7-Figures & Beyond - An Ecommerce Marketing Podcast For 6 & 7-Figure Brands
Today’s Ecommerce marketing landscape looks very different than it did in 2021.
Customer behaviors and preferences have changed dramatically, buyer journeys are longer and far more complex, and ad/customer acquisition costs are on the rise.
Every week, CEOs, CMOs, marketing directors, etc. share their wisdom and insight of what it really takes to scale a brand. Each episode is designed to help you think differently, think bigger, and take massive action toward your goals.
7-Figures & Beyond - An Ecommerce Marketing Podcast For 6 & 7-Figure Brands
How To Leverage Paid Media To Dramatically Increase Sales For Lifestyle Brands
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In this episode of the Seven Figures and Beyond Ecommerce Marketing Podcast, host Greg Shuey welcomes Nikki Lindgren, founder of Pennock, to discuss optimizing paid media strategies for lifestyle brands, especially with the holiday season approaching. Nikki shares her experience in paid media and SEO, emphasizing how the landscape has become increasingly challenging due to economic uncertainties, higher advertising costs, and shifts in consumer behavior. She highlights the trend of consumers holding back in October in anticipation of major Black Friday deals, making it crucial for brands to strategically navigate this period to avoid sales slumps. The conversation sets the stage for exploring practical ways brands can leverage paid marketing channels like Google, Meta, and TikTok to drive growth while overcoming these hurdles.
Nikki emphasizes the importance of a full-funnel marketing approach that balances brand awareness and retargeting efforts. For emerging brands, she recommends prioritizing budget on high-impact, core channels rather than spreading resources too thin across multiple platforms. She points to the power of creative assets, noting that high-quality video content with strong hooks can significantly enhance ad performance. The discussion also delves into the benefits of utilizing creator-generated content, even on a limited budget, to make ads feel more organic. Nikki provides practical insights into optimizing campaigns with tools like Google’s Performance Max and Meta's Advantage+ to stay competitive in a fast-evolving landscape.
Looking ahead, Nikki predicts a shift towards more granular audience targeting and intentional ad placements, contrasting the current reliance on broad machine learning-driven strategies. She believes that refining audience segments and focusing on specific customer tribes will yield better returns, especially as platforms like Google and Meta continue to expand their features for advertisers. Greg and Nikki agree that a holistic approach to marketing, which integrates paid media with organic strategies and owned channels, will become even more essential for brands aiming to maintain growth and navigate the complexities of the ecommerce space.
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Nikki Lindgren LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkilindgren/
Pennock: https://www.pennock.co/
Bestever: https://www.bestever.ai/
Soona: https://soona.co/
https://www.stryde.com/leverage-paid-media-to-grow-lifestyle-brands/
Leveraging Paid Marketing for E-Commerce Brands
Speaker 1It doesn't matter what kind of e-commerce brand you're building. You still need a rock-solid way to grow and scale your company like clockwork. Welcome to 7 Figures and Beyond an e-commerce marketing podcast for D2C brand owners and marketers, looking for best practices that include proven strategies and tactics to grow an e-commerce brand to 7 Figures and Beyond, bringing 18-plus years of marketing experience as an e-commerce brand owner and e-commerce agency owner, please welcome your host.
Speaker 2Greg Shuey. Hey everyone, welcome to the Seven Figures and Beyond e-commerce marketing podcast. I hope that everyone listening today is absolutely crushing it and having a fantastic day. I am really pumped for our discussion today. So my guest's name is Nikki Lindgren and she is the founder and managing partner of Pennock, a paid media and SEO agency for beauty and lifestyle brands. Now we do have some overlap. You're probably wondering like, why on earth am I doing this? But I absolutely love it. I love collaborating with like-minded people who have an abundance mindset, and I just like talking to smart people and figuring out how I can work with them and help them and those types of things, and so it should be a really fun discussion today.
