Episode Summary
In this episode of the 7 Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast, host Greg Shuey welcomes back Kelsey O’Rourke to discuss how to build an effective Google Ads strategy for D2C brands in 2025. Kelsey, a performance marketing expert, emphasizes the importance of structuring Google Ads campaigns correctly, debunking the myth that they are fully automated and require no ongoing management. She breaks down different campaign types, highlighting Performance Max (PMax) as a powerful but often misused tool. Kelsey stresses the need for brands to separate prospecting from retargeting efforts, avoid inflating ROAS with brand search traffic, and understand their customer lifetime value (LTV) before scaling their paid media efforts. She also warns against blindly following Google reps’ recommendations, as their goal is to increase ad spend rather than optimize performance for individual brands. The conversation concludes with key advice on aligning Google Ads with an overall omnichannel marketing strategy and ensuring campaigns support a brand’s specific growth objectives.
Key Takeaways
- Performance Max (PMax) Is a Powerful but Often Misused Tool – Many brands fail to properly structure their PMax campaigns, leading to inflated ROAS and inefficient budget allocation. Proper exclusions and segmentation are necessary to ensure it works as a true prospecting tool rather than a blend of new and returning customers.
- Google Ads Requires Active Management – Despite increasing automation, Google Ads is not a “set-it-and-forget-it” platform. Brands that fail to optimize campaigns regularly, test creative elements, and refine keyword strategies will underperform against competitors.
- Understand Your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) Before Scaling – Brands must calculate their LTV before investing heavily in paid media. Businesses with low LTV need to focus on acquiring net-new customers, while those with high LTV can balance prospecting with retention strategies.
- Be Wary of Google Reps’ Advice – Google account reps often push brands toward high-spend campaign types like DemandGen, prioritizing Google’s revenue over the advertiser’s performance. Brands should critically assess recommendations and stick to strategies aligned with their goals.
- Google Ads Works Best as Part of an Omnichannel Strategy – Google should be viewed as a mid-funnel channel that captures intent-driven traffic. It works best when complemented by upper-funnel awareness campaigns (e.g., Meta, TikTok) and lower-funnel retention efforts (e.g., email, SMS) to maximize conversion efficiency.
Questions To Ask Yourself
- Do I fully understand my customer lifetime value (LTV), and am I making ad spend decisions based on it?
- Am I structuring my Google Ads campaigns correctly, or am I blending brand and prospecting traffic in a way that inflates ROAS?
- How does my Google Ads strategy align with my overall marketing funnel—am I capturing demand, creating it, or both?
- Am I relying too much on automated Google Ads recommendations instead of critically analyzing what’s best for my business?
- What adjustments do I need to make to scale profitably instead of just increasing ad spend for the sake of growth?
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Kelsey O’Rourke LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelseycorourke/
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey (00:02.041)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Seven Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast. I am your host, Greg Schuey. I created this podcast to help D2C business owners and marketers who are stuck and who are trying to find a way to grow their business. So my guest today, you may recognize her. She is Mrs. Kelsey. That’s her nickname here at Stride.
Kelsey O’Rourke (00:26.091)
Greg Shuey (00:26.81)
She was on last month and we talked about meta ads and so she’s back. We’re going to talk about paid search. She is really dialed in when it comes to the performance marketing and the ad side of things. And you know, honestly, she’s probably one of the smartest paid marketers I’ve ever met in my life. So super excited to have her. I don’t know. It looks like she might be rolling her eyes. I can’t tell.
Kelsey O’Rourke (00:55.31)
You know what, I like to stay humble, that’s all, I like to stay humble.
Greg Shuey (00:59.408)
There you go. So we’re going to dive in. We’re going to dig into Google ads, how you should be building your strategy for maximum effectiveness throughout the rest of 2025. Kelsey, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to come back. I hope I hope we can make this a regular thing.
Kelsey O’Rourke (01:21.198)
I think we’re on that trajectory, I feel like, know, second time back.
Greg Shuey (01:24.496)
Second time. Isn’t it like third or fourth times a trend? I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you.
Kelsey O’Rourke (01:32.022)
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I don’t. I only know like the fitness thing where they say if you do something for 21 days and it becomes a habit. But I feel like if you recorded this podcast, yeah, but I feel like if you recorded this podcast for 21 days, people would get sick of hearing our voices.
Greg Shuey (01:39.716)
Well then you’ve got a ways to go.
