Episode Summary
In this episode of the Seven Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast, Greg Shuey interviews Martin McAndrew, director of Blue Thirst, to demystify Google Performance Max (PMAX) campaigns. Martin breaks down PMAX as a powerful yet misunderstood advertising tool that leverages Google’s vast ecosystem, including YouTube, Gmail, Maps, and Search. He emphasizes the critical role of quality data—specifically first-party data—in optimizing campaign performance and scaling effectively. The conversation covers foundational setup practices, such as defining clear goals, ensuring accurate data flow, and leveraging audience signals. They also discuss creative strategies, secondary conversion events, and balancing ROAS while scaling. Martin stresses the importance of AI, automation, and data collection for staying competitive in the evolving digital landscape.
Key Takeaways
- Data is the Backbone of PMAX Success: The quality and accuracy of data—especially first-party data—is vital for PMAX campaigns to function effectively. Clear goal-setting, precise conversion tracking, and leveraging first-party data give businesses a competitive edge.
- Audience Signals Drive Campaign Precision: Marketers should use audience signals strategically, starting broad with demographic data and layering in CRM or Shopify data to target high-value customers. Competitor-proof first-party data is the most valuable asset.
- Creative Assets Need Continuous Testing: High-quality creative assets, particularly videos and images, are essential for PMAX campaigns. Test assets consistently and evaluate performance reports to refine strategies and maintain relevance.
- Scaling Budgets Requires Patience and Strategy: Incremental budget increases (no more than 20% every 3-5 days) and tools like seasonal adjustments help prevent disruptions in campaign performance while scaling.
- AI and Automation are the Future: As digital marketing trends further toward automation, businesses need to focus on data collection, AI-driven insights, and advanced audience segmentation to maximize PMAX and broader marketing strategies.
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Martin McAndrew LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinmcandrew/
Blue Thirst: https://www.bluethirst.co.uk/
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey (00:01.592)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Seven Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast. I hope that everyone is absolutely crushing it today. My guest today is Martin McAndrew. He is the director of Blue Thirst, a performance digital marketing agency based in the UK. Martin’s been in the digital space for 18 years, about as long as I’ve been in. So yeah, it’s been a minute, right?
Martin McAndrew (00:30.574)
I think that’s why my wrinkles and furrow lines are deeper than yours, mate.
Greg Shuey (00:36.342)
That’s awesome. And he’s an expert paid search marketer. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. So we’re going to dive into performance max also referred to as P max. And for many marketers, those that we work with, as well as those who I’m talking to on a regular basis, they just, they don’t understand P max. They think that it’s this black box.
where you add some inputs and they’re not quite sure what’s going on behind the scenes or how to optimize it, how to improve it, and they just set it and forget it, right? So I’m hoping that when we come out of this episode that we are really going to have shred this mindset and give you a roadmap on how to properly set it up, how to optimize it, and then most importantly, how to scale traffic and revenue through this channel.
So it’s gonna be a great discussion today. Martin, thank you so much for being with us. Yeah, so before we jump into our conversation, would you just take a few 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? And this is my favorite part of the episode, honestly.
Martin McAndrew (01:39.285)
Thank you for having me, mate.
Martin McAndrew (01:55.214)
So actually, my introduction to digital started in my final year of university. So I actually trained as an engineer, as a marine surveyor, and I worked as a kind of summer and evening jobs as a yacht broker. When I say yacht broker, I was the guy that used to wash the boats when the yacht broker would ride us. And in the UK, it gets frigging cold in the winter.
and you don’t want to be the guy outside of the hosepipe washing the boats in the middle of the winter. I heard on the line that there was potential for a new website build and this was kind of back in the day before CRMs and CMSs and all that kind of cool stuff. Straight HTML, yeah, it was, was, was phenomenal. And it was an opportunity to get out of the cold winter and stay in the office during the winter. So yeah, I put my hand up.
Greg Shuey (02:36.29)
Yeah, straight HTML.