Speaker 2Our topic today is pretty timely, as we are starting to go into the holiday season, so it is going to be about how to effectively leverage the power of paid marketing to dramatically increase sales for lifestyle brands. I know a lot of these brands right now are kind of limping along. It's a weird time to be an e-commerce business. I know I've said this in several episodes Consumer confidence is down. We've got the election coming up. There's just a lot of weird things going on right now, in addition to it being October, and when October usually rolls around, consumers go into hibernation mode. They're getting ready for Black Friday, they're anticipating the biggest sales of the year, the biggest, deepest discounts, and so they typically start holding back in October in anticipation for those sales in about five weeks, and I'm really excited to hear what Nikki has to share with us. I hope that some of the things that she shares with us can help us all make October better than it potentially could be, and so, yeah, I'm excited. Nikki, thank you so much for being with us today.
Speaker 3Great, thank you. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2Awesome. So before we jump in, would you actually take just a couple of minutes and introduce yourself to our listeners and share a little bit about your personal story and how you've gotten to where you are today?
Speaker 3Yeah, absolutely so. My name again is Nikki Lindgren. I'm actually going to take you way back. I'm from this really small town in rural Minnesota and the town is actually called Pennock, which is the name of our agency. Interesting, yeah.
Speaker 3And so as I was living in rural Minnesota in the 90s getting ready to graduate high school, I was so desperate to get out. So luckily, I found an opportunity to go to college in San Diego and just felt like you know, the world was opening up for me and it was my, my oyster, and I had a ton of anabolic energy to just go out and conquer and do great things. I'm quickly tired of San Diego and moved up to San Francisco, which is the area I'm still in. I'm in the suburb of San Francisco, but it was here in San Francisco that I had my first real marketing opportunity. First with Cost Plus World Market, where I was part of the founding direct-to-consumer team on launching e-commerce. It was fun to be on this really small team of six people trying to launch e-commerce and market e-commerce for the business's first time in history, after having like 200 and some stores, so really successful, and really surprised me in terms of like the level of interest and excitement I had towards it.
Speaker 3So I continued to work in direct to consumer. You know, up until this point we're still mainly direct to consumer and what we do for our clients I've been both brand side in house as well as agency side. So I feel like the experience I had really helped me understand what brands and what agencies do well together and where the opportunities were to kind of strengthen that connection. And that's really what we try to do here at Pennock is act as a proper extension of the brands and look at things from a little bit more of a holistic view than I feel like most of our brands have had with their previous agencies before coming to work with us.
Speaker 2Sure that experience with their agencies, or even if they tried to do it in-house, right, Like they don't have that depth of experience and expertise, that's a really cool way that you position and be able to come in and help those people. That's awesome. Are you ready to dive in? Let's do it Awesome.
Speaker 2So 2024, rolling into 2025, there are so many places that you can put paid media dollars these days. I mean, if you look at all the platforms I'm just taking TikTok as an example right, you can do TikTok ads. You can do ads specifically for TikTok shops, Like where do you split that? You've got meta. You've got Facebook Instagram. You can send traffic to your Facebook shop or your meta shop, your Instagram shop. You can send it to your website. So I'm a big believer, especially with smaller brands, probably like sub two, three million dollar brands in really focusing in and really focusing your efforts and not stretching yourself too thin across a ton of different platforms. So when you start working with a lifestyle brand and you start looking at the digital landscape, you know competitors. Where do you find, like, the two most impactful paid media channels are for growth and why are those the most impactful?
Speaker 3yeah, yeah. So I'd probably step back for a second and just kind of like answer, which hopefully is obvious and your listeners are well aware of at this point. But like there is not really like a proper playbook that we follow, each brand has its own like quirks and nuances, right. So like we don't take on a new client and say 50% of the budget goes to Google, 40 goes to.
Speaker 3Meta, etc. So I do think at this moment in time, like really understanding where the customer is going to be is probably the first thing to tackle in terms of growth, and even though I said where the customer is as a symptom of growth, like the initial pass is to get that awareness up right. So we, we have so many brands that are in that emerging, emerging space of maybe under 3 million in yearly revenue and we continue to kind of cripple opportunities for remarketing because the business isn't growing and the awareness levels aren't growing enough to spend more on remarketing, which I know we'll probably get into in a little bit like budget allocation mix.
