#730 Paid Search with Charley Brennand, Danielle Gipps, Sarah Sal and Cathryn Stormont

Speaker A: This is Internet marketing. Oh, Kelvin Newman here and welcome to the Internet Marketing Podcast. Um, we've got slightly different change of format coming up over the next few weeks. Um, recently we had the Brighton SEO event and one of the popular elements of the program, there are panel discussions with, where we get groups of people together to have live discussions around interesting topics around search and more broadly, digital marketing. So, um, we've decided to take a few of those panels and use them as episodes for the Internet market podcast so you can get a bit of a sense of what those panels are like at Bryton SEO. So, yeah, we've got one of those coming up. Um, I hope you really enjoy it.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to, I think, what is your potential second to last talk of the Day, if you're staying for Big Rory at the end. Um, you've obviously got the pleasure of our, ah, lovely company today. Uh, we've got the lovely Danielle to my left. Um, we were actually just chatting then saying about, uh, are we going to read the bio word for word or are we going to ad lib and be like, hey, she's sassy, she knows a lot about social media. Uh, she's actually the marketing manager for Revenue Growth Agency. And the biggest thing that I learned from her this morning is that she is an avid, avid Star wars fan. So all I would say is just bear in mind throughout this session, if you do have opportunities to have questions, which you will do, we'll break twice for them, maybe throw in a few Star wars questions for her. She'll get excited.

Speaker C: I will. I can't guarantee I'll know the answer. Okay.

Speaker B: Okay. Oh, yeah, she's soon, whatever that is. So there you go. Right, so that's Danielle. She knows lots about social media. We got Sarah, uh, to my right. So she is Facebook and LinkedIn ads, um, specialist. You may have seen her talk yesterday. It was sensational. A lot of cats, a lot of ice cream, and some very, very questionable choices around ketchup and where it's placed. But she does have a shit ton of experience with Facebook ad spend. Seven figure, uh, ad spend, to be precise, under 10 years. Uh, work for some like, Excellent, excellent company. So Facebook ad testing for things like Ad Espresso, blitzmetrics, Copy Hackers, adweek, John Loom as Power Hour. I must be missing something because I don't know how half of these people are, but they must be pretty big time because you're big time, right?

Speaker D: Yes, I am.

Speaker B: So Sarah actually wanted to introduce herself in a certain way and I Think if you had a certain type of host for this session, they'd be like, no way. So, so I just would like you to greet the audience in the way that you promised.

Speaker D: Yeah. Hello. Beat you.

Speaker B: Yes, yes, thank you, Sarah. So you can see how this session may go. So, uh, last but not least, on my far right, we actually have Catherine and she is the director of digi Freelancer. Catherine and I sort of chin wagged in the speaker room and you know, I've got to say it's kind of like peas in a pod because we are both PPPC people. These two people here, paid social through and through. So she's my ally on the, uh, on the desk today.

Speaker D: She's uh, like BBC, like the TV station ppc. Oh, I think.

Speaker B: Do you remember that thing that we were.

Speaker E: Okay.

Speaker B: So she's helped grow brands that you may have heard of like Hobbycraft, Wiggle, Fujifilm, Mazda, ah, just to name a few. So we're really, really blessed to have such talented people on the um, panel today. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask a couple of questions, speakers are going to answer, then we'll break for some questions. So first of all, can you tell us things that search and social can share to benefit one another and perhaps anything that we should absolutely avoid doing categorically.

Speaker C: Do not do what when it comes

Speaker B: to search and social? And I'll fire that to you first, Danielle.

Speaker C: This is probably going to be a common theme with the majority of my answers today. Um, and that's because I believe that video is king. But I think you definitely need to be including video and even just visual, creative and visual content as part of your PPC and not just relying on social to be able to deliver those assets. Obviously they have different purposes. So paid social, predominantly we use it as like an introducing channel. So using it for brand awareness where visuals are so important and be able, being able to capture and keep the attention of new audiences. But if you're not then carrying that through to your paid search campaigns and you're not actually making use of things like pmax that is actually really effective at serving visual content, then you're kind of missing a trick. And it's not, I mean, I'm not an expert ppc. I don't think it's that difficult to dump some creative assets in your PMAX campaign.

Speaker B: Not the room, not the room.

Speaker C: But also in terms of like display retargeting and all of that kind of stuff are gonna work really effectively. So I would Say in terms of things that work really well together, I'd say get your creative ducks in a row across both platforms. Make sure that you're taking the, the high performing creative from both your organic and your paid social channels and testing them as part of your wider PPC strategy can be really, really effective.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you. Katherine, any thoughts? What do you think that search and um, social can share and benefit one another?

Speaker E: I think with PPC at the moment there's a lot more targeting out there. So a lot more affinity targeting in marketing targeting and you can start targeting by life events and it's kind of now rivaling paid social Facebook. So if you're testing stuff on Facebook then you should better test it on PPC as well. And it's just about sharing that information between the two platforms. You can just, yeah, use it as testing platform. It's absolutely important.

Speaker B: Sarah, any thoughts?

Speaker D: May I start? But what we should not do, you

Speaker B: can absolutely do what you bloody well

Speaker D: like never launch a campaign when you're bloody drunk or under the influence of ah, Russia. That's one thing you shouldn't do. Um, if you want to scale a company you would need to do both. You cannot do. I mean I see companies that only do Google or they only do paid social or they only do cherish organic and they say we want to scale when it become big. But people exist outside of one channel. So often if you want to grow you would need to have multiple touch points across different um, awareness spectrum. Um, but you need to be mindful of the difference. I mean I see a lot of people who do cherish and then they try paid social and they fail because cherish is demand fulfillment. Somebody say, I have an hormonal balance and you say, I'm um, the hormone expert. I could treat you, I treat you many people and then they go on social and it's similar to going to something to a coffee shop. I said, I noticed this. You have a mustache. Do you have any chance of hormonal imbalance? Come to my clinic and it's a good way to have somebody throw water coffee into your face instead. You want to educate people. It's like, it's called demand. One is demand fulfillment, one is demand generation. And it's like how can you use storytelling the second one to create the interest and the awareness before you even dare to ask for a sale?

