Episode Summary
In this episode of the 7 Figures and Beyond e-commerce marketing podcast, Greg Shuey interviews Altay Malazgirt from Go Audience, a platform that helps e-commerce brands find new customers based on credit card spending history. They discuss the challenges brands face with increasing customer acquisition costs on Meta due to uncontrollable variables and privacy regulations. Altay shares his insights on leveraging first-party data, the impact of iOS 14 updates, and the importance of creative and audience testing. They also touch on the role of AI in optimizing marketing strategies and the evolving landscape of digital advertising.
Key Takeaways
- Impact of Privacy Regulations: Data privacy laws, especially the iOS 14 update, have significantly restricted tracking and audience targeting capabilities, complicating customer acquisition on Meta.
- First-Party Data Utilization: Leveraging first-party data is crucial for building precise custom audiences and mitigating the impact of reduced tracking capabilities.
- Creative and Audience Testing: Rapid testing of both creative content and target audiences is essential to optimize performance and reduce customer acquisition costs.
- Role of AI in Marketing: AI can help process large datasets and provide valuable insights, but human expertise remains vital for strategic decision-making in digital advertising.
- Continued Evolution and Adaptation: The digital advertising landscape is rapidly evolving, requiring brands to continuously adapt and leverage new tools and technologies to stay competitive.
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Altay Malazgirt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/altaymalazgirt/
GoAudience.com: https://goaudience.com/
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey (00:01.107)
Hey everyone, welcome to episode 30 of the Seven Figures and Beyond podcast. How about that? The big three zero. We made it. We made it further than most podcasts. So there you go. Yeah. Hope everyone is absolutely crushing it on this beautiful day today. So today’s guest, his name is Altay. Not even gonna try to say his last name. I’m gonna let him introduce himself in just a minute.
Altay Malazgirt (00:09.422)
Yeah.
Altay Malazgirt (00:13.566)
That’s actually a good point.
Greg Shuey (00:30.323)
because like I was telling him before we hopped on, I already slaughtered his first name, even more slaughtered his last name on the last episode, introducing our next week’s guest. So we’re gonna let him introduce himself in just a minute, but he is from a company called Go Audience. Go Audience is a relatively new platform. I would imagine that most brands listening probably haven’t heard of his business before. What they do is they help,
Altay Malazgirt (00:37.518)
Thank you.
Greg Shuey (00:58.771)
e -commerce brands find new customers based on their credit card spending history. It gets a pretty unique approach to prospecting for new customers. So if you’re looking for new ways to expand your footprint, drive top of funnel, you need to go check them out. And we’ll make sure to include a link to their website in the show notes. So today’s discussion is gonna be pretty awesome. We are gonna be talking about how it’s becoming.
increasingly more difficult to manage customer acquisition costs on Metta due to the many different variables that just can’t be controlled from the brand side. And then we’re going to talk about some of the things that you should be doing to be able to start to improve performance. So this is a huge pain point. Anytime I talk to a brand, it’s probably about 99 % of the time when they come to me, they are complaining about.
how their costs are getting out of control on Meta, how it’s getting more expensive to acquire customers. They don’t know what to do. And I’m assuming that most of you listening to this are probably experiencing that same pain and you’re becoming increasingly frustrated. So this is gonna be awesome. All right, Altai, thank you. See, I almost screwed that up again.
Altay Malazgirt (02:20.334)
Yeah, nice. That was good, man. That was really good. Let’s go. One more time and we’re good. That means we’re good.
Greg Shuey (02:26.547)
My crap.
boy, I’m done saying your name. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us today and being flexible on the time. We had to bump this back a couple of hours last minute, so I really, really appreciate it. All right, so before we jump in, would you just take a couple of minutes and introduce yourself to our listeners and share a little bit about your personal story and how you’ve gotten to where you are today? This is probably the favorite part, my favorite part of.
Altay Malazgirt (02:43.822)
My pleasure.
Greg Shuey (02:58.003)
most of our podcasts because I like to hear people’s histories and stories. They’re all so unique and cool. So let it rip.
Altay Malazgirt (03:04.11)
Yeah, thanks, Greg. I really do appreciate you inviting me onto the podcast today. You did pronounce my name very well. It’s Altai for everyone out there. Like Altai your shoe. I always like using this analogy for people to really understand how to pronounce my name. And yeah, I’m one of the original founding members here at Go Audience.
Greg Shuey (03:26.835)
You can’t move on until you’ve said your last name and you pronounce it for everyone.
Altay Malazgirt (03:30.574)
okay, sorry. There’s only one Altai Malazgirt, I’m sure, on LinkedIn. So if you just type in Altai go audience, you’ll get there, but I’ll give you my full name. Altai Malazgirt. It’s a Turkish name. For those of you out there that are curious, my parents are Turkish. Moved here back in, I think, 81. Moved here to the United States. I mean, I’m now based in Florida, but I grew up in California.
