps. What it's

14:19

doing As it's it's. Pushing display

14:21

ads and in some cases actually video

14:23

ads in front of prospects in order

14:25

to drive them back to any commerce

14:28

event specifically. And it's using your entire

14:30

product feet. So the more products you

14:32

haven't slept shopping, the better in there's

14:34

there are limitations and except as that

14:36

rule but ghouls not just cataloging you

14:38

the person, it's also cataloguing all these

14:41

products. and so it's it's working. The

14:43

kind of like a match product person

14:45

in a. In. An algorithmic way. And

14:47

so it's hard to say what smart shopping

14:49

is because it's not any one since it's

14:51

Google. Using all this data and all of

14:53

it's it's conduits in order to push advertising

14:55

in front of people. Did it it believes

14:57

have a stronger likelihood of buying and to

15:00

push the the right product in front of

15:02

represented the right time and he i hate

15:04

to be a sensitive Ralph how did I

15:06

do that It was at work and and

15:08

force jumping around. The question here little bit.

15:10

Know. That's that's exactly. What

15:14

we what we want to understand.

15:16

it's not a it's not a

15:18

policeman's I guess is what we're

15:20

really talking about here. it's it's

15:22

the ai and the algorithm working

15:25

in different ways in and around.

15:27

the placements with Google shopping being

15:29

one of them were as sort

15:31

of a tentacle in the entire

15:33

sort of see ecosystem. But it's

15:35

also display also. display also. ghouls,

15:37

it's it's it's got. Google has

15:40

something called dynamic prospecting. so it's

15:42

it's the tip of the spear for ghouls than

15:44

a week prospecting which really means their ability to

15:46

go out and find people based off of who

15:48

they think is going to take a conversion action

15:50

in it's all in cichlids as well on a

15:52

say it's and ten face but i'm assuming there

15:54

and ten has something to do that but that

15:56

intent is not necessarily because i did a google

15:59

search for speedy carrots It's not explicit

16:01

intent. It can be implied intent. Like if

16:03

you get an... I'm going to oversimplify it,

16:05

okay? But let's say that you get an

16:07

email from a friend inviting you to his

16:09

wedding. Now Google knows Ralph

16:11

needs shoes, an airline ticket, a rental. You know

16:13

what I mean? Like all of a sudden there's

16:16

one little trigger and now it's like, okay, I

16:18

know what it is that this person potentially... And

16:21

take that and quantify it 70 million times across

16:23

variables and axes that I'll never understand. The reason

16:25

so many agencies don't like smart shopping is because

16:27

you have to trust the machine. We

16:29

lose so much control and all of your tricks,

16:31

all the tools on my tool belt, we're a

16:34

great Google ads agency. Everything that

16:36

I know about managing all the other campaigns goes right

16:38

out the window. Smart shopping has to be approached just

16:40

as an example. You have to run a smart shopping

16:42

campaign for at least 45 days without

16:44

touching it once. And in that one-pronged-day

16:46

period, it's bouncing off of the walls. We had one client

16:48

that didn't have a single impression for two weeks and he

16:51

called us on it. He knew enough to look at it

16:53

and he's like, guys, what are you doing? And we're like,

16:55

I'm so sorry. We can't touch this for 45 days. And

16:57

so it's an interesting timeline because you have to have some

16:59

conversions. So for a brand new client, you have to run

17:02

standard shopping or dynamic search or whatever to

17:04

generate some conversions, to juice the algorithm. Then you

17:06

run smart shopping against the same conversion actions. You

17:09

let it go for 45 days and in 45 days, the

17:11

performance is abysmal. But on

17:13

day 46, now the machine is calibrated.

17:15

It's like it's triangulated and then it goes, okay.

17:17

And then from day 46 on, you begin to

17:19

see that slow incremental improvement that we all want

17:21

to see. So many people who run smart

17:24

shopping have failed because, A, they didn't have enough conversion events in the

17:26

beginning. Google says you need at least

17:28

20. I've seen it work with less, but I've also seen

17:30

it need more. So it really depends on the type of

17:32

product you're selling. And I can talk a little bit more

17:34

about my theories on why that is. But as soon as

17:36

you have about 20 conversions that say all other things being

17:38

equal, then you start smart shopping and then you let it run 45

17:40

days. And then on day 46,

17:43

you start to optimize. And by now,

17:45

most people have lost patience and

17:47

they've jumped ship. And Google tells you to

17:49

do a bunch of stupid crap like they tell you to start

17:51

with the target realize figure, which means you want to tell Google,

17:53

here's how much money I need to make. Well,

17:55

if you start with target ROAS, you basically put a ceiling on the

17:57

machine and you don't let it learn. I

18:00

tell my clients, we're going to start with

18:02

zero, T-ROAS. We're actually going to go out

18:05

there and spend money maybe inefficiently in the

18:07

beginning, but it lets us calibrate the entire

18:09

room. So now I know

18:11

what the ecosystem looks like. And so when I

18:13

clamp a T-ROAS on it, I know how much

18:15

of the market I just shut myself off from

18:17

and where the market is. So

18:20

step by step, I'm new

18:22

in Google. I've got my AdWords account. I'm

18:25

an e-commerce store. I've

18:27

just set up ralphswatches.com.

18:29

And I'm very excited about my 10

18:32

SKUs. Do I need more than that

18:34

or do I need hundreds? Guide us

18:36

through it for somebody who maybe is

18:38

just starting out how you would approach

18:40

it. Some of the check boxes that

18:42

you need in order to get to

18:44

the point where you're letting the machine

18:47

learning really, really work in day 46,

18:49

which is amazing actually. Things

18:51

start to come together. Take us through that

18:53

whole step by step. You're asking all the

18:55

right questions, by the way. This is the

18:58

way that the process needs to work. So I appreciate that

19:00

from you. Thank you. We do

19:02

a viability study for all new clients. Some people aren't going

19:04

to work for smart shopping. If you come to me and

19:06

you're like, I'm dropshipping cell phone cases, nothing

19:08

I can do for you. There's nothing I

19:10

can do for you. It's too low margin. You don't have the

19:14

spend to be able to support a smart shopping campaign.

19:16

If 300% return on ad spend doesn't break you

19:19

even, won't work. If you don't reach

19:21

that, this is anecdotal. I have no way to prove this, but I've seen

19:23

this over and over and over again. If you don't reach the 300% ROAS,

19:27

Google actually will deprioritize your accounts

19:29

and your campaigns. I think it's

19:31

because they're like, all right, they're obsessed with relevance.