Greg Shuey (01:48.08)
That’s funny. So our listener count grows every single month. So we have some new people here. Will you just reintroduce yourself? Share a little bit about your personal story and how you’ve gotten to where you are today.
Kelsey O’Rourke (02:05.058)
Yeah, totally. I mean, I know you said I’m one of the smartest paid marketers that you know, but I really like to stay humble because I feel like I owe all of that to the people that taught me along the way. And there’s one particular person who I owe pretty much everything to as it relates to my paid marketing career. name is Stephanie. She’s founder of Spray Marketing. She’s got over 15 years of expertise in not just paid media, but
pretty much full marketing funnel. And she has in numerous cases acted as fractional CMO for a number of different brands, whether they’re e-commerce or healthcare. And she really took me under her wing in the year of 2020, which was a pivotal year for most people, I would say, and taught me everything that I know today. And I mean, it wasn’t just that year that I was learning. It’s been a learning.
journey ever since, because the paid media space is ever evolving. But as of recently, I’ve spent a bit of time with different people outside of herself, whether that’s an agency is or other brands to really just expand my knowledge and see how other people are doing things from a paid media as well as a marketing space. So also thinking retention and SMS. So yeah, that’s
kind of where I got my start. owe her all of the credit, but I have really tried to spend some time and especially in the last year to broaden my horizon a little bit and then understand different trains of thoughts as it relates to paid media because there isn’t one way to do anything. And as much as I think agency founders and even business owners want a plug and play paid media strategy.
Every business is different. So we can learn how to do things and we can kind of have a plug and play for how to structure a specific campaign type. But in reality, your business needs something different than your neighbor’s business. And that’s really why I spent, that’s really why my focus has been expanding my knowledge and my exposure to other people in the space in the last year.
Greg Shuey (04:28.186)
That’s awesome. Yeah, I like that. Every business is different and I think every, every customer of those businesses is different, right? You have two, two skincare companies who have a very different customer base and needs and different problems that they’re trying to solve. So love it. Cool. Cool. Well, before we get too deep into this, can you start out by walking us through the
Kelsey O’Rourke (04:36.686)
100%.
Kelsey O’Rourke (04:41.198)
100%.
Greg Shuey (04:57.7)
different types of campaigns in Google and which tend to perform the best for direct to consumer companies.
Kelsey O’Rourke (05:06.966)
Yeah, of course. I think the most obvious is standard search. That’s really what Google Ads is known for. That’s where it all started, where it search campaigns. You have standard shopping, which still has a search element tied to it, but it’s shopping placements instead of search placements. Then you have performance max, display, app campaigns. You have local campaigns, which
Now our performance max, but the purpose of a local campaign is really to drive people to your store. So that’s going to be attached to your Google business listing. And then there’s some additional campaign types that you can utilize within Google Ads. YouTube is actually managed through Google Ads, which a lot of people are not aware of. But that’s what they qualify as their quote unquote video campaigns. You have display, which I think most people are familiar with what display is. And then
There is a newer campaign type that Google reps are really pushing on brands at the moment. It’s called DemandGen. I say that the nicest way possible. if I could give anyone one piece of advice before they leave this podcast, don’t take everything your Google rep says as Bible.
A lot of the time, they just want you to spend more money. There’s nothing wrong with the demand gen campaign, but I think that what most brands don’t understand about it is that it really is more of a brand awareness tactic. So it’s going to drive a lot of traffic to your site. But if your goal is conversions, it’s probably not the best place to put your money at this point. And if you don’t have a lot of budget for brand awareness, you just tell your Google rep, thank you so much. But that doesn’t align with my goals. And they’ll still come back and tell you the same thing next month.
Greg Shuey (06:52.86)
you
Kelsey O’Rourke (06:53.202)
so that’s, guess the suite of campaign types, in terms of what performs best for D to C brands, it really depends on the stage at which they’re at, as well as what their lifetime value is. So, I’ll get into lifetime value a little bit later in the call, but if you don’t have a ton of money and you want to run.
campaigns and you are concerned about what your end platform row as is, I find that a combination of performance max for prospecting purposes and a simple brand search campaign is going to be a good way for you to kind of dip your toes into the pond. If you’re a little bit more of an established campaign or business, I apologize. If you’re a little bit more of an established business and you have some more meat to work with as it relates to budget.