Speaker B: Okay, okay. So I think in terms of um, I think something that we discussed earlier as well is what's really important. And I think it was discussed at another meeting that had been to a few weeks ago and we kind of talked about as well, um, the interesting fact of how organic content can sometimes be the best content for paid, but it very, very rarely works the other way around. And I think to your point, it's because one of them is so much about building the emotion, building the story, connecting with people, whereas the other one's kind of like very transactional. So, uh, yes, thank you. Um, okay, so this is, you know, quite an open ended question, so I thought it'd be fun. Ever changing paid and um, paid social landscape. How do we stay on top of it, if at all, if at all?

Speaker C: We talked about this earlier, didn't we?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Ah, um, the main way that I stay up to date with trends is just to be a user of the platform. Um, so as much as I hate it when I can see people like just mindlessly scrolling through their phone, I am one of those people that I do it in the privacy of my own home, so I don't feel guilty about it. Um, but I think if you want to, with paid social in particular, if you want to keep up with trends, Trends move so fast in social now, especially when you think about how reactive platforms like TikTok are. New trends are happening all the time. If you're not a user of those platforms, you're always kind of going to be hearing it through the grapevine or someone in the office is going to be like, oh, have you seen this new trend you're already behind because you're having to hear it through someone else and it's like Chinese whispers. So I think being a user of the platform can help you spot immediately what those trends are. And that's not to say that as a brand you need to jump on every single trend because sometimes it's not going to work, it's not going to resonate with the community that you have on that particular, particular platform, but it just helps you kind of stay abreast of what the landscape looks like in general and then, you know, predicting as best you can how what the longevity of that trend might look like or whether it's just a passing fad that's not going to catch on.

Speaker B: So how do you feel about, uh, an undisclosed person of an undisclosed age that says, I don't use TikTok because I'm too old for it and it's not me?

Speaker C: I wonder who you might be talking about. I mean, I was about to say I don't want to ruffle any feathers, but I think I ruffled Some yesterday during my talk. Anyway, so I'm just gonna say it. I think if you're working in paid social or organic social, and you say, I categorically do not want to go on TikTok, you either need to kind of brand yourself as a specialist in meta or a specialist in a platform you do use, or you need to find another job because you need to love it, Right? If you work in paid social, I could talk, I could chew your ear off about social for 24 hours a day, because I love it. But, like, if you're in a job and you think like, oh, God, I hate TikTok, then why are you doing it? Because you need that, like, spark to be able to kind of keep up to date and want to know what the next big thing is. And if you're not like that, then there's no shame in going, you know what, TikTok's not for me, but I still love Instagram and I love Meta. So actually, let's go down that route and that's going to be my speciality. I'm going to stay ahead of those trends and I'm going to love it, and I'll leave TikTok to somebody else who lives and breathes that platform.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a very, very good point. Um, Sarah, how do you stay ahead of the ever changing landscape?

Speaker D: I was interviewed by a famous podcast. They asked me, what is something that works today that 11 months ago did not work? I was like, how about I tell you something that worked 50 years ago, before social media even existed? And I gave an example, um, health authority in the US at some point they said, popcorn made with Coconut oil has 37 milligrams of saturated fat. Is that too much? Is that too little? Then the scientists said, how can we explain that? They said, it's the same as an English breakfast. A burger, a steak and a fries in one meal. The popcorn still has more saturated fat. Now everybody got it. It became m the first on so many newspaper, tv, channel, et cetera. And when you're talking to people, I mean, trains come and go, but you're still talking to human. And persuasion principle are still, um, there. So I don't really want to run after, um, train. I mean, it's like a small kitten, uh, that drank five cup of coffee running in every direction. You're never going to catch the kitten. But how about you think about things that worked 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 500 years ago and 1,000 years ago and continue using them?

Speaker B: Have you ever Given a cat, five cups of coffee though, I think that's a guilty yes actually. Catherine, how do you stay ahead of changing trends? Paid social ppc? What is it that you do to stay on top of things?

Speaker E: I think it's just being part of any kind of beta that comes around. Uh, it's really important I think to connect with uh, LinkedIn. If you connect with some of the Google product lasing officers, they've got to tell you about some of the latest betas. I mean I was involved many years ago where site links didn't exist so I got on the beta and I was one of the first in the UK to do site links. And if you're just testing out the new things then you're going to stay ahead and you, it's about if you just see that little nugget of information and then just research the hell out of it. That's how I stay on top. Just research all different sources. It doesn't necessarily have to be anyone you particularly follow if you just stay on top and you've got to predict the next thing. So we start thinking, okay, Netflix ads, that's now the next new things. And if you start predicting ahead of that, just get on the platforms early, get on the platforms early as you can get those betas as possible.

Speaker B: Brilliant. Um, I think what I would add to those three answers is also that you just can't assume anything. I think you, like I said, I wasn't going to say this but I can't help it, don't assume anything. So we won't talk about the undisclosed person that doesn't have TikTok because it's definitely not me. But um, somebody that does have TikTok that is very out of uh, maybe what I would deem as, you know, the uh, Persona of someone that has TikTok is my 50 year old mum. And um, guys, she's TikTok famous. She is TikTok famous. And believe me did not think those words would ever come out of my mouth. But she does have in excess of 70,000 followers. So um, what I would take from that is that you're never too old, no matter how old you think you are, to learn a new bit of tech, to learn a new platform and actually you know, it's quite self sabotagy to even ever say something like I just can't get it because ultimately like what you were saying, you know, if you feel like that really has the power to enhance whatever you're doing, it is your job to do it. It is your job to understand it, however slow you might need to go, uh, you know, however much of a technophobe you feel like you are. Listen, if my 50 year old mum can do it, anybody can do it, for God's sake. Um, yeah, I think that that's kind of a big one and I think if you want any recommendations from any of the panelists of people that they follow or publications that they get their updates from, please grab us at the end. There will be names that they will be happy to recommend. So I am going to open it up for the first time for any questions. So please be brave, wait for the microphone because we want to get your question. Uh, but yeah, any questions for any of the panelists or any thoughts that you want to share or anything that you want to challenge or, or any questions at all.

