Episode 36: Interview with Brad Geddes

For OMReport this time Andre interviewed Brad Geddes. Brad is one of the first Google Advertising Professionals and also a member of Microsoft adExcellence. His book Advanced Google AdWords is a bestseller and his Paid Search trainee program Certified Knowledge is known in whole US. Brad is in Online Marketing for 15 years now and has worked as consultant, AdWord trainer and tool provider, as well als being the founder of several online businesses.

Andre Alpar: Alright so today’s version of OMReport is with Brad Geddes. Brad can you briefly introduce yourself if people don’t know you yet?

Brad Geddes: Yes, I’m Brad Geddes, founder of Certified Knowledge which is a training tool site, founder of Adalysis which is an testing platform and Advanced Google AdWords which came out about a month ago.

Andre Alpar: Alright so how many… Is it official? How many books did you sell so far? Because I mean your market is great here in the US but I think your books were also sold overseas right?

Brad Geddes: You know, I have no idea honestly how many books have been sold, but I usually…

Andre Alpar: Was it like a best-seller?

Brad Geddes: It is, it usually stays in Amazon’s Top 10 000 book list for several months and usually it breaks another Top 1000 or 2000 for a very niche product which is great on occasion so.

Andre Alpar: So how much do you have to change from edition to edition like percentage, what is your guess?

Brad Geddes: In addition probably 50 or 60%, it was a huge, huge change. I mean some chapters changed very little, like “introduction to paid search”…

Andre Alpar: Right and then probably the whole site-links topic?

Brad Geddes: The entire ad extension is brand new, all the enhanced campaigns, that was brand new, PLA didn’t exist, flexible targeting for display did not exist… So reporting is very similar, but the ways you can target have changed. It’s only two years old, I mean, the previous version, so its most versions changed 50 to 60% between versions.

Andre Alpar: Wow! Would you suggest people to not get into a topic at all because the knowledge kind of diminishes so fast, what are your suggestions for people to do?
Brad Geddes: You mean from a learning standpoint? (Yes). So books are still good because they can go into a depth of level that is very hard in other mediums, I mean the book is 657 pages. They are still very good and it’s nice to know where things have changed. Since the book launched, Google has changed one per-click to converted-click, I mean just one metric number, but it’s the same, it’s the same thing. And the principles don’t change. What may change is certain actions or screen-shots.

Andre Alpar