utilizing performance max for prospecting is going to be key for you. Having a well structured brand search campaign is going to be key for you, as well as using some additional budget to build standard shopping campaigns that target your brand search keywords. And the reason that we want to have brand search as well as brand shopping is because brand shopping gives you visibility in shopping placements, whereas brand search obviously gives you visibility in search placements. So that’s
That’s especially great for brands who are, for example, on Amazon and they’re competing with themselves from an Amazon perspective or they’re in retailers. So your retailers are going to show up at the top in those shopping placements. So if you’re not also visible up there, you lose out from a Google ads perspective. Some brands don’t really care where the purchase goes from a retailer or from a DTC perspective. It just really depends on how you’re running your business. But if
you do care and you want more people to purchase from your D2C online store, having visibility in those shopping placements is really going to be key for your brand searches. That’s kind of like the baseline, I would say. You can really expand from there. All these other campaign types can help with all sorts of different things like display for retargeting, YouTube for retargeting. You can also use YouTube for prospecting new purchases. But I think
Kelsey O’Rourke (09:17.612)
A lot of brands make the mistake of trying too many things all at once when you really need to get the basics down and get the basics in a very healthy place. And I think that’s where people really need to focus their energy. It’s like, if you’re trying to build an omni-channel strategy and you don’t have any other channels, you shouldn’t go start in TikTok unless for some reason your product already went viral there.
Let’s start with the basics. The basics are Google and Meta. Get your basics into a good place and then start to diversify from there. So it’s the same train of thought with Google. Get your search and your performance max and your shopping into a good place before you start expanding into these other campaign types.
Greg Shuey (10:00.91)
Got it, nice. So I can see that being one big mistake is coming out of the gate. What are some others? Like I know that you work with a lot of brands. What advice? Like one, what are those mistakes? And two, how can they avoid those this year?
Kelsey O’Rourke (10:18.614)
Yeah, I think the biggest mistake that I see most often in e-commerce brands as it relates to their Google ads is they’re not utilizing Performance Max appropriately. A lot of times this is because they have a lazy agency or a lazy consultant doing the work and wanting to show superficially better metrics.
than what they are actually performing at. But PerformanceMax is meant to be a top of funnel campaign. When you think about that, PerformanceMax covers search placements, it covers video placements, it covers image placements. So that means it can show up as display, it can show up in YouTube, it can show up in your Gmail ads, it can show up in search placements, et cetera. It covers a very wide range, which is why it’s a top of funnel campaign. A lot of brands make the mistake of not adding brandless exclusions, not
setting the campaign to target new consumers or to favor new consumers over a combined and a lot of brands don’t add keyword list negations on top of their brand lists. And when you don’t do that, what essentially is happening is you’re pulling in a mix of like top of funnel searches as well as brand searches and superficially your performance max campaign looks like it has a 10 ROAS but
if we exclude all your brand searches and the conversions from your brand searches, what is your actual ROAS? It’s not 10X because it’s superficially inflated. And so it does not allow brands to understand truly what their new customer acquisition cost is in Google. And on top of that, you’re overpaying for your brand clicks. If you had all those brand clicks funneled to your brand search campaign,
where it’s standard search and you have control over CPC bids, which you do not have in Performance Max, your CPCs are going to be significantly lower and your conversion rates for brand search are going to be significantly higher. So your CPA is going to be lower. So when you’re paying for those clicks in Performance Max, you’re effectively overpaying for them for absolutely no reason. And you’re muddying the water. So you have no idea how to understand what is truly net new versus what is.
Kelsey O’Rourke (12:37.742)
not net new and someone who’s already familiar. And it’s probably one of the most frustrating mistakes that I see brands make because when as an agency or as a consultant, you come in and brands say, we want to scale. And then I look at that and I see that I’m like, that’s so great. But if you want to scale, your ROAS is going to drop by 60 % because what you’re
Greg Shuey (13:02.234)
We want to scale. Our ROAS is an eight. We need it to be a 15.
Kelsey O’Rourke (13:06.016)
Yeah. It’s like you can’t, you can’t you already something brands already don’t understand a lot of the time I find is that you can’t scale and improve your ROAS as you scale results are going to depreciate. That’s just the nature of how paid media works. But if you come to us or me with a performance max campaign that has a 10 ROAS and you’re like, want to throw $10,000 a month at it more than what we’re already spending. But we don’t want ROAS to change. I’m like, okay, that’s great. But
All of this money that you thought was net new consumers is 80 % brand.
So it’s a really frustrating mistake that I think a lot of brands just unfortunately are not educated by their agencies and by their consultants on what is right and what is wrong. Because a lot of people are scared to report bad performance. And if you tell a brand, your ROAS is a three, which is probably significantly more true for someone who’s running majority prospecting campaigns than.
that doesn’t sit well with them because brands think they need to be at like a six or seven X.