19:33

Just like Facebook. They want people to trust their ads and

19:35

trust their ecosystem. So if you're not selling enough, Google is

19:37

not going to want to position your ads any longer. If

19:40

you can't be at least break even on 300% ROAS, not

19:42

to say you won't get

19:44

a higher ROAS. I have clients like I just showed you one that's

19:46

in 10,000, but we start at 300% and

19:48

optimize from there. So that's number one. Number

19:51

two is be really careful. I love

19:53

consumables. I love consumables because

19:56

you're bringing the customer back. If you're selling watches, like

19:58

you just said, people are going to buy one. watch,

20:00

and then maybe one for their brother-in-law in two

20:02

years, and that is it. Not

20:05

to say those businesses don't work, because I have enough of

20:07

those clients that have been successful, but it's a dogfight every

20:09

day. There are certain businesses that just

20:11

have a better at bat than Google or

20:13

inside of smart shopping, and I also like more

20:15

SKUs. Now, I've made single SKU campaigns work before,

20:17

and some of them really weird and obscure, but

20:20

it's a data play. The more SKUs you

20:22

have, the higher

20:25

the likelihood that Google is able to find

20:27

the matrix that it likes, as

20:29

far as the people that are interested at what time

20:31

and in what context. Now, you can

20:33

have too many SKUs, because if you have, let's say, at 50,000

20:36

SKUs, now you need to spend to

20:38

support that, because Google has to go learn all of

20:40

those SKUs. Anything sub 50, I call

20:42

that low SKU count. Anything over 50

20:44

tends to be healthy. Anything over 1,000, now I'm like,

20:46

all right, we need to talk about your budget before

20:48

I'm willing to invest in this. The average CPC instead

20:51

of smart shopping is 56 cents. That's

20:53

not a global data point. That's across all the campaigns that we run.

20:57

You can begin to back into... I've

21:00

got an estimates and projections document actually that I share

21:02

with clients. It's free online. You can find it on

21:05

our YouTube channel, but you can start to back into

21:07

your potential profitability based off of what you know about

21:09

your on-site conversion rate. One of

21:11

the couple of pro tips here, just in preparing for

21:13

smart shopping, you have to use

21:15

GTI encodes. For those not

21:17

listening, if you don't know what a GTI

21:19

encode is, it's like a UPC code. It's

21:21

a unique identifier for your product. If you

21:23

have a manufacturer, they should be giving you

21:25

the GTI encode. If you don't, you can

21:27

go buy GTI encodes for your products. You

21:29

need to buy a GTI encode for every

21:32

single product variation. That's the academic approach. If

21:34

you have a T-shirt that has five sizes, you need five

21:36

GTI encodes. Now, if you have 50,000 products and each one

21:38

of them has five variations, you're not going to do that.

21:41

Pick the variation that's the cheapest. What's

21:43

happening is Google is using the GTI

21:46

encode to identify that product. If you change

21:48

the title, the description, the product elements, whatever, it still

21:50

knows, oh, this is still the same product. Without

21:52

the GTI encode, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. I've still seen

21:55

smart shopping campaigns work. As a matter of fact, you might want

21:57

to prove concept first before you go spend a bunch of money

21:59

on GTI encodes. codes. In

22:01

order for it to scale rapidly, you want to make

22:04

sure you're using G T N codes. And then last

22:06

thing I'll say as far as best practices is you

22:08

need a very clean product feed. So we use data

22:10

feed watch. I'm not an affiliate, I am a partner.

22:12

And you have to use lifestyle

22:15

images. Because nobody wants to

22:17

see an image of a product in

22:19

display, they want to see people using

22:21

that product. Statistically, the highest performing avatar

22:23

across all industries is a 30 year

22:25

old female Caucasian Burnett who's attractive and

22:27

smiling. I don't know why that

22:29

is. But for what I mean, I guess we're all like

22:31

racist, sexist and ages, right? But that's the

22:33

that's what the world has decided appeals

22:35

to people across, you know, cultures

22:38

and ages and whatever 30 year old female Caucasian Burnett

22:40

who's attractive and smiling. So if you don't know what

22:43

to do, go find your friend who's the closest to

22:45

that avatar and get her to wear or use your

22:47

product and snap some pictures of her. And if it's

22:49

a you know, maybe it should be a family, maybe

22:51

it's for a man, it should be a man, but

22:53

you want lifestyle images because smart shopping is display based.

22:55

And you're getting hundreds of thousands of impressions out of

22:57

this. And if somebody sees a watch that doesn't have

23:00

the same dopamine hit is when they see a real

23:02

life human being making eye contact. That's why when you

23:04

go to a shopping mall, it's nothing but a bunch

23:06

of placards of people making eye contact with you. Because

23:08

there's there's real psychology there as

23:10

far as the connection that you're making with people. And I know

23:12

I keep saying the last thing I'll say I'm sorry, Ralph, I

23:15

get really excited. Remember that you're getting

23:17

hundreds of thousands of impressions. So smart shopping is

23:19

one of the best brand builders I've ever seen.

23:21

And it's effectively free brand building. If you're profiting

23:23

from the campaign, make sure that the

23:25

images that you use are are heavily

23:27

branded. You want people to see your favicon,

23:29

your logo, your icon, your URL, your product,

23:32

you know, like that whatever imagery

23:34

or visuals you're using, in there are some some

23:36

organizations that are really good at this. You know,

23:38

if you see a Pepsi commercial, you instantly know

23:40

it's Pepsi. And you want to be able to do

23:42

that for yourself too, because there's hundreds of thousands of impressions, you don't want