Martin McAndrew (02:51.246)
We managed to, yeah, it was a cool little system. back in the day, you know, we were selling anything up to kind of 150 foot boats across Europe. And generally these guys who want these big boats want a big mooring and they also probably want a house nearby. So this system, you know, all this stuff’s always for sale if the price is right. So what you could do, one came in looking for something, you’d list what they’ve currently got. And then a couple of months later, someone would be looking for something like that. And the whole system tied it together as well as being, you know,
Greg Shuey (03:00.75)
I know.
Martin McAndrew (03:20.398)
It wasn’t like a headless website, so would plug into different things. Yeah, that was my first foray into digital and that was, God, God, 20 years ago? Something like that. Yeah, and then 14 years ago, bombs blew first and I’ve never really looked back. yeah, exactly what you said, digital marketing, anything. Normally the paid media side of things. We’ve done a lot of SEO back in the day, we’re predominantly paid media now, of course.
Greg Shuey (03:32.109)
man, We’re the old boys.
Martin McAndrew (03:50.306)
Google meta, TikTok, Pinterest, portfolio of products really. So yeah, in a nutshell, that’s my history.
Greg Shuey (03:57.976)
I love it. I love it. Yachts. That’s wild.
Martin McAndrew (04:00.886)
Yucks. We’re an island, man. We’re an island over here. We’ve got to find somewhere to get off every so often.
Greg Shuey (04:06.872)
Fair enough, fair enough. Nice. Okay, so let’s jump in. So before we get kind of into the meat of our conversation, can you give us just a really quick crash course on what PMAX is and how it’s different than like a traditional search campaign or display campaign? Break this down.
Martin McAndrew (04:28.834)
Yeah, so there’s essentially two schools of thought on PMAX. There’s the pro Googlers and there’s the anti-Googlers. So the way that Google sells it is it’s a great way to access their entire portfolio. So it’s YouTube, it’s Google Display Network, it’s Discover, it’s Gmail ads, it’s Maps, and it can all be driven by a cost per acquisition, a return on investment type bidding strategy.
Greg Shuey (04:37.485)
Yeah.
Martin McAndrew (04:58.958)
Then there’s the kind of naysayers who are, it’s a black box that everyone should be scared of and it’s Google taking over the world. But the reality is it’s kind of in the middle and some days are lean a bit more that way and some days are lean a bit more that way. But it’s the way it’s all going and it’s kind of the sort of, we’re even seeing it in meta and we’re seeing it in TikTok. It’s the same approach. And I don’t think PPCs need to be worried about their jobs because actually there’s quite a lot you can do within PMAX and actually you become
more valuable by having a more technical understanding of how all this stuff works rather than going through a CSV file of search queries and picking out the bad ones, which is what everyone seems to be worried that they’re not going to be able to do anymore.
Greg Shuey (05:41.25)
Right? Yeah. I like that. I like that you mentioned they don’t have to be worried because there is so much that you can do inside of P max. I mean, the thing, the one comment that rubs me wrong is when I’m talking to a prospect and they’re like, isn’t that just all automated? You just set it and forget it. go, my goodness. Like, and, unfortunately a lot of marketers and businesses think that that is the case. And so, let’s debunk that. Let’s jump in. So.
Martin McAndrew (05:48.054)
Exactly, exactly.
Martin McAndrew (05:59.203)
Yep. Yep.
Greg Shuey (06:11.21)
Someone who’s brand new to PMAX, when they’re trying to figure out how they should approach this, like what are some of those key elements that these marketers should prioritize when they’re starting to set up that PMAX campaign for the first time?
Martin McAndrew (06:27.084)
Yeah, so the first thing is this is a computer, this is a generated type of campaign. So it will only work as well as the data you give it. So the mindset you need to go into it is with a data mindset. If you just want to set something up and leave it, it ain’t going to work. So kind of…
Greg Shuey (06:47.18)
You may get lucky. You may get lucky, but probably not.