Greg Shuey (03:40.051)
There you go.
Altay Malazgirt (03:58.958)
Bay Area specifically was where my dad and mom settled and then my sister and I were born and we grew up in California. So we’re Turkish -American, kind of grew up with that close heritage, always speaking Turkish at home, learning English in the… Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, we retained that close heritage, which was nice. And I think actually having that second language in the household growing up really allowed me to learn another language.
Greg Shuey (04:13.939)
Really? That’s cool.
Altay Malazgirt (04:28.654)
And so I picked up Spanish very quickly in high school, actually then lived in Argentina when I was 16 for a year. Came back when I was speaking to a lot of the Hispanics in California, they actually thought it was Argentinian because I had such a strong accent. Yeah. And then I guess fast forward a couple of years, I was living in Portugal and I picked up Portuguese too. So I have to thank my parents for…
Greg Shuey (04:51.379)
Gosh.
Altay Malazgirt (04:55.918)
Just speaking our mother tongue at home when we were kids, because that allowed me to, I guess, add more languages to my arsenal growing up. So yeah, grew up in California, everyone. My mom was a serial entrepreneur. My dad worked in Silicon Valley. So I kind of always knew that I would get into the tech industry. Although when I did graduate college, that’s the last industry I wanted to go into because that was actually at the boom, right?
I would say Web2, right? Everyone calls it Web2 now because we’re in Web3. Web2 is basically like all those apps that now we’re so familiar with, right? Like Uber, Airbnb, right? Everything that basically took what was difficult back in the day and made it so much easier and put it into our hands through obviously the smartphones. And the reason why I didn’t really want to go in at the time is because I knew that I would just go into sales and I didn’t want to be just another salesperson.
Greg Shuey (05:43.443)
Yeah.
Altay Malazgirt (05:53.23)
and I kind of still had this curiosity to go and see the world. So I actually graduated college back in 2015, I’d say now, and then moved to Turkey because I was like, well, I want to know what it feels like to live in Turkey as an adult. So I went to Turkey, lived there for a couple of years, ended up working for a big conglomerate over there. This company then sent me over to Portugal where I was based for two years doing a project.
And then Portugal kind of then led me to Spain where I went back to school, got my MBA. And that’s when I went into a very entrepreneurial school, like they’re number three, I think number three for entrepreneurship in all the world, just behind Harvard and Stanford. And that’s when I was like, okay, I want to go into tech, but I want to go to early stage tech. And that’s kind of, I guess, after the pandemic, how I ended up in Miami, because it was going to be either going back to the Bay Area, which I didn’t want.
Greg Shuey (06:43.443)
Hmm.
Altay Malazgirt (06:51.918)
going to New York, which hadn’t recovered yet from the pandemic, or Miami, where everyone was talking about the city that was now reinventing itself. And it used to be a sunny place for shady people, but that was changing. And I was like, well, let’s go and check it out. And I was just so fed up with the mask mandate in Europe. So I was like, OK. Miami’s in the news for all the wrong reasons sometimes, but let’s go and check it out. And I’ve been here now for the past three years, and I couldn’t be happier.
Greg Shuey (06:55.443)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (07:08.787)
That’s cool.
Greg Shuey (07:22.195)
It’s awesome.
Altay Malazgirt (07:22.206)
I was doing early stage at another company for two years, but then decided to kind of take a sabbatical. And then that’s when Ahmed, who’s our CEO and founder, came to me. He actually saw me on another podcast and said, hey, do you want to join my team? Do you want to build out our sales and go to Mark and Operations Arm? And I said, let’s do it. So that’s how I ended up at Go Audience. I know I’ve been at the company for seven months and we’ve been some good traction.
Greg Shuey (07:47.923)
great.
Altay Malazgirt (07:49.934)
I’m really excited to talk about what the issues are right now in the advertising world and talk about how we’re trying to solve those to see if we can solve anyone’s pain points.
Greg Shuey (07:59.571)
It’s awesome. Perfect. Thank you. I was going to ask if you had been back to Turkey. You lived there. That’s awesome. That’s great. And you were still fluent.
Altay Malazgirt (08:05.902)
Yeah, I live there for quite some time.
Yeah, I mean, I retain the fluency for sure. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (08:13.171)
That’s awesome. Cool. All right, man, you ready to jump in? Okay, let’s go. So the first question to start off our discussion based on kind of the data that you have and what you have been seeing in the market. What are the primary factors that are contributing to the increasing difficulty in managing?
Altay Malazgirt (08:17.038)
I’m ready to jump in, let’s do it.
Greg Shuey (08:42.931)
customer acquisition costs on Meta.
