PMAX + Remarketing Strategy: What’s Working in 2025? | Greg Finn Insights

Speaker A: Hi, Anthony. Welcome to the 10X Marketer podcast. I would love to have your introduction and then let's get started.

Speaker B: Awesome. Um, yeah, so I'm Anthony Higman. I am the owner of Ad Squire. We're a digital marketing agency for lawyers based out of Philadelphia. Um, I am a Google nerd and follow closely all of the things that are happening within, uh, Google and kind of the larger ecosphere.

Speaker A: Awesome, Anthony, and Welcome to the 10X Marketer podcast. The reason I got interested in talking to you is your approach to the omnichannel marketing that I was very impressed with. So let's start with that. And for the benefit of broader audience group, we can start with how do you define the omnichannel marketing and especially for the local businesses, what are the benefits, implications of an omnichannel approach?

Speaker B: Awesome, awesome question. Yeah, so over the years, um, we've, you know, tested lots of different things within Google. Again, for our kind of target market, which is mostly local law firms. We have developed this omnichannel approach, which really works for almost all of our clients. Um, and what that entails is it's mostly search, which is like the bread and butter for leads for law firms. Um, then it's YouTube and display. So that's kind of like the 8020. And then the newer part of that, uh, is local services ads, which kind of we manage in unison with search campaigns because of how those are kind of being, um, a more prevalent piece of the puzzle in local lead generation.

Speaker A: Awesome. So if you have to define it for any local business other than lawyers. So the component that you mentioned in your omnichannel approach is you start with the search marketing. That is one primary channel you want to focus for a local business. Then YouTube Plus Display Ads is another component that you include in this. And then maybe the business, if they have the CRM, they can, uh, do the remarketing through emails and other channels that they already have that utilize that to reach their existing customers. And then you, on top of that, you can also use the local service ad if they're available in your area. So that is the entire approach to marketing when it comes to the building a campaign that is more like an omnichannel and reaching your customer wherever they are. Now let's talk about the other important thing. What are the typical challenges that comes when you set up an omnichannel approach? Is it easy to set up? Is it difficult? What are the challenges? What should be the things that one person should keep in mind while they're setting up the entire process for an omnichannel approach.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Um, yeah, so it can definitely be challenging. Um, as you know, I'm sure there's a ton of different settings and targeting options in Google Ads. Um, and all these things like do take knowledge and practice and testing to kind of see what works. Um, in my opinion, it's kind of why Google uh, is pushing these new campaign types like Performance Max, Demand, uh, gen. They essentially do the same thing that we do in an omni channel approach, but it's just much easier for the normal average person to set up. You can just kind of like put your assets in. Google walks you through how to do this and then you do kind of have an omnichannel marketing strategy, uh, set up with, with these kind of new campaign types. Um, where we differ there and like where we kind of. I don't want to say disagree because I understand what Google's doing, um, is just that like, I think it's extremely important to control the channel mix. And again like over the years we've kind of honed this strategy to where we control that channel mix. And again it's like 80% search and 20% these kind of other uh, branding strategies which do then funnel back into branded search campaigns. And we can see that over time like when you're running YouTube the way that we do, um, different kind of cool display strategies, these things do really increase branded search and branded search conversion. Um, and that's that 20% but with like the new ones like Demand Gen Performance Max you, you can't. Well on demand gen you can control channels which is I, I do like that. But Performance Max, it's kind of like again it isn't an omnichannel approach but you're not controlling the mix. And so like it's going to spend where it can spend and that can be good, it can be bad. Um, you know again there's always pros and cons with all of these kind of Google, Google new campaign types and really anything in Google, uh, the settings that you're going to set do take knowledge. You can read about a lot of these things. A lot of like industry pros do talk about like what the right settings are for the right kind of business. But as you know there's just a million different little tiny nuances and settings within Google Ads campaign.