23:44

to miss out on that opportunity. So this

23:47

is my job is just to summarize, because

23:49

obviously, you're so good at this and excited

23:51

about it. And if this is pretty darn

23:53

exciting, I mean, this is something

23:56

that we've never talked about, like I said before, in

23:58

the intro, but so let me just go

24:00

back through and summarize. So you

24:03

should at least be getting, like if your

24:05

business can't tolerate a 300% ROAS, like

24:09

you don't have any business, like

24:11

you have to take out the

24:14

drop shippers, the resellers, probably the

24:16

affiliates, I would guess. So

24:18

the business type is really important just to

24:20

start off with. Second

24:22

thing is consumables, but not necessarily consumables

24:24

that are a one-time purchase or maybe

24:26

a two-time purchase, you know, three years

24:28

from now, but something where I'm buying

24:30

it or maybe it is a consumable good, I

24:33

have to buy it over and over again, or

24:35

maybe there's other products that are related to the

24:37

first product that I buy, as long

24:39

as it's greater than 50 SKUs

24:41

in an ideal world. In an ideal world,

24:43

and if it's not a consumable, just hire

24:45

a ticket. We've got a client who sells

24:47

Ophthalmic equipment, so like a $30,000 exam lane

24:50

for an optometrist. And when we started

24:52

running this, first of all, it took me years to

24:54

convince her to even run online ads. And

24:56

when we started running this, she goes, there's no way anybody's buying

24:58

an exam lane online. I've sold two. What's

25:00

interesting about Net though, is we

25:02

run smart shopping for her and she's got 7,000

25:05

SKUs or something. So we'll sell like a lot

25:07

of like, you know, light bulbs or replacement exams

25:09

or whatever, but we run smart shopping for lead

25:11

generation. So we run smart shopping, the

25:13

optometrist land on the site, but they don't buy

25:15

from the site that they call her. And then

25:17

I manually import those conversions back into Google ads

25:19

in order to show the proper ROAS, which

25:22

is tedious, but she has, and I have her

25:24

on record saying, we saved her business post COVID.

25:26

She is one of the highest performing campaigns I've

25:29

ever seen over the longterm. And

25:31

she's one of the smallest distributors in

25:33

her space with one of the largest, she's the smallest

25:35

in terms of personnel and one of the largest in

25:37

terms of the actual business we're doing because of our

25:39

campaigns. So in her case,

25:42

she's got over a thousand SKUs. One of

25:44

the things you said when you're figuring out

25:46

your selection criteria is that might be too

25:48

many, because you need expansive spend in order

25:50

to get impressions for

25:52

all those SKUs. Am I correct in assuming that?

25:54

For her, we started with 400 SKUs, for

25:57

highest margins, and then we expanded out. That's the other

25:59

thing to do. in smart shopping is you

26:01

can actually segment by margin. Google tells you not

26:03

to run multiple smart shopping campaigns. They say run

26:05

one smart shopping campaign with all your products. I

26:08

have, in the past, told my students, that's stupid.

26:10

Run a low, medium, high margin campaign. So one

26:12

campaign for low, one campaign for medium, one campaign

26:14

for high. So you can prioritize your spend for

26:17

your high margin products. And it works. The problem

26:19

is, and we only found this out recently. And

26:21

Google makes none of this available, by the way.

26:23

You have to figure it out by yourself. What

26:25

sucks about running separate smart shopping campaigns is if

26:27

people skip between products that are in

26:29

separate campaigns, the remarketing stops. Because

26:32

Google doesn't know, should I

26:34

remarket you for campaign bucket A or campaign

26:36

bucket B? And in some instances, you

26:38

actually kind of lose that prospect. So there's a risk

26:40

there. So if you can, and

26:42

if all of the things are equal, run

26:44

all your products into one campaign and just

26:46

prioritize the high margin products. If you need

26:49

to, you can separate and run multiple smart

26:51

shopping campaigns. But realize that you lose some

26:53

of that cross-permeation. It's

26:55

good when product interest gets incestuous. And

26:57

you're killing the ability for that to

26:59

happen in multitude campaigns, which we only

27:01

found out recently. So anybody who's taken

27:03

my education in the past, I'm so sorry

27:06

I misled you. I didn't know until we

27:08

went and made this mistake. So

27:10

it really seems like the next step to this whole

27:12

thing is obviously having a GTIN codes. And if you

27:14

don't know what those are, we'll leave links to the

27:16

show notes for everything that we're talking

27:18

about here. A product feed and a

27:20

catalog is obviously super important. So if

27:23

you are one that actually has 1,000

27:25

plus SKUs, you

27:27

don't have to put them all out there. You

27:29

can make a subset of that catalog for your

27:32

highest margin, maybe best sellers potentially, just to start

27:34

off with. That's correct. You can

27:36

tell Google, I want these products

27:38

and only these products. Shopify is the best

27:40

integration of any e-commerce solution I've ever seen.

27:42

But most product

27:44

feeds work with a little massaging.

27:47

Setting up conversion tracking for e-commerce is a frickin'

27:49

nightmare. But interestingly, Google will do it for you

27:52

for free. You can schedule time. And it's

27:54

one of the very few times you can ever get Google

27:56

on the phone. You can schedule time with Google's Tag Implementation

27:58

Team. And they'll help you set up your conversion. and tracking

28:00

on your site. Interesting. And I gotta tell

28:02

y'all, I'm an agency. I think very few

28:04

people know what I know about Google Ads.

28:07

I use that service. I don't try to do it

28:09

myself. Like this is one of those times where it's

28:11

like, hang up the pride and just go get the

28:13

people that know what they're doing because it can be,

28:15

it can end every website is different too. So it's

28:18

not just about knowing Google Ads, it's about knowing the

28:20

site and the feed and connecting all those things. Pretty

28:23

helpful to know that. I mean, obviously it sounds

28:26

like Google Support has gotten a lot better through these.

28:29

It's gotten so much worse. It gets

28:31

worse every day. It's just that one thing that they help

28:33

with. Good, because they

28:35

know this is the long game

28:37

and it's gonna end up benefiting them in the end.

28:39

I mean, they obviously, they put the resources in the

28:41

places where they really understand where they

28:43

can get the biggest return for their investment.

28:46

Data Feed Watch is the service that

28:49

you use for your catalogs

28:51

and your product feeds. And

28:54

then the other part is just

28:56

summarizing lifestyle images, display-based, super important.

28:58

Not necessarily the 30-year-old female who

29:00

was attractive in a brunette, but

29:02

along those lines, when I was

29:05

in affiliate marketing, there was one

29:07

image of one woman that always

29:09

worked. You probably saw it for

29:11

years and years and years, but

29:13

it met that criteria and that's

29:15

the reason why it worked. So

29:19

talk to me about how you do

29:21

it. All right, so

29:23

you get 20 conversions. The 20 conversions

29:25

to start off with is,

29:27

let's say it's not Ralph's watches.

29:30

Maybe it's Ralph's jewelry and watches

29:32

and male accoutrement. So I've got

29:34

500 SKUs here. So

29:38

start off with pay-per-click, display, get your

29:40

20 conversions. Is there any timeframe in

29:43

which you need to get those 20

29:45

conversions? Is it a week? Is it

29:47

a month? Is it just over six

29:49

months? It's a good question.

