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The Future of Paid Traffic with Patrick Gilbert of AdVenture Media Group
Learn how to set up a Google Ads eCommerce purchase conversion action for your Shopify store using Google Tag Manager.
Setting up your conversion action the right way is important if you want to track the success of your Google Ads campaigns. Plus, it can help make sure your money is well spent.
To keep you on the right track, Smruti, one of our amazing Google Ads trainees, walks you through how to create the conversion tag properly. He also guides you on how to configure it to fire on all pages of your Shopify store and check if it’s working.
Purchase Event & Data Layer Link - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P...
0:00 Intro
0:38 How to Set Up Google Ads Purchase Conversion Action for Shopify Using Google Tag Manager
4:10 Code for checkout page tracking
10:25 Are you having trouble with Google Ads?
17:25 How to check if your conversion tag is working
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Transcript
So if somebody's watching this and they don't know adventure
JOHN:media, y'all are a big deal.
JOHN:Like you have the highest ranked, not just Google Ads course to you,
JOHN:to me, but it might be the highest ranked digital marketing course.
JOHN:Any business can, run Google Ads profitably.
JOHN:Any business, you know, you sell some online, you should be
JOHN:running Google ads, you should be running Facebook ads, whatever.
JOHN:like, probably not.
JOHN:that's not an always, always situation because at the end of
JOHN:the day, advertising is a numbers.
JOHN:And like good.
JOHN:Traffic is expensive.
JOHN:It always has been
JOHN:daily.
JOHN:Google News costume here.
JOHN:I'm so excited to introduce you to Patrick Gilbert, the COO of Adventure Media.
JOHN:Patrick, thanks for being here.
JOHN:What's up?
JOHN:Go.
JOHN:Thanks for having me, man.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:Appreciate you.
JOHN:We met through Fred Valis, who's my friend of me.
JOHN:How do you know?
JOHN:well, we've been optimized our customers since the very beginning.
JOHN:I think we were like one of the earliest customers of optimizer back in like 2014.
JOHN:And just through the years just getting to know Fred, I mean,
JOHN:he's been super helpful, super supportive of everything we've done.
JOHN:Isn't he just the best human in the world?
JOHN:Like he's just amazing.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:And optimizers great application.
JOHN:By the way.
JOHN:If you're watching this, you should go check it out.
JOHN:I joke about me and Fred being in front of me only because he and I have different
JOHN:worldviews when it comes to Google ads.
JOHN:And then I always, anytime he has me on his podcast, I feel horrible.
JOHN:Cause I say something and then I stop and realize like, God, I
JOHN:just really threw grenade at Fred.
JOHN:He's so kind about the way that he adjusts though.
JOHN:Before we dive into the fun stuff, you've got a big event coming up.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:So we're entering the event Space Adventure Media.
JOHN:We're having an event on November 10th in New York.
JOHN:We call it DOLA Stands for Day of Learning and Happiness,
JOHN:which is kind of ridiculous.
JOHN:But it was an internal event that we had for like two years now a
JOHN:couple times a year where it's really just a training event.
JOHN:We kind of open our toolbox, we go through.
JOHN:Case studies, methodologies, frameworks, basically just like
JOHN:how we do the work that we do.
JOHN:So this year we're doing it big.
JOHN:uh, we have a space in lower Manhattan.
JOHN:We're gonna be live streaming the event.
JOHN:We're partnering up with New York Festivals, which is
JOHN:advertising awards company.
JOHN:Okay?
JOHN:Live stream it and, do it.
JOHN:Awesome.
JOHN:So check it out@adventureppc.com.
JOHN:You'll see a link to the DOLA 22 landing page, but we're
JOHN:tickets online and in person.
JOHN:We'd love to have you come by and meet us and spend a day
JOHN:talking about digital marketing.
JOHN:Having a few cocktails at the end of the day.
JOHN:Of course.
JOHN:Yeah, exactly.
JOHN:You can't get away without cocktails.
JOHN:I'll make sure there's a link to that in the description So if somebody's
JOHN:watching this and they don't know Adventure Media, y'all are a big deal.
JOHN:Like you have the highest ranked, not just Google Ads course in you
JOHN:to me, but it might be the highest ranked digital marketing course.
JOHN:think so, and I appreciate that.
JOHN:That really means a lot.
JOHN:Yeah, I mean, we've been around for a while.
JOHN:Isaac Rodinsky is our ceo.
JOHN:A lot of people might recognize his name because of that course and a few other
JOHN:things that he's put on over the years.
JOHN:But like anyone else, like we started out very small.
JOHN:There was a couple of us in a very tiny disgusting office
JOHN:above Isaac's father-in-law's.
JOHN:Store that he had in Long, just trying to get good at, PPC and
JOHN:originally Google AdWords, and then Facebook and a bunch of other things.
JOHN:We're coming in on 10 years now.
JOHN:I've been growing the company pretty slowly over time, but now we
JOHN:have 40 some odd employees, three different offices across the US
JOHN:and couple team members worldwide.
JOHN:So yeah, we put out a lot of content.
JOHN:So Isaac has three courses on Udemy.
JOHN:Just basic Google AdWord stuff, or Google ad.
JOHN:Retargeting and landing page optimization.
JOHN:I have a book out if you haven't heard of it, Join or Die Digital
JOHN:Advertising in the Age of Automation.
JOHN:You check it out on Amazon.
JOHN:And then, I mean, we always have a lot of blog content, a lot of podcast
JOHN:stuff like this or YouTube content but Dola is gonna be a big deal.
JOHN:I mean, we have not put out a ton of content over the last year, and I think
JOHN:this is our big splash moment of saying, Here's what we've been working on.
JOHN:take this and, come join the convers.
JOHN:That's awesome.
JOHN:Anybody can sign up or specific avatar.
JOHN:Who are you going for to comp?