Speaker C: Oh, don't all go.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, don't fight for it. Yes, please. Hello, is this on? Um, yeah, we were recently in the

Speaker C: really lucky position that our client's meta account got hacked.

Speaker B: Yeah, not through us, through In House,

Speaker C: um, which was a really, they were a charity and it's really massive part of their income stream and we just lost that bottom of the funnel, um, like, activation tactic which has been devastating for them. Um, meta have been as helpful as you would imagine in that situation. But I'd like to throw this at you as, um, an interview question, I guess.

Speaker B: How would you respond if one of

Speaker C: your clients, one of your clients is relying on meta? They've been hacked and they've lost that bottom of the funnel activation. Go and I'll write this down. Um, so I hope so I'll start. We have experience, uh, with this. We have, we have still, it's still ongoing. A client that was also hacked. An unfathomable amount of ad spend was spent. Um, we were in a privileged position where we opened a new business manager account and we just started from scratch. We had a first party data solution in place, so we were able to feed the algorithms quite quickly with first party data. So the period of learning for meta in a brand new business manager account was shorter than it would have been had we not had that data. Do you mean from like a, like a brand reputation point of view or purely just kind of they're losing that revenue because you've had to turn off that activity. Uh, just from a revenue perspective. Lucky they've got some like, really strong brand advocates who are like, are you okay? And it was really obviously not them. It was some like MLM or like, nonsense. Yeah, I would say, I mean, if you were in a position to just kind of start again really quickly, get your social team to open that new business manager account, get campaigns m copied over and up and running as soon as possible, I would say that's probably the best bet. And then obviously having those conversations with the Facebook fraud team in the background to try and solve that immediate problem. Um, if you have content that you are serving on meta that would transfer across to YouTube, YouTube shorts, you know, could they be put into a PMAX campaign? Could you use them as display? Would it be able, would it also work on things like, you know, Pinterest or any of those other visual platforms? I would say maybe try testing those, seeing whether you can make up ground on another platform that you know that your, your customers are. Um, yeah, I would say the, the main thing would just be, you know, if you can get meta back up and running quickly, just run with it and try and do that. I don't know if that's even helpful, but the option is there. You can have two business managers running concurrently against each other.

Speaker B: Is there anything you want to add to that?

Speaker D: I would say don't put all your egg in one basket. If something work on Facebook, it might work on LinkedIn. I know people say LinkedIn is expensive, but I'm currently running ad where we're getting $3.50 per webinar opt in a B2B. Um, technical SEO, uh, niche, um, TikTok. Okay, last year I talked about TikTok and why some people fail and succeed with it. But TikTok is interruption marketing the same way Facebook is. And you could leverage it, um, even if you're not hacked. I give you two story, um, a client, I mean one client sell Photoshop courses and I get the email from Facebook telling me stop interfering in election. Um, another one, um, he's selling Spanish language courses and um, the ad account got banned. And um, when I shot with Facebook support there are people that are cop. I mean basically Facebook, yes, they're worth maybe 300 billion but they hire um, they outsource the support to people who are abused or they are told, why didn't you reply to 500 Query uh today? So those people are basically copy pasting and I'm saying hey, learning Spanish is nothing political and the person just copy paste. We're protecting democracy. End of discussion. And shot the shaft. Right? And for a few months we couldn't run ads. So even if today you're not hacked, you have two factor authentication. Maybe tomorrow Facebook become more Expensive maybe like it happened with iOS 14 basically. Now Facebook is showing your ad to garbage audience while hiking the price by 5. Um, you should have the alternative. I mean don't wait till it's too late to think about having more than one egg.

Speaker B: Catherine, anything that you'd add to eye

Speaker E: with those in terms of the cost? Absolutely. LinkedIn, Facebook, similar CPCs. It really is now. So yeah, keep trying different mediums and they say don't put eggs in one basket. Keep going, keep trying different things, set new channels up. Uh, if one channel goes away you've got another channel as a backup.

Speaker B: Anyone else got any problems they would like the experts to address?

Speaker D: The expert.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker F: Hi panel. I don't know if this is a problem or anything like that but um, we're using right now ah Facebook and uh, TikTok. Right. To run ads and everything and I wanted your guys opinion on some strategy that we started using. Um, so let's say for example we like I'm trying to keep a three plus hours in Facebook and on TikTok. Right. So the ads that we run and um, let's say for example after every two, three days or even a week, the ads that are performing lower than three, we turn them off, we add new ones. So in your opinion like do you think how many times should you turn off the ad and how long should you keep it running for? Because the main objective and the aim is to have ads running that are bringing in the best conversions. Right. Three plus but anything else usually gets turned off let's say within two, three days if it's spending too much and there's nothing coming out of it. So just wanted your opinion on this. Like what do you think? What is the best time to run that? When you should turn it off and we keep an eye on it daily and um, just, just some.

Speaker B: Does anyone want to fight fight for that question? Anybody?

