Ep 05: The 401 On PPC With Mohamed Amine Lakaab | Geeky Tech

Q: What is PPC?

PPC as an acronym has only like one main definition is just when it is used or what it is usually used in the. In the industry or, um, to refer, um, in terms of what are you referring to basically? So SEO we know is mainly getting traffic from organic search, uh, PPC. When we speak about PPC as a traffic source, most of the time, we mean getting traffic from paid search. Um, okay. Even though the dictionary definition of PPC is paper per, per click, generally speaking, SEO, organic search, um, PPC getting traffic from paid search and S E M is, uh, yeah, a combination of the two it’s when we do general search engine marketing. Means getting traffic from both organic and, uh, paid search. Most of the marketing managers that I worked with referred to PPC as simple paid search. Um, so it’s only that one, that one channel.

Q: Should companies of all sizes consider using PPC as part of their marketing strategy?

Yes and no. If you are smart about it and if the industry that you are working in, doesn’t have that much competition. Okay. You might get away with doing some search ads, uh, without, without a big, true, true big of a budget. Most of the time there is always before, um, before we’re running any ads, there is always a stage where kind of an audit is done. Okay. Yeah. And part of that, Part of that step is to see if PPC is worth doing for the budget that the advertiser, um, has available or not.

Q: Is it different with B2B and B2C when it comes to PPC?

There is a small difference when it comes to costs. Yes. In B2B, there are generally more, more competition when it comes to paid search. Okay. Uh, because businesses do. Do understand the potential and do understand of the importance of being there, being visible and making sure that you are on the top of that search, um, search visual page. And this goes, this is, this goes for a CEO as well, but even more for PPC because PPC is. Kind of not short term necessarily, but depends on the strategy, but the results, you can see them really quick getting your, um, ad or your message on the top of the search engine page is. Definitely something that all businesses are doing.

Q: What’s the smallest amount of money you can spend a day on an advertising campaign?

From an ad platform perspective, if you’re, if you’re going to use like a platforms like Google ads or even paid social, or, um, some other platforms, some of them can let you set up a daily budget of as low as $1 per. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the budget you want to use, especially like what we said in the case of PPC. If your average cost per click for the keywords that you’re targeting is way more than that.

Q: Should you be researching your competitors before creating your paid search ads?

Yeah, that’s that it should be part of the, not, not necessarily only the keyword research, but generally speaking from a planning level or at the media planning level, where are your competitors also running ads? So not only at the keyword level, but generally speaking. Okay. Are they doing paid social? If so, why? This, this in my opinion is a necessary step. Uh, okay. Simply because you know, most of the ad platforms are auction based auction based. That means that one of the primary factors of defining who will be the auction winner and, um, what will be the cost of that click or the cost of those 1000 impressions. Is competition and is how, how many advertisers are bid on that placement or are bid on that keyword or are bid on that target audience? When we speak about paid social, for example. So taking into account what your competitors are doing can help you detect, for example, those gaps that either no one is Tapp into, or also help you define if your budget is in, not through executor strategy, basically. Okay. Yeah. Researching your competitors when it comes to the keyword strategy and in general is yeah. Is a must. Okay. When developing any paid advertising campaign.

Q: What’s the first thing you do when a customer comes to you wanting to create ads to draw in more customers for their software because sales are stagnating?

The first steps involve the client, trying to explain to us first what they do and why their software is amazing and how it helps their clients. Part of that process as well is to understand at the moment. Uh, where are they getting their sales from? And, okay. Uh, in this specific example, you mentioned stagnating. We try to understand why is it, is it because like they maxed out all of those potential customers on the other channels or no, and if not, We need to know that because maybe paid advertising can not necessarily generate revenues, um, on its own, but also help the other channels increase their revenue as well. So, okay. Um, there is that the first step is this is understand the current challenges. Softwares USPS, the competition and yeah. Analyze this, the success and the failures that they have, um, that they had in the past with paid ads. If they run any, most of the clients would have already tested maybe in house. Okay. Or sometimes it’s the marketing manager who, uh, Who is running the ads themselves mm-hmm and, uh, trying some, um, some ads platforms by themselves as well. So all of that historical data sometimes is very, very useful. Like I said, in understanding why, if it worked okay, why? And if it didn’t work, why, so we can either expand on, on that success, um, and scale it. While, obviously throwing a wider or a broader analysis in check or checking or, uh, researching other areas that we can tap into as well or understanding if it didn’t work. Is it because of strategy and execution? Then the second step is we move to the strategy development. so during the strategy development phase, we try to get from the client, their objectives when it comes to this, if it’s only sales that that’s, that’s one objective. If it’s boosting the brand awareness, or if it’s a new software increasing or driving discovery of that software. Um, we’ll include that as an objective as well. And then based on that, we’ll go ahead and develop the strategy. What would be our recommendation when it comes to paid advertising in general? Yeah, so we get the budget as well, uh, or an idea of the budget and what would be a measurable in terms of, uh, KPIs or metrics. Mm-hmm what are those measurable KPIs? Uh, that we could use to say, okay, um, after let’s say, the first three months or six months, or next quarter, we decide if what we are doing is successful or not.