Speaker 3But to answer the question you had, which is where do you actually find growth? You know there's there's a couple obvious players still in the room. You know there's a couple obvious players still in the room. So Google's been strengthened a lot in 2023 and 2024 with performance max type of campaigns and that's where we see a lot of growth.
Maximizing E-Commerce Paid Marketing Creativity
Speaker 3I know Google recently released the capabilities of seeing within every campaign how many of the customers are new versus returning and the lag time between first touch and conversion. So there's a lot of cool features there that can help marketers augment what they're doing, even in Google, to be more awareness and less remarketing so very excited about that. And then meta converts well. So I would say, if you're a new brand and you've got some budget set aside for paid media, those are two super obvious players. Like I don't think anyone's surprised to hear me say those two, but I would say the level that we need to dial into is where their customer is. Our brands that are a little bit more young and Gen Alpha, gen Z we're doing a lot more media buys and bigger media buys on TikTok, primarily pointing to TikTok Shop, as you mentioned.
Speaker 2Yep, cool, I like that, and I think you know if anyone in e-commerce has actually paused for a minute and gone over to Google and typed in you know a search query for a specific type of product.
Speaker 2The search engine results page looks insanely different from what it looks like six months ago, and I think Google's shifting and becoming like your shopping category page. They're starting to become your aggregated product detail page with product knowledge panels. It's it's crazy, and I think, as Google starting to make this shift, that the power of of spending on Google from a paid media perspective is just going to get stronger and stronger. They're almost creating their mini little shop. I was even looking at it yesterday and they're getting ready to roll out they're probably beta testing it where you can buy right in the SERP. I haven't seen anyone who can click and buy right in the SERP yet, but I was reading about it and you can join. You can put your brand on a waiting list to be able to test that, and so will more and more brands start spending on Google. So will more and more brands start spending on Google.
Speaker 2I think so, as they're leaning towards this kind of the same model as not necessarily a TikTok shop per se, but they're trying to keep people on the SERP and they're trying to give them all the information there so they don't have to leave the SERP and then get them to buy, and so I see that potentially grabbing more media dollars. But yeah, just went down a rabbit hole there. I apologize.
Speaker 3No, no, no, that's great insight and like thank you for sharing Cause. Yeah, I agree, like they're being really responsive to what's happening on TikTok with all the search going over there and I will say just to kind of plug, like the new versus returning customer insights we can now get from Google. Super compelling to see that even for branded search right, because oftentimes we as marketers are like, well, spend something on branded search, like don't spend your whole Google budget on branded search. But we've got a couple of clients where so many of their first time customers are coming through branded search and it just it actually surprised me. I didn't assume that to be the case. I was convincing my team and some of our clients to not feel the need to be always on for a branded search because these particular brands were doing so well with their seo cool.
Speaker 2So if a brand is coming in, they're starting from scratch. They're just starting to dip their toes into paid media, paid marketing channels. Where do you think will be most impactful for them to get started Like what should they do first?
Speaker 3Yeah. So I think the first thing, from a low hanging fruit perspective, would be set up your Google Merchant Center. Google Merchant Center Next and get all the feed integrations within the paid platforms. You want to be on live and you know, feed ads sometimes seem like the less, the least exotic of everything we get to do. Right, but they do.
Speaker 2They're not sexy at all. They're boring.
Speaker 3Yeah, but they do convert so well. So if there's just like one thing a brand has time to do, I would say the proper feed integration, making sure that things are not blocked or disapproved for different reasons, making sure everything's like super polished and optimized in the feed settings so that you could run P max even with shop only type placements on Google or run dynamic search ads on or dynamic product ads on meta would probably be like the lowest level of fruit I would think through and then building from there. So maybe you know you take a phased approach and the first thing is going to be get this, get these feed campaigns up and running, and then the next phase could be like top of funnel video view awareness campaigns that you're building a pool of folks to remarket to.
Speaker 2Yeah, I like that. I definitely think there's low hanging fruit there for sure, and then coming in with more of a full funnel approach so that you can start filling the top, driving the bottom and then figuring out which campaigns you need to double down on to scale. So I like that approach for sure.