29:51

I haven't really tested that because for us, the clock

29:53

isn't just ticking on store shopping. It's also ticking on

29:55

me as an agency. So we always

29:57

get the 20 conversions within the first month, but that's because.

30:00

if we can't, you're gonna fire me. You

30:02

know, you don't want to pay my fee.

30:04

I imagine the time can be elongated, but

30:06

I've never dealt with it. I can also

30:08

tell you that those conversions don't have to

30:10

come from the Google ecosystem. If you're successfully

30:13

running Facebook and Instagram, as long as you

30:15

have Google conversion tracking in place, Google can

30:17

watch those conversions. So if you have a

30:20

site that's converting well organically from social from other

30:22

avenues, you can actually start running store shopping right

30:24

out of the gate. And you

30:26

don't need, you know, any of the preface,

30:28

the really important note there though is you

30:31

have to track conversions using Google ads

30:33

conversion tracking, not Google

30:35

Analytics. So many Google ad

30:38

integration tools and Shopify is bad at this, by

30:40

the way, it actually they just fixed it. But

30:42

a lot of integrations and a lot of thought

30:44

leaders teach you to track conversions using Google Analytics,

30:46

which means you're importing conversions from Google Analytics. And

30:49

the problem with that is attribution. Analytics uses a

30:51

different attribution model than Google ads, you want to

30:53

track your conversions analytics, but only to reconcile against

30:55

your conversions have to be tracked inside of Google

30:58

ads, you're not going to get adequate data, and

31:00

you're not going to be able to use different attribution

31:02

models, which ends up being really important for smart shopping.

31:04

Because smart shopping, there's so many touch

31:07

points that you know, in the beginning,

31:09

I tell people to use time decay. But

31:11

what's interesting is because smart shopping is acquisition based, where did

31:13

the customer come from? Sometimes if you want a real big

31:15

shot in the arm, you can switch over to first click.

31:18

Over time, I like position based most, let's give

31:20

all the credit to the first click and the

31:22

last click, and then some along the way. That

31:25

way, everything kind of gets touched. But you have

31:27

to be using Google ads conversion tracking. And if

31:29

that conversion tracking is in place, and you know,

31:31

everything's structured properly, as you're getting conversions on your

31:33

site, Google is able to see everything, not

31:36

just conversions that are triggered by Google. And

31:38

once that's the case, then you can roll up

31:40

your smart shopping campaign, run it for

31:42

45 days, do not apply a target ROAS, regardless

31:44

of what Google says, when you're in there, and

31:46

you don't apply to ROAS, it actually shows an

31:49

error message. And it tells you that you're doing

31:51

things wrong. I don't care. They're they're

31:53

incorrect. And I've seen this over and over and over again,

31:55

don't apply it to ROAS in the beginning, and let it

31:57

run for the 45 days and realize that you just have

31:59

to you have to let it go. And here's what sucks.

32:01

Sometimes you get to the end of 45 days and the

32:04

campaign fails. And it's just

32:06

like gee golly, that stinks. And normally it's,

32:08

you know, you have a competitor that

32:10

offers a better product for, you know, less money or

32:12

is willing to spend way more than you or your

32:14

site sucks or doesn't hurt. Whatever the reason ends up

32:16

being, I have had smart shopping campaigns fail, what happens?

32:18

I manage that expectation heavily with my clients, you have

32:21

to go in there, no one has a test. Super

32:24

important there. So for

32:26

those of you like the attribution question,

32:29

we blew through attribution there. We did

32:31

a whole show on attribution. We're about

32:33

half the show is on attribution. That's

32:35

over episode 302. I'll leave

32:37

you guys the link for that in the show

32:39

notes. So I do

32:42

my pay per click campaign, let's say

32:44

in that case. And then where do

32:46

I go to like inside

32:49

the Google ads ecosystem? How do

32:51

you activate this thing? And that's

32:54

the first step. But then secondly,

32:56

based upon this 45 day

32:59

window of the AI really trying

33:01

to figure it all out, like

33:04

how do you budget out? Is it

33:06

based upon how many skews

33:08

past experience like just a guess like

33:10

is how do you do that? And

33:13

if things go south and don't really

33:15

work on day 45 or 46, you

33:17

like how much money could people potentially

33:19

be out in your experience? And what's

33:22

the likelihood of that happening? That's about

33:24

seven questions all at once there. So

33:27

I'm throwing it right back at you with

33:29

all the information here. But really interested

33:31

to find out what your answers are. A

33:33

lot of is an educated guess. I've gotten better at guessing

33:35

as I've had more clients. I'm going to give

33:37

you just some round numbers. For products

33:39

that are unique,

33:42

specific, little obscure, you can get this done with two

33:44

grand a month and spend. That's

33:46

the absolute lowest I've ever seen this really work.

33:48

Now, can it get done for less? Yes. But

33:51

remember, I'm also an agency. So I'm going to

33:53

bring people on that give me a little bit

33:55

of room for experimentation and growth. If you're doing

33:57

this yourself, you might be able to run this.

34:00

for a grand a month, who knows? I won't take a client

34:02

if they're not willing to spend at least two grand a month.

34:04

And even then, you have to bring me a product, like I

34:06

just bought this online, this little, you can't see this if you're

34:08

listening, but they're the little, what are these even called, Ralph, do

34:10

we know? Fingers, strengthener, thingies?

34:12

Yeah, so you squeeze it and it

34:15

makes your fingers stronger. Yeah,

34:17

and this is actually kind of like, it's not

34:19

a cell phone case, right? This is unique

34:21

specific, and if we wanted to see if this

34:23

would work. Now, I wouldn't go to market with

34:26

just this, you'd have to have a whole suite

34:28

of like, fun little office, whatevers. But

34:30

this is a specific product, and it's not like the whole world

34:32

wants it or needs it, and we can carve off a little

34:34

niche. The more general your

34:36

product is, the more budget

34:38

you're gonna need, because Google's gonna need to spend that,

34:41

spread that spend across people. I

34:43

really like specific products that are

34:45

high ticket, like Optomic Equipment. And

34:48

a couple of these case studies that I have in

34:50

front of me, you'll notice a lot of them are

34:52

really unique, like the brand that I mentioned earlier, the

34:55

men's hygiene product, there wasn't anything like it when he

34:57

first came out. There's been some copycats.

34:59

We had another client who had the silicone

35:01

wedding rings for like, cops and firefighters and crossfitters.