Martin McAndrew (06:50.67)
you’ll probably spend a shedload of cash, become one of the naysayers against PMAX and be worried you’re going to take your job. But actually, if you go down the other route of looking at the three different bits of data that PMAX really need is the first one is super important to set the goals. What is it you actually want the campaigns to do? And you need to start thinking about minimum numbers as well. So realistically, you’re probably needing 50 to 100 of these
goals to complete every kind of month to allow the system to work. So if you’ve got a very, very small budget or you’re using, you if you’ve got a funnel and you’re right at the very bottom of the funnel, you’ve got to make sure that you’re giving 50 to 100 conversion signals back up for the system to run. it’s really, yeah, yeah, yeah. There are some documentation that say you can get away with 30, but I would set
Greg Shuey (07:38.734)
per month. Okay.
Martin McAndrew (07:47.31)
50 to 100 is kind of a nice safe bet that you’re giving the algorithm enough data that it can get kind of near statistical significance on the decisions it has to make. If you’re going to give it a month work and give one conversion and it can try and work out what to do from one conversion, not even a greatest PPC mind could do that, not to mention a computer program that’s got to go and do it algorithmically. So yeah, work out what your goals are.
And then that kind of leads on to the second bit, which is understanding the conversion and the way you’re reporting that goal. So if it’s an e-commerce type campaign, so ROAS return on ad spend is the important metric. Do you understand the revenue figure that you’re giving back to the channel? Does it include delivery? Does it include tax? Are you removing stuff for refunds? If you want a four times ROAS,
and you’re not giving it the correct ROAS figure for it to do its algorithmic calculations with, the system’s going to fail. So you need understand the data that you’re giving to the tool before you give it to the tool and then tell it off for not doing the right thing. And then finally is the audience bit, which is really the nut and bolts of how all this stuff works. So we used to have fairly good audience data where you could see people that are looking for this type of product or this sort of subset.
Especially in Europe, we’ve got laws now against digital privacy, don’t get me started, but a load of rubbish. We need to work within these laws. And actually what you really need to be doing is taking the people that do what you want them to do and passing that back into the system. So first party data, give the algorithm the people that did what you wanted and say, go and find me more people like these people that did what I wanted.
it’s a little bit scary what Google knows about you and it can go well you know this person that did this had all of these data points here’s a whole lot of other people with the same data points and that’s kind of effectively how the algorithm uses audience data so yeah that’s it sounds simple but that if that’s the most important of any PMAX campaign is just getting that data that would allow the algorithm to work correct correct
Greg Shuey (10:04.514)
Yeah. And part of that data, I assume, would be making sure that Shopify is connected and that you’ve got the right things set up that connect back and forth to pass that data to Klaviyo, making sure that we’ve got all of our platforms and data flowing properly.
Martin McAndrew (10:20.226)
Exactly.
Yeah, integrated and correct. yeah, it’s always worth taking raw snippets of that data and double checking what’s being passed across. We’ve found a few little glitches where things haven’t synced up right. And just because it looks like it’s working doesn’t always mean it is. But yeah, getting that set up and getting that data flowing and getting that first party data and understanding what that first party data is, that’s the core of getting PMAXed away. If you can’t get that right,
you’re not going to get success because it needs those signals and it needs that data in order to operate.
Greg Shuey (11:00.056)
Yeah, so just kind of a follow up question there. If you struggle on the data side, you should just either not do paid search or like you should just do search ads. Like what are your thoughts about that?
Martin McAndrew (11:17.484)
I mean, if you’re not able to get that data, I think you’re going to struggle to do business. Yeah, exactly. Even with, there are some great tools out there at the moment that use AI to interpret big data sets. And the kind of mindset we’re going to enter with all of our clients now is, if you can record it, record it in a database, because in six months time, we could look at that and we could find some insight in there and we could plumb that in as a…
Greg Shuey (11:24.024)
Period. Yeah.