Altay Malazgirt (08:44.974)
Yeah. Yeah. No, great question. I mean, it’s, I guess, the overarching question for us to start with, right? Really understanding what was the landscape, I’d say, pre -COVID, pre -IOS 14 updates, circa 2016, actually pre -Cambridge Analytica, when we were, I would say, in the golden age of digital advertising on Meta.
Greg Shuey (09:11.155)
Yep.
Altay Malazgirt (09:13.102)
as opposed to now, right? And a lot of people are just kind of really frustrated. And so we need to understand what are those primary factors, as you said, that contributed to these increasing difficulties that people are seeing. So I would say number one, definitely data privacy regulations, right? Absolutely pulling the proverbial tablecloth out from under the tableware. I mean, everyone was enjoying their steak and wine a few years ago until those privacy laws and regulations, including the iOS 14 update.
Greg Shuey (09:29.075)
100%.
Altay Malazgirt (09:42.83)
which is actually a result of those privacy laws and regulations that crack down on the selling and sharing of user data. So it started with Cambridge Analytica. We all kind of remember what happened there with elections in 2016 and that whole scandal. And then I think what the government realized, and by the way, I know all of this because it’s like when we started the company, we really dug deep into the data world because actually what we deal in is data.
The tech is just how we service it. But essentially, we really need to understand what was the pre and post of all of this. And Cambridge Analytica, I think, really kicked it off and made the government realize that, shit, Meta has so much power. Meta and Google have so much power. way too much, right? Absolutely too much power. And you can think of them as marketplaces, like in the traditional sense, right? Like…
Greg Shuey (10:14.099)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (10:28.755)
Way too much.
Altay Malazgirt (10:38.382)
back in the Roman times, where would you go and buy your stuff? You would go down to the plaza and you would go to what was the marketplace and someone controlled the marketplace, probably the Caesar at the time or the person in charge of that city center, and you would go and you would hawk your stuff or you would buy the stuff. So Meta, in this sense, is the marketplace. Google is, in this sense, the marketplace and they basically hold the reins in their hands. So the government realized this.
and they said, shoot, they have so much data on people and it can get into the wrong hands, we need to do something about this. So instead of going after the advertisers, they went after the platforms, right? And they made it more difficult for the platforms to share this data on people and therefore made it difficult for advertisers to market to these people, right? But what I think a lot of people didn’t realize is that Meadow was technically the winner from all of this change.
Greg Shuey (11:19.282)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (11:37.555)
Right.
Altay Malazgirt (11:37.678)
The reason being is because they then have to change their algorithms, right? Because, well, now they have to come under some new law. They couldn’t share directly this data with advertisers so that advertisers could send their ad directly to the person that they knew was their customer, right? I was listening to some guy talk the other day and he’s like, back in the day, you could like…
send your ad directly to a middle -aged miner in West Virginia. You give me that precise because you had that data on Meta and Meta could allow you to target in a precise fashion. But since they were not allowed to anymore, but they still retain the data. They still retain that data, by the way. They still have that. They’re just tweaking their algorithm so that they do it for you and therefore say, hey, we’re driving the results.
Greg Shuey (12:11.123)
Yeah.
Altay Malazgirt (12:33.006)
But you actually don’t have any control anymore, right? And you can’t see the data, right? And so what you saw is what you got back in the day. And now what you don’t see is, again, what you don’t get, right? So I think that’s the issue. So definitely those data privacy laws changing, this leading to Meta’s algorithm changing, now prioritizing user experience over ad reach.
Greg Shuey (12:35.859)
and you can’t see the data. Yep.
Altay Malazgirt (13:00.59)
I think that is also very important. So now everyone is optimizing for that user engagement, but they don’t exactly know how that user engagement is being driven. And I think that’s where the frustration lies. So you’re doing all this creative testing and trying to figure out, okay, what hits, but you don’t know exactly what in those creatives are actually hitting and what you should really double down on.
So actually, instead of a marketplace, I want to call this now a casino. So I think Meta is the casino. They’re the casino owners. And what used to be just roulette, betting on red or white, now it’s like Blackjack, which actually requires skill and digital advertising know -how. So a lot of people are struggling because they’re not experts in digital advertising. It’s not like it used to be where I have a product that works. I know my customer more or less. I can precisely target them. And everyone is making money back.
Greg Shuey (13:38.131)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (13:57.331)
And I’m going to run my own ads and then I’m going to run them until I run out of time. And then I’m going to hire someone to run them for me. I mean, that was kind of the evolution of it, right? Yeah.
Altay Malazgirt (13:57.518)
But now, exactly.
Altay Malazgirt (14:05.614)
That evolution exactly exactly but now I think fast forward to now like people don’t know how to do it so they then hire someone to do it and even like agencies like yourself that are kick -ass marketers and advertisers sometimes just have to throw up their hands and be like yo look like we’re trying all these tactics we know that we’re good but at the moment I can’t see into the proverbial black box which is
Greg Shuey (14:34.739)
And every now and then it doesn’t work. And there’s literally nothing you can do about it. And that’s the really hard thing about meta.