JOHN:So we already have a bunch of people that are listed as attendees.
JOHN:So we have other agencies.
JOHN:We have a lot of freelancers showing up.
JOHN:We have some marketing students, so a couple people are bringing their
JOHN:marketing classes, like from local colleges like Stony Brook or op.
JOHN:A bunch of people from Google are gonna be there.
JOHN:We're gonna have people from a couple other DSPs.
JOHN:Yelp's gonna be there.
JOHN:So it's just like a bunch of marketing minds and advertising minds all
JOHN:in the same room to talk about what's going on in the industry.
JOHN:Dude, it's 179 bucks.
JOHN:That's a Freaking deal.
JOHN:Actually, it's currently cheaper.
JOHN:We're doing thing I think it's $89 right now.
JOHN:It's a full day that, look, this is our first event, so we don't know
JOHN:how this stuff should be priced.
JOHN:But early bird, I think it says the top through October 22nd, $89.
JOHN:Come spend a full day talking, marketing and PPC and advertising
JOHN:with all of us in that.
JOHN:That's a deal and a half.
JOHN:And then that live stream again, deal and a half, 29 bucks.
JOHN:All right.
JOHN:we'll make sure there's a link in the description of the video.
JOHN:People should definitely do that.
JOHN:And then I want people to see your.
JOHN:Join or Die.
JOHN:That was on my list to bring up, because first of all, you really
JOHN:wrote a book, most people write a book just as a branding thing.
JOHN:I wanna get on stage.
JOHN:So you go hire Scribe Media, you pay 'em 40 grand, they write a book for you.
JOHN:, you did this right?
JOHN:Like you're a pen to page.
JOHN:and then you got like some real traction.
JOHN:146 ratings organic rings.
JOHN:that's difficult cuz one in 50 people, let's say, actually provide reviews.
JOHN:So tell me a little bit about the.
JOHN:I appreciate it, the book.
JOHN:essentially chronicles my own journey with understanding automation and
JOHN:learning how to use this technology for the purpose of marketing.
JOHN:Cause my background, like I'm a marketer, like I went to school for marketing.
JOHN:I've worked in marketing my whole career.
JOHN:Like, I wasn't necessarily like a data guy.
JOHN:I've never.
JOHN:tried to convince myself that I'm a statistics whiz, but I think to survive in
JOHN:this modern age, like you need to be able to be proficient in a lot of those areas.
JOHN:Sure.
JOHN:And I was fortunate enough to have a few mentors or couple, like really
JOHN:good product experts at Google that gave me the time of day to really help
JOHN:me understand these methodologies.
JOHN:So like you don't need to sit here as a marketer and know the
JOHN:real fundamental, how the Beijing machine learning like works.
JOHN:But from a conceptual level, it's actually not that difficult.
JOHN:And if you just kind of start picking up on these topics you
JOHN:unlock all this incredible potential.
JOHN:So like what I started doing back in, let's say 2018, was taking
JOHN:this topic really seriously, and I started writing about it.
JOHN:And one blog post turned into five blog posts, which even.
JOHN:It became a book log, A book I pen to paper.
JOHN:I've always had a knack for writing.
JOHN:I love writing, I love creating content.
JOHN:It's sort of like, it's my own version of like just yelling out into the void.
JOHN:And I wanted it to be short.
JOHN:I wanted it to be like, that cheap brand, not cheap branding thing, but you
JOHN:know, I thought it was gonna be a small project, ah, maybe 200 pages, whatever.
JOHN:And then as you sat down, it was like, this is my one attempt to get that
JOHN:conversation out there and tell people about how incredible this technology is.
JOHN:I started writing it at the time where like there were a
JOHN:ton of people that were not.
JOHN:Adopting automation.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:And they're still not.
JOHN:But it was like, three, four years ago it was like really bad.
JOHN:And I was just trying to get the message out into the world and say, not only like
JOHN:do you have to embrace this technology cuz that's going away, but like, here's why.
JOHN:it's freaking awesome.
JOHN:And if you just know a little bit about.
JOHN:A few of these concepts, the potential that you have to drive value for
JOHN:your clients is just otherworldly.
JOHN:And I think that's really where the reception of the book came from is
JOHN:a lot of people, a lot of marketing people like me that didn't really
JOHN:know anything about machine learning before picking up the book, saw it like
JOHN:essentially through my eyes and was like, Oh, this is actually practical.
JOHN:This is actually useful.
JOHN:And I've gotten a lot of really good feedback from it.
JOHN:And there's more to come where that came from.
JOHN:I'll say that.
JOHN:There's also a think with Google is doing a spotlight on automation that
JOHN:is gonna come out in the next month or so we do a lot of these types of
JOHN:conversations that circle around the topic of automation and what it means to
JOHN:all of us and where the futures going.
JOHN:So keep a lookout for that as well.
JOHN:that's my favorite topic of all time, by the way.
JOHN:And obviously in our itinerary.
JOHN:As far as automation's concerned, cuz I was one of the reluctant adopters, very
JOHN:reluctant, jag kicking and screaming.
JOHN:And now I see the line of sight that's been established, especially
JOHN:with Performance Max, but I question.
JOHN:Certain media buyers longevity.
JOHN:Like I know the agency's always gonna be a necessity, you know what I mean?
JOHN:Always.
JOHN:And I think it's gonna move into data analytics, some creative, depending
JOHN:on how AI influences creative.
JOHN:But there's like the old school, daily tweak, turn my knobs and pull my levers.
JOHN:Media buyer, like, is there a role for them three, five years from.
JOHN:probably not.
JOHN:And honestly, like, dude, what an honest answer.
JOHN:Thank you for that, Patrick.
JOHN:I, I really appreciate you dude.
JOHN:Copy that.
JOHN:But you know what though?