Speaker 3Yeah, and Greg, just to add one more thing to that. I think this strategy I just mentioned is a great way to get leadership on board right, Because, like, what you don't want to do is launch something that's going to have such poor efficiencies for the business that the business gets nervous and decides like, hey, this is not the right tactic to go after. Where, with that catalog integration and catalog ads because they generally are among the top performers again, even though they're not sexy we want to take advantage of what we think will win while we're trying to get buy-in from leadership.
Speaker 2Yep, that buy-in is super important. As you know, if they're not bought in, they'll turn it off tomorrow if they're not seeing a return, and that is frustrating and very, very, very bad for your paid campaigns.
Speaker 3Yes, 100%.
Speaker 2Cool. So it's competitive out there. Ad costs are going up, Clicks are going up, clicks are going up. You look at, you know the average cost per click for some of these commercial, transactional type keywords and it is just getting crazy. So, like what are some of the creative ways that lifestyle brands can really stand out in hyper competitive paid channels?
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah. So you know this all goes back to creative. I think creative is 60% of what's going to work or not work within a proper ad strategy at this point. So definitely, you know any brand that's in kind of like the beauty or wellness lane. We find that video is always going to win. So within the video the brand has to focus on that attention rate. So how do they get their three second views to impressions to be as high of a percentage as possible? Because everything after that is going to, you know, make, make the ad itself work.
Speaker 3And so there's a couple different tactics and hooks that we often use. A lot of these are kind of like well known in the industry at this point, but I would say, like us versus them, some sort of comparison to the rest of the industry and named competitor, et cetera, generally works well. I think a get ready with me or come along with me in the journey of using product testimonials still kill it. And all of this can be leveraged through in-house creative or creator generated content. But what we kind of shy away from is calling like creator generated content a hook, because the hook has to be like a concept of what's inside it, not just to deliver the content.
Speaker 3So those are the things we kind of like tweak and think about to really maximize the first three seconds. Oftentimes we're like stitching together recommending a brand, stitch together different video ads so that we can make sure that hook rate is as high as possible or that attention rate. That being said, like within beauty brands, like within beauty brands, carousels still kill it when the seasonal collection, photography and videography is really well done and really well executed. So when that happens, we generally find, with fashion brands, carousels on paid social do work better than video, which is kind of surprising, feels a little dated. Better than video, which is kind of surprising, feels a little dated, but while that continues to be the winner, that's what we kind of push more volume in terms of creative variations from brands for got it cool.
Speaker 2Um, so a follow-up to that is when a brand's putting the majority of their their budget into paid. Oftentimes they don't have enough to be able to produce really good assets, really good creative. Outside of working with creators and influencers, are there some creative ways that they can do creative on a budget?
Speaker 3Yeah, so creative on a budget, Um, we find that the creator generated lean usually is going to be the most fruitful. Um, because we get to do whitelist or spark ads then and it allows you know things to look like they're a little bit more natural and less from the brand. So I would say, as much as you can get creators to do the work for you, just by seeding the product and not costing you more money than that, go in that angle until you're blue in the face. Beyond that, we've tested a few AI partners to just kind of augment and add, like some more jazz to our assets, to our assets.
Speaker 3Best Ever is a really good product that's in its infancy that we use for some AI augmentation to our assets, both motion and still assets. They've been a good solution for. And then I mean there's so many shops out there, like Dilly out of LA is a common partner we work with to create assets, as well as Suna. So I think that there's a handful of places you can find creative or you know, as low as a couple hundred dollars per video. So we usually kind of understand the landscape of the brand, what they're planning to spend in marketing versus creative for the marketing and then kind of put them to the appropriate partner but creative for the marketing and then kind of lead them to the appropriate partner.
Speaker 3But you know everyone's in the gig economy now and there's no shortage of people who can do really great things. So you know, it's really just the hunting for the right person.
Speaker 2Got it Cool. Thank you for sharing those. We'll make sure to put those in the show notes. Could you share some examples of some campaigns or tactics that have significantly boosted sales for a lifestyle brand?