Speaker D: Sure, I. Go ahead, go. I'll say managing ad is more of an art than a science. What do I mean? Let's say I go to Las Vegas and I'm gambling. Um, If I have 1 million, a bank account and I lost everything I could keep gambling. It's not a big deal. Right now if I'm down to my last hundred dollar and I still need to buy an airline ticket back home, I'm going to stop gambling. So often I would have um, client they say you need to achieve let's say 7$, um CPA. If my average CPA now is 5$, I have the flexibility to let things that are not running run longer to have more statistical significance. On the other hand, if my average cost CPA is 20$, then I would be more ruthless and I'm starting to kill things more quicker. Even if I'm sacrificing the statistical significance of um. Personally I like to look at what's the average CPA for the campaign. Look at a multiple of two or three. If I spend that and my cost is higher than the average, then I would pause it because imagine a scenario where you spend $10, right? Your average CPA is 5, you might kill it. Now you get 3 conversion, that's like $3, right? On the other hand, if you spend $50 and you still get 0 lead, spending an extra $5 or $2 or $3, there's no chance in hell the $50 is going to become $3. I mean if you got 1 conversion, it's $50. If you got 2 conversion, that's still $25. If you got 3 conversion, that's still more expensive than your average cost per lead. So um, at the end of the day it depends on your business objective and uh, you're making a choice between statistical significancy and um, profitability or cost. Uh, action.

Speaker B: Catherine, do you want to chime in?

Speaker E: I'm thinking also from an attribution point of view, you know, if you're turning something off after a few days, then what to say that isn't down the line having a long term effect. You need to be looking, keeping things running a little bit longer to work out is that having an assisting value on another channel, what's the true value of that? And rather than just immediately turning it off just by the numbers and thinking about the bigger picture and bigger picture

Speaker C: in the attribution model, I could not agree more. Um, I think that you don't know purely by looking at roas, what impact some of that creative might be having in terms of building brand awareness and pulling people in at the top of the funnel. So if your ads are purely focused on converting people that are already in market for the product that you're selling, then fine, you could look at ROAS to see how effective that is at converting. However, if your campaign, I mean, I don't know how your campaigns are set up, but if for instance you had a piece of creative that has a lower roas, but it's really good at uh, building awareness at the top of the funnel and you kill that ad, that's then potentially turning the tap off that's going to convert someone in three Weeks, four weeks, six months time. So similar to Catherine, you don't know the wider impact that some of that creative might be having. So I'd say depending on what the focus of that creative is, if it's to convert, yeah, fine, look at the roas and see how it's performing. But if it's more of a holistic campaign that is focusing on pouring people into the top of the funnel and then converting people later down the line, maybe looking at a slightly longer term view. And again, if you have the attribution solution in place to be able to measure how effective it is, first click versus last click, you might notice that when you turn it off, you're blocking people from even getting to the bottom of the funnel, if that makes sense. Um, so I would say just have a play around and see. But yeah, I think maybe two or three days might be a little bit quick to be making, making decisions on kind of how effective things are.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think all I would add to that as well is you know, in this day and age it's very rare that we'll just ever assess performance by one or two metrics. Right. So um, you've got to look at the, the revenue share, you've got to look at the, the spend share, you've got to look at the, the reach share. So what, what else is it contributing if it isn't hitting the mark in one area, is it actually hitting the mark in three other areas and actually then adds value to the entire campaign? Or is it falling short in multiple areas therefore maybe justifies you turning it off for a period of time until you get into a place where you can afford to have it on or whatever. Um, I think we've got time for one more question before we move back into the structured one so. Yeah, sure. Wait for the microphone.

Speaker C: Ah, probably too open ended of a question.

Speaker D: It's uh, I wanted your take on

Speaker C: interest based targeting versus going broad on social, particularly meta because there's a lot of blogs, lots of uh, experts talking about how interest on meta have not

Speaker D: been updated for years.

Speaker C: So it's being uh, you're actually not targeting effectively anymore. Uh, part clients also like to see insights into hey, who are you targeting? So there's always a mix and match like how do you balance the two sides and what can we take with

Speaker D: courage, uh, and authenticity and say hey

Speaker C: look, you might not see this particular insight but it's because it's not relevant anymore. I don't know, like I said, too

Speaker D: open ended probably I'm seeing More and more campaign targeting are doing really well. This said, I still see once in a while interest targeting work. Maybe things like real estate investment. Um, it's impossible for a guru or expert to say interest targeting is always better. Lookalike is always better. Um, broad is always better. And um, when I'm asked that question, I like to say mustard or chocolate sauce. Which condiment make your food always better? How about you add the chocolate sauce to your French fry and add uh, your mustard to the ice cream. You cannot generalize. And the only way you know you have two campaign. One of them you try interest targeting and the other one you don't try, but you cannot in the absolute say always interest targeting will be less good or always interest targeting is going to be, um, better. And even the keyword interest targeting is a little bit misleading because it has the word interest, right? So let's say the interest shopping. Now you imagine your head, somebody passionate about shopping, wake up in the morning and say, I love shopping. It's the only reason I'm alive. And uh, m. Maybe I'm walking down the street of Brighton and I see so many homeless people and said some people are shopping for Rolex watches that are worth 50,000. And on the other hand people are looking for food in the trash. And now I made a post with the keyword shopping appeared in it. It doesn't mean I'm a shopaholic right now. There are keywords like, um, where only somebody who's in the medical field or real estate investment or politics or engineering might, uh, like composite material. I mean if I'm not an engineer. When was the last time you saw a friend talk about composite materials? So, um, take everything regarding targeting with a grain of salt, but at the end of the day, um, make a test and let the number tell you what's working better or not.

Speaker B: Danielle, anything to add?