JOHN:Like, I went to HubSpot's inbound conference in 2016.
JOHN:I'll never forget it cuz it was the night of the 2016 election.
JOHN:It was like terrible timing to have a conference.
JOHN:Wait, is that where to Nasee Coates got up and stole the mic.
JOHN:I was there.
JOHN:You were there.
JOHN:It's so funny.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:What a weird, Yeah.
JOHN:What a small world.
JOHN:That was a wild conference because For so many reasons.
JOHN:But that was awesome that was like kind of a week where I started to realize like,
JOHN:this AI thing is real and it's practical for me and it's not going anywhere.
JOHN:Paul Rower who's a PR 2020, he announced the Marketing AI
JOHN:Institute at that conference.
JOHN:So there was like a lot of like the seeds of what is now ed.
JOHN:kind of goes back to that one event and it was like totally ran me, Isaac and, our
JOHN:other colleague Danny to wheel were like there as a bunch of like young idiots,
JOHN:but Gary Vaynerchuck gave the keynote.
JOHN:And like say what you like, Gary V is very polarizing, but Gary vs.
JOHN:Gary V Yeah.
JOHN:He's hilarious in a lot of ways, but whatever your thoughts are, There was
JOHN:something that always stuck with me and he said if you are not trying to put yourself
JOHN:out of business, Somebody else will.
JOHN:Wow.
JOHN:And now I was sitting there, your writer downer, isn't it?
JOHN:I was working, at Adventure for probably two years at that point.
JOHN:And I thought that we were this, innovative, scrappy, we're gonna
JOHN:take the business from someone else.
JOHN:And like, on our drive home from Boston, at the end of the week, I
JOHN:was like, thinking about that and me like, you know what, maybe what
JOHN:I'm doing isn't gonna last forever.
JOHN:And maybe I should start thinking about putting myself out of business.
JOHN:So like, if you think about.
JOHN:Yes, that media buyer that I was in 2016 doesn't exist.
JOHN:There's no role for that person, but thankfully I replaced that person
JOHN:so I was the beneficiary of it.
JOHN:working in marketing or anything related to technology, it's exhausting
JOHN:and like it's daunting to think about like I'm still a relatively young
JOHN:guy, like the future of my career.
JOHN:Is going to have to include multiple reinventions.
JOHN:That's every two years, right?
JOHN:All of that.
JOHN:The thought of that is terrifying cuz it's exhausting to just constantly new stuff.
JOHN:you know, if you want to just be like a.
JOHN:I don't know.
JOHN:there's a lot of industries out there that don't change very much.
JOHN:And that sounds pretty enticing.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:I wanna be a stone mason at this point.
JOHN:Like, I just want to go cuz that, you know, that's 2000
JOHN:years of longevity there.
JOHN:Nothing's changed.
JOHN:Same tools, right?
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:But wanna exist in this industry, you have to continue to iterate and you have
JOHN:to have the energy and the perseverance to be able to do that again and again.
JOHN:How do you know the difference though, between shiny object and evolution?
JOHN:Because I've been caught on the wrong side of both, speaking to Gary v I
JOHN:remember when Gary V came to Icon and started talking about Snapchat.
JOHN:And he was so convincing about this is the thing this is, is gonna destroy Facebook.
JOHN:It's the next social.
JOHN:If you are not Snapchatting, it's over for you.
JOHN:and I'm, pulling up and I look old and I'm like, trying to
JOHN:figure out this freaking thing.
JOHN:And now it's massively irrelevant, but I spent so much time trying to crack the
JOHN:code on this thing that was worthless.
JOHN:And then things like, the AI mark on that I just didn't pay attention to
JOHN:until very close to my own detriment you know, shiny object and evolution,
JOHN:How do you distill between those two?
JOHN:There's like no right answer.
JOHN:I think that all of us are gonna continue to be wrong,
JOHN:and you just have to be right.
JOHN:Sometimes I think that like, stepping back and thinking about
JOHN:why those sorts of things catch on.
JOHN:So if you wanna talk about like, okay, where are things going and where are
JOHN:we at and how to be mindful of that.
JOHN:like these like cyclical things, like we could sit here and talk about inflation
JOHN:or election cycles and like, I think that sort of like what's happening right now
JOHN:or today, that's I think where you get caught up in the shiny object stuff or
JOHN:it's like all these people are flooding to this platform and it's like, all right,
JOHN:like, let me watch this for a little bit.
JOHN:And there's implications, right?
JOHN:So like if you wanna talk about like what's happening in the world
JOHN:right now, what are the changes.
JOHN:Okay.
JOHN:Like what are the larger macro trends?
JOHN:that I'm aware of is okay, well the VC money is dried up compared to
JOHN:where it was three, four years ago.
JOHN:And I think there's implications for what that means for clients and
JOHN:expectations and certain types of players that dominate, ad auctions, whatever.
JOHN:And there's a lot more money on points.
JOHN:So that means like less ingenuity and more tread and true, right?
JOHN:Like when money goes safe, the market shifts to.
JOHN:Commoditized, but consistent.
JOHN:Yes.
JOHN:Monetization.
JOHN:That's fricking brilliant, brilliant point.
JOHN:What we've seen is there's a big push now toward private equity, and we now
JOHN:have a couple of clients that they're large private equity firms that buy up a
JOHN:lot of cash, rich, small local services.
JOHN:Things like plumbers, hvac, tire repair stores, things like that.
JOHN:Tried in true methodologies.
JOHN:they're looking to us saying, Okay, we need a playbook for how to roll.
JOHN:Relatively small budgets across a, a spectrum of 300 brands and
JOHN:all these different markets, and how do we do that consistently?
JOHN:And that's very different a VC backed client that's trying to acquire
JOHN:customers at some sort of arbitrary C number that like one of their
JOHN:board members decided, they came up within a weird Excel document.