Optimizing Full Funnel Paid Marketing
Speaker 3Yeah, and I think I don't know if you or the audience is going to really like my first example, but I think it's really important to talk through because I do think, like the, you know the days of like the early two thousands when it's like just run a bunch of ads on meta and your business will succeed, and you know we got 15 million. Those days are just so long past us that it really has to be a fully integrated, 360 degrees approach that anyone running ads is doing with the greater marketing team. So a couple examples I have that worked really well are examples of that really coming to life. So in the month of March it's there's a National Fragrance Day. Of course there is. It's a national day for everything, and we had a brand in the fragrance space that was launching new product around that time. So we really built out a full month catalog in terms of new campaigns to launch to support this initiative. Was it picked up on other channels and other parts of their marketing programming? Yes, absolutely Like. It was 360. So we had a lot more creators working with us. We even had some billboards and certain DMAs. We had, you know, press about it.
Speaker 3So there were a lot of things that came together to make it successful, but I do think it's worth noting, because when we're amplifying as a full business and not just amplifying on a couple of channels across digital, you know the things work in our favor. And so through this initiative, we were like launching Spotify ads, which is something this client doesn't normally do day over day. So we just had a really robust strategy and approach and, you know, not only were the efficiency numbers where we expected them to be for paid media, because we were running on TikTok, Meta, Google, Programmatic, Pinterest and Spotify but the business was exceeding their top line projections and their forecasts. So I think that's an example of like all of the efforts are going to raise the business and calibrate the business higher. So that's just one to share, because I think it's really important to have everybody think about the 360 approach and then, more pointed within the paid lane only, I think sometimes the tweaks of simplified structures more machine learning to more specified structures where you are maybe toggling in the audiences and putting in the details yourself, sometimes switches like that and you know, truly kind of resetting campaign structures, are going to elevate the performance and give you some of those quick wins and learning.
Speaker 3So, as much as we like to say like we want to stay out of learning, we want to keep steady, Eddie, with everything we're doing. Sometimes you have to blip the system to see better success and so, as we're getting new collections of to drop or creatives to drop, Sometimes we'll do that intentional blitz to ensure that we're getting the right level of efficiencies out of things. But again, those are the tactics that mean less for the business overall, because it's just busy work. So I do think the idea of aligning with the email team that owned and earned marketing teams, etc. Is a much more holistic way to get the business to do what we want Nice.
Speaker 2I like those. I like those examples. I especially like the first example. The more data you put into those pixels, it's all machine learning, it's algorithmic based. Algorithmic based I mean I had this discussion with a client on Tuesday when we were talking about their search engine optimization and why it's so important to be able to drive that organic traffic in in addition to their paid channels, their email, their SMS. It all just works better. You get better results and all the rising tide lifts all ships right, and so I really like that example. So with paid media right, we talked a little bit about the funnel right, driving top of funnel all the way down to the bottom. So when brands are putting together budgets and planning out, like how they're going to prospect, how they're going to retarget, how should they do that, like that can be really tricky and really overwhelming for brands. Just getting started to think through that and figure out how do I attack each part of the funnel, like how do you lay that out for your clients?
Speaker 3Yeah, and hasn't it become even more gray, with advantage plus shopping and performance max.
Speaker 2Yes, thank you. Thank you, you guys with Performance Max and with.
Speaker 3Advantage Plus Shopping. However, there are still solutions in those walls that can be built to make it more one audience versus the other, but I would say that's generally where we want to be, with clear KPIs against each funnel position as best we can to land on this blended KPI, whether that be ROAS or CAC, for all of paid media, and I think it's really important to own and control expectations around each part, because you know and I'm sure you felt this too, greg, like I can't tell you the amount of times brands are like just get me better ROAS and I'm like cool, we can remarket, but and that's all we can do.
Speaker 3Yeah, we can remarket much heavier. But are you focused on the efficiency here or do you want your business to grow? Because if we remarket by the third month of doing this, your pool is going to dry up and your business isn't. You're not going to see that top line growth you want. So that's what we're kind of toggling when we're building a media plan is making sure that we aren't over fixated on efficiencies of paid media at the expense of the total business. So for that reason we also monitor MER marketing efficiency rate with our clients to make sure that that is kind of sustaining, if not growing in the right direction.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think one of my favorite discussions to have with prospects is hey, you know, we were getting an eight or nine ROAS and we increased budget and my agency tanked our account. We're down to like a one and a half. And when we in, it's like, oh yeah, they opened up top of the funnel, like what did you expect? That's not going to have as high of a row as it's just driving retargeting and bottom of funnel and so it's an ongoing fight, right it?