Martin McAndrew (11:45.506)
first party data source or as a signal or a tool. So yeah, think outside search, getting your data correct across a business has got to be one of the biggest priorities. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (11:55.316)
Absolutely critical. Cool. So I know you just briefly touched on audience and being able to target, you know, based on interest in those types of things. you know, once they’ve got data flowing, data set up properly, how should marketers approach audience signals in PMAX campaigns? And I would assume a lot of people who are listening to this might not even know what audience signals are. So maybe you could break that down for us, but
How should they approach that? What are the most effective ways to layer in signals to really guide that machine learning?
Martin McAndrew (12:28.91)
Yeah, so kind of at the top level, you’ve got the audience data in the platform. So that’s things like your demographic data, your interest in data. Everyone has access to that. So for me, that’s the weakest source of data. So that’s where you’d kind of start. You’d go broad. You’re getting people that are interested in the topic. You’d then start to overlay that with remarketing data. So you could use the Google Ads tag and say, well, you know, I want
people similar to the tag, but ultimately where you want to get to is your CRM and your first party data. So if you’re using Salesforce or Shopify, it’s the people that have actually made the purchase you’re passing back. None of your competitors have got that because they haven’t got your data lists. So that’s where the real value that, you know, everyone else has got the same tools to work with, but not everyone’s got the same data. And that’s where the data again, going back to my…
kind of first point is the data that’s the important bit. The data is where all the value and everything you do going forward is going to be. Everyone’s got access to the top level, but you can really get ahead by, you know, it’s that 50 to 100 conversions. If you’ve got better 50 to 100 conversions than your competitors, you’re going to get better performance. Exactly.
Greg Shuey (13:42.072)
You’re going to win. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Cool. I, know that, you know, you mentioned at the beginning is that P max has a lot of different things working inside of it. So, you know, it can deliver search ads for you shopping ads, you know, display remarketing. So one of the things that’s new ish for some brand owners and marketers is, is the idea of we need to put creative into the system.
So typically that’s just been like a Facebook, a meta ads type thing. So in your opinion, how critical is creative going into PMAX, especially high quality? And then what type of assets are you seeing performed best in platform?
Martin McAndrew (14:30.178)
Yeah, great question. we started when PMAX first came out with taking our best performing creative from a meta campaign and dropping that into a PMAX campaign. When PMAX first came out, you weren’t able to see individual asset performance. Then they released it through the API. Now you can actually see it in the interface. So what we’ve started to do is migrate from using the best meta video
creative and actually making our separate own A-B testing plan within Google. Generally, what works on Meta tends to work in Google because they’re kind of similar placements. And what the system’s trying to do is align people to top of the funnel with kind of the branding type message at the bottom and then changing that creative asset as they become further down the funnel and go to different buying stages.
into ultimately what everyone complains about is brand at the bottom. But yeah, that’s how people search. They’ve got a problem, they get introduced to something and then they flow through the system and most of your people will convert on your brand term. But actually you’ve got to look at it as an overall investment, an overall return and does using PMAX investing in Google as a strategy have a positive ROI overall, rather than just kind of super focusing on brands and you
Greg Shuey (15:58.092)
Yeah.
Martin McAndrew (15:58.72)
am I losing to brand and can I get brand for free? That’s kind of not the way it works anymore. If you restrict PMAX from brands, you’re saying, well, I want a five times ROAS, but I’m not going to allow you any of the revenue from people that generally convert on that final step. So the system will go, okay, well, I now can’t accommodate that into my algorithm. So I’m now going to have to make the top of your funnel a lot smaller to hit the same ROAS target. So yeah, you’ve kind of
Even though I hate to it, you’ve gotta trust Google a little bit. Something I thought I would never say, but yeah, you’ve gotta trust them a little bit.
Greg Shuey (16:36.332)
to make up a graphic with just your face on that quote. You’ve got to trust Google a little bit.
Martin McAndrew (16:39.086)
I
Martin McAndrew (16:44.0)
Yeah. Trust it with lots of testing. There we go. There’s the caveat.