Speaker C: Not necessarily. I would say yeah, just kind of test. There's no right or wrong. And ultimately it will depend on like what industry you're in, how niche that is. You know, I am an advocate for targeting being slightly broader because often there's a demographic that you don't think would be interested in your product and they are. So I think we are somewhat past the phase of like hyper, hyper targeted campaigns where it's like this exact person and they have to have all 15 of these attributes and if they don't, then we don't want the ad to show. Um, but yeah, I would say just to echo what Sarah said, like just testing it against you Know a campaign that has exactly the same creative ad copy or whatever and just the targeting is different. You can see, see if that's just your only variable, you can see how that works in terms of performance, engagement, click through rate and then ultimately like sales and roas and then just taking it from there. But that's not to say that what works for one campaign is necessarily always right for another client or another campaign that has a different purpose and a different goal.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, there was a, I can't remember who it was now because you're going to say who was it Charlie? Um, there was someone talking yesterday, it might have even vineyard and they're talking about interest targeting on meta and they were saying how um, if you look at interest targeting, um, there are ah, something like if you input location. Algeria work. Yeah. It was you, wasn't it?

Speaker D: What?

Speaker B: Come on, it was, what was it, 66,000 or 660,000?

Speaker D: The biggest employer in Algeria is Feliz. 660 employees. That's based on Facebook, um, own data. Now I'm going to make a huge separation between LinkedIn and Facebook because LinkedIn people are looking for a job. They work at a company. The reputation of the company is at scale. So if somebody says I'm a technical CEO expert, take them at their word. Um, then on the other hand Facebook is based on behavior and attributing data based on behavior are really hard. I mean I had a client, I mean at the time when getting followers on Facebook was still a thing, he said oh my God, I'm going to target CEO, right? And then I check the profile is somebody who put in their profile and CEO at making love. Um, he was hoping to target somebody who was a manager of a company with 50,000 employees with free yacht and 20 million back in the bank account. And basically he was reaching people who are broke, uh, who didn't have $10 to their name with um, that's really difficult. Based on what? I mean I have a perfect example For a while I used to post on Facebook like really disgusting food pick. I have really strange sense of humor and I thought it was funny, right? And some of my friends would say Sara, stop it. You discussed us, right? And one friend said I would need to unfollow you. Now Facebook, she engaged with those pics and now Facebook is suggesting her groups like called Retarded Meals where it's basically um, what is a pickle covered in chocolate and so on. So she engaged with my post. Um, Facebook thinks she love means nothing, right? Um, so there is two extremes between LinkedIn from one side and behavior. Like, how do you do that at a huge scale? No, it's guessing. But then I say imagine you go into a coffee shop, right, and you try to sell something. If you, I mean, let's say back pain, right? Probably there in this room, Maybe there is 20 or 10 of us who suffer from back pain. If we're in a conference all day right now. If you say buy it right now, people can care less. If I tell you the story of somebody last year who had back pain to the point they couldn't sleep and how 10 minutes massage under the table here made her sleep the best sleep of her life, people will be interested. So become less about who you target and more about what you say to them. If you want to convert, I don't know.

Speaker B: Did that answer your question? Between the two answers? Yeah. If it didn't, we're going to be here afterwards and, uh, Sarah would love to talk to you all day about that. So, yeah, just hit her up, fill her with a pint of lager and she'll be fine. Uh, okay. So I'm just going to move back on to the questions just to get us back on track. So I've got here. Is video truly king amongst all assets with the rise of channels like TikTok or Do Image and text ads still have a place? I'm going to start with you, Katherine.

Speaker E: I think they still have a place. I think, you know, video absolutely important, absolutely important, but everything still has a place for each type of campaign you're doing different audience, different generations, and you've got to have all the different touch points because everyone has a different attention span. Whether, depending on what generation you're from, you're going to have a slightly different attention span. You can respond to different mediums. So I think text ads and image do have a bit of a place. And when you do a campaign, you've got a certain amount of inventory to reach and different sizes and different images. So you need to cover all the bases. And without doing that, you're limiting your campaign if you're just focusing on video.

Speaker B: So you can't just go hell forever on TikTok and hope for the best, basically. Any additions to that, Danielle, you're like, yes, video trumps everything. Conversation over.

Speaker C: No, as much as, you know, as much as I talk about video all the time, I do agree with Catherine that you have to have, you have to have everything, basically. Um, video is great. It works great at, uh, the top of Funnel Um, it's great at inducing emotion. Emotion helps with long term memory. Long term memory helps with brand awareness. Brand awareness then helps with like decreasing price sensitivity, brand recall, reputation, all of those things that if you're playing the long game is so important important. It's hard to get that same amount of response with a text ad unless your copyright, you know, unless your copy is like mad, um, or you know, you know, photographs can make you feel something or images can make you feel something. But it's a bit different if I'm just seeing like a product image with a few labels on it to have that same emotional response that's going to help your brand in the long term. But that's not to say that I'm not telling you that all you need to do is video all the time because then all you're going to be doing is showing, basically showing people films about your brand and they'll never buy anything. So I definitely agree that like static still have their place. And if any of you are using TikTok, you'll notice now that carousels are becoming far more frequent on your for you page. People are posting statics, you're watching slideshows. So even TikTok as a video first platform is embracing static images. So everything kind of has its place. Um, and tech sads obviously have their place when people are searching for very specific things. I still use Google to search for stuff. So tech sads definitely still have a place and they need, you need to be running them in order to capture the people that are searching directly for either your brand or the product that you're selling. So um, I love video but yeah, you do need everything.

Speaker B: I think we were saying as well before that, you know, not everybody has production budget to make big fancy pants videos. Um, but Danielle, you were saying that actually you were using static imagery to throw together, um, to create a video out of statics. And I think that's just something to be mindful of. Like you don't have to be, you know.

Speaker C: Yeah, shout out to cap cut.

Speaker B: Yeah, you don't have to be like, you know, some big spenny company spending thousands and thousands on videos. Like there's tools out there approach Danielle, after this conversation for the, for the tips. But there's tools out there that will allow you to create that video content from the statics that you've got from the product shots that you've got. So there are ways to facilitate those videos if you feel like again, you don't have the budget to stretch that far.

