Sarah Stemen has worked in digital since 2007, with time spent both client-side & agency-side. Sarah is currently a Paid Search Manager at Marcus Thomas. She began her career in-house on the client side but ultimately loves the diversity of clients found on the agency side. Sarah has been hands-on in Social, SEO and everything in between. She decided to specialize in PPC in 2015. When not working in PPC, Sarah is busy raising her three kids (talk about super mom!).
You can find Sarah on Twitter @runnerkik and on LinkedIn: sarahstemen That said, we invited Sarah to do an Ask Me Anything Session via our #general Slack channel, enabling the search community to ask her any question they desire. Below you will find a series of questions and answers asked during the session.
Q: what do you do if your brand name is very generic. Does it make sense to run a “branded” campaign in the account? What examples of interesting branded campaigns have you seen in your practice?
A: Hi, great question. I am always a supporter of brand campaigns because brand campaigns allow for the ability to control the messaging.
In terms of interesting brand campaigns – I used to work promoting supplements and the brand campaigns there were “interesting”
I can’t believe people take medicines or supplements from the internet
Another layer on the brand campaign – with a generic name is going to be budget, can the client afford to run the campaign and is there brand awareness?
Q: What have been some of the most valuable resources to you and your career, to date, that have helped shape your knowledge and skills within the SEM/PPC space?
A: I think that the community has been wonderful twitter, but I also listen to Marketing O’Clock, and watch PPC Townhall – and I regularly read posts from people I follow on Twitter and LinkedIn
Even if I know something I still read because I can learn better ways to phrase concepts or a small nugget or way to look at an issue
I also think that as the internet has grown (I started doing this in 2007) so has the way content is produced – when I first started I had to read and use google alerts and visit peoples blogs now I follow on YouTube or Spotify and can multitask.
I also started before cell phones are what they are, so I had to use twitter on my desktop – the world has made it easier to stay connected to the community.
Q: What are your go-to custom columns for analyzing search performance?
A: Well, last year some of my custom columns for budget tracking were a hit but that isn’t what I use most often. I actually use the Google report center multiple times a day. I use standard columns plus ROAS and Conv Value and I look at my data daily by campaign type then rolled up
Q: What are your thoughts regarding first click, linear, time decay, and position-based attribution models going away starting in July 2023?
A: Well I never use first click ever, or linear or position based, maybe time decay at times – so this won’t impact my accounts, HOWEVER, I do have clients with in house analytics that look at last click – and last click by nature our brains kind of understand. My hope is that the ability to look at the attribution models side by side continues because sometimes trouble shooting a client analytics question requires looking at the modeling at each level.
Q: Is there anything you want other women in this industry to know?
A: Well I always say – there is room for everyone. Paid search is an art and a science and has become more of an art and a science over time. We are in a space of looking at the big picture and human behavior which is something women can do well. When I first started I remember clients being surprised to work with a female and I think that has shifted – women are among the smartest marketers out there.
Q: What are ways you are utilizing ChatGPT to your benefit at this time?
A: I love chatgpt and I use it daily
Q: What are your thoughts on manual CPC vs. smart bidding? Do you utilize smart bidding?
A: Smart bidding all the way! I can only think of 1 time in the past 2 years I have felt the need to use manual bidding, and I think it was to determine volume since I was bidding on an irrelevant term.
Also I find that when you have to force the system, a lot of times it is to try a tactic where PPC wasn’t the ideal solution.
Q: Do you have a "PPC mentor"? Do you have any advice for a new PPCer interested in a direct coaching model?
A: I have had alot of help along the way. When I was on the client side my agency taught me so much: Chris Boggs, Jason Tabeling, I read everything from Matt Cutts back in the day, then Matt Umbro founder of PPCChat helped me so much…I would say that if you are new really take time to learn but understand that the soft skills are as important as the hard skills. I will take a clean accurate spreadsheet on ad copy over a messy one, or a person who is consistent in doing the pace report.
Q: Have you played with optimized targeting yet? Do you see it as a good replacement for similar audiences?
A: I have and I do, I have a client running a test right now in their campaigns looking at similar vs optimized targeting. I also advised that similar audiences might not have a hard stop date to keep using until they stop populating. I really think that audience targeting is not anywhere near as exact as platforms want us to believe. One look at my ad center can validate that. So that is a long way to say I am not convinced that even when being specific with audiences there isn’t data loss + expansion going on.
Q: Do you use Google Ads "experiment" feature? And if so what sort of variables are you testing?
A: I do use it. I use it for 1. ad copy tests 2. landing page test and 3. video testing – using difference sequence ads and arms (this can get complicated quickly)
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