JOHN:. And like we still have those clients.
JOHN:We still have plenty of those clients.
JOHN:But I think you just kind of see these things shift.
JOHN:But anyway, that is shiny object stuff.
JOHN:Like if I was to say like, Oh well we're all in on private equity and
JOHN:we're out on everything else, I think that would be shiny object.
JOHN:That would be a.
JOHN:The real thing here in terms of like looking at the trends of the future
JOHN:is really paying attention to what's happening with technology because
JOHN:technology does not go backwards.
JOHN:It only goes forward, and that is why I was like, so.
JOHN:Willing to buy into the automation piece.
JOHN:Years ago when everyone, and I too, I also was drag kicking and
JOHN:screaming cuz like it failed for me.
JOHN:And I was worried about my job and worried about the value that I would have if all
JOHN:of my campaigns are running on automation.
JOHN:But then you kind of wake up with names and be like, all right,
JOHN:like this isn't going the away.
JOHN:So like, maybe it's good, maybe it's different.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:What happens if I lean into it?
JOHN:I dunno, I think what's happening with AI right now is so fascinating.
JOHN:Like, I'm more excited over the last couple months about the state of AI than
JOHN:I have been in a couple of years now.
JOHN:and the thing about ai, by the way, is that we kind of use it as this
JOHN:term is like it's in the future, but like by the time it becomes something
JOHN:practical, we don't call it that.
JOHN:it's like, oh man, could you imagine AI bot that just like organizes all the
JOHN:information on the internet and then like you do a search and it gives it to you.
JOHN:Like that's Google search.
JOHN:Or like it's Spotify's Discover weekly engine or it's auto applied
JOHN:recommendations and Google.
JOHN:we never call it ai, it's just something that's fed to us.
JOHN:But dude, hold on.
JOHN:You just gotta pause right there, Patrick.
JOHN:Cuz that was fucking genius and I actually try not to curse on this channel.
JOHN:. No, what a brilliant point.
JOHN:There's a funnel.
JOHN:To all things AI and while it can't be understood, it's opaque or it's
JOHN:ill defined, we refer to it as ai.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:And as soon as we integrate it, we actually remove the AI label.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:And that's the event horizon.
JOHN:That's how you know something is, tangible.
JOHN:Like we've got the controls and we understand it because we no
JOHN:longer call it, even though it is, we no longer call it ai.
JOHN:There's a lot of things like that.
JOHN:One spent time thinking about that, but that is really worth meditating on.
JOHN:This is not a glitch.
JOHN:I'm interrupting because I need to remind you that I'm always
JOHN:looking for people to join our team.
JOHN:So if you're passionate about Google Ads and you wanna work with the best
JOHN:Google Ads agency on the planet, please go to so late.com/apply.
JOHN:Speaking of working with the best Google Ads agency on the planet, if you're having
JOHN:trouble with Google Ads and you want professional help, that's what we do.
JOHN:You can go to so late.com, that's s o l eight.com to apply for your
JOHN:free, no obligation action plan.
JOHN:And if I've.
JOHN:Any level of value at all.
JOHN:Maybe think about giving me a thumbs up and subscribe your channel.
JOHN:That's how we juice the YouTube algorithm so they actually know
JOHN:that I know what I'm talking about.
JOHN:If you have questions, comments, concerns, or confessions,
JOHN:hit me below in the comments.
JOHN:And now back to your regularly scheduled program.
JOHN:I think Metaverse is the same idea.
JOHN:Like I think all of us in a way, like right now, you and I are in a
JOHN:metaverse, we're on Zoom right now.
JOHN:is this super different from like what people are thinking about as the future?
JOHN:Like it doesn't have to be fully fledged VR headset, like this is still.
JOHN:But the second, it's, Oh, that's just Zoom.
JOHN:Do you have a podcast?
JOHN:Not well.
JOHN:Yes, we do.
JOHN:How to hide a dead body.
JOHN:But Isaac and I have not recorded in a while.
JOHN:Dude, I would listen to you every day.
JOHN:Like you just said, so many things that I'm a fanboy.
JOHN:We haven't recorded.
JOHN:It's been probably a year.
JOHN:Oh, you're killing me.
JOHN:Well, I'll link to that in the description of the show notes too.
JOHN:check out the archives of that.
JOHN:There's some good stuff in there.
JOHN:Oh, I bet they're, Yeah.
JOHN:That's really cool.
JOHN:Most of our listeners are either small businesses trying to run
JOHN:Google as themselves or agencies.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:I wanna talk to the small businesses first.
JOHN:Here's my fear for them, and this is what I've seen, and you tell me if I'm wrong.
JOHN:PAX rolls out.
JOHN:The BEIT is 2019, but really the rollout's November, 2021 and as soon as it rolls
JOHN:out, we used to be able to take clients that had 3, 4, 5 grand a month spend.
JOHN:That was a healthy spend.
JOHN:I can't take a client now that's sub, and if they're sub 10, we call 'em our
JOHN:incubator program and then at shoestring and it's dangerous and it may not work.
JOHN:I feel like AI works really well if you've got a healthy budget, but the entire SMB
JOHN:world, and we'll see what happens with Pmax now that took over local, putting
JOHN:that on a shelf for a moment though.
JOHN:If you got a small budget, I feel like ai, programmatic machine
JOHN:learning, whatever you can't play.
JOHN:possibly.
JOHN:So I, think first of all, to unpack that question or that point, really, there's
JOHN:like a fundamental assumption in that statement that says like, if you have a
JOHN:smaller budget, you're at a disadvantage.
JOHN:and I would agree with that.
JOHN:any advertiser that has a smaller budget than the next player is at a disadvantage.
JOHN:and as much as we wanna tell us, like, Oh, it's a level playing field, shout
JOHN:out Fred's book that's right behind me.