Speaker C: Yeah, like uh, iPhone cameras can film in 4K. You can buy a stabilizing gimbal off Amazon for 25 quid. If you're already doing an e commerce shoot for product images or lifestyle images, just shove a phone in someone's hands and just get them to film stuff and then you can make it look nice in the editing suite. Uh, you can learn Adobe have great courses on color grading on really basic video editing. You know there's loads of kind of like Capcut being one of them, loads of these kind of like AI or templated video editing softwares that you can use. It's becoming more accessible to create that kind of content and it's great if you want to just test how video can enhance your social strategy in particular, um, because let's face it, if you're putting statics into PMAX and Google's automatic generating those videos, they're not always the best.

Speaker B: Sarah, uh, do you have a preference over Cat Flat lays or cat videos?

Speaker D: I have clients that when I send them an update I share my screen and I share the ad manager and I say this is the result. And they would reply, thank you very much, this is very useful. And I have clients who tell me please send me written report. I hate videos. So different people have different preferences. If you think you took, I don't know, one liter of wine and now a video, you're passively consuming information, right? Or you might be at a conference like today and you're bored and you could take your phone and you could read text. So it's not one better than the other. Different people have different preferences. And you could have text that is super, um, engage in. I mean I'm running out uh, for a dating coach right now and there are two friends arguing with each other. One said, you want to get married, just go out. And a friend of her replied I'm out non stop, how dare you tell me I'm not out. And Basically they left 10 on one comment. They left 10 comment arguing between themselves and an extra person now joined in. Um, but you just need to know how to write the copy. The problem is like most copy are badly done. It's written under five minutes. Many are using ChatGPT. But if you go interview your clients, spend one hour knowing what is an emotional story and you turn it on an ad, whether it's video or text, it doesn't matter. Uh, people consume differently. But what matter is what you put in the video or what you put in the text. It's not video for the sake of uh, I mean, actually I have the perfect example. Um, there is a TV, like a famous British YouTube channel. Right. And um, they got an Italian chef to try some canned food from the UK that is passed as Italian. And in one case a company brought like horrible food and added some oregano and said that's Italian. And um, when people said video is always the best. It's a case where people take aesthetic image and they turn it into a gift just because they heard video is what will get you in heaven. Uh, it's not the same as seeing a video where you see somebody face, voice, body language, A, ah, demo of the product. It's making video for the sake of making a video.

Speaker B: M. Okay, my favourite question of the day. Unpopular opinions. Yes. Who doesn't love a bit of controversy?

Speaker C: You need that like BBC Radio on jingle, don't we?

Speaker B: What is it?

Speaker E: Go on.

Speaker B: I'm not.

Speaker C: No, I'm not. Go on.

Speaker B: Does anyone know?

Speaker C: Does anyone want the microphone?

Speaker B: Do you want the microphone? So you can do that again? Okay. Yeah. Ruth, can we have the microphone please? Thank you. That's ah, your punishment for drinking on a school night.

Speaker C: It's not quite.

Speaker B: Yeah, okay.

Speaker C: We can fix it in post if

Speaker B: we can just overlay unpopular opinion on that, that would be great. Right, okay. Who wants to start with their most unpopular opinion? Go on, hit me with some controversy.

Speaker C: Oh, you don't have to ask me twice. I'll explain what I mean after I've said this very bold statement. But seven, uh, day last click roas should get in the b. I know, I don't actually mean that literally. Um, there's been a lot of focus on, well, a lot of marketers, rightly so, over the past however many years, months, um, generally focus on a last Click Roas attribution model. Um, generally it's a seven day window, which is great for shopping ads.

Speaker B: You know, all the stuff I do.

Speaker C: Yeah, all the stuff that Charlie's really good at. Great. So she, she bloody loves seven day Last Click Roas. But like I mentioned before, there is like a wider picture that as marketers we should really be looking at in terms of the wider effects that some of our brand building is doing. And it's difficult, but it's not impossible to look at the effect that social channels in particular are having as introducers that uh, are starting the journey that then leads people to convers. And that's not something that you can report using a uh, seven day window and a last click model. So, um, we have clients that use North Beam, which is a fairly sophisticated attribution channel which uses server side first party data to be able to map out like customer journey. So it'll give you essentially every single touch point that a customer goes through in order to make a purchase. And you can, I mean I. And if you want to talk to me about it, I will just pass you on to somebody else to go into the nitty gritty. But you are able to see the effects that channels have at other parts of that consumer journey. So seven day last click. Absolutely. If you want to see what's closing people and getting them to buy is absolutely the metric that you need to look at. But you shouldn't be using it necessarily to assess the effectiveness of every single campaign that you're running because you may be, as I said before, turning something off at the start that's getting people to the point where they want to convert. Um, so that is my unpopular opinion and I will let these guys argue with me now for the next couple of minutes.

Speaker B: I don't think it's uh, I don't think it's uh, unpopular apart from people with like me and Catherine, really. I think Sarah will be with you

Speaker C: with that three and three.

Speaker B: Catherine, what's your unpopular opinion?

Speaker E: My unpopular opinion, uh, is do we need a landing page?

Speaker C: So interesting.

Speaker E: Do we need controversial intro landing page? If we've got a white paper campaign, why not send it to the white paper Now? I'm not talking about gated or ungated content here. If you've got the extra step, then you're just going to stop people getting those conversions. And then thinking about E commerce, you've got the Instagram checkouts and Facebook shops. That's taking you straight to that product point of purchase. You don't necessarily need that product category page, eliminating that and that will effectively you get better conversions that way. I personally don't think you need that intro landing page on those sort of channels. Anyway,

Speaker B: if you want to fight her on it, uh, she'll be done in about 15 minutes. Take it out back. Sarah, uh, come on, you've got to be bursting, bursting with some unpopular people

Speaker D: regarding marketing or in general, just, well,

Speaker B: why are you throwing in one of each just for the shits and gigs?