Greg Shuey (14:13.68)
Right. Yep. And you have a similar, I think we talked about this last time, a similar problem with Meta, not having those campaigns filtered out or separated out to where you’re prospecting and then you’ve got your retargeting and everything else. So, it’s a problem. It’s a problem.
Kelsey O’Rourke (14:26.722)
Yeah. Totally. Yeah.
It’s definitely a problem. It’s like as a consultant, I’ve kind of come to this place of like, do business owners want to be lied to? Because I just can’t think of any other reason why we’re still running campaigns this way. It’s shocking to me, truly.
Greg Shuey (14:50.65)
Yeah. All right. So let’s shift gears a little bit. So brands who have already kind of dipped their toes in the water when it comes to Google ads, or maybe they’re even just getting started. What are the next steps for them to start building out their campaigns and like really get them in a good place to where they can, I hate to use the word because we just talked to scale, right?
Kelsey O’Rourke (15:01.966)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Shuey (15:20.153)
How do they structure and set up properly so that they can scale?
Kelsey O’Rourke (15:25.078)
Yeah, I think before anyone decides that they want to scale any sort of paid media, this relates to Google, this relates to Metta, you need to understand what your LTV is. So if you don’t understand what your LTV is, go and do your homework, figure out what your LTV is. If your LTV is less than two, it’s not easy. Well, I mean, it’s not easy. I’m not going to be shady. It’s not.
Greg Shuey (15:40.464)
and it’s not easy to get.
Kelsey O’Rourke (15:53.674)
It doesn’t need to be so exact, especially as a newer, younger business, but you need to have an idea of what it is. If your LTV is under 2,
Number one, that’s problematic just from a business perspective, but there are a lot of brands that develop products that are just not repurchased products. That’s fine. They exist. They still can be successful, but you need to understand what your LTV is. If it’s lower than a two, let’s say it’s a 1.1 or a 1.5, that means that people are basically not coming back to purchase again. They’re purchasing once.
Greg Shuey (16:07.598)
It’s huge problem.
Kelsey O’Rourke (16:30.648)
Let’s say it’s a product that you don’t need to purchase more than once. So this makes sense for that business. What that means is that you need to focus on net new consumers. You do not have the luxury of focusing on retargeting because all you’re doing is wasting money on people who have no intention of coming back because your product doesn’t require that. When you…
Greg Shuey (16:53.509)
Yeah.
Kelsey O’Rourke (16:54.58)
If that is the case, then you need to focus on Performance Max as a true prospecting campaign. You need to have the correct exclusions in place so that you’re not paying for brand searches there. You also can start to focus on non-brand search. My recommendation would be to look at more mid to low funnel search keywords instead of super broad. So let’s say you’re a refrigerator brand. Like let’s say you sell refrigerators. Don’t bid on
kitchen appliances. Why would you do that? You don’t know what kind of kitchen appliance they need. Bid on refrigerators or refrigerators near me, period. So if you want to focus on non-brand search from a performance max perspective, it’s really going to cover the gamut in terms of more broad searches again, because it’s so top of funnel. But those are the two areas that I would really focus on from a net new perspective. I would also still keep a small brand search campaign in there because ultimately
Greg Shuey (17:26.095)
right.
Kelsey O’Rourke (17:53.762)
some brands want to see their in-platform ROAS at a certain level. A combination of 90 % of your spend on prospecting and 10 % of it on brand is going to likely lift your ROAS to a place where you feel a little bit more comfortable. If you have a higher LTV and you have people coming back, I don’t know why you’re laughing at me, but this is like, I’m being so for real with people.
Greg Shuey (18:15.173)
Just, no, in-platform ROAS. They have to have an in-platform ROAS to make them happy.
Kelsey O’Rourke (18:21.066)
Well, I mean, some brands really care about that. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. As long as you’re also educated as to like, what does that mean outside of a platform? Like, what does your M.E.R. look like? You know, like what is your management expense ratio? Is it healthy? Are you still a profitable business? But if your LTV is higher, let’s say it’s a two, maybe it’s even a three.
Greg Shuey (18:27.952)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (18:35.694)
Right.