Greg Shuey (16:50.892)
and that will go viral. You’ve got to trust Google a little bit. So what’s working the best right now? Videos, images, like is it a blend of the two?
Martin McAndrew (16:52.302)
Ha!
Martin McAndrew (17:02.306)
So what is great is to give the system as much creative as possible. If you’ve got stuff that’s worked on other channels, put it into the system. There are asset reports that you can see if they’re being served. There’s a nice little hack. And what you can find, and it’s by tweaking your CPA targeting.
If you’ve got a relatively tight CPA, you’ll find that a lot of stuff tends to come in through your search ads, through your PLA ads. If you start tweaking the cost per acquisition target up, you’ll then start to notice Google may be selling your ad space into stuff that’s not going to work quite so well. So that’s where your CPA is kind of over egged a little bit and you could…
that back and you can start removing. So it’s just a game of playing with that raw asset or CPA targeting, seeing which placements are being used. And that’s quite a nice little signal that, you know, if you say to Google, I’ll pay you 10 pound for every lead, well, it’s going to go out and it might be able to get them for six pound per lead, but it’s going to put another four quid into outweigh because why wouldn’t you? You’re a company. So you can tweak and you can play with that and you can look at where the placements are. You’ve just got to be a little bit mindful that
Greg Shuey (18:08.91)
Sure.
Martin McAndrew (18:18.614)
very few people are going to watch a YouTube video and go, yeah, I’ll buy that and buy that in that same session. So you need to give it a little bit of time. You need to allow it to kind of track, find the right people. But, know, over a period of time, every asset should be a sales guy. And if a salesman is not selling, cut them and put something else in there. But yeah, you just got to, it’s that kind of mindset of if it’s top of funnel and it’s brand awareness, well, then don’t expect it to be producing sales because its job is to
Greg Shuey (18:22.776)
I’m ready to fly.
Martin McAndrew (18:48.866)
make people start searching for your brand name and then come and make purchases. So, you know, you’ve just got to be realistic a little bit with the data.
Greg Shuey (18:57.132)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we see this with PMAX. We see this with Meta as well as when you’re spending, spending, spending, spending, driving traffic, driving conversions, driving revenue, and then you start to plateau. And at that point, you’ve got to figure out how to start building efficiencies so that you can start then getting off of that plateau. So as you have encountered this,
Martin McAndrew (19:12.738)
Yep.
Greg Shuey (19:24.62)
Like what are some of those effective strategies that help you optimize and kind of take that next step off of the plateau?
Martin McAndrew (19:34.19)
Yeah, so there’s a couple of bits that we’ll generally do in that instance. My kind of favourite at the moment is giving the algorithm supplemental data with secondary conversion events. in Google Ads, you’ve got a primary conversion event and you’ve got a secondary conversion event. So a primary conversion event is a sale. So you’re saying, for every sale, I’m going to pay 10 pounds or I’m happy for it to be 100
10 times hour, so whatever you’ve set the tool up. That’s what the system’s kind of being judged on a win or a fail, but you can give it secondary data. So you might want people that have been viewed five or six pages, but you don’t want to pay for that. You don’t want to say, well, I’m prepared to pay a pound for people that view five or six pages. But you can say to the system, if someone views five or six pages, they’re probably interested. So make it a secondary conversion event.
and use that to prime the algorithm to look and to find other people. And there’s lots of things here. There’s clicking on phone numbers, there’s viewing of videos, there’s watching of videos. With Tag Manager, you can set almost anything you want to be a secondary conversion event. that’s a really great way of… Because what Google wants you to spend as much money as possible on its platform, it’s in its interest for you to be at a scale budget. And what it will generally be is one of two things, either…
It can’t find more people like the people that are going to hit your target. So you need to give it more signals, which is where the secondary conversions events come in. Or everyone who has seen it has seen your creative and your creative starting to degrade now and you start need to start producing more creative testing creative options. So generally that they’re your two main options of how to scale when things are starting to plateau is give the system more data to find more people.
or give the system more creative to go out and use and refresh people. So yeah, that’s generally the two options that you’ve got.