Speaker 3really is, and then I think like going. I know the next question wasn't necessarily about like cookies and pixels in the future of retargeting, but like the more first party data within like meta you are collecting and building full funnels in like a meta or a tiktok, the better. For this reason, right, and that's why like video view as an objective top of funnel is so important for brands that have big enough budgets, because then we don't even care if they made it to the website, right. It's like kind of better if they don't, because then we can remarket to them and get them more engaged before they journey to the website or to our shop page. So we're building a lot more full funnel on a single platform strategies than we ever have before.
Predicting the Future of Paid Media
Speaker 2Yeah, I love that. Why don't we just kind of jump into talking about that, Like how do you recommend measuring all of this? Do you look at Facebook numbers? Do you look at GA4 numbers? Do you use Shopify conversion events? Do you use a third party like a Popsicle? What are you guys doing?
Speaker 3Yeah, so we are generally like our first touch is usually going to be platform data, so we're going to look at that first as like our source of truth. We usually are doing shorter, shorter look back windows right, like on meta. Obviously it's it's seven days or or one day, right, but we're doing the seven day there. So that's kind of like our first pass is like how are things looking there?
Speaker 3A lot of our brands are integrated with North beam or triple wheels, so we'll use that as that source of truth in the instance that we're working with a vendor like that or a solution like that. We have started leaning more heavily on ga4 data and even in the data-driven model, even when you're not favoring just google ads, the numbers for paid social have just been remarkably low, like super concerning for brands to see some of these numbers. So that's where we're kind of set. Yeah, so if our brands are like we don't trust meta because meta overstates, we'll possibly land in a world where we're like let's optimize for one day and that way at least we feel like we're doing a better job of potentially undercounting rather than overcounting.
Speaker 2But that gets messy too.
Speaker 3Well, and it's not our favorite solution, because many of our brands are a little bit more considered right.
Speaker 3It's like a two and a half to three day lead time before they convert.
Speaker 3So it does get messy.
Speaker 3And then I feel like you know, I was just talking to a client about it yesterday I'm like I feel like we're chasing yesterday because we're looking at what happened the day before and we're making wild changes to your account based on that and like we're just in this constant state of responding and learning and never getting like out of anything for long enough to sit on it and see success come forward.
Speaker 3So it's definitely not, you know, I don't think it's a place to be when you're trying to scale, and I think like there's a ton of fear and scarcity in brand owner and brand executive world right now because we're in September and it is a different September with the election and CPMs are much higher than they used to be and I feel like the outlook for some brands are as a little more bleaker. And with that comes all of these needs to look at things more carefully and I just could not, you know, state differently that GA4 tracking is too understated for social to be beneficial and one day look back is also too hard to manage because you're just in a constant state of responding.
Speaker 2Yeah, it makes me wonder and I brought this up a few times on the podcast is are we going to get to the point where we literally have to look at an overall marketing budget?
Speaker 2It's like the days of old, right, like and say, is this moving my business forward in a meaningful way, versus breaking it down channel by channel and as we continue to get, you know, privacy restrictions and cook, like, are we even going to go to a cookie list world Google, just you know, backed off that they're not going to roll that yet, and so, like, are we going to get back to that point where it's okay, we have to build a holistic strategy, knowing that all these pieces play together and work together, and is that moving the business forward the way that it's supposed to be? I don't know. It'd be interesting if we ever get back to that place.
Speaker 3It'd be interesting if we ever get back to that place. I mean, I'd like to get back to that place, but I think, in talking to new brands who are either going to start investing much more heavily in ads or, you know, just trying to think about if we're the right next team to help them with ads, they it doesn't really pass their sniff test to talk about.