Kelsey O’Rourke (18:48.046)
Like maybe you’re a product that people need every single month. You can focus on net new consumers, but you can reduce that percentage of spend that goes to them and spend a little bit of a higher percentage on things like display campaigns to retarget as well as YouTube for video. If you’re newer, wouldn’t even just pretend that stuff doesn’t exist for now. Wait your turn, your time will come.
for utilizing those campaign types, but you can reduce it. So instead of spending 90 % of your money on prospecting, you maybe spend 60 or 70, and then the other 30 % goes to brand and these other tactics. But I think that’s really like, the baseline is what is your LTV? Because that’s gonna tell you where you need to focus your money. And if your LTV is low, and you don’t have a way to change that because of the product type,
then focus on that new because if you’re not filling that top of funnel, it’s going to dry out and then eventually you’re going to fall into this like rut and then you’re going to wonder why you went from spending $10,000 a month to spending $5,000 a month in your row as being lower. And it’s because you spent 50 % of your budget on brand terms, which, but you weren’t filling the top, the bucket at the top.
Greg Shuey (20:13.52)
It’s awesome. I love that you bring up LTV. I get so triggered when we talk about lifetime value, mostly because I talk to a lot of prospects and none of them know what it is. They hum and ha and then they make up some number. And the other reason I get triggered is because Shopify’s got the data. Give us the freaking number. Like it’s so dumb. Like they give us average order value, but they won’t give us lifetime value. It makes no sense. And so, you know, you either have to buy.
Kelsey O’Rourke (20:33.486)
Mm-hmm, 100%.
Kelsey O’Rourke (20:40.963)
I think.
Greg Shuey (20:41.616)
your channel apps or bring in a CPA to help you or just guess
Kelsey O’Rourke (20:46.382)
I think a lot of brands are scared to know what their lifetime value is, to be honest. I think it’s scary for them because they’re like, wow, people don’t want to repurchase my product. Which like, to be fair, if you’re a product that people should be repurchasing, like a skincare brand, that is scary. If your lifetime value is a 1.5 as a skincare brand, that’s problematic. But that’s a problem. That’s a fundamental issue that a paid media campaign is not going to solve for you.
Greg Shuey (20:51.077)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (20:56.26)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (21:08.304)
It’s a big problem.
Kelsey O’Rourke (21:14.958)
Like no amount of money into paid media is gonna solve that leaky bucket. If you have a 1.5 lifetime value for a refrigerator, that makes sense. Or even like trying to think of something that’s less like a cooler, for example, coolers are expensive. If you’re buying like a more expensive brand cooler, I don’t need to buy a cooler every year. I don’t even need to buy one every five years.
maybe even every 10 years. They are built to last a lifetime, these more expensive coolers. like, I don’t know, pots and pans, another one. People aren’t buying pots and pans probably once every five years, if that. So it just depends on what your product type is. But if you have a product type that people should be repurchasing, you just gotta take a slice of humble pie and understand that your paid media campaigns are not gonna fix that leaky bucket.
that you’ve got to do a lot of work on like the retention side and the community building side and the education side. I mean, you know, hopefully it’s not because the product is bad. That’s, I don’t even know how to fix that.
Greg Shuey (22:25.2)
Yep. Problems. Big problems. All right. So here’s another thing I get triggered about a lot is when I get on the phone with prospects and I hear them say, you know, Google ads are all automated. Performance max is 100 % automated. Now you just set them and forget them. What are you, what are you charging me for? Why are you charging me so much? And you know, that’s crap. It’s straight up.
Kelsey O’Rourke (22:49.582)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Shuey (22:52.944)
I think that there are pieces that are more automated than they used to be. And I would assume as AI continues to get better and better and better, it’s going to get more automated than it is now. But, you know, as that happens, how can brands ensure that they one keep control and that they can stand out over the competition? Because if everything becomes automated at some point, then like really, how do you differentiate outside of copy and your offer?
Kelsey O’Rourke (22:54.168)
Yeah.
Totally.
Kelsey O’Rourke (23:03.192)
Mm-hmm.
Kelsey O’Rourke (23:21.742)
Mm hmm. Yeah. there is a lot of automation in performance maps, but they’re not set it and forget it. And anyone that is doing that is lazy. and if people really feel that way, then they should try to run their own campaigns. That’s my first piece of advice. You should give it a shot and tell me how it goes. And then maybe, maybe you run your campaign. Maybe you run your campaign and I can run mine side by side and then we can see which one does better.
Greg Shuey (23:22.724)
Right, so maybe walk us through that.