Greg Shuey (21:34.05)
I like that. You don’t hear a lot of people talking about the secondary actions, secondary conversions. Like it’s not something that either a lot of people aren’t doing it or they’re doing it they’re not talking about it. and I think that’s a really, really powerful strategy. So when you look at marketing from a broader perspective, I know you said that, you know, you do meta ads as well. Like how, how can a marketer take what they’re learning in P max and use that to improve broader digital strategy?
Martin McAndrew (21:39.534)
Yep.
Martin McAndrew (22:05.262)
Yeah, we produce, when we’re running kind of big sets of A-B tests, what we will generally produce for our clients is a test by test breakdown. generally when we’ve got, so we worked with a very large finance client that wanted to be the next PayPal and they were spending, god, they were about 35 grand a day on Google and about 35 grand, so 35,000 pounds.
Greg Shuey (22:32.814)
Mm-hmm.
Martin McAndrew (22:32.878)
on Google and Meta a day. So we were hitting statistical significance of 95 % in around two and a half days. So that meant that for every two and a half days, we were going to roll out a new ad copy, which was going to have a new testing hypothesis. So the hypothesis might be it was a B2B similar to PayPal type product, that this character would have a higher conversion rate than this character, and would have a hypothesis Y, would run an A-B test.
and then you’d pick a winner and we’d probably have 10 or 15 tests lined up. But the goal from that is we would produce a one-page PDF of a test and say, generally found that it’s like the old, if you put the price above something, it seems more expensive than having the price below an image. Kind of little things like that. So if you’re going to run offline press or you’re going to do something else, here are all the tests that we’ve run that will probably work in a similar way that if you’re going to, you know, if you’re a shop and you’re going to do a spread in a paper,
you’re going to put a price below the product because that makes it look cheaper than if you put it above. Little things like that. All that stuff. The digital teams client side absolutely love that, being able to share that with their team members and say, well, here’s some great stuff that you can take offline. Here’s some great stuff. We worked for a very large DIY franchise in the UK.
Greg Shuey (23:35.339)
Interesting.
Got it.
Martin McAndrew (23:58.486)
And part of that was an SEO project actually. And what we would do is our keyword research would go back to the buyers and the buyers would be going, well, we’re going to buy sheds for next year. What search queries are people using for sheds? And they would come up with their buying strategy based on the organic visibility that was there and what people were searching for. there’s a huge amount of data that people don’t really use that can be flushed through a whole business really.
Greg Shuey (24:08.93)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Shuey (24:26.776)
Yeah, I like that you mentioned even taking that offline, right? I think most marketers don’t even think about that anymore.
Martin McAndrew (24:34.89)
Yeah, it still exists in some place offline, what is that?
Greg Shuey (24:37.998)
A newspaper ad. I’m like, I haven’t seen a newspaper in years. It’s crazy. It’s funny. So let’s talk about scaling and balancing ROAS. I mean, we all know that as you start to put more money into platform, ROAS typically starts to come down, especially if you’re trying to prospect and find that new customers.
Martin McAndrew (24:43.416)
No.
Greg Shuey (25:04.78)
What are some of those best practices that you like to adhere to to help? Get as close as possible to maintaining Roas and or you know, starting to improve that.
Martin McAndrew (25:17.23)
Yeah, the first one is going back to data. It’s giving the system good data, ideally giving it first-party data that your competitors don’t have. That’s going to get you ahead of 90 % of people on the system. Because it’s an algorithm as well, you kind of need to play the algorithmic game. So if you are getting good results and you need to start scaling budgets, if you…
double the budget, system goes, crap, and it will go back into learning and have a little bit of a panic. Generally, you you’re looking at, don’t increase budgets more than 20 % in every three to five days as a rough kind of ballpark. you know, Black Friday and Cyber Monday was an interesting one this year because it’s the first year really when everyone was PMAX ready. But you’re kind of thinking, so we’re going to get a huge spike over a weekend.
how would you tell the system to expect this and it to not learn from this weekend and apply it to the next weekend, which is traditionally what PMAX might do. So you’re using seasonal adjustments. So within the PMAX system, you can go in and say, well, we expect conversion rates to increase by 30 % this weekend. So you can pre-warm the system. And actually, we were running our PMAX Black Friday campaign a week before the start of Black Friday.