JOHN:Google adss is a place where everyone can bid on the same keyword.
JOHN:Like it's not because like, here's a Texas Instruments calculator.
JOHN:if I was a D to C brand that just, know, invented a new calculator and I bid on
JOHN:the, keyword like financial calculator and the cost per click is whatever
JOHN:it is, Texas Instruments can afford to pay more per click because people
JOHN:are familiar with that brand, right?
JOHN:And expected conversion rate on that click.
JOHN:Even if I had the greatest landing page in the.
JOHN:It's gonna be higher for them because they've done the
JOHN:branding, they have the impact.
JOHN:So like it's not a level playing field.
JOHN:a lot of performance marketers like myself, historically have always
JOHN:thrown shade on the concept of brand awareness and brand equity.
JOHN:But it freaking matters, man, because that's why you're a
JOHN:small business, you can't compete now or okay, you can't compete.
JOHN:Can't.
JOHN:Well, and that's why Ty Lopez and those guys are running around
JOHN:buying all those defunct brands.
JOHN:Do you see what they did?
JOHN:They bought Radio Shack.
JOHN:They threw a bunch of like bullshit drop ship electronics
JOHN:under the Radio Shack umbrella.
JOHN:And dude, they flew off the shelf.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:It was the same stuff.
JOHN:You'd never be able to drop ship otherwise, but if you put a Radio Shack
JOHN:logo on it, they're like crushing life.
JOHN:Absolutely.
JOHN:And like so, That methodology, I think like if I put myself when I'm,
JOHN:pitching small businesses and like, let's say it was five grand, right?
JOHN:Because that number's always kind of been, we're gonna pick a number and it's gonna
JOHN:differ because if you're drop shipping like goofy t-shirts with like pop culture
JOHN:references on it, and it's like, all right, cool, like five grand is probably
JOHN:plenty for you to get started on, like Facebook ads or Google Ads, whatever.
JOHN:But if you're like, if you have a SAS product, like get outta get outta here.
JOHN:Like if you don't have a hundred.
JOHN:it's not worth a penny, right?
JOHN:put a hundred grand in or it's not worth a penny.
JOHN:that number I think has always been a little bit arbitrary.
JOHN:And I think it's always just been about like, what do we think that like
JOHN:agencies can get away with pitching so that we can set expectations.
JOHN:Cause all of us kind of know that you're at a disadvantage or the smaller budget.
JOHN:So I need to be able to go to the client and convince them that it's not worth
JOHN:your time you throw out a number and it's like, I hope they don't, shock.
JOHN:we've increased that number like years ago maybe it was a thousand bucks.
JOHN:Maybe it was 2000 bucks.
JOHN:Now what show's minimum right now?
JOHN:I don't know.
JOHN:it depends on the brand.
JOHN:It depends on the product, you know what I mean?
JOHN:I think it's really hard to work with someone below 10 grand But there's
JOHN:other pieces of that because like the kind of service that we wanna provide
JOHN:is, We wanna be able to do really cool reporting and all these other
JOHN:things that kind of come with costs.
JOHN:so whatever that number is to really answer your question, like, it's probably
JOHN:double what it was two years ago, right?
JOHN:Like if it was like, Hey, listen, baseline entry Google Ads was five grand in 2020.
JOHN:It's probably 10 grand now.
JOHN:Like, that's just the reality of it because like, it's hard.
JOHN:You need to be able to put, because at the end of the day,
JOHN:advertising is a numbers game good.
JOHN:Traffic is expensive.
JOHN:It always has been.
JOHN:And in any business, you can't afford to just be like, Ah, I'm gonna like test
JOHN:this channel and get 10 clicks a day.
JOHN:and maybe I'll convert one person every other day.
JOHN:Like, you have to like really think about what is a realistic
JOHN:conversion rate that I can get on my.
JOHN:good brands, like the best e-commerce brands in the world have like a
JOHN:one to 2% conversion rate, if that.
JOHN:So it's.
JOHN:Okay, so you're getting 80 clicks a day from your Google ad campaigns, so you're
JOHN:gonna convert less than a person day.
JOHN:Like the math just doesn't check out.
JOHN:So now if it's like, Okay, well I wanna be able to feed good data
JOHN:into a system to be able to leverage target, return on ad spend bidding,
JOHN:or to leverage maximized conversion value and performance max campaign,
JOHN:like the math just doesn't check out.
JOHN:That's no fault of the automation, That's no fault of Google's machine learning.
JOHN:That's the fault of just like not having the budget to quantify.
JOHN:Data.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:You didn't feed it enough.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:Yeah, that's well said.
JOHN:it worries me because I feel like we're putting ourselves in a position
JOHN:where there was an organic ecosystem within which an entrepreneur really
JOHN:could bootstrap themselves, and now it feels like it's not insurmountable.
JOHN:10 grand a month.
JOHN:Forgive me for saying this, For anybody listening to this who's
JOHN:like, you know, screw you, dude.
JOHN:I'm, driving an Uber, working nights and weekends trying to pull myself up.
JOHN:I know 10 grand a month is a lot of.
JOHN:But it's accessible.
JOHN:Like we can go get it if you believe in a product or service,
JOHN:but it's getting very close to inaccessible, you know what I mean?
JOHN:Like 10.
JOHN:I'm like, All right, somebody could be but 15.
JOHN:and then you put yourself in a position where the visibility has
JOHN:gotten so expensive that do you go?
JOHN:What do you do?
JOHN:So I think what I've been guilty of in the past and what I think.
JOHN:I think we're all guilty of the Maslow's Hammer effect, which is like
JOHN:when all you're holding is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nap.
JOHN:It was a nail.
JOHN:Yeah, and like I believe that for a very long time that like any business
JOHN:can run Google Ads profitably.
JOHN:Any business, you sell online, you should be running Google ads, you should
JOHN:be running Facebook ads, whatever.