Greg Shuey (23:31.94)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (23:44.24)
You may get lucky
Kelsey O’Rourke (23:51.406)
That would be a really fun experience. No, that’s just me being salty. But there is a lot of automation in Performance Max. that’s valid, right? But Performance Max, I think, gets a bad rep. Because when it first came about years ago, it was essentially a black box. You couldn’t see search queries. You couldn’t see performance into any sort of creative elements. You just kind of put everything in there and prayed, for lack of better word.
And you could control things on the bid level. So you can control your TROAS bids. You had the ability to add some bid adjustments in some different areas and things like that. You could change your creative, change your copy, et cetera. But you really didn’t get a lot of insight into why things were working. However, that was years ago. Performance Max has since evolved. We can now see performance on an asset group level so we can create some segregation that allows us to understand
on an asset group level, what is working versus what’s not working. We can see search query reports, and we can see what keyword themes as well as specifically what keywords are converting. We can add negations, which we couldn’t do years ago. We had to just trust that Google was doing it for us. And you have a lot more control from a creative perspective because we can fill in our own copy. We can add our own images. We can add our own videos.
Can you use Google’s AI generation to write the copy for you? Sure. Which is what a brand who’s running their own campaigns is likely doing because they don’t have time or knowledge to write copy the way that it should be written. But it used to be a black box. We have a lot more insight now than we did two years ago. If a brand really wants to stand out, first of all, from a creative perspective, a big mistake I see in performance max campaigns that typically comes from somebody who says,
They’re just automated. What am I paying you for? They’re not using all their creative fields. They don’t have videos attached. They don’t have a lot of images attached or the ones that they have were lazily cropped. So they’re uploading images blindly and letting Google crop them with their AI. So they have like, let’s say it’s a suiting brand. They’ll have a man in a suit uploaded and it’s cropped so that all you can see is his head. You’re not even seeing the suit. Like, what is that doing for anybody? And
Greg Shuey (25:51.792)
Fair enough.
Kelsey O’Rourke (26:17.07)
they also are not using all of their copy fields. There’s 15 headlines, then there’s short descriptions and long descriptions. There’s a lot of space for brands to enter copy. One of the most annoying mistakes I see is people not using them. They have eight headlines filled out. Why do only have eight if you have space for 15? Why not use what’s being given to you? They don’t have logos attached. They don’t have extensions of any kind attached. there’s
A lot that can be done from a creative perspective that will allow you to stand out as a brand. And people just don’t use it, mostly because they’re like, well, if there’s 15, why do I need all 15? Well, because you don’t know which one Google is going to choose to serve. So why not give it more options to choose from? Why are you limiting yourself and limiting the education that you can provide about your brand? Outside of that, the way that Performance Max was structured years ago
was just like one campaign, all of your products or a collection of your products you would select and like one ad, essentially. You now have the ability to set up different asset groups and a way that a brand can really get more insight into what’s working for Performance Max is separate those products out by product types or product themes, right? So if you are, let’s say a bookstore, let’s put like
your books that fit into the crime novels into one campaign, into one asset group, then we can put romance into one asset group, then we can put nonfiction autobiographies into another group. allows the budget to split. Google’s algorithm will split the budget how it sees fit across those asset groups, but then you can look at that report a month later and understand,
Crime novels really isn’t doing anything for us and pretty much all the budget is going to autobiography. So maybe we want to pull that out and then try to scale from there. giving yourself a more clean structure that is arguably more annoying to build will allow you to have more insight and then scale from there. And that’s a really good way for a brand to quote unquote, stand out, right? Like I don’t.
Greg Shuey (28:24.1)
Yeah.
Kelsey O’Rourke (28:33.71)
standout feels like a weird word to say, it’s really, think the question is like, how do we be, how do we build success and how do we scale? Right? I think that’s what everybody wants to know. In addition to that, there’s a newer train of thought that I’ve been working with and utilizing lately that kind of goes against everything we know as marketers who learned Google a long time ago or have like an old train of thought, quote unquote.
