Meet Greg Kohler: A dynamic force in the digital marketing realm! With a razor-sharp focus on lead generation and brand awareness for local, service-based ventures, Greg isn’t just any digital marketer – he’s a master of the craft. Always at the pulse of the latest updates on platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, his enthusiasm is contagious, constantly enlightening the PPC community with game-changing insights. Recognized as a top 50 PPCer, Greg’s name reverberates across marketing podcasts. Loved and lauded by peers for his invaluable and regular contributions, he’s not just a contributor, but a cornerstone of the PPC community. Dive into the world of marketing with Greg, and you’re guaranteed a front-row seat to innovation and expertise!
Q: What are your thoughts surrounding automatically created assets. Are these helpful, hurtful, or both?
A: We haven’t had a great experience with automatically created assets.
All of our ad copy goes through a content approval team before it’s allowed to go public so really it’s a matter of maintaining brand standards/voice more than anything.
That said, the process to turn off automatically created assets within the asset tab is way too cumbersome. As we’re navigating turning them off in all of our accounts, we can see what Google is auto-creating and it’s just terrible quality stuff – “Know More!” as a callout. “Customer Service Available” – like of course it is, why would we need to have that as a callout. and the worst one, which I’ve gotten in trouble for is automatically created business names with the wrong capitalization from our trademark
Q: What's your take on the DSA and Google Display Ads upgrade feature that was recently launched? Do you recommend transitioning these campaigns to Performance Max now or do you think they are still viable standalone campaigns?
A: 1. My gut reaction when I first saw it was “another money grab from Google by way of unsuspecting account managers.”
2. DSA kind of makes sense for imo. and I don’t think anyone was really surprised to see it go this way.
3. Display was a bit more odd for me. IMO PMAX is a full funnel approach vs Display which is much more geared to higher funnel, generate awareness. I have a a hard time thinking a business with let’s say a $2500 monthly display campaign budget is going to be able to run a “successful” (really depends on how you define success) PMAX campaign for that same budget. Overall I’ve never been a big fan of PMAX because I think managers should try to maintain control as much as they can of where their dollars are going. I would always say manually transition these yourself to ensure your content/settings/etc stay consistent and aren’t “upgraded” also.
Q: You always seem very up to date on platform changes. How do you do it?!?
A: I subscribe to the PSA Newsletter! https://paidsearch.org/
- But in addition, I subscribe to every relevant newsletter I can.
- I have RSS subscriptions for all of the popular search websites.
- #PPCChat on twitter
- This slack channel
- PPCChat Slack and Discord Channel
- Marketing O’Clock Podcast + Discord
- Google News and Announcements (https://support.google.com/google-ads/announcements/9048695?hl=en)
- Paid Search Podcast
Q: What is your take on what the role of a PPC practitioner will look like over the next 2 years?
A: Not sure if I came up with this or heard it somewhere else but I see ourselves becoming more like ship captains. We can point the ship in the right direction (leads/revenue goals), we’ll be able to steer it around obstacles (close variants) but at the end of the day we’ll be at the mercy of the winds (platform changes). I think one of the most important things we can do is learn how to set expectations for our clients. I think clients have an over-expectation (and we can blame ourselves a bit) that with digital ads, we’re fully in control, all performance is 100% attributable, and if there’s a drop in performance, it’s because of something we did.
Q: What bid strategy you're currently seeing the most traction with?
Q: Thoughts on what it takes to make Shopping in Bing scale? Is it worth the effort?
A:Very little experience with shopping at all from me! That said, I think it anytime you consider moving dollars to Bing you have to consider the time/effort that comes with managing another platform vs the (potential) cost savings per user traffic. I think in many cases small business are better off focusing their budget on google where they’re likely not maxing out the traffic they could be getting already. Don’t spread yourself too thin – regarding budget and your own sanity!
Q: Thoughts on investing in YouTube for Action? Is it worth the upfront investment based on a somewhat faith based assumption that traffic will come back via branded search?
A: Yes if your conversions are on DDA – and you can see that the Video Action (previously TV4A) campaign is garnering some incremental conversions then keep it going. My personal bias is Video Action campaigns should have never been “upgraded” to include the video partners network and that it’s just another money grab. https://digiday.com/media/advertisers-further-probe-ad-buying-transparency-on-youtube-despite-platforms-protestations/
That said, TrueView for reach isn’t eligible to be included in Data Driven Attribution because you’re serving impressions, not views – or so our rep has told us.
That’s another thing with TV4Reach, you can’t build an audience off of users who have seen the ad. Jyll Saskin Gales mentioned it’s due to users not taking an action on the ad/purposefully opting into the audience – like you can with Video Action.
Q: How have you adapted to using GA4 so far? What are the current pitfalls you face?
A:Working through it – fortunately I didn’t have a ton of past experience using UA based on our team’s makeup but have really been working towards building a deeper knowledge of GA4 – which I think for me learning it then makes (what others call the simplification of the platform) a bit easier. I know a common pitfall many people faced is the default data retention of only a couple months vs 14 (i think?) – but a lot of really good follows like Brie Anderson on twitter have helped to warn of us those. https://twitter.com/brie_e_anderson?s=20
Q: What's one recommendation you have for someone just getting started with learning Paid Search?
A: Be a sponge.
Learn everything you can – read the help articles, listen to podcasts, join PSA!, ask questions, follow threads that others are asking questions. Go to conferences (online and in person).
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