Speaker A: Understood. Now the other uh, option that Anthony. So uh, two questions come to my mind. I'll uh, ask them one by one. So the first question is, let's say the typical marketing uh, Wisdom that most people have or most people offer is that you are not supposed to like distribute your budget in a way that it saturates or it thins out very quickly. So you want to consolidate your effort in one direction. And there may be load of load of businesses, especially the local businesses that are just dependent on one channel. So if they are doing search, they have been doing search for 10 years, they don't want to do anything else. They, they think that they are able to control the entire universe just with the search campaign. And to some extent they are successful also. I mean, they are able to fill their operations capacity using only search. So one, what they are losing. And second, uh, part of this question is if you have to start the omnichannel approach, which when is the right time to get into an omnichannel?

Speaker B: Another awesome question. Um, I think everybody should be doing some kind of omnichannel approach. Um, again, I think this is like a big part of Google's automated push over the last three years. Ish, um, is they're trying to push more people into an omnichannel approach. And again, that's like a consequence of lots of different things. User behavior changes. Google's very interested in younger audiences and what they're doing and how they kind of navigate the Internet. And their search path is much more fragmented and doesn't always start with Google. I think really the first thing you need to do is kind of determine obviously who your target market is, what, what those demographics look like. And that kind of can help you be a guide on like, what is your omnichannel marketing approach going to be. But everybody, I think today is searching in a lot more places and user behavior is changing 100%. Um, I know like, what I always do, um, and it might not always be the right way, is I tend to start by looking at things like through my lens, where do I spend time, what am I looking at, what captures my attention? And that's kind of like where I start, right? Is like, okay, I spend a lot of time on YouTube, on social media, on Google. So that's kind of how we start to craft our approach. But again, you should look at like, what is your target market, where are they spending time? But I think everybody should have at least a couple channels that you're touching with different ad strategies that again, like, are cohesive or targeting the same people. And so you can just have those touch points that, that come back and, and again, like help your, your search campaigns, which again, I still think is the 80 20.

Speaker A: Understood. So let's, since you talked about 80, 20 and this is one universal rule that applies to almost anything. If you are starting an omnichannel approach and you are a small business, how do you distribute your budget? Is there a universal rule or is it something that everyone has to figure out?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, okay. Uh, it's the second but I do think that there is still an 8020. Again it goes back to that like what are your demos and where, like how do people spend time? Sometimes it might be heavier on YouTube, right. Than it is on search, but I still do think it's, it's mostly the 8020. So 80% is search and 20% is those other omnichannel approaches like YouTube display. And then again we're getting into like some of the pmax and um, demand gen side which is kind of like Google's social focus, more the demand gen side. But um, again I think it does, it does differ. But in my opinion search is still that 80%. Um, that's obviously changing a lot in Google's kind of AI error. But I still do think like showing up on Google when uh, people search is a really important and uh, probably the most important factor, at least for local lead generation. And then there's local services ads. I know like they're not available ever or I know they're not available everywhere but I think they're going to be. To be honest with you, like Google is really expanding local services ads. M and we're just seeing them, especially in the US become this like much bigger uh, piece of overall search because they're showing up again more and more for the same keywords that you're targeting on Google search campaigns. So that's kind of like a tricky piece of the puzzle is then how that 80% of search gets divided up in between Google search campaigns and local services ads. Um, and um, how you kind of have to like balance those budgets.

Speaker A: So there are two, three questions that comes to my mind after listening to your explanation. First is um, obviously you have the budget allocation and everything in place. Now the real question is um, where is the balance between finding new customer versus targeting the existing customer and how that fits in an omnichannel approach. How do you ensure that you are not losing attention of somebody who is already in touch with you in some manner? You want to retarget them, you want to refactor them in your marketing algorithm and then you also don't want to lose your tab on people who have recently started searching for your solution. So new customer and existing customer. How do you create an omnichannel marketing uh, strategy that is able to capture new customer and also keep a tab on your existing setup customers?