When Performance Max first came out, running Performance Max for the same keyword themes or products as a non-brand search campaign, running them together was a big no-no because you were effectively cannibalizing yourself. You were bidding against yourself. There’s a newer train of thought which I have
been successful at utilizing, which runs PerformanceMax alongside Search. And the reason we run them alongside is because what PerformanceMax is becoming as things evolve is more like a prospecting meta campaign. So if we were to take PerformanceMax in Search and put it into a meta perspective so that people can kind of understand and compare, TMAX acts as prospecting and Search acts as retargeting. So PerformanceMax is going to have
really high volume searches, really low CPCs, and really just drive a lot of awareness around these higher funnel keywords. And then the search campaign is going to come back with higher CPCs, but higher conversion rates, and capture those users again. So it’s kind of almost this little additional fishing net. You have a really wide one that PerformanceMax is casting, and then you have your search, which captures those people who actually have intent. The trickiest part about that is really figuring out
how much budget do you allocate to performance max over search? It’s different with every single brand. So it could be 70, 30. In some cases, it’s 60 % search, 40 % performance max because the CPCs are so high on the search side, but the conversion rates are there that it makes sense. So that’s really the part from a marketing perspective that I would say is the most challenging. But it’s a newer train of thought.
Kelsey O’Rourke (30:48.91)
Some Google reps are behind it. Some Google reps will have no idea what I’m talking about. But I have seen success with it. The problem with this train of thought is that it really only works with brands that have enough budget to run both. Because it’s not something that someone can come in with $100 a day and run both. It’s just not going to work that way. You need a little bit more cash to run the two side by side and be successful.
We’re no longer cannibalizing ourselves in that way because PerformanceMax has so many different asset types attached to it because it’s so top of funnel.
Greg Shuey (31:25.296)
Cool, very cool. OK, as we look at like broader landscape, we think about more of like an Omni channel. We’re running meta ads where maybe running CTV like we’re doing a lot of different things to help build the brand and drive the traffic. So what role should Google ads play in an overall Omni channel strategy?
And then how can brands align this kind of advertising with their other marketing efforts throughout the year?
Kelsey O’Rourke (31:56.782)
I think Google and Meta really need to be looked at as like the bread and butter of paid of the paid portion of your omni-turnal strategy.
If you want to understand what role it should play, you need to kind of dial back to how Google works versus how Meta works, right? So in Meta, you’re effectively showing an ad to someone who did not care or know about your brand. They didn’t want slippers. They weren’t looking for slippers. They had no interest in slippers, but you’re telling them, please buy slippers.
Google is a search engine. So someone says pink slippers. I need some, they Google pink slippers. They Google fuzzy slippers, whatever it might be. They sit in like this mid funnel area as it relates to paid media. And so when you think about how they interact together, that’s also why having prospecting dollars being spent in meta is so important because
Greg Shuey (32:39.46)
I need slippers.
Kelsey O’Rourke (33:00.686)
it acts almost as like a first touch point, whereas then search kind of comes as a second touch point. It’s now as consumer behavior changes even more, that’s becoming even more true because people are going to Meta, they’re going to TikTok, they’re going to Instagram, and they’re searching things there before they get onto Google to search to go and buy it because they want to see what’s out there, what are these brands offering, right? So I think you need to look at it as kind of a mid funnel.
Even though I just described top of funnel, mid funnel and low funnel, it just needs to kind of sit in the middle in comparison to where Meta is because Google, everyone within a Google perspective who’s a customer has significantly more intent than somebody on Meta. Because again, in Meta, they didn’t even know they wanted slippers. You’re telling them to buy slippers. They didn’t even know they wanted a therapist. You’re telling them, go get a therapist. And in Google, it’s like someone saying therapist near me. So it’s just a very different consumer behavior.
Greg Shuey (33:56.986)
Yeah.
Kelsey O’Rourke (34:00.41)
and I think that’s brands really need to try to understand like, where does the customer sit in their buying journey in, in meta, in Google, in email, in SEO, et cetera. Like SEO is like super top of funnel, right? These people aren’t even looking for something. They’re looking for like information and they stumble across a blog and then they think about it. And then they’re like, this brand had this blog and
you know, maybe I’m going to buy this thing that I wanted from there. Right. So I think you have to kind of as you’re building your omni-channel strategy and you’re thinking about what channels you’re going to invest in, because ultimately every channel is an investment, even email and SMS. It’s not an investment necessarily so much financially as time. It’s time and employee cost. Right. So you have to kind of sit down with your team and say, where do all of these channels fit inside of our funnel?
And then how are we going to allocate budget time resources to these things? And what do we need to outsource? And I think that’s really what Google plays is that like mid funnel, higher intent user. and I don’t know that it’s the best channel for anything outside of that, you know, so I think some brands want to say, you want to run brand awareness? Well, you should run it on social. It’s a much better channel, but it’s expensive, but
it’s going to be more effective on social most likely than using like a demand gen, for example.