35:03

There have been a bunch of copycats then too,

35:05

but I mean, he had an amazing return on

35:08

ad spend for a long time, because it was

35:10

so unique. But we have a client, an online

35:12

shoe retailer, and a 916% row

35:14

as, and they sell like Steve Madden and

35:16

normal regular shoes. They have almost 1000% return on

35:18

ad spend, and they

35:21

have physical locations that Smart Shopping helps feed. Food

35:24

processing equipment, which is like,

35:26

this is for like industrial kitchens, if

35:28

you need like, something to make your sausages or whatever, then

35:30

they have a 3000% row as. We

35:34

have a client that makes wallets, bags, and

35:36

accessories out of recycled firefighting hoses. He's at

35:38

1100% row as. He

35:41

was on Shark Tank, by the way. We have a client who sells

35:43

luggage, he is a 2100% row as, and he refuses to

35:46

let me run a brand campaign, because he thinks he knows Google better than

35:48

I do. So his row as is probably 6000%, he just doesn't know

35:50

it. So

35:52

yeah, I'm not really answering your question.

35:54

Too great is the minimum. If

35:57

you have a broader product, you're gonna wanna spend like three,

35:59

four, five. five is healthy. But what's interesting is you

36:01

don't want to overspend, I tend not to let people

36:03

spend more than 10. Because there's two

36:06

different spend paradigms in Google ads, there's top down and bottom

36:08

up. Top down says I'm going to spend

36:10

as much as I can carpet bomb the ecosystem and

36:12

get as much data as I possibly can. Agencies like

36:14

top down because it makes them look better. But

36:16

what's the analogy I like to use is imagine a body

36:19

of water, you know, one of the Great Lakes, and

36:22

top down spend paradigm says I take a helicopter over

36:24

to the center of the body, the water where it's

36:26

deepest, and I parachute in. So I'm

36:28

on top, which is great. But I don't know how deep it

36:31

is. I don't know how many competitors are in there. I don't

36:33

know how tumultuous it is. I don't know what the seabed is.

36:35

With bottom up spend paradigm,

36:37

you start at the beachhead and you walk in. And what's

36:40

cool about that is it takes longer. But now

36:42

I know there's a substantive difference between like, you

36:44

know, positions four versus three versus two versus one,

36:46

instead of just starting at one, I get to

36:48

see where the performance is, I get to

36:50

see where the competitive market is, I get to see

36:52

how competitive my competitors are actually getting. If there's a

36:54

big change in ecosystem, I know how far back I

36:56

can move and still be profitable. So

36:59

I prefer and this, by the way, is not just

37:01

smart shopping. This is this is Google ads spend in

37:03

general, I like bottom up spend paradigm, it

37:06

takes longer, the agency doesn't look as

37:08

good in the short term. But in the long term, I

37:10

have way I'm weaponized. And I can I

37:12

can slaughter an agency that went top down because they don't have any

37:14

of the information that I have. So you

37:16

want to start you know, anywhere between that two and 10, depending

37:18

on your product and your ecosystem here going after I recommend

37:21

segmenting even if you don't have a segmented product.

37:23

So you might say, Hey, we sell internationally, I'm

37:25

gonna say that's fine. Where's where do you sell

37:27

most like let's pick a country or a region

37:29

or whatever. Because if we can put a lid

37:31

on it, that doesn't change the experiment, it

37:34

just makes it a little bit easier to qualify and prove concepts.