Speaker 3No, they really don't like it because you know it's. It's unfair for paid media to be like, oh, we look at MER and like, as long as that hasn't tanked, like we're helping you. So it's kind of hard to find that like lane that really cuts through and makes the brand align with you and like feel that they can trust the strategies and I think MER is still kind of a red flag for them. Yeah, and this doesn't even take kind of a red flag for them.
Speaker 2Yeah, and this doesn't even take into account third-party marketplaces like Amazon. Right, I've got a client right now where, if we lower their Facebook spend, there's a direct correlation to their Amazon sales going down. It's like this is messy, way messy.
Speaker 3It really is, and that's a fair point. Like us in the industry space, we hear that on a regular basis. It's a weekly topic that I think we have with our clients, and so, yeah, with you on precisely what you just said.
Speaker 2So we'll kind of wrap up here with the next couple of questions. So mistakes what are common mistakes that brands make when they're getting started with their paid marketing, and how can they navigate that and work to avoid?
Speaker 3those mistakes only the novices in the room are going to make is setting up a testing structure, even a campaign structure, that's intended to have one objective, but the actual inputs in the pro, in the platform, have a different objective. So I'll bring this up and this irks me and you know some some agencies do this, and you know or people and and find success with it. But generally speaking, if you're setting up a testing, a creative testing campaign, versus like a business as usual campaign, they both should have the same audiences, intentionally, so that you're learning from one and move into business as usual, and they should have the same objective. So if you're pushing out new creative and you're not sure it's going to win and you're like well, let's test it against traffic. Well, if traffic isn't your long-term goal, it doesn't really make sense to test in a lane that is then going to be changed when you put it into your natural longstanding campaign structure.
Speaker 3So that's one of the icks that we like to avoid here, and I think the other one is probably just around understanding how to funnel people down, because I think when budgets retract, often what we like to do in the agency is like make sure um, like, brand search continues to get the same level of you know, love or like, remarketing gets the same touch that it had before.
Speaker 3Um. But what often gets failed to be realized by people in the digital space is you know, if you don't have that awareness, the budgets for all of these remarketing efforts do have to decline as well, because otherwise you're oversaturating and fatiguing the audiences. So I think those are probably the most common things is like they start with remarketing and they're like, oh, I can only spend 100 bucks a day, and it's like, yes, because no one knows who you are. And they're like, oh, I can only spend a hundred bucks a day, and it's like, yes, because no one knows who you are. And also, I'm testing in a world, I'm testing and learning things that are outside of my main core business objective.
Speaker 2Yeah, yep, cool. And then wrapping things up like where do you see paid media going over the next few years? I know it moves fast, right, it changes so fast. Like what are you seeing?
Speaker 3What so fast? Like, what are you seeing? What are you predicting? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you'd be in alignment on this, but I think one of the predictions I'm seeing is a return to a little bit more control around audience targets and audience inputs with PMAX. Well, I don't know how many PMAX have really given us quite yet, but ASC is definitely opening up what types of you know inputs we can give around audiences. So excited about that. Also excited about the idea of just finding your core customer tribe and, you know, oversaturating them intentionally with the idea of like, looking very big to them and looking very much like in their face. So that can be geographies that can be like you know very much like in their face.
Speaker 3So that can be geographies that can be like you know characteristics of the collective tribe, et cetera. But I do think there'll be like a return to let's be a little bit more intentional and aim small and, you know, swing small so that we can get some learnings before blowing everything out to people all over the country where you know that's kind of been the machine learning play we've had now for two years yeah, it kind of goes.
Speaker 2And it goes back to one of my comments is like getting stretched too thin so like swinging small getting it dialed and to the point where you can start scaling and dumping cash and getting a good return. So I like that Love it. Cool. I think that's a good closing Awesome, well, thank you. Thank you so much for being with us today. That was a really great discussion.
Speaker 3Yeah, greg, so happy to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2Absolutely so. As always, as we wrap up these podcasts like we've learned a lot today, Nikki shared a lot of awesome insights with us, so I hope that you've taken away a couple of really good nuggets. So take those, make a plan and then take massive action. You only have three more months to take massive action this year, so get it done, close the year well and gear up for 2025. Thank you everyone so much for joining. We'll see you next time.