Speaker D: I mean it's unpopular, but I think British food and the history of humanity. There is no cuisine with more flavor in the whole history of humanity. Find me one cuisine in the last 5,5000 year that is as flavorful as British food. Come on, just one cuisine. I challenge you.

Speaker B: That'll be none, actually.

Speaker D: None.

Speaker B: None. Is that not because we don't technically have our own type of food, we just steal everyone else's potentially. And a marketing unpopular opinion, if you don't mind.

Speaker D: I think targeting is over exaggerated and you have company after company after company come to me and say I think I have a targeting problem. And when I dig deeper, they have a content, they have an offer, they have a persuasion offer. Not a targeting, uh, problem. Because targeting is more and more broad. Even when we thought we had hybrid targeting which uh, was not that hybrid. If you dig deeper.

Speaker B: Okay, so basically they don't have a targeting problem. Their abs are just a bit. Yeah, okay, just wanted to make sure I got that right. So we're going to open the floor up for some last questions. So we've got about 12 minutes left in the session, so let's ask some questions. If you've got problems that you want these guys to answer, if you just want to throw a question out to stump them, be wild, say whatever you like. Uh, because ultimately if you don't fill the space, I have to um. Yeah, all I really got to talk about is how much I love feed optimization and I don't want to send anyone to sleep. So uh, yeah, just throw out some questions, get a bit excited. We're literally nearly at the end. Guys, there's going to be free drinks.

Speaker D: If someone has insomnia and it's two in the morning, can you call them and talk about feed optimization?

Speaker B: I mean if they manage to get my number without me giving it to them, then yeah, crack on.

Speaker D: I have your number, I could give it around.

Speaker B: Right, we've got a question in the back. Yes please.

Speaker D: Um, so I work for a company that's in the financial services and every time we try to post something on social we always get like um, fight from compliance because everything has to be FCA approved. Um, I was just wondering if you have any creative ways to not get through compliance or FCA but that we can, can work together rather than work against.

Speaker B: Post it on Tik Tok. No joking.

Speaker C: You stole my answer. I mean I'm happy to chat with because I could talk about this for ages. So if you want to catch up afterwards then great. Get creative with the type of content that you're creating. Um, obviously with it being a financial service business there's always going to be that element of like professionalism I guess and, and that kind of thing. But yeah, I would say yeah, get creative. Use another platform that's slightly less compliant because you might find that actually you might not think that your audience is on tick tock, but as Charlie mentioned before, you can't really assume anything. Um, so yeah, just like maybe be bold. I don't know a lot about Facebook compliance admittedly, so I wouldn't nowhere to point you in terms of like getting the decisions overthrown and things like that, but definitely from a creative aspect in terms of making your ads, you know, more suitable or writing ad copy in a way where, you know, you're not making those like financial statements that tend to get red flags, then I'm happy to chat a little bit more.

Speaker D: It's something I have experience with. So in the financial industry, you cannot promise, you cannot say you're going to, to get that return on investment, you're going to retire 20 years from now with that. But you could talk about the result you got your existing client. And I remember I worked with a financial planner in the U.S. i said, I cannot promise I'm going to help you get um, a scholarship with that value because everybody's situation is different. But she could say, this is how I help Jessica and her kid get a $10,000, um, scholarship. So make it uh, right life and center. Um, the story of people you already help and the result. You got this. You could talk about it as long as it's true. As long as you're not making up the story. You could take, talk all day long about that. You could talk about misconception people have, you could talk about common question people have. Um, there is a lot of way you could do it without, um, promising. The problem people think about promising marketing is like you're gonna be rich, et cetera. And um, sometimes maybe you invest in a certain way to mitigate the risk. Maybe you could explain it using analogy in a way that everybody understand.

Speaker B: Catherine?

Speaker E: Yeah. In terms of the financial services verification on Google Ads as well. That's the thing at the moment. And it there are. You just have to try and adhere to all the practices and go jump through all the hoops and try and get all that going. Yeah, it's tricky. And yeah, look at different channels and see what you can do, but haven't got those restrictions in place. But ultimately you want to be on those, you want to be on Google, you want to be on those channels and you just have to jump through those hoops.

Speaker B: I'm afraid I think Sarah actually covers this in a talk yesterday. Again, just to reiterate what she just said then is I think get creative with how you talk about the product and Rather than just be like, hey, we've got this service, buy it. You know, talk about the problem rather than the solution. Um, especially when there's so much regulation around things like that, the client story, you know, the customer story, whatever it might be, like, talk about the problem rather than the solution. Because the solution sells itself. Right? Like somebody that works for a financial services company that's pushing ads out isn't selling ice cream. Do you know what I mean? So, uh, yeah, if there's anything you want to add.

Speaker C: Yeah, I was just going to give an example. So at my previous agency, uh, we had a client that sold funeral plans.

Speaker B: I don't know if I like where this is going.

Speaker C: Which is obviously a, um, financial plan but also quite a sensitive issue to talk about on social media. Like no one wants to scroll through Facebook and, and read the word funeral. But so in we, we kind of tried again to lay a story down and say like, you know this, if you have a funeral plan in place, these are all of the carefree things that you can do without worrying after your retirement was basically how we spun it. So in from a creative perspective. We had like people, people of retirement ages, like on roller coasters and you know, doing all of these fun things. There was also a plan for expats. Again, it's a little morbid, but basically if you're an expat and unfortunately you die abroad, your body has to be flown on a plane back to the UK or back to your country of residence. And they had a specific plan for that and they got a lot of kickback from Meta because of the way that the plan, the way that the copy was phrased in terms of that particular, particular plan and the finance and all of that kind of stuff around it. Um, and we were also serving ads in Europe because it was catered towards expats and we just told a story, we almost used like a case study like, like Sarah mentioned and actually told the story of someone who went through the process in a light hearted way as well, as much as you can. Um, and that was the way that, that we then avoided actually talking about the ins and outs of the financial plan and actually just got people to understand the process.