Speaker B: Um, really great question. I'll speak to kind of our client base and then like how I would do what you're talking about, um, how I would do what you're talking about is I would just have different ad groups within a campaign. So if I'm doing YouTube, I just have a bunch of different ad groups that are kind of touching on those points that you brought up. Right. So like if I have the ability and the data to target those different segments of the audience that you're talking about, new customers, um, people who are currently interacting with my brand. Again it would just be like ad um, groups or different campaigns with different data that's connected to those, that's hitting on those points. With us it's more difficult because we're in a sensitive ad uh, category. We touched on this briefly. We market a lot for lawyers and a big portion of that is injury type based lawyers and they operate in a sensitive ad category. So you can't use all those data points. Um, so in a way you have to kind of get more creative to keep all of the things that you're talking about and you really can't like zoom in on. Okay, I want to just target these people and not these people. So it is kind of more all encompassing than it is like using Google Ads data which is awesome. I love that you can target um, tons of different people and remarket and all these things. When you do have that ability, again like with us it's slightly more difficult because of the sets of ad category. So we kind of um, again it, it is why we do omnichannel. It's not going to work for every single person because it's a little bit more broad, all encompassing. But again I just think that that mix is important. The 80 20.

Speaker A: Understood. Now the other part of puzzle of uh, the same puzzle Anthony, is that when you go to a different platform you get carried away by the, all the functionality that the platform offers. So in a search ad versus in a YouTube ad, how do you actually manage the entire communication channel so that your brand messaging, your brand identity and overall communication to your target customer remains the same? It's kind of accurate, similar targeting, talking the same language. How do you ensure the uh, consistency there?

Speaker B: Yep, just as you put it. So we have our, we have our search campaigns that have a certain message. We're obviously testing those and then our YouTube campaigns will hit on similar points. Um, most of the firms that we work with do have like a brand video that will cut up into different segments and we'll test those and see what resonates best with our audience. But again, the messaging, again because we're like super niched down in, in legal, um, a lot of it is the same. And so you're looking for like the points of differentiation from law firms. And a lot of those like are in brand videos in, in kind of like different segments are. Our favorite, um, YouTube ad type is the 15 second non skippable ad. Um, because again we're targeting these by keywords. You can still do that in what we're doing. And so you're touching upon the same audience that is looking for those services within search. And then it's not direct remarketing, but again they're doing these searches on Google and that's what we're targeting on YouTube. Um, and so there is like crossover and again like brand recognition. Um, the, the challenge I think again, and why Google is pushing certain things is like that every law firm does have a brand video. Some of the smaller firms that we work with like don't have those assets. And I think that's kind um, of part of this big AI push with creating assets and creating videos, um, which is kind of still in its infancy. There's definitely some cool things going on there. But yeah, again like we're trying to target the same kind of keyword searches that are happening on Google, um, and, and carrying that over to YouTube, uh, the best that we can with the limitations that we work with.

Speaker A: Understood. So the other part that is really figuring out almost every conversation is what are the KPIs and what do you actually track to make sure that you are doing good in terms of your performance?

Speaker B: Yeah, totally. So, um, our North Star, again we're legion. So our North Star is uh, is kind of like half out of platform. Um, you know we're tracking calls and forums and live chats. So like that's always what we're looking at is like we have goo like, like every day we have Google Ads open and then we have those three kind of um, out of platform stats that we're watching. And we're really just trying to beat our last month's stats. Right. So like how many phone calls did we get, how many forms, how many live chats? We're just continually trying to outmatch that number this month from the last month. And so those, those are really the KPIs that we're tracking obviously then we're looking in platform and you know, click through rates. Um, I think a big thing is like when we're running these omnichannel approaches is testing different creatives and then seeing the branded search increases. We always run a brand campaign for all the advertisers that we're running ads for. And so again, that's super powerful in that when you run different tests on YouTube, display different targeting, uh, approaches, you can see those branded searches come back and continue to increase. Um, and it's actually like pretty cool and powerful because over time the branded search just keeps increasing and increasing. Um, and so that's again how we know it's working. And branded search conversions, all of these things are things that we're tracking.