JOHN:Like, probably not.
JOHN:that's not an always, always situation.
JOHN:And I think that's a good point, dude.
JOHN:They can go elsewhere, right?
JOHN:It's like, get organic, provide value, Start a YouTube channel, do a podcast.
JOHN:it's unreal how much visibility we get from our organic action.
JOHN:it's tedious, but it's free.
JOHN:Our company doesn't do any Google ads.
JOHN:like, that's awesome because I don't know.
JOHN:You need to do you.
JOHN:We, we spend a significant amount in Google.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:Actually, you know what's funny?
JOHN:It's not Google search, it's all YouTube.
JOHN:We spend like 75 grand a month on YouTube.
JOHN:Exactly.
JOHN:and that goes back to my original point, like, you can afford to spend,
JOHN:because look, I've seen what cost per click is for like, PPC agency.
JOHN:Oh, we can't do search.
JOHN:It's just Yeah, Right.
JOHN:Every idiot on the planet just goes out there and maximizes conversions.
JOHN:It doesn't make any sense.
JOHN:but that's the thing though, is like you might be able to, and you
JOHN:might be able to profitably do.
JOHN:Because you have this YouTube channel because you spend money everywhere else.
JOHN:So it's like all those other things where it's like, Oh, I've seen that guy.
JOHN:Oh, that's the guy with the long hair.
JOHN:I've seen his performance Max thing subtly.
JOHN:Now it's like, okay, so lake.com and then like a bunch, three other
JOHN:agencies that's people in their mom's basement that are overpaying for clicks
JOHN:and like the likelihood of somebody clicking on your ad is incrementally.
JOHN:And the likelihood of them reaching out to you and and asking for an
JOHN:audit is incrementally higher.
JOHN:And it's not like binary.
JOHN:It's not yes or no.
JOHN:we're talking about like expected clickthrough rate
JOHN:and expect conversion rate.
JOHN:And because you've done the work to help build a presence and a halo
JOHN:effect before that person gets to Google and search for PPC agency.
JOHN:Now you can afford to do that.
JOHN:maybe not.
JOHN:Cuz it's still freaking expensive.
JOHN:It's still, You know what's funny about that though?
JOHN:there's something to be said for being visually identifiable.
JOHN:Tom Breeze, YouTube, gu.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:Yeah, I've seen his stuff.
JOHN:Super smart guy.
JOHN:Tom did an audit on my YouTube account.
JOHN:And one of the things that we identified in that audit is when my
JOHN:hair is down, my watch rate is higher.
JOHN:I think it's just because people are like, Oh yeah, I know that guy.
JOHN:And when my hair is up, I look like maybe just every other dude.
JOHN:But I've seen like Rand Fishkin, he looks like a pirate and you
JOHN:know, Rand and you know Asez, Ezra Firestone, you know Isaac Rodinsky?
JOHN:You know Isaac?
JOHN:He's always got Beanie on.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:So he puts himself in a position to.
JOHN:Like you said, I used to be so dismissive of brand too, but now I get it, man.
JOHN:Like it's really important.
JOHN:Have you ever seen Scott Galloway stuff?
JOHN:Oh yeah.
JOHN:So Scott Galloway, nyu, Google is God.
JOHN:What's that?
JOHN:Google is God.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:Very talk about somebody that has no filter on his political views
JOHN:and how he feels about large brands.
JOHN:but he is very transparent.
JOHN:I mean, he's got some really good career advice if you kind
JOHN:of dig through everything else.
JOHN:And he says like, the best thing you could do is have a
JOHN:visual aesthetic to your brand.
JOHN:and he had said like he was losing his hair at some point
JOHN:and he just like shaved his head.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:He's like, I'm gonna be the bald guy with the big glasses that's yelling
JOHN:about how bad Facebook is for the world.
JOHN:And that sticks I have.
JOHN:Yeah, it really does.
JOHN:Figure out what that's gonna be for me.
JOHN:But we'll get.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:I don't know man.
JOHN:The world is your oyster right now as far as, I'm gonna pivot
JOHN:on you real quick cause wanna make sure I don't pass this up.
JOHN:And there was a opportunity to pursue it previous and I'm just
JOHN:a horrible interviewer, as you can tell, cause I get so excited.
JOHN:Attribution.
JOHN:I think it's a trillion dollar problem.
JOHN:I think whoever cracks the code on attribution is gonna like own the media
JOHN:space right now, as far as I'm concerned.
JOHN:I'd love if you have a solution, cause I don't think, you know, high rows, wicked
JOHN:reports triple A, I don't think any of those work at least not well enough to
JOHN:rely on as a single source of truth.
JOHN:What are you all doing for attribution and what do you see coming on the
JOHN:pipe that could either help or hurt?
JOHN:I don't think there's ever gonna be an actual solution.
JOHN:I think that hopefully we'll all get more mature at how we talk about it.
JOHN:I think that one of the big things that we need to do as an industry
JOHN:is change the way that we measure goals and how we set goals.
JOHN:Because like being held to the return on ad spend column, I think is.
JOHN:Ridiculous because it's, a proxy for profit.
JOHN:It doesn't actually show profit.
JOHN:And they're write downer, Hold on.
JOHN:The Roaz column is a proxy for profit.
JOHN:and like this sounds, my God, it's like Monday morning quarterback.
JOHN:Like, it sounds so simple, but like what is the percentage of clients
JOHN:that I've worked on over the years that like, I actually don't know
JOHN:how profit is calculated in the.
JOHN:because people tell you all the time like, Oh, we have 35% margins, or like whatever
JOHN:it like, That's not what I'm saying.
JOHN:I'm saying like, show me the books What goes into putting money in your
JOHN:bank account when you close at the end of the day, Show me that and then
JOHN:I'll work backwards and show you 15 different scenarios how we can make
JOHN:that number larger and it might come.