Altay Malazgirt (14:43.118)
And that is the number one thing that is hard to find out.
Greg Shuey (14:46.451)
Cool, cool. So.
Altay Malazgirt (14:48.846)
At mid, finally, the last factor, increased competition among advertisers. I think just that’s supply and demand economics, right? Higher bidding prices due to increased competition, the pandemic put everyone into DTC models. So now everyone is trying to go DTC. And I think that’s just the reason why you’re seeing like really, really high CPAs.
Greg Shuey (14:53.987)
yeah.
Greg Shuey (15:09.971)
Yeah, for sure, because there’s less inventory to buy up and it drives the price up. So can you elaborate on some of the uncontrollable variables on the platform that significantly impact customer acquisition costs?
Altay Malazgirt (15:14.222)
100%.
Altay Malazgirt (15:25.582)
Yeah, definitely. Talking about that, I think algorithm change right now affecting ad placement and visibility. So it’s like, how are we sending this? When are we sending this? What are people actually seeing? What are people actually engaging with? Digging into that granular detail would allow the marketer to make tweaks in real time, right? But you’re still having to run something for a certain amount of time.
and then just rely on the data that you get on the backend, which is, you know, this many conversions or this many signups or this many impressions or this is the amount of reach. But like, I can’t see in actual real time what’s going on. Only Meta can see that, right? So again, the algorithm puts them in the driver’s seat and it’s literally you’re in the passenger seat. Whereas you should be in the driver’s seat because it’s like you’re the one spending 5K a day. You know what I’m saying?
Greg Shuey (16:02.195)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (16:16.083)
Yep.
Altay Malazgirt (16:17.998)
Like if I’m spending 5k a day on gas, I want to make sure I’m driving a freaking Ferrari, man. Don’t put me in the side seat of like some Toyota. Nothing that’s Toyota, by the way. I think it’s a car. But you know what I mean, right? You know what I mean. By the way, I think a Tundra is a great car. But I’m not just trying to save face. Really, I think if we are spending this amount of money, and that’s literally what it comes down to, we want to be in control and we are…
Greg Shuey (16:26.739)
Yeah. Hey, I drive a Toyota. Don’t knock on my Tundra. Yep.
Altay Malazgirt (16:47.182)
control, right? So I think that algorithm change really pushed some changes on that, on how, what, and when. And then ultimately, like, those fluctuations in user engagement are also kind of driving us to really just look at the end result, which is, this one hit, this one didn’t hit, right? And that’s leading us to…
Greg Shuey (17:10.163)
Yeah.
Altay Malazgirt (17:14.894)
put more reliance on broader targeting strategies, which is leading to higher CAC, when indeed I think we should actually, yes, creative test, but we should also be more strategic in who we go after, right? We should be more strategic in who we’re going after because we have assumptions of who our customers are. We need to test those assumptions. That’s essentially what advertisers and marketers do, but we’re not being allowed to test those assumptions with broad targeting.
Greg Shuey (17:28.755)
100%. Yep.
Greg Shuey (17:41.683)
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think something that you didn’t touch on is that media buying is becoming more and more automated, right? The more AI that we get, like I had this interesting discussion yesterday with a prospect, you know, we were talking about our pricing model. So we don’t do percentage of ad spend anymore because media buying is becoming so automated and we’re shifting more into creative strategy. We’re shifting more into kind of the customer research hat because.
Altay Malazgirt (17:48.398)
Yes.
Greg Shuey (18:10.771)
Like you said, we have assumptions on who our customer is. Also, we don’t have to have assumptions, right? We can go out and actually do that customer research and we can figure out who they are, what their buyer journey looks like, how they describe their pain points, how they describe the solutions that they’re looking for. And we can take all of that data and marry it up with creative strategy. And then we have something like a real leg to stand on. But yeah, I mean, the media buying side, like who knows where it’s going to be in a year.
Like will it fully be automated? Who knows, but it’s moving really fast with AI for sure.
Altay Malazgirt (18:47.438)
Yeah. I mean, I do think that, I mean, you’re totally right. And AI is completely changing the face of everything. I would say not only advertising, but also other industries. I still do think when it comes to media buying now, there is some expertise. There is a lot of expertise that a marketer can bring, and we still need to rely on you guys putting on the thinking cap and saying, hey, this is what I think we should go after. I think AI is better placed to help in just crunching tons of data.
and providing insights from that data. And that’s ultimately what we’ll get to. And what we’re trying to do with Go Audience, I will happily tell you guys about that. But it’s insane how AI is now creeping into so many things where I still think that the human touch is necessary.