Q: If PPC ads are created, the audience is selected, and the campaign is ready to launch, how long can you reasonably expect to see results if you’ve done everything correctly?

After the strategy development, where we go and, um, and do our own research, when it comes to translating the business, um, the business target into, uh, or the marketing target, the target persona into basically, um, a model that would work with. Our available tools, uh, in, in paid advertising. Mm-hmm, we, we, we come up with that recommendation and we come up with what we call the media plan. The media plan is the combination of, uh, depending on the objectives, uh, of all of the, uh, channels, add formats, uh, targeting tactics that we recommend using. And, uh, in the case of paid search keyword that we recommend to, um, start the campaign with, obviously all of those, um, are not like stagnant. Once the campaign launches a campaign is what I like. I always say it’s a live thing. Um, it does need care. It does need monitoring. It does need maintenance and it does need, uh, optimization. So the targeting that you are starting with, it’s not necessarily the one that you, you will, you’ll still have when the campaign is generating results. Yeah. So there is a learning phase. There is an optimization phase. We just trying from that initial research and strategy development and media planning to make that, that path a little bit shorter. Mm-hmm um, I guess, yeah. Okay.

Q: What can marketing teams do to maximize their ad spend or basically guarantee some results?

The short version of my answer would be to not give up too early, um, especially in the B2B industry. Um, most of the, most of the marketing managers that we have worked with in the past, um, kind of expect the results, especially from, uh, paid advertising to be like linear. Um, okay. Like, yeah, you run a PPC ad, you get leads. Um, you promote, um, a new webinar that. Bring some like experts or, um, an expert panel from the industry expect to get leads. Um, yeah, the truth is it’s not necessarily that linear with paid advertising. Hmm. It does take if effort before and during as well, like I said before. So even when you create your resistible ads, um, and you push them. You can’t be sure that those ads are irresistible before seeing the actual data. Um, okay. Each customer is different. Each user is different. Each, each geo market is different. Um, so there is definitely that, like I said, that work that needs to be done after the campaign launched to make sure that, um, the budget is spent. Where it is not necessarily only generating the conversions, but assisting in generating those conversions long term. If your campaign is already running and it’s already generating results and good results based on the, um, on the target KPIs. That you defined as, okay. Once we start to see this cost per conversion or cost per subscription or cost per per purchase, we can say that this campaign is a success. How can we maximize beyond that, that work? Okay. That needs to be done from that step onwards is still, uh, can still involve all of the variables that made that campaign successful. Even if you are landing page. Has like a really good conversion rate, not involves you from creating a second version to try to push that conversion rate even further and improve it even more. Uh, even if your current ads are working correctly, at some point during that, that campaign, depending on the, like I said, industry, the size of the audience, et cetera. Uh, the, the target audience you should, from the, from the frequency metrics or even the clickthrough rate, you should start noticing or, um, feeling the, a fatigue phenomenon.

Q: What is ad fatigue?