37:36

The thing that you're running into with Google is they want to

37:38

make sure that you're actually going to work too. So

37:40

in a lot of this, we have to prove ourselves to

37:42

Google in order to get the visibility that we want. That's

37:45

I can't prove that that's just my feeling based on you

37:47

know, all the campaigns that we've run. And when I say

37:49

day 45, that's when the

37:51

learning phase stops. Day

37:54

46 is when you start watching the data. So

37:56

if you're not profitable day 46, that's

37:58

okay, you might not necessarily need to

38:00

be this is really a 90 day

38:02

commitment. Now I've had clients, we had

38:04

one client, especially clothing retailer, weird clothes,

38:06

Ralph, weird. Like when he came in,

38:09

I was just in my mind, I was like, there's no

38:11

way this ever works. But you know, I've been wrong so

38:13

many times, I don't make assumptions. He was a 1200% realized

38:15

within two weeks, we weren't even out of learning phase. So

38:18

I've seen things surprise me. And then I've seen clients that

38:20

came in, I was like, Oh, this is a home run,

38:22

we're gonna crush it. And we get to the end of

38:24

90 days, and we just don't have the realize to support

38:26

the campaign. So it's, you know, the first 90 days of

38:28

the test and an experiment, you're spending an order between two

38:30

and 10 grand. And if you're working with an agency,

38:32

their fee to and and if you're

38:34

working with an agency, it's not charging you enough

38:36

realize that think about all the work I just

38:38

said, what would you charge in order to

38:40

be able to do that work? So be really careful with

38:42

agencies are like, oh, yeah, I'll run your ads for 500

38:44

bucks a month. Because what would what can they do for

38:46

that? They can't even pay for data fee watch. You know

38:48

what I mean? What can they possibly do for that? So

38:50

that's that's the other thing that really pisses me off is

38:52

I see so many people in this not to slander our

38:54

collective ecosystem. But you know, every these adminitors

38:57

go online, they take one course, and then

38:59

they start spending small businesses money. And it

39:01

infuriates me in periods, because

39:03

they're not just taking the money that they're

39:05

charging you, they're taking the money that you're

39:07

spending. There's so much more dangerous than their

39:09

fee. I so sorry, I

39:11

soapboxed their brother, I just got really, really

39:14

passionate about it. We deal with it

39:16

every single day. In fact, we have

39:18

an entire ad campaign, which talks about

39:20

this in the Facebook side of the

39:22

equation. Because a lot

39:24

has changed since 2012. When we first started

39:27

this whole thing is basically the only Facebook

39:29

and Instagram ad agency. And now there's thousands

39:31

of them. And there's lots of people that

39:33

are it is dangerous. And unfortunately, that colors

39:35

a lot of potential new customers because they've

39:37

had bad experiences prior, which is unfortunate. So

39:39

you do get what you pay for at

39:41

the end of the day. However,

39:44

with this, like this is there is

39:46

patience that is involved here. I mean,

39:48

you might be able to get you

39:50

know, 1000% ROAS within the first two

39:52

weeks, because the learning is just so

39:54

good or the product, but it

39:56

is a bit of a crapshoot. I mean, it's you

39:59

can You could check off

40:01

all these boxes here. Obviously,

40:04

no amount of traffic in the world is going to

40:06

cure a crappy offer. If you have a great offer,

40:08

it's a great place to start just

40:11

to begin with. Hiring

40:13

an agency is just going to add fuel to the

40:15

fire. It's going to throw gasoline on the flames for

40:17

you because you've got something that the world wants. Most

40:21

businesses don't have that one thing that

40:23

nobody else has. Most

40:26

of them are muddling around in a reddish

40:29

ocean where there is lots of competition,

40:31

where it's a sophisticated market. You're

40:33

going to have to figure out a way

40:35

as an ad agency to differentiate yourselves. Good

40:39

offer, obviously something like this, that's universal

40:41

in advertising and it certainly helps. When

40:44

you are listing all the different customers

40:47

that you've had and still do have

40:49

with these amazing ROAS figures, it's not

40:51

just consumer goods. It's B2B stuff as

40:53

well, which is even more amazing. Opthalmic

40:55

equipment being sold through Google, I guess

40:58

so. Never heard of that one. That's

41:01

outstanding. There's

41:03

a lot that's into this. What I'm

41:05

hearing from you, it's at least two grand to

41:07

start, at least to get

41:10

some data, ideally anywhere between two to

41:12

ten grand. That's safe to say, just

41:14

as guideposts? Yeah. I wouldn't spend

41:16

much more than ten on that. Unless you have a product

41:18

that justifies it, if the CPCs are insane, if it's super,

41:20

super competitive than you might need to. That

41:22

two to ten is a good window regardless of the

41:25

size and the SKU count. We

41:27

had a client, they're the largest lighting supply manufacturer

41:29

on the planet. Their SKU count

41:31

was in the seven

41:34

figures. I

41:37

think it was in the mid-seven, it was huge. We still

41:39

narrowed down and we just started with a smaller amount of

41:41

SKUs and a smaller spend because we wanted to make sure

41:43

that we were able to qualify before we lifted the lid

41:46

off of everything. It's good business

41:49

practice, especially if you are hiring an agency.

41:51

Here we are talking agency to agency. We've

41:54

had customers that come in to us, like, oh, I've got

41:56

a thousand SKUs, let's just sell them all. No.

42:00

What's the ones that are the highest

42:02

profit margin? And what

42:04

are the ones that are the most unique

42:06

in the market? Chances are, if you have

42:08

all three of those out of your thousand

42:11

SKUs, it's probably good to start there, look

42:13

into your Shopify store and force rank them,

42:16

and then figure out, all right, what are

42:18

the financial metrics behind this so I can

42:20

potentially pay more to acquire a customer because

42:22

I have more profitability on it. I

42:25

think that's just a good business

42:28

practice just in general when you're

42:30

talking to an agency because, yeah, there

42:32

are other fees. You're paying

42:34

for that expertise. Let's

42:37

not minimize that expertise. You charge for your services.

42:39

We charge for what we do. We're pretty damn

42:42

good at what we do, but we're not the

42:44

cheapest, and I'm sure you're not the cheapest either,

42:46

and you do get what you pay for, especially

42:48

if you're using the right types of tools in

42:50

order to make this whole thing work. What

42:54

else can you tell us about this? You

42:57

keep mentioning 45 days. Is

42:59

that a guideline or is that something that you

43:02

think of or is it something happens magically

43:04

on that day and everybody's just waiting, they

43:06

mark their calendars, and I can't wait to

43:08

look at the Google ad account on day

43:10

46. What happens

43:12

there in your estimation? Check this

43:15

out. I know our listeners can't see, but I

43:17

just want you to see, Ralph, Google's

43:19

education says 45 days. 45

43:23

days. 45 days. You

43:25

can see all these search results instead

43:27

of the training on smart shopping as

43:30

it takes 45 days. This

43:32

is funny. Here's one where they back to down just a little bit,

43:34

which is not uncommon for them to change their narrative, by the way.