Greg Shuey (19:19.475)
Yep.
Greg Shuey (19:31.923)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (19:36.147)
100%. Yeah, definitely. I mean, just look at, you know, the crap that comes out of chat GPT sometimes, like it’s not foolproof by any, any means. So. Cool. I know we briefly touched on this, but could you maybe go into a little bit more detail about data privacy changes, tracking limitations and how that’s impacted a brand’s ability to effectively target and then acquire.
Altay Malazgirt (19:37.838)
You know.
Altay Malazgirt (19:48.366)
Yeah, I agree with you.
Greg Shuey (20:04.659)
I like to call them bright fit customers, right? Like we can go out and we can acquire customers all day long, but if they don’t, if they’re shopping for a discount, they don’t come back and make another purchase and another like, what’s the point? So like, let’s talk about that a little bit.
Altay Malazgirt (20:07.182)
Yeah. Yeah.
Altay Malazgirt (20:20.59)
Yeah, no, I completely agree with you. I mean, like, I think that reduced ability to track user behavior across platforms is really what’s driving a lot of some of the frustrations that we’re seeing right now in the market. And then, like, obviously, you have less precise audience segmentation due to restricted data access too, right? Because now there’s like these walls up above this data that doesn’t allow you to access it. And again, that’s what we’re trying to do here is democratize some of that data with a go audience.
But essentially, I think I was 14, update really kicked it into high gear. People now had an option right in front of their faces when they were downloading an app to be like, I don’t want my data track. Yeah, sure.
Greg Shuey (21:00.723)
Done.
Altay Malazgirt (21:01.582)
And you used to have to go into settings and do it, but no one does that. No one in their right mind does that. We’ve evolved as a species so much so that going into settings to turn something off from this list that we don’t really probably understand anyways because we’re not developers, seems like a completely tremendous lift. So freaking painful, but it was great. It worked for advertisers because people didn’t even think about it. But as…
Greg Shuey (21:21.427)
So painful.
Altay Malazgirt (21:30.03)
This whole thing kicked off with iOS 14 update. It was right in front of people’s noses. They had an option and they took that option most of the time. It was overnight that we lost 40 % of people that we could track. Obviously, that’s the total thing now. Everyone’s talking about that. I think it’s trying to understand where the cookie crumbles and then where do those crumbles lie.
And then which crumble is the golden nugget that allows you to take that person to a conversion. And on the back end of that, now everyone is trying to figure out attribution. There’s companies out there that are building up these massive dashboards so that they can show you the attribution on Meta, attribution on Snapchat, and it’s all still a crapshoot. Exactly. And one thing against any of those companies, these are actually companies that have very large valuations at the moment, but…
Greg Shuey (22:01.075)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (22:16.691)
And it’s still all a crapshoot.
Altay Malazgirt (22:26.67)
It’s really hard to crack that space because it’s like, where does that person come in from and where do they exit from?
Greg Shuey (22:33.459)
Its customer journeys are so complex these days. There could be, I think I wrote a LinkedIn post earlier this year. It could be 20 touch points. And at the end of the day, you could walk into the Costco, you get an ad, you get a little Costco thing in the mail and you’re like, well, I was shopping for that. It’s on sale, it’s $100 cheaper. And you go in on a Saturday morning and pick it up. Who gets credit?
Altay Malazgirt (22:56.654)
Yeah, 100%. And that’s the attribution that we talked about. So where do you then push your dollars or where do you channel your dollars in order to figure out, okay, this one’s doing better, this one’s doing less? You can’t be so strategic about it. So I think one way to kind of go around this is really just focus on what you have at the moment. Who are your current customers and what can you learn from that data and leverage that.
Greg Shuey (22:58.387)
Yeah.
Altay Malazgirt (23:25.166)
And even if you’re seeing some kind of engagement data coming from people on platforms, let’s say like Meta or Google, really brilliant at that. Try and understand as much as you can about those people that are already engaging with your content. And then if we’re going more upstream, really be precise in who you target. And there’s still tools out there that allow you to do that. If you don’t have that first party data that you can’t leverage to go and do lookalikes, for example.
Greg Shuey (23:37.779)
Yeah.
Altay Malazgirt (23:54.35)
So yeah, I mean.
I think an answer to your question here is like, what is kind of an effective way to go about this is just go further upstream, right? Try and figure out like, what’s the step before that? Okay, what’s the step before that? And then, okay, I’ve landed on a way to prevent me getting downstream and not understanding my customer at all, right?
Greg Shuey (24:01.939)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (24:20.019)
Sure, yep, 100%, I love it. So what are some of the strategies that you’re seeing these days that brands are using to improve their performance on meta despite all of these challenges? Because there are still brands crushing it on meta right now.