Ad fatigue, um, or there is a phenomenon called basically ad blindness okay. Um, yeah, it’s when you are used to see so much of a brand’s ads with the, I mean the same ads. Okay. Same message messaging, same key visual, same colors, same creative. Um, that at some point when you are browsing throughout the web, even when the ad is there. You become blind to it kind of. Oh, and you just skip it, like at some point you have seen it so much that you, um, that you start not noticing it anymore, where while you’re reading your news articles, for example, oh. Even some advertisers do do a mistake by, for example, changing just the headline. But at that stage, It’s probably too late because no one would read that ad. So how long is too long? It really, it really depends. Your PPC manager should be able to, um, to tell you based on, on, on all of the pre click metrics. At some point, like I said, you’ll start noticing a drop in the clickthrough rate and yeah, your frequency would, will be so high. Like, um, it would tell you, for example, if you’re not applying a frequency cap, it would tell you, okay, if you’re targeting these 10,000 users, each user has seen your ad at least. I don’t know, nine times, nine times or 12 times in the past week. at some, at some point when you see like such a high frequency and your clickthrough rate start decreasing, that’s one of the signs that add fatigue is now a thing. And you maybe need to refresh or think of a new creative way to, uh, change those ads that once were irresistible. Okay. So yeah, all of the elements that made that campaign successful need to be optimized even further, not to only to maximize the ad spend, but also to keep, to keep that success for as much as, as you can. And that’s basically optimizing your return on or ad spent Oris from a management perspective, your PPC manager should be able to help you during that learning. But also in the future mm-hmm with either with general insights either when it comes to, okay, we are targeting the us, certain states seem to engage with our ads and our offer better than others. Okay. So they could be optimizations when it comes to the budget allocations per state, per device, per multiple dimensions, really. But they, they should always be. An area where you could make sure that no. No dollar is going to waste and we direct it towards the areas that, uh, where you are seeing the success. And that’s, that’s ultimately how you’d make sure you have, like, you reach your maximum return on ad spent on that specific company.

Q: What is the most effective B2B advertising channel?

It doesn’t depend, um, it’s in this specific instance, the best channel is the channel that works for you and from, from, from which you are getting the results at the, at the cost per acquisition that are acceptable. And with which you are making profit for some industries, they find more success in paid social in general for some. Other industries, the only success they would have found is for example, on LinkedIn or in search only. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be doing all of the other channels, a good general, uh, paid media strategy is one mm-hmm that takes into account the global participation of all of those channels. This is the bane of every marketing manager. Um, attribution, basically. Yeah. Like I said, that’s one mistake that I think, um, That I think most of the marketing teams make is. They without a proper, like, uh, a proper attribution platform and moving forward, I think, especially because of the, like with the cookies going away eventually mm-hmm some platforms that seem that they are not generating the results. Will be based on that one KPI that everyone swears by in some, in, in some examples, these leads, for example, you could say, okay, Facebook is definitely not generating leads for me. Um, so I should probably cut my budget there or even remove it from my media plan and focus that budget on the search. Um, Yeah, like I said, the most effective advertis channel is in my opinion, that combination of channels that work all together as part of the same mechanism, some of them are more, uh, are used more when we are doing dimension. Some of them are used more when we’re doing demand, capturing like search, for example, or display re targeting. You will always, or in most cases in B2B, see the leads or the final conversion happening on those demand capturing channels, because that’s what they are, their, demand capturing. It’s the end of the journey. But the, yeah, the customer journey started like way long before that. And if you are using the other channels, right, you were part of that journey from the start you were part when that user decided, okay, this is a problem that we have internally. Is there something, some tool or software that could fix this for us? You were part of the journey when they were, for example, researching those kind of soft softwares, how they work, uh, do they integrate. Other third party software that they have, for example. Yeah. They have seen your message, for example, that pushes, okay, we integrate with this, this and this, which would definitely make an impact. You were part of the benchmarking when they were considering multiple providers and you were part of that list. And at the end, when they finally decided, okay, this is exactly what I need when they were looking for an offer for that tool, they saw your last ad on search because they researched one keyword and ended up converting. If you’re looking at, for example, Google analytics alone, you would see that. That conversion will be attributed to that last step, whereas way before maybe a journey that started three months before those users have been exposed to your exposed to your messaging in Facebook, in LinkedIn, um, display banners on organic, you know, it’s not necessarily only, um, paid channels. So without the proper measurement or, um, A good measurement of all of those touch points. Mm-hmm it is hard to have like the perfect setup in terms of, uh, channels or which, in my opinion, like I said, it’s a multi across platform channel presence for your brand. Okay. And you would just say okays is the only one working for me. I’ll stop doing everything else, exploring all of the other options. And yeah, that’s one blocker into maximizing your ad spent and, um, okay. Yeah, there have been instances in the past where some big brands decided, okay, I’m ditching Facebook. It’s not working for me. Yes. It did influence the revenue. Um, it’s noticed at the sales stage, not necessarily before, but yeah, like I said, It’s it’s really, it really depends. It really depends on your current setup, if you’re able to measure those effects or not. And sometimes when some clients are coming to us saying, okay, we are not able to maximize, um, our paid search results. Sometimes it’s just because. Of that, because they’re not making any, any actions or any communications at the other stages of the, of the funnel, if we want to, uh, refer to the funnel again, because they’re, they’re already maxed out at the bottom of the funnel, they’re already doing retargeting. All of the users who visited their websites without converting. They’re already getting as much as they can from that, from that segment of the audience. Um, all of the ones that are researching their specific brand and their primary keyword, and considering like, there are some, some products that you don’t care about the brand. Sometimes you just, you know, you’re such in a, in a hurry and it’s not, it’s not like a, it’s not like a big pricing product. You’re just looking for. A pen, any pen would do. Um, yeah. So you are relying on such things and thinking that, okay, this is as far as I could go in paid search, but you could go much farther than that. If you have done more work on the stages of the funnel that are before that. Yeah. Um, okay. Yeah.