Greg Shuey (26:22.19)
It was tricky. Yeah.
Martin McAndrew (26:43.936)
on a very low budget to start it learning. And then we actually dropped our promotion into the PMAX campaign once it was at full budget. So all we actually changed before Black Friday was a couple of headlines and a merchant promotion. Everything else was in there and firing. The seasonal adjustment kicked in on the Thursday night and that got us through until Cyber Monday where you have to rein it all back in and go, right, conversion rates gonna drop a bit and tell the system what’s gonna happen next.
So yeah, was an interesting one this season, but we had a client do £2 million over the weekend, 40 % up on the year previously. yeah, it’s a nice challenge to have. But yeah, you’re powering an algorithm. You’re powering a system. You’ve got to always remember that the system needs the data to react. So yeah, that’s kind of the things that we’ve found from running PMAX.
Greg Shuey (27:25.08)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (27:40.718)
That’s awesome. So again, we’ve got a lot of folks here who may or may not have had a lot of experience with PMAX. So what are maybe two or three of those mistakes that you see marketers make with PMAX? And then how should they be sidestepping those, avoiding those?
Martin McAndrew (28:06.414)
Yeah, so the first thing is your primary conversion events. So it’s going into conversions overview and just looking at what’s defined as a primary event. And if it isn’t a business objective, cut it out. Because if it’s view five pages, well, the system’s going to go out and find you people that you’re going to pay on a ROAS model for people that view five pages, which isn’t what any business needs. So it’s getting that.
correct tracking setup, getting good conversion data into the system.
Greg Shuey (28:41.378)
Data, we’ve heard it over and over again, data.
Martin McAndrew (28:44.078)
Yeah, it’s all about it. And understanding what that data is, if it’s a revenue figure, is that revenue figure including the delivery, the tax? Is the ROAS including the delivery and the tax? Is that the right number to be using? Because that’s what the system’s going to be using. So if you don’t understand the one $5 data set that you give to it, it’s going to make the wrong decision. It’s kind of that simple. Too many assets kind of go in.
Back when we used to do A-B tests manually, we used to always aim for a 95 % statistical significance, which means 95 % of the time this will happen. It might mean that we won’t know what will happen 95 % of the time, but that’s kind how the number works. If you have got an algorithmic system that’s trying to work out the best creative to use and you give it 100 options, well, it’s going to have to do hundreds of tests, hundreds of times before it can work out what works and what doesn’t work.
So keep it simple, change stuff in and out, but yeah, don’t give it a whole load of data because it will go, right, well, I’ve got a hundred different videos to test. I’ve got to test each one of them until I’m 95 % happy that that one will work all the time. And that takes a shed load of sessions. You’ll basically waste a whole load of cash doing testing. Yeah, exactly. And then, yeah.
Greg Shuey (30:02.965)
and money.
Martin McAndrew (30:08.494)
look at the insight data the tool gives you back. Don’t trust it 100%, but do look at that data that’s in the platform, look at the recommendations, and then just kind of use your common sense if it’s gonna be good for your business or if it’s gonna be good for Google’s business, and then make the right decision on whether you should implement that or not.
Greg Shuey (30:32.622)
good for your business or good for Google’s business. That’s another good quote right there.
Martin McAndrew (30:35.542)
Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (30:39.636)
I love it. Okay. This is my second favorite question of every interview. My first was getting to know you. My last is pull out the crystal ball. Like where are next going next year? We’re a couple of weeks away from 2025.