Altay Malazgirt (24:35.662)
Well, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. There’s a lot of people crushing it. There’s a lot of people not crushing it. And I think there’s a lot of people that are somewhere in between, right? There’s a guy who’s in our office space here. And one day I see the guy beaming just from ear to ear, crushed it that day or that week. And the next day he’s just like in the malaise. I’m like, what’s going on, dude? He’s losing like $200 to $300 a day. And I don’t know what’s going on.
Greg Shuey (24:45.299)
100%.
Altay Malazgirt (25:04.334)
And thankfully, it’s not $2 ,000, $3 ,000 a day. It’s all relative, of course. Maybe when the guy’s crushing it in one day, it’s like $10 ,000.
Greg Shuey (25:13.683)
the next day he’s making 10K, the next day he’s losing 2K. And that’s real life.
Altay Malazgirt (25:15.662)
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s just so gross. That’s real freaking life. And it’s so frustrating for some of these people. And that’s the reason why like, yeah, you have some winners and it feels good when you’re winning, but like when you’re losing, it’s really, really tough. And then there’s also just people that are kind of like stringing along, just breaking even, and that’s not fun.
We’re all here to win, right? We don’t want like middle of the table. Like we just talked about NBA before turning on the podcast. It’s like, I don’t want to be 11th, right? And that’s where the Jazz were 11th, right? They were right behind the Warriors, which is my home team. It’s like they didn’t even make the play intended, you know? You know what I’m saying? And no one wants to be, you know, middle of the table. So yeah, I think what I’m hearing a lot from the market,
Greg Shuey (25:52.371)
Weren’t they like 20th? They were not even in the plan. Yeah, enough about that. I’m already appreciated.
Altay Malazgirt (26:05.934)
in relation to all of this and in response to everything that’s gone on in the industry for the past couple of years is creative is now everything, right? Investing in creative content that resonates with broad audiences, right? Because that’s the best way to reach as many people, as many customer segments as possible. And at some point, if my content is good, people are gonna be interested and they’re gonna engage and that engagement is gonna give me…
more reason to push them down the funnel eventually towards a conversion. And nothing against the creative people, nothing against creative being a good piece of your strategy, but it cannot be the only part of your strategy. And therefore, I think it’s a strength, but also a weakness. Because sure content drives engagement, and this drive signals a meta.
But just because someone likes your content or engages with your content doesn’t mean that they’re your potential customer.
Greg Shuey (27:08.595)
or that they will ever buy.
Altay Malazgirt (27:10.19)
or that they will never buy. And I use this example a lot because it happens to me on Instagram. I’m Instagram spammed by all this like dog food and dog toys and dog supplement brands. And I don’t have a dog. I don’t have a dog. But I am literally, if I were to be in another life, another creature, I would be a golden retriever.
Greg Shuey (27:24.371)
Well, do you have a dog?
Altay Malazgirt (27:35.95)
Literally, I cannot go to Whole Foods on Sundays without staying there for an hour because it’s overrun with dogs, and I’m going and saying hi to all of the dogs. I have that energy and I love dogs, and so I obviously have a lot of accounts that I follow. I have a lot of content that I share, probably majority with my sister because she also loves dogs, and I’m sharing all this stuff, saving all of it so the algorithm thinks I’m a dog owner, right?
Greg Shuey (28:02.099)
Yeah.
Altay Malazgirt (28:02.99)
And so it’s pushing me these type of brands. But it couldn’t be further from the truth because I don’t own a dog. You know what I’m saying? So I definitely see that people are investing in creative content thinking that it is the new targeting. But content is only king if you deliver it to the right person. It’s like when you try and court someone, like content for the right queen, content for the other king. It depends on who you’re into. But it’s like we need to kind of step.
take a step back and realize that sure, algorithmic targeting based on creative is very important as part of your strategy, but it’s not your only strategy, right?
Greg Shuey (28:42.675)
Well, let’s talk about what those strategies need to be.
Altay Malazgirt (28:47.566)
I think those strategies definitely need to leverage some kind of first party data to build custom audiences. And that’s our mantra here, right? First party data is essentially data that you get from your customers, right? If you don’t have customers already, or if you don’t have a robust CRM of first party data, there’s places where you can go and leverage first party data. And one of those places is Go Audience, right? And we allow you to go and find people that are already buying dog food in the market. As simple as that. If you’re already buying dog food,
Greg Shuey (28:52.723)
Yep. Yep.
Altay Malazgirt (29:16.686)
you are most likely a dog.
Greg Shuey (29:18.675)
No, for sure. I don’t buy dog food as a gift.
Altay Malazgirt (29:20.206)
I mean, I’m not buying dog food for shits and gables. It’s expensive enough already. So we allow you to go and find people that are already buying a specific brand, if you will. You can get granular as much as that, or we can show you the top 5 % of dog food spenders in the US. And you can leverage that data in order to build custom audiences, attach to your ad set, and then run your campaigns to be more precise.