43:36

For whatever reason, it takes

43:39

the machine 45 days to learn. Now,

43:41

I've had campaigns perform faster than that, but I

43:43

have seen that 45-day period just

43:46

kind of be the ubiquitous truth as well. I

43:49

manage the expectation of clients in this 45

43:51

days, and if we qualify faster, I've underpromised

43:54

and overdelivered. Just

43:56

go into it knowing that you're going to have to give it the

43:58

45 days. I think it's... managing

44:00

expectations is always a challenge when you're doing any

44:02

sort of agency work but I mean especially with

44:05

that like that's not a new from

44:07

my perspective that's a worthy investment just to

44:09

see if it can work especially if you're

44:12

talking about like ROAS numbers that we're discussing

44:14

here I mean you I would

44:16

imagine with some of your larger customers

44:18

once that day you know 45 90 day

44:21

sort of learning period is up like

44:24

you're pouring it on with lots of ad

44:26

spend or is this still the kind of

44:28

thing where you don't necessarily need to be

44:30

spending millions per month on this you can

44:32

still spend you know five six figures and

44:34

get a decent return or is it just

44:37

really depend on the individual business we actually

44:39

we've run into this being a big problem

44:41

you can't scale faster than a rate of

44:44

10% of spend per day and now what

44:47

I just said is there's some wiggle

44:49

room there but we've had big clients are like oh yeah

44:51

go spend a million bucks and we've said

44:53

no we can't and they're like I'll do it anyway

44:55

we actually had a client go in and make the

44:57

campaign changes himself and he and his campaign went off

44:59

the rails and what sucks about it and

45:01

this is what they don't understand and honestly what I

45:03

don't understand is I can't just reset it and it

45:06

goes back to where it was like

45:08

now we've zeroed us out and

45:10

I've got to go relearn all these damn

45:12

lessons and I almost part of me the

45:14

conspiracy theorist in me thinks Google penalizes us

45:16

sometimes when we don't follow the rules but

45:18

smart shopping has to be scaled in an

45:20

incremental rate and I think the reason for

45:22

that is because it's self-imposed inflation you

45:25

know just like when the Fed prints a trillion dollars

45:27

and all of our money just became worthless including the

45:29

trillion that they just printed right so like the

45:31

train that they printed isn't worth a

45:33

trillion dollars anymore it's worth whatever

45:36

a trillion dollars would be worth in this new

45:38

ecosystem which includes the money this is weird kind

45:40

of inception level that's maybe a bad

45:42

analogy but when you scale your spark shopping spend

45:44

and this is true for all paid advertising smart

45:46

shopping is just so much more expensive you're

45:49

influencing the ecosystem in

45:51

its entirety as a whole and so you need to

45:53

see how that spend influences the

45:55

ecosystem before you continue to scale your

45:57

spend as you increase your spend your ROAS

46:00

goes down, which is natural. It's

46:02

loss of supply and demand. The more market

46:04

you go and try to capture, the less

46:06

efficient that campaign becomes. We have clients that

46:08

are at a 4,000% realized

46:10

that are profitable at 700%. They've told

46:12

us, spend as much as you can. We

46:14

watch 4,000 comes 3,900, becomes 3,800, becomes

46:16

whatever. Spend as much as you can so you get

46:18

700. Then they're still crushing

46:21

life because they'd be profitable at 300, but 700

46:24

has been the baseline that they set. Scale

46:26

and smart shopping is hard. The other thing that

46:28

really sucks is smart shopping if you get a

46:31

competitor that enters the space, one of our clients

46:33

is they do sporting equipment. They're one of the

46:35

largest for a very specific sport. They're one of

46:37

the largest importers and distributors of this type of

46:39

and great big things too. I'm trying not to

46:41

give away their identity, but it's not just like

46:44

balls and stuff. It's $15,000 devices that you would

46:46

need. What's

46:49

interesting about them is they were crushing

46:51

life. Then we got this competitor that

46:53

came in out of China, really well

46:56

funded, and they

46:58

destroyed the ecosystem. They started spending more than conversions

47:00

were worth. I call it dumb money. It's the

47:02

Walmart model. You move into an area, you drop

47:04

prices so low that the little mom and pops

47:06

can't afford to compete. Even though you're losing money,

47:08

you can do that for three years. Then once

47:10

mom and pops are all set down, then you

47:12

raise prices. Now, we were able

47:15

to navigate around it, but it

47:17

ruined its campaigns. You'll see that happen

47:19

if a big competitor enters in

47:22

cyclical markets. COVID had a

47:24

lot of actually positive impacts, but also some

47:26

negative impacts. The market can impact your campaigns.

47:28

You're not marketing in a silo. You

47:31

just have to watch it. What's interesting about smart shopping

47:33

is there's not as much for us to do inside

47:35

the individual campaigns. There's way more

47:37

for us to do like feed management,

47:39

optimization, managing the campaigns on

47:41

the perifices. What's really interesting too is with smart

47:44

shopping, I tell all my clients, go run Facebook

47:46

ads. I have a client who's running Facebook ads

47:48

at a loss. His Facebook ads, the

47:50

ROAS and the Facebook ads wouldn't

47:52

justify Facebook standalone, but the conversion

47:55

lift to smart shopping is three

47:57

or four X his Facebook spend

47:59

because... Because for whatever reason, Facebook's not able

48:01

to necessarily track all the conversion events all the

48:03

way through. A lot of that might be Facebook's

48:05

narrow attribution window. But

48:07

with Google, it sees the prospects

48:10

come in, sees the purchases, and then is able

48:12

to bring those into the remarketing feed of the

48:14

smart shopping algo. So there's a lot you can

48:16

do, but it is not a

48:18

light engine to manage. You have to be behind

48:20

it watching it all the time. So

48:23

as far as campaign management goes, after

48:25

the 45 days, you can't touch it

48:27

for 45 days, which for a lot

48:30

of media buyers and a lot of customers is

48:32

really challenging. And I'm speaking to you tier 11

48:34

customers who go in there and do this sort

48:36

of stuff. You can't touch it. Do you lock

48:38

your ad accounts? Do you lock them out and

48:40

they can't ever get in and

48:42

start messing around? We've

48:44

thought about doing that many times. But anyway, now I'm

48:47

just ranting. So

48:50

you have to not touch it. But

48:52

then after that, you say,

48:55

OK, I can't scale any more than

48:57

10% per day. So

48:59

that is a touchy on the campaigns.

49:01

What else are you doing inside the

49:03

campaigns? Or is it

49:06

90% feed management and 10% I'm just

49:08

checking and I'm just raising budgets, you

49:10

know, 10% per day? Like

49:12

what's going on in the campaign management side?

49:15

Feed management is huge. And optimizing your product feed

49:17

is really important because Google is using the data.

49:19

It's actually a lot like SEO. I'm talking about how we all

49:21

came from SEO in the beginning. The

49:23

title, the description, the product information that you have.

49:27

Because Google is trying to figure out who's applicable to this

49:29

product, the more robust your product description and titles, the better.

49:32

And if you don't know how to do this,

49:34

go look at any Amazon product that's well placed.

49:37

Those people have cracked that freaking code, man. They're

49:39

all amazing. And look at how robust their

49:41

titles are. I mean, Leo Tolstoy

49:43

has written less in some instances. You know,

49:45

like it's just unbelievable how expensive they get.

49:48

But it works. And we're going right back

49:50

to like, you know, SEO circa 2011 when

49:53

we all did keyword fluffing and it actually like,

49:55

you know, produced some results. But

49:57

you're jam packing your titles with good value. your

49:59

descriptions with really robust information. And then we're tweaking

50:02

those. That's why GTI-N is so important because when

50:04

we make those tweaks, we wanna make sure Google

50:06

still knows what the product is. And

50:08

then you're making, in-app, you're making adjustments

50:10

on bids, of course, but you can do that

50:13

on a per-product basis. So if I see products

50:15

that aren't getting any purchases, you can turn those

50:17

products off, but you have to be really careful.

50:19

This is where Smart Shopping is so exciting. I

50:21

have products that have zero purchases for that product,

50:23

but they have a four, five, 600% ROI as

50:26

attributed to them. Because

50:28

if somebody finds us through the product,

50:31

does it by that product, but buys a different

50:33

one, Google attributes the conversion event

50:35

to the product that they found

50:38

us through. So you wanna make

50:40

sure you don't turn off your acquisition products. And this

50:42

happens a lot. The other thing I'll tell people is

50:44

don't make assumptions about what products will sell. My client,

50:46

the Optama's equipment client, she gave us 300 or 400

50:48

of her best products. She goes, these are the only

50:50

products that are sell. When we finally open up her

50:52

entire slate, which is sub 10,000, I think she's at

50:54

7,000 products, not

50:56

one of her 400 products

50:58

was on her top sellers. Not one, not

51:00

a single freaking one. Now, some

51:02

of the products that sell, she actually doesn't want to sell.