Martin McAndrew (30:57.12)
Yeah, it’s interesting. I think it’s all going to go further automated. I think we’re going to see some interesting stuff coming out from AI. But the nice thing about digital is we’re at the leading edge of it. what we’re seeing is everything that we’re seeing in other parts of the business, Google kind of led with.
dynamic creative, the production of video assets, the creation of text assets. We’ve had that for six months. What we need to be doing is improving the data into the systems, which is where everything’s lacking. Yeah, it’s going to be data. It’s going to be data and improvement of data, first party data, data warehousing, data analysis, AI data interpretation. That’s where the future is going to be because everyone’s got the same tools now.
Greg Shuey (31:34.904)
Data, there it is again.
Martin McAndrew (31:50.986)
Everyone can go in, we can have an intern go in, set up a PMAX campaign, the same as a $100,000 PPC freelancer who’s an expert, same tools, but actually, what can that big performance campaign deliver that your smaller competitor can’t and it’s your data? That’s the most important asset that any business has now is your first-party data. If you can record it, collect it, store it, do it because you will need it.
Greg Shuey (31:50.989)
Yeah.
Martin McAndrew (32:20.482)
next year.
Greg Shuey (32:20.718)
And it’s vital for everything even outside of PMAX for Meta, your email SMS. Like that is what helps an e-commerce business be able to learn and grow, especially when you can segment that data down, right? And get to your like ideal highest value customers. Do you do much with that? Do you run campaigns specific to segments?
Martin McAndrew (32:25.89)
Yeah, exactly.
Martin McAndrew (32:34.625)
Exactly.
Martin McAndrew (32:45.09)
Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve got a cool tool that we’ve been playing with for about two or three months now. And we’ll have a client come in and it pulls into a couple of different databases. We can use keys amongst databases to join that person up together. And they might come in and they do something in the first section, but by the end of the database, they’ve done something else. We can then create similar audiences to the people that have done with our own first party data.
apply that out to the campaign. yeah, that’s all done with AI now. So we can say it’s a client that’s a car buyer and we can say, well, you know, from the people that have bought this type of car, let’s look at all the stuff. Let’s look at all the correlations of all the different data points before they became that buyer and get those types of people. So yeah, it’s using first party data correlation within your own internal systems. And it’s amazing what AI and data analysis can
can find. really is incredible stuff that’s happening now.
Greg Shuey (33:42.702)
Yeah, well, I think 2025 is going to be a fun year. I think it’s going to be a stressful year trying to figure out all of this AI and how to use data properly. And I think the brands that really nail it are going to crush it next year. And the ones who struggle to figure it out, they’re probably going to limp along. data, data, data. That’s the big takeaway, everyone. So make sure that you’ve got your data. Martin, you, outside of following you on LinkedIn, you on X?
Martin McAndrew (33:58.658)
Yep. Yep. Yep. I completely agree.
Greg Shuey (34:12.162)
The Twitter, like where’s the people, you know, check you out and learn from you.
Martin McAndrew (34:16.214)
The best place is Martin, the candle and LinkedIn. Yeah, we’ve got Blue Thirst and we post a regular every week, an update of everything that’s happening in digital. So it’s all the stories the team here finds and go, that’s good to know. We distribute that every week so you can sign that up through Blue Thirst LinkedIn page. And yeah, or connect to me on LinkedIn. More than happy to connect to anyone.
Greg Shuey (34:37.742)
Cool. Well, we’ll make sure to include those in the show notes, make it really easy for everyone to get in touch with you and follow you and be able to continue to learn from you. So thank you so much for being with us tonight. That was a great conversation, a great episode, and I know that we learned a lot. And so to our listeners, I hope that you’ve been able to pull a couple of really good nuggets of wisdom. Take those things, make a plan, and take massive action this year. Thank you everyone so much for joining.
Martin McAndrew (34:47.074)
Amazing. Thank you for having me, mate. Really enjoyed it.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