JOHN:one times return on ad spend.
JOHN:It might come at a 10 times return on ad spend.
JOHN:And there's all these different ways to do it.
JOHN:And I'll tell you, my biggest client right now, the one that I spend more
JOHN:time on than any other client, any larger business that you work with, there's more
JOHN:and more attribution problems, right?
JOHN:The small company, the easier it is.
JOHN:Like, ah, I spent 10 grand in Google and I got all this business and I'm not doing
JOHN:any other marketing's never heard of me.
JOHN:But if you're working with a larger brand, it's more complicated.
JOHN:And the data that this brand in particular has is not only completely
JOHN:disjointed, but there's certain.
JOHN:Compliance issues with the industry they're in that
JOHN:like you just can't get it.
JOHN:So what we do is we create models that we know are extremely flawed and
JOHN:extremely imperfect, but they're good enough to help us steer marketing
JOHN:decisions in the right area.
JOHN:Like for example, we know we do a bunch of Yelp advertising for this client.
JOHN:We know that Yelp is driving a ton of their business even though
JOHN:the model that we're using is not giving it nearly enough.
JOHN:, but it doesn't mean that we're spending any less.
JOHN:Mm-hmm.
JOHN:, like we're still driving at home.
JOHN:Cause at the end of the day, and this is really the part of the attribution
JOHN:problem, like there's still rationale and gut instinct and it's like, listen,
JOHN:like I'm not seeing the data being reported in my Facebook campaigns, but
JOHN:I know that those Facebook remarketing ads are helping drive conversions.
JOHN:Like it's not there.
JOHN:And it's not saying it's profitable, but I know that if I turn 'em
JOHN:off, my actual sales are gonna.
JOHN:There's a lot of intuition that's gonna have to come, even if we have the
JOHN:world's greatest attribution solution.
JOHN:At a practical level, what we are doing in a lot of cases, developing our
JOHN:own data driven attribution solution.
JOHN:Oh, good for you guys.
JOHN:Are you gonna turn that into a SaaS product or keep it proprietary?
JOHN:God, I would.
JOHN:I mean, I would love to.
JOHN:So this is the crazy thing about data driven attribution.
JOHN:It's just a math equation.
JOHN:it's not proprie.
JOHN:Because if you actually look up where this concept came from it's,
JOHN:oh my gosh, I should call the comment in here to actually describe
JOHN:this cuz she'll go crazy on it.
JOHN:first of all, we have a blog post on our website that talks about
JOHN:it like that just outlines how we did it for a different client.
JOHN:But it's based off of this model from game theory that is based on three
JOHN:different principles of like how you assign credit for a decision or an action.
JOHN:And it's basically as if it's like the laws of physics it's really
JOHN:a measure of incrementality for different interactions that you have.
JOHN:And if you can just build this math problem and then say, Okay, well this
JOHN:person viewed a Facebook ad, but then they clicked on a Google ad and then
JOHN:they clicked on a second Google ad, and there's, actually an equation that you
JOHN:could just say, Okay, well therefore we're gonna split it up in this way.
JOHN:Like Google's data driven attribution.
JOHN:Is not a black box.
JOHN:Like a lot of people are like hesitant to adopt DDA cause they think Google's gonna
JOHN:gain the system to like spit out numbers that are convince you to spend more money.
JOHN:That's complete bullshit.
JOHN:DDA is literally a very open and close.
JOHN:Like just look at the numbers of how they, write it.
JOHN:It's no different from how position based is 40, 40.
JOHN:it's more complicated and most people like me that aren't mathematicians
JOHN:don't really understand it.
JOHN:So that's essentially what you can do is if you can get that data and say, Okay,
JOHN:well we're gonna use a solution like CM 360, or we're gonna use view through data.
JOHN:Or we're gonna use, I think GA four actually has a lot
JOHN:of these solutions built in.
JOHN:And then we're gonna pull all this into a Excel.
JOHN:We're gonna make our own data driven attribution model and assign credit
JOHN:accordingly, and then do a gut check and say, Does this logically make sense?
JOHN:And therefore that's how we're gonna distribute our budget.
JOHN:That's essentially what we've been doing, and I think it's been working really well.
JOHN:That's really brilliant.
JOHN:Where we struggle is, first party data is accessible to
JOHN:you so you can get most click.
JOHN:It's all view.
JOHN:the entire top of the funnel, top middle of the funnel is basically effectively
JOHN:entirely opaque, especially after iOS 14, but not just because of iOS 14.
JOHN:You're seeing like, yeah, there's a whole bunch of things that
JOHN:reasons that you lose that data.
JOHN:But I love what you said about making multi variant and what the other thing
JOHN:that you also did too is you just gave the whole media buyers that we put out of.
JOHN:20 minutes ago you gave 'em a new job.
JOHN:They have a whole new job.
JOHN:Like Yeah.
JOHN:Parsing this stuff is like so important and so valuable because, well, first of
JOHN:all, you want to talk about proxies again, some people have really made up their mind
JOHN:on the value of view through, just, it's so asinine to me because they're like, Oh,
JOHN:well they didn't click on that Facebook.
JOHN:It's like, oh, you impressions Google's on a 500 touchpoint paradigm.
JOHN:You know what I mean?
JOHN:You have to get to 500.
JOHN:When was the last time you clicked on an advertisement?
JOHN:Facebook, Google, Otherwise, I don't care.
JOHN:but the reality of it is we're using clicks as our proxy for
JOHN:engagement or interaction or interest or whatever you wanna call.
JOHN:But like, that doesn't mean anything cuz then you also can make the same argument
JOHN:about accidental clicks and my kids watching YouTube on my iPad and all this
JOHN:other stuff that like, it's all nonsense.