Greg Shuey (35:33.904)
Got it. Nice. I like that. Perfect. Okay. As we are kind of wrapping up here, I think we’ve learned a lot, but if you could either summarize it down or give us like one key piece of advice when it comes to Google ads in 2025, what would that be?
Kelsey O’Rourke (35:41.166)
Mm-hmm.
Kelsey O’Rourke (35:59.074)
Don’t take everything your Google rep says as Bible.
Greg Shuey (36:03.106)
I knew it. I freaking knew it.
Kelsey O’Rourke (36:07.168)
No, think that is an important one because there are a lot of brands who can’t afford to have a consultant. They can’t afford to have an agency. the founder is doing it on their own or their business partner is doing it on their own. And for those people out there, they do rely on these Google reps. And it’s very scary to me as a marketer because Google reps are not like you have to remember as a business owner. A Google reps job is not to
Greg Shuey (36:16.165)
her.
Kelsey O’Rourke (36:34.718)
It is to make sure your performance is good, but it’s first and foremost to make money for Google. So they’re going to drive you to things that are going to spend your money. Do they want you to convert? Yes. Do they necessarily care that you explicitly meet your goals? Not in the same way that a consultant or an agency or you care. So I think that’s yes, that’s not my only piece of advice. think. But I think it’s an important one for business owners to learn, because I see it time and time again where they come.
and their Google reps have been running things with them and they’re spending all sorts of money on demand gen and YouTube, but they haven’t even developed search or performance max strategy. And I’m like, what are we doing? Your conversions are all view through. They’re not even, they’re not real. So I think if I was to leave with one piece of advice that was not about your Google rep, because some of them are great. I think.
It would be do your homework on what your business needs before you try to build a paid media strategy. Understand your LTV, understand your AOV, understand your COGS clearly so you actually know like what is my CPA threshold. And once you understand all of that, take a slice of humble pie and understand.
that whatever your ROAS is when you’re spending $1,000, $2,000 a month is not going to be the same as what your ROAS is when you scale to $10,000 a month. And try to really drill that into your head. It will help set your expectations in a much better place than if you go into it seeing a 10X ROAS and you’re doing amazing and you’re like, okay, let’s throw 10 grand here. Your ROAS isn’t going to be 10X. And just setting your expectations is going to make you a much more successful marketer.
within your business because it’s gonna allow you to like see truth and be realistic. But yeah, I think that would be my advice. Do your homework on what your business numbers actually are before you try to build a paid media strategy.
Greg Shuey (38:48.782)
And I think I would add on top of that is do your homework on your customer as well. Really know what their buyer journey looks like, where they spend time online, how they consume information, and wrap all of that together with your business numbers and build a real strategy instead of just throwing stuff at the wall.
Kelsey O’Rourke (38:54.798)
Totally, yeah.
Kelsey O’Rourke (38:58.776)
Yeah.
Kelsey O’Rourke (39:09.206)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I think it goes back to kind of what we talked about in our episode about Meta, which maybe people will go back and listen to if they haven’t already listened to it, but meet your customer where they are, right? There are going to be some brands that want to jump into Meta, but they don’t have enough money to run it effectively, both from a media spend perspective, an agency fee or consultant fee perspective, and keeping up with the creative. So Google is a better option for them.
because Google has higher intent, is traffic going to be more expensive to your website from Google? 100%. But those people have significantly more intent in comparison to someone in meta. And if you only have a small budget every month, it does make more sense to utilize a channel like this over a channel like meta. And once you get into a good groove and a good rhythm and you’re willing to spend more and you have a little bit more budget, then you can explore other channels. I think Google is a really good
starting point and I mean the reason for that is because it was the first real form of paid media like Google ads was before meta. So yeah totally.
Greg Shuey (40:19.44)
long before.
Awesome. Well, that was fantastic. Kelsey, thank you so much for being with us again today.
Kelsey O’Rourke (40:26.819)
Yeah.
Yeah, so happy to be here.
Greg Shuey (40:31.184)
I know you’re super busy, incredibly grateful that you’re willing to take 40 minutes out of your schedule to be with us and to really help the brands who are listening find ways to move their businesses forward. So thank you again.
Kelsey O’Rourke (40:46.744)
Yeah, totally happy to be here. I love doing this podcast. Feels like a yap session, if we’re being honest.
Greg Shuey (40:49.424)
awesome
Greg Shuey (40:53.002)
That’s funny and to our listeners, thank you for joining and hope you tune in again next week. Thank you everyone.
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.