Greg Shuey (29:28.571)
Yeah. Yep.
Altay Malazgirt (29:50.446)
in your targeting, right? Because guys, don’t forget, we need to know who we’re selling to, right? I might have a fabulous product, but if I’m selling it to the wrong person, it doesn’t matter, you know?
Greg Shuey (30:01.907)
You’re wasting a lot of time, a lot of money. You’re going to fire a lot of agencies.
Altay Malazgirt (30:07.918)
100%. Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. And I think that’s what one of those strategies needs to be, right? Rapid creative testing, but also rapid audience testing. And you can do that by leveraging first -party data in a cost -effective way, which is what we have on Go Audience. And then ultimately, I talked about how I still want marketers to be in the mix. I still need people like you. We still need people like you, Greg.
But I think where AI can step in and machine learning can step in is really to optimize those processes that deal with a lot of data, that deal with a lot of analysis and then synthesis and then presentation of insights. Because that’s going to optimize your time. We want AI to optimize our time as human beings so we can focus on the more important stuff. So it just so happens to be that we also leverage AI in our tools. So the reason we use because you can’t leverage or you can’t analyze…
credit card data from 200 million US consumers using a human being. You need to leverage some kind of machine learning, and that’s what we’re doing in order to present you with those custom audiences that you can then leverage in your campaign, and we want you as the marketer to run those campaigns.
Greg Shuey (31:27.155)
Yep. and this approach is kind of mind blowing to me before we first spoke, I was like, this can’t be real. Like credit card, credit card data is available to purchase spend people’s spending and the categories. Like it’s mind blowing. And I’m glad that someone like you has been able to take that and kind of build a platform and a tool to be able to leverage that data. It’s, it’s, it’s awesome for sure.
Altay Malazgirt (31:37.006)
Peace.
Yeah. Yeah.
Altay Malazgirt (31:55.854)
Thank you. Appreciate that.
Greg Shuey (31:57.523)
So, I mean, when we look at the digital landscape and we look at how fast it’s changed over the years, it’s changing even faster these days. So as you look forward, again, this is, you know, we’re looking at a crystal ball here. Now, who knows what trends do you foresee, you know, happening in meta and in terms of being able to.
Altay Malazgirt (32:06.254)
Right. Right.
Greg Shuey (32:27.379)
drive customer acquisition costs down, hopefully, and how should brands be preparing for these potential changes that might be coming?
Altay Malazgirt (32:40.398)
Yeah, absolutely. I think honestly, continued evolution and technology, that’s going to enhance personalization and targeting, right? Personalization is everything. Everyone wants to know that this brand is talking to them as if they are the only customer, right? And so whether that is through creative testing, whether that is through audience testing, whether it’s a blend of both,
Greg Shuey (32:59.315)
Yep.
Altay Malazgirt (33:08.174)
Or whether it’s you leveraging some data that you get directly from your customers through surveys or through anything that you’ve done, let’s say offline at an event to drive engagement, to drive learnings, all of this is going to come back down to personalization. And so you need to know how to be more personalized. And once you figure out what that looks like, then you need to leverage the technology at your fingertips and your know -how as a marketer to then go and…
scale that personalization. And I think definitely, again, going back to what we talked about, AI -driven tools, being part of that continued evolution of technology, it’s definitely going to allow you to optimize your campaigns. So first, really define what is the objective that you want from your campaign. Do you want reach? Do you want just engagement?
Greg Shuey (33:39.827)
Yeah, I love.
Altay Malazgirt (34:07.63)
Or do you want some kind of conversion? I know we’re probably talking to a lot of e -commerce brands here, so everyone wants to see the money. And I think you should always optimize for sale. It’s like a sign up, right? Optimize for that action, right? It’s like when I want people to come to us and book a demo, right? I prefer to actually talk to them, right? That way I can really understand what package is best for them, right? Optimize for that sign up, optimize for that sale. But yeah, really understand.
Greg Shuey (34:16.019)
Ha ha.
Altay Malazgirt (34:36.238)
what your objective is, and then go in and try and optimize that in your campaign, right? And then utilize the tools that are necessary to get there. So let me just paint you an example. Like typically we’ll see that a lot of people come to us when they don’t have any first party data and they really want to just go and get some custom audiences off the shelf, if you will, right? Because I can show them exactly who’s already buying supplements in the market, right? If they’re coming out with some new supplement brand, right? They can go and leverage that data and they can then, you know…
go and target those people directly with their ad and then hopefully bring down their CPAs, right? I can then sometimes find that people come to me when they’re like, hey, look, I feel like my CPAs have immediately gone up or have immediately spiked because there’s some kind of audience fatigue, right? I feel like they keep seeing the same ad creative over and over and over again. I feel like I need to go and find someone new. Can you help me with that? And then we’ll do the research and then we’ll find the audiences. We’ll push that in to their ad set. And then, you know, we’ll…
see within a couple of days that the CPAs come down, sales start going back up. So really just trying to figure out what it is that you need help on and then go and find the tools out there. Because I think as marketers too, we need to know when to tell people what to look for. And then if we know that there’s a solution out there that can help them besides just our individual know -how, then we need to be able to present that to them.