Speaker A: Awesome. So in a, especially in a competitive space you will see a lot of people are ah, like targeting each other's brand names. Right. So do you see that happening lot in the law firms also?

Speaker B: We do. And also, um, I think Google is, is doing a lot of this with kind of the new campaign types. Um, something that we, you know, we've seen over the last three years is an exponential increase in them matching up every, every law firm brand name in the entire United States to regular keywords.

Speaker A: So it's like you are the synonyms with low. If you are a legal firm, you are kind of a synonyms with a low.

Speaker B: Yep. So like the, the example is like the keyword is personal injury lawyer, even like an exact match of that. And then you'll look at search terms and there will be 300 law firms that match to that as a close match variant. And they're, they're doing something there. Like I'm 100% certain of that. I think part of it is going to be AI Max. Like they're working that in, they just added like brand exclusions to AI Max. Um, I think that Google knows that a lot of uh, branded search runs through Google and they're trying to, again, I don't think it's necessarily like bad. I don't like it, I'll tell you that much. Like, because it's a lot of work to like negative these and keep our channels clean. But I think what they're trying to do is shorten the gap in introducing other brands. They know that what people do on Google is build that list and then like whittle that down into who they're going to contact. And I think they're trying to shorten the gap between them seeing the next brand. So I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. It again, as marketers makes us just focus more on like what matters, which is like the differentiation and like really core marketing principles, like back to websites and what you're saying, like the messaging more so than the platform, which again, I kind of, uh, everything with Google, I am a love hate kind of a thing.

Speaker A: Like, yeah, we still want, we still want our episode to go live because YouTube is primary distribution. So we'll not go in overboard in criticizing.

Speaker B: Right? Again, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not necessarily criticizing. I, I have a.

Speaker A: No, no, it's okay. I understand. And I also agree we should not go overboard this. Now let's discuss one more important thing. Anthony. Uh, have you seen, uh, some firms when you, especially when you audit a new account, what kind of vanity metrics people track when it comes to omnichannel? They call it omnichannel. And you really understand that this is something that you are doing is more like stupid thing than omnichannel?

Speaker B: Um, yeah. So I mean, you know, I think most of the vanity metrics that, that people push or, or talk about or report on are like views and impressions. Right? Which I, I don't necessarily think it, they, they can be bad, they can be good. I'm not saying like that's necessarily a bad thing. Is, hey, how many, look at, look at how many views that you got. That's not our focus. Um, it, it can be. Right? Like it depends on what you're targeting. Again, we work with mostly local law firms, so the, the areas that we're targeting again are local. And I do want, um, a lot of views in that local area and I want the views to be increasing. But again, we always go back to our branded search campaigns and our branded searches funneling back from this strategy. And if they're not, then something's wrong and we have to work on that.

Speaker A: Understood. Now let's say, uh, let's flip the switch once again. What will be the biggest challenge for agency owners like you and me, uh, in next two years because of AI and other developments that are happening already. As you already said, whatever we are doing, we have been doing for 10 years. Google is trying to automate all of that. Uh, how do you see the future?

Speaker B: Um, again, always a mixed bag. Um, so for, for me specifically, I think that the big, um, automation push from Google is uh, half of a negative because, um, in, in these categories that are sensitive ad categories, U of us can't you can't do it because like all these automated strategies are, are tied to specific data points. Right. And a lot of them we don't have the ability to target. And so I think that some, some business types, um, are getting forced into these automated campaign types that have limitations in, in data passing back and forth. Um, I, I know that Google's working that um, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that they're, they're trying to fix these issues. But that's been like a point of contention for us is that like some people might get left behind in, in this push. And Google again, uh, nothing wrong with it, they're concentrating on their 80% right, where they can drive the most value and connect all these data points. And I do think like data is extremely valuable and the targeting options are cool. I just think that some businesses, um, it just doesn't work out for um. And with what we do for lawyers, it's hard because they don't hang super long if they're not getting results. And, and these new campaign types, a lot of times take a, take a good amount of time to get honed in and, and in that inner, in that like, um, in that gap, they get a lot of like bad leads that waste their time and it gets them upset and so they like stop advertising on Google basically. So I think like again there, there's challenges. I understand Google's push and I think there's definitely a ton of benefits to it, but there's some business categories I think that it's not going to work out for in the short term. And again, I know Google's working on it. Hopefully they, they shorten that gap and, and find solutions for those business typ.