Speaker B: I also, Sorry, the reason why I was giggling was because we were talking about uh, some of the features that Meta has and overlaying, uh, music is one of them. Uh, and we're talking about, you know, a lot of traditional companies that are starting to use Meta because they're like, okay, everyone's doing it. So we Kind of need to do it. I feel like that's a really good example of maybe a company that didn't use Meta a while ago. Um, yeah, so as soon as you said funeral plan providers I was thinking God, Rita ora rip. Please God, don't put that.

Speaker C: No. Yeah, so what Charlie's mentioning is Meta has a, has a toggle now when you're setting up campaigns that if your video is, has no audio it will start testing out like royalty free music on it's of its own accord. So, so you might see one of your ads and go we didn't approve that music. Where does that come from? And it's Meta basically using their AI to trial things that it will think will make your app more effective. So just be aware of that. Especially if you're in a slightly more um, sensitive industry, you might want to just keep tabs on that.

Speaker B: So just check your ads for music is what we're saying. Yes, this lady from

Speaker C: um. I've got a very like campaign um, related question really. Um, it's more of a would you rather question. So would you rather have a creative that's like low production quality which may or may not work or a uh, campaign which has high performing single image ads that guarantee converse for paid socials. Can I fire a question back at you? What's your campaign goal? Um, lead generation and m. Oh no.

Speaker B: Do you want to pass the question?

Speaker C: Yeah, I need some time to think.

Speaker D: So the question is low production video or a static image. Right? Yeah. Why would you be afraid? I mean if one of them gets your lead at 2 pound, the other one at 10 pound, does it matter which one is which one? I mean um, are you doing ad for the sake of using one creative or at the end of the day it doesn't matter which one get you which result as long. I mean you'd be happy with either if the course is good, right? Yep.

Speaker C: It was basically more along the lines of like um, the larger trend being not the larger trend basically the larger agreement being that like video is king essentially. But sometimes like this is something that we kind of like face in our organization that we are not super confident in the whole video, video production side. So um, I guess it's kind of like the organization itself is a bit more hesitant in like working with video when they know that like we probably don't have like the right resources to have like good quality video content.

Speaker B: So I, I would say to that look like everyone loves ugc, right? Everybody loves that. Uh, and that is most of the time, I'd say 80 of UGC is pretty low quality. Like it is it, it makes it feel a little bit more real, a bit more natural, a bit more relatable. So I don't know that uh, actually a low quality unless you know, maybe it's a really, really you know, like I suppose professional business that actually does have the money, they just don't want to funnel it into it. Not having the budget shouldn't be a reason to not do those videos because look, you're only going to learn as you go, it's only going to get better, you know. And actually there's like a bunch of people that do the most random videos on uh, Instagram and other channels that may get shared onto Instagram. Um, like does anyone know who Jeffrey Walk is? Jeffrey Walk and his wife, they went viral during lockdown. It's basically like an old guy and his wife and he just started sharing videos of their life in lockdown. And like this is like a guy who's like 18, 90 years old. So you know, again like the quality of those videos isn't like amazing but people love them because they're real and they're easy to digest. You know, no one's looking at it going God, he could have done a better job on that video, do you know? So I think it's just, it is very dependent on your situation. So you know, if you have got a video ad and a static ad, if you're a videography company, of course you are going to have preference over the video ad because it's displaying your product. But in any, any other situation, like Sarah said, let the data speak for itself. If the tech sad or the video, you know, the flat lay ads working better. Who's to say you have to chase down video just because videos trending like do what works.

Speaker D: So she said video is king, right? Is there kings today? That is a 90 year old wearing diaper, not being able to go to the bathroom alone. Just, just because somebody's a king, it doesn't mean he's 20 year old and in perfect health. Uh, for all we know there are kings out there that cannot feed themselves because they are 90 year old and severely sick and uh, they lost their memory. Just because a king is a king, it doesn't mean you need to marry the king.

Speaker C: I would say I've thought of my answer now.

Speaker D: Test it.

Speaker C: Just test both.

Speaker B: We've got one minute.

Speaker C: Okay, I'm gonna make this really quick. Test it. It's very cheap on Meta in particular to Be able to test something, you know, put a video in there, chuck a couple quid at it, take a look at some insights, decide whether or not like the engagement is there. Um, in terms of it, uh, you being worried about low production value, uh, some brands are producing low production value content on purpose. I showed Charlie earlier, uh, the RSPB TikTok account. Shout out to anyone listening who might be working for RSPB. Your TikTok account is insane. They're purposefully making bad quality creative. But it is so fun. Um, bird of the week has my, has my heart once a week, Bird of the week. Um, so don't think because it's low quality that it's not going to work. There will be an audience for it. So just test it, throw, throw a little bit of money at it and that should hopefully then get you buy in if you want to produce more high quality content from like your financial team or whatever.

Speaker B: Amazing. Four seconds to spare. So, sorry, if you've got questions harass these ladies after this panel, I will be running out of the door. Don't talk to me. Uh, but you can find me on LinkedIn. So yeah, these, these ladies are great. If you can all give them a hand, I'd much appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thanks so much for joining us for today's episode of the Internet Marketing podcast, produced by the team behind Brighton SEO, the world's largest specialist digital marketing conference covering SEO, ppc, paid social web analytics and content marketing. If you want to find out more about us and the show, you can check out the website internetmarketingpodcast.org and if you've, um, not already subscribed to the show, you should hit that subscribe button and can ask a favor. If you are subscribed and you're enjoying the show, can you leave us a review wherever you're watching or listening to the show? And if you want to get in touch, um, become a guest on the show or just generally feedback about what we're doing, you can always email me. That's kelvinrightonseo.com so K-E L V I N M@brighton SEO.com or of course you can contact me on social media, so at LinkedIn or Twitter. Uh, um, my usernames are Kelvin Newman. See you soon.