51:05

She called us up. from

51:07

a client. She's like, I am so sick of shipping out

51:09

this little onesie-twosie stuff. Like she was mad at how much

51:11

we were selling. And that's a big problem, by the way.

51:13

I've had a couple clients, we had one recently just a

51:16

few days ago, turn it off. They're like, we can't, we've

51:18

run out of silicone, and that's what they needed in order

51:20

to, like we're not equipped to fulfill.

51:22

Here's what sucks. That sounds like a really good

51:24

problem to have. I'm not bragging.

51:27

When you do that, you just kill the algo. When

51:29

they try to turn it back on, we've got this

51:31

whole ramp up period, and we've got to go back

51:33

and relearn. It's a pain. Make sure you're in a

51:35

position to where you can fulfill, because turning it off

51:37

and on is a pain in the hindquarters. But it's

51:40

not like, and you want to be

51:42

running other campaigns on the outside of it. So you want to

51:44

run like dynamic search ads. Google tells you not

51:46

to run dynamic remarketing because smart shopping is going to do

51:48

the remarketing. What we tell people is to run a dynamic

51:50

remarketing campaign, you're going to get zero

51:52

impressions. But what's weird about it is, running the

51:54

dynamic remarketing campaign captures users better

51:56

than smart shopping does, and then smart shopping takes those users and

51:58

remarkets to them. You can't, like you have

52:00

no control over bids, placements and ads, very limited visibility.

52:03

You can't control network placement or breakout. So I can't

52:05

say I want to be here. I don't want to

52:07

be there. You can't exclude specific networks. It's really such

52:09

for people who have sensitive products. We

52:11

can't have negative keywords. Like

52:14

we can't make that bit adjustments the way

52:16

that we're used to. I'm trying to think about what else. You're

52:19

no longer driving a race car. You're now sailing a

52:21

boat. And you're making kind

52:24

of like, you know, as the tide goes,

52:26

you're sort of making calibrated adjustments accordingly. Got

52:28

it. Do you have your hand

52:30

on the rudder or is it an ever so slight

52:32

touch of the rudder? It's, it depends on the client.

52:34

It depends on the client and the product. You know,

52:36

every now and then you just can't let that damn

52:38

thing go. Yeah. Restraint, it sounds like is one of

52:40

the biggest challenges here to

52:42

a certain degree. But you can

52:44

over optimize the campaign for sure.

52:46

Yeah, for sure. Now this has

52:49

been a tremendous, obviously, I

52:51

feel like even though we've been talking about this

52:53

for 40 or so minutes, like we've just only

52:55

scratched the surface, which leads me to believe we've

52:57

got to have you back on the show here

53:00

because this has been really a lot of fun.

53:04

Tell our listeners where they can find you, how

53:06

they interact with you, if they want to hire

53:08

you guys as an agency and what you got

53:10

coming up. I know you got a promotion coming

53:12

up in a week or so as well. Yeah.

53:14

So we've got a free challenge. It's a three

53:16

day challenge. If you like what you've heard, we

53:19

teach people how to do this. It

53:21

starts May 10th. It's specifically

53:23

geared towards Shopify stores. But

53:26

if you're not on Shopify, you'll still get value out

53:28

of it. You'll just have to adjust some of the

53:30

Shopify specific training to whatever CMS you're using. But

53:32

just go to 3xshopify.com. The number

53:34

three, the letter X, shopify.com. It's

53:37

a 3x Shopify challenge. It's completely

53:39

free. We walk through quick by quick,

53:41

point by point, exactly how we build smart shopping campaigns

53:43

over the course of three days. So

53:45

go to 3xshopify.com. If you're interested just enough

53:48

as an agency, you go to sol8.com. That's

53:50

sol, the number eight. Check us out. I

53:52

think we're one of the best grew-ed agencies on the planet. And

53:54

we'd love to work with you and help with you. If

53:57

we can't, I always pride myself on anybody.

54:00

who engages with this ends up being better off after

54:02

the fact. So if I'm not the right resource for

54:04

you, I'll try to point you in the right direction.

54:06

Yeah, much appreciated. And if they want

54:08

to interact with you personally, or you want on social

54:10

medias, the Twitters, Facebook, all that, or is it? Yeah,

54:12

hit me up on YouTube is the best place. I

54:14

shoot one YouTube video a day. So

54:17

yeah, I mean, I try to drop as much value

54:19

as I can. So just go to YouTube and search

54:21

for solutions that you'll find me LinkedIn is another good

54:23

place and I've got I'm the only cost of my

54:25

mind now. So I'll be easy to find. It's a

54:28

very distinctive name. Yeah, for sure. And you're also a

54:30

DM traffic coach too. So if you're a digital

54:32

marketer person, you probably know, you know,

54:35

what we're talking about here, at least to a certain

54:37

degree, because you're doing that on a monthly basis. It

54:39

sounds like, yeah, I spoke on this topic at traffic

54:42

and conversion. So if anybody was at TNC and you

54:44

saw me, this is just all redundant, redundant information for

54:46

you killer. Well, there's a lot to digest here. We're

54:48

going to leave a lot of links in the show

54:50

notes and obviously thank

54:53

you so much for listening to this

54:55

week's episode, a little flashback, a little

54:58

throwback from three years ago from Cosm's

55:00

first episode. Make sure you subscribe and

55:02

leave a rating wherever you listen to

55:04

podcasts and make sure that

55:06

you do connect with us through our

55:08

telegram thread. I don't know

55:11

where to say thread or channel. I

55:13

believe it's thread, technically with telegram and

55:16

say hello in there, introduce yourself, ask

55:19

a question, tell us what you're doing, you know,

55:21

what your biggest need is and how we can

55:24

help you. And then you can even

55:26

at Cosm if you want to stay in touch with

55:28

him in there, because he's going to keep a finger

55:30

on the pulse inside that telegram thread. So definitely join

55:32

that. That's over at perpetualtraffic.com

55:35

forward slash telegram. As

55:37

always, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube

55:39

channel. That is at

55:41

perpetualtraffic.com/YouTube and all resources and

55:44

shown as mentioned on this

55:46

week's show will

55:48

be at perpetualtraffic.com. So

55:51

on behalf of my

55:53

awesome now ex co-host,

55:55

Cosm Ozlam. Until

55:58

the next show. See you. You've

56:03

been listening to Perpetual Traffic.