Speaker A: Understood. So I think uh, for now you are safe, but you don't know about the future. Awesome.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Any tips, tricks you want to share with agency owners who are in a similar space, a similar boat like you?

Speaker B: Uh, okay, I'll talk about a couple cool things. Um, and a couple like just weird things. So with YouTube campaigns, um, there's some, there's a ton of different stuff you can do. We target keywords, we test different audiences. Um, we used to, uh, part of our process used to be every week we would um, go in and exclude a bunch of stuff. And a lot of what we were excluding was like kids content. Right. Um, we're not like targeting kids, but a lot of YouTube, uh, campaigns like you will see a ton of kids content in them. When you're looking at the placements that you're showing up in. So for, uh, a year, maybe more than that, we would go in every week and we would exclude kids placements. Uh, we, we listen to calls as much as we can and like, you know, review lead quality. Something interesting we've found out over like the last year or so is that, um, we've gotten some really big cases for clients where they were watching YouTube videos with their kids and they saw our law firm's ads and converted. Um, and it's not, it's not always a direct conversion like through a YouTube ad, but on that call they'll go, oh, we saw your ad on YouTube and that's why we called. And so we've gotten like these crazy big cases from adult users that are typing these keywords in that we're targeting. And then they're watching YouTube content with their kids and they see our law firm's ad. Um, so we've stopped excluding, uh, kids placements because we, we kind of just didn't understand that that piece. And it was kind of like a really cool eye opener. Um, another thing that we do, um, Google, you know, uh, YouTube is becoming just kind of this powerhouse. And like so many people watch YouTube. I watch a ton of YouTube. I think it's like almost like better than Netflix at this point. They have like a lot of like free movie content and like all these cool things. So like, uh, targeting certain placements like movies is, is something that's cool. Also a lot more people are watching YouTube on their TVs these days. So like, been adjusting up TV screens is something that's been beneficial for us. And that also like, helps you to get on YouTube TV placements, which is crazy because you can get like really awesome uh, network cable placements for like less than a penny. And like, it's just unheard of in like, if you tried to target these kind of same cable network placements, um, through traditional tv, it would be like a lot of money. Whereas now you can do cool things with YouTube campaigns where you're getting on cable net, like major cable network placements for less than like 0.002 cents. And uh, I think that's extremely powerful. Um, through YouTube TV again, they're selling kind of, um, lots of different things through YouTube. So again, I'm like very bullish on YouTube. I think they're putting a lot of resources behind it. That revenue is growing. Um, a couple other things on the YouTube side because I, again I'm very bullish on YouTube is a new thing that they just started doing. Is testing 30 second non skippables, and those are in regular YouTube campaigns now. So there's a beta going on where they're doing 30 second non skippable ads that you can now target. And then they're doing a new combo, which is like 15 second non skippables and, um, at six second bumper combos. And I'm seeing a lot more of those when I watch YouTube, so I think they're getting adopted and I think that's cool.

Speaker A: Awesome. So thank you so much, Anthony. I think we had a awesome chat today. Thank you so much, guys, for listening to us so far. Make sure you subscribe to the 10X Marketer podcast before you leave. Wherever you're listening from, just subscribe it there. Thank you. Thank you once again. And I think, uh, we had a lovely chat today, so thanks for joining.

Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you for having me.