Q: How can advertisers access consumer data to fine-tune their outreach or campaign?

The example that I just mentioned, um, the customer match targeting tactic. You can’t necessarily access who ex or see who exactly is on those, um, audiences. Okay. You can, you can reach them, um, using display advertising or. Uh, audio or even TV. Um, like I said before, crazy, but you can’t know, like, this is Mr. John DOE for example, and this is his email. You never have access to that information, uh, at all. Okay.

Q: If you’re doing an ad for brand awareness, how is the data coming from, and how do you target your audience?

It’s the platform with data management or data? Data warehouse. Propers. Okay. Um, but yeah, most of the time the platform handles that for you. Okay. If I take the example of Google, uh, Google’s DSP is called display in video 360 mm-hmm . So Google is not only a DSP, but also has an add exchange and has. An SSP, which is a supply mm-hmm supply, uh, supply platform. Yeah. That the publishers use. So they basically have a product across all of the, all of the, all of the chain. Yeah. They have a platform that the advertisers use to buy. At placements and they also have the platforms that publishers use to sell that placements. And they have an ad exchange, which is the platform in the middle that sits and handles. It’s basically the marketplace manager handles all of the transactions. Be. Between that demand and offer. And they are themselves an advertising platform and the publisher, because they have so many websites, so many tools, um, they have too much power. Yeah, they have, they have data. So if you’re using. At DSP as an advertiser, like DV 360 or displaying videos, 360, you basically have access to all of the data that you can imagine from a targeting perspective. It’s not everything, but if you’re just starting out, it’s way more than. Then you should need if you’re starting out in programmatic. Mm. Um, so when you are using contextual, you’re basically using a combination of data, data that the publisher, uh, declares. So I’m the New York times when I’m in the process of integrating my offer into Google’s ad exchange. I have to declare who I am, who I. What my website is about. What’s the nature of the content that I publish. Um, how brand safe it is, is it, it is rated only for adults. It is, what’s the rating, um, from a contextual perspective as well. Um, like each article or each category of the website would declare. Okay. Um, I’m speaking about sports. So the users who are more likely to read the news articles that are in here are, um, sports fans, et cetera. All of this data is shared by the publishers. Okay. But from a user perspective, since Google in this specific example has so many products and is everywhere basically. They know, what, what are the signals? They collect signals about the user and it’s the combination of all of this data. The one provided by the publishers, the one provided by Google that is offered to you, the advertiser as a targeting option or method in the ad. You have to pay extra for displaying video 360, if your agency, um, I mean you can get it. Um, there are minimums, uh, minimum investments, monthly investments. Oh, okay. So it can be a little bit hard when you are working with the limited budget. If you are working with, uh, an agency, that’s a partner you should be able to, to spend on it or have access to it for a little bit cheaper. Are we a partner? We are, um, we do, we do have, uh, access to David three XG and yeah, we can handle the creation of ad accounts for advertisers. Of course. Hmm.

Q: What is the best piece of advice you can give any advertiser starting out in paid advertising?

If you’re just starting out in, um, paid advertising and doesn’t matter if it’s working for you or, or if it’s not working for you, um, you can always. Uh, get in touch with most marketing agencies and us being a B2B marketing agency, uh, would do free audits, like completely free. Um, would sign an NDA, ask you for temporary access to your ad platforms. Have a one hour call with you to understand what you’re trying to achieve. And from a technical perspective would help you definitely with a big list of recommendations on how you could optimize targeting, maybe test or experiment with a specific bit strategy that you haven’t tried. Um, cetera, that you’re free to use yourself so completely free value. Um, I would always recommend to do that, even if you have a professional, in-house imagine those for you. It’s always good to get a second opinion. So from a general paid advertising perspective, um, I’d say never under, uh, or devaluate a channel based on leads for example, or the conversions KPIs. And. Uh, never underestimate what a good combination of multiple channels that are all working together as part of that dance to generate that end result can do to your general revenue, uh, metrics as a marketing manager.