JOHN:So the real conversation here is like, okay, listen, we know that if somebody
JOHN:viewed an ad, like it, like a view is still not as valuable as a click.
JOHN:Like I'll agree with that a hundred.
JOHN:But it's not completely not valuable.
JOHN:Not worthless.
JOHN:Right?
JOHN:Not worthless.
JOHN:It's worth greater than zero.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:So can we come up with a, a best guess about that overall value?
JOHN:And it'll change depending on where it is in the ecosystem.
JOHN:If it's your first touch, it's probably a lot more valuable than your last touch.
JOHN:And it changes depending on the quantity of interactions.
JOHN:If you've had two interactions and one was a click on a Google ad, and then
JOHN:the second was a view on a Facebook ad and then they converted, you could
JOHN:argue that that probably had a lot more value than if it had 35 interactions.
JOHN:And the last one was a view on a Facebook ad.
JOHN:Mm-hmm.
JOHN:. The incrementality there is probably much less, and with a
JOHN:little bit of like weekend math.
JOHN:You can actually prove that, you can measure the incrementality of
JOHN:that 35th interaction and say you compare it to the same string.
JOHN:This is actually how DDA works, right?
JOHN:So we actually wanna talk technical for a second.
JOHN:The way do you measure this is you look at all interactions.
JOHN:Let's say it's a, it's a, it's a Google ad click and then
JOHN:a Facebook remarketing view.
JOHN:You look at the actual conversion.
JOHN:Of those interactions that you've had.
JOHN:So you have to get a lot of conversion data first, right?
JOHN:we had a hundred people that had this path on the website, and there was,
JOHN:we had a 10% conversion rate, so we had 10 people of that path convert.
JOHN:But when we pull away that last interaction, And we say, How many people
JOHN:just had that one Google ad click and never had that secondary interaction?
JOHN:And then you say, Okay, well the conversion rate there, we
JOHN:had a hundred people click and only eight people converted.
JOHN:So that's an 8% conversion rate for their interaction.
JOHN:So that delta of that well it's, not 2%.
JOHN:it's really 20% from eight to 10% Sure.
JOHN:So that 20%, that means that that Facebook view through conversion has a
JOHN:20% value of the overall conversion value.
JOHN:It gives you a 20% list.
JOHN:That is how data driven attribution works.
JOHN:Like that is the simplest version of it.
JOHN:Cuz at scale it's not that simple.
JOHN:It's people have like, I mean you've probably seen your path reports, right?
JOHN:Well, it's multi variant too.
JOHN:There's just, Oh, crazy.
JOHN:So that's why it's really hard to measure this stuff, but
JOHN:like that's just how it works.
JOHN:And if you can do this yourself, you kind of come up with a gut feeling of
JOHN:like, eh, maybe that's a little more valuable or a little bit less valuable.
JOHN:Do you do private consulting, Patrick?
JOHN:If people wanted to work with.
JOHN:Yeah, I mean, at our company we do, like, there's people much more
JOHN:intelligent and knowledgeable about the stuff than I do, but we have
JOHN:almost 50% of our client base at this point is like just pure consulting.
JOHN:We work with in-house brands, we work with.
JOHN:a lot of people that run their ad campaigns themselves or just like,
JOHN:Hey, I know that, my campaigns are up and running, they're profitable.
JOHN:I just need someone to like, make sure that I'm not screwing up my
JOHN:Performance Max implementation.
JOHN:Can you help me not screw this up?
JOHN:So we do a lot of consulting, dude, that's, we don't do any consulting,
JOHN:so we should just send our consulting because we get a ton of requests for it.
JOHN:We only do services.
JOHN:They usually just go to you.
JOHN:Yeah, that'd be fantastic.
JOHN:I love the consulting work because to be able to sit and talk shop and not
JOHN:necessarily like, be worried about.
JOHN:okay, well now we're gonna make a decision just on our side without access
JOHN:to all the, like, you're really making a decision together with the client.
JOHN:Which I, really like that sort of thing cuz there's always
JOHN:a different perspective.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:So consulting clients send them our way.
JOHN:I love it.
JOHN:Dude, you're easily one of the smartest people I've ever talked to.
JOHN:This is awesome.
JOHN:I'd love to do it again if you don't mind me exhausting your timetable.
JOHN:I'd also love to get you on perpetual traffic.
JOHN:I'm gonna go pitch you up to them too.
JOHN:I love look shooting the breeze, but with brilliant people like yourself, Casa
JOHN:is like my favorite thing in the world.
JOHN:This is a very isolating business that we live in.
JOHN:Is it air, the human condition with other people and gripe and talk
JOHN:about all the different challenges it's extremely therapeutic and
JOHN:it's my favorite thing to do.
JOHN:Yeah, it's mine too.
JOHN:So we've got Theola event that people have to check out for no money.
JOHN:By the way, if I was gonna criticize one thing, I'd be like, That's only free.
JOHN:Yeah, it's essentially free.
JOHN:That's exactly right.
JOHN:So if you're anywhere near New York, go in person.
JOHN:If you're not, go get the $29 whatever pass.
JOHN:Check out Patrick's book.
JOHN:Link in the show notes.
JOHN:Last words to you, sir.
JOHN:The, the last words are never, always, never, never.
JOHN:That's my mantra that It's just one thing that works every time.
JOHN:Everything has a million different reasons why it might work.
JOHN:and that's the fun of marketing is that you can do everything right and
JOHN:something might still go wrong, and that's what keeps us coming back.
JOHN:So never, always, never, never, never, always, never, never.
JOHN:I love it.
JOHN:I've got a bunch of writer downers from you.
JOHN:Really appreciate you being on here, brother.
JOHN:Thank you.
JOHN:Thanks Co.
JOHN:This is a blessed.
JOHN:Yeah.
JOHN:If you're watching, I shoot a video every day, like come and