Greg Shuey (35:40.115)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (36:00.819)
Nice. Well, sweet. That was very helpful for sure. So we’re about halfway through 2024. Can you believe that? Pretty wild. It’s nuts. So what predictions do you have for the rest of the year and even into 2025 when it comes to meta ads or just leveraging more and more first party data? Where do you think we’re going to go?
Altay Malazgirt (36:12.75)
It’s crazy. Yeah, I know it’s insane.
Altay Malazgirt (36:29.87)
Yeah, so more stringent data privacy regulations for sure. This is going to impact tracking capabilities. It’s only going to get worse. So Google kicked the can down the road again one more year. So their deprecation of cookies are not kicked to the end of 2025. And they keep doing that. But…
Greg Shuey (36:48.371)
Yeah.
Will they ever, you know? Who knows? Yeah, we’re gonna be forced.
Altay Malazgirt (36:53.838)
I think at some point they’re going to have to, for sure. They’re going to have to. Beats me as to why they’re doing that. Maybe they have some kind of thing up their sleeve that they’re playing at. But if everyone’s on meta right now, meta is only going to become more of a black box. And they’re going to definitely push algorithmic targeting harder and harder now. Advantage Plus is still kind of in infancy. So if you’re on Advantage Plus and you’re struggling, I would say…
Greg Shuey (37:10.515)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (37:17.331)
Mm -hmm.
Altay Malazgirt (37:23.182)
bring it back to manual targeting. And I think this is definitely one of the trends that we’re going to see. It’s not just advantage plus or go home. It’s going to be advantage plus, manual targeting, broad targeting. So you definitely need to be able to kind of swim in those three arenas. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. And therefore, go and leverage that first party data you get your hands on. Because that’s going to be essential for you to at least do the audience testing instead of just creative testing.
So then you’re putting your eggs in three different arenas and then in two baskets, which is creative testing and then audience testing. And then a bigger basket where you have both of those combined and you’re really optimizing. That’s, I think, when you really hit that optimization point. Right. And I see our customers really go happy, go home happy because they figured out who their audience is based on the first party data that I get from us. They’ve done their creative testing where they found that, okay, this creative is kick ass. This one is going to be the winner.
And then they go and they marry those two. And I think when it comes to meta, they’re probably going to try and get rid of the middleman even more. And I think they’ve been trying to do that for a long time because they realize that they have a strong tool in their hands. So just be patient with anyone that you’re working with.
Greg Shuey (38:22.355)
Yep. Perfect.
Altay Malazgirt (38:50.638)
I think this is an SOS call to any agency that’s also listening to, like, it’s not your guys’ fault. If you know that you’re putting in the work and sometimes you’re not seeing the results, it’s not your guys’ fault.
Greg Shuey (38:59.603)
It’s hard when the rules are changed on you in the middle of the game. And we’ve been dealing with that for 30 years when it comes to Google algorithms and SEO. And, and now we’re experiencing that on all of the paid platforms more often than we would like. Right. And so it just takes a little bit of patience, takes a little bit of trust, takes some retooling and, you know, for the most part.
Altay Malazgirt (39:04.366)
100 %
Greg Shuey (39:27.763)
If you’ve got smart people working for you, I think that they can course correct and they can work and continue to build. So, that’s a fantastic stopping point. That was great. That was an awesome discussion. Thank you so much for being with us.
Altay Malazgirt (39:43.981)
You’re very welcome, Greg. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, I think, you know, last point I do want to say is, as you kind of said, you know, be sure to adapt, right? Be sure to test different things out. Be patient with people. Understand that there is value to be seen. Tony Robbins says it’s not about resources, but being resourceful.
which in my mind kind of translates to everything is figureoutable. So kind of be adept in finding ways to make things work. And it will work on Meta. It’s not the end of the world. And yeah, leverage any tools that you can find because that’s going to help you guys.
Greg Shuey (40:08.371)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (40:20.115)
Yeah, perfect. Awesome, man. Well, again, appreciate your time. So on our next episode, we will be chatting with Will Laurencin from an agency called Customers Who Click. How about that? That is quite the agency name, Customers Who Click. Their agency specializes in conversion rate optimization and customer revenue optimization. So a different kind of CRO, customer revenue opt.
Altay Malazgirt (40:24.718)
No, thank you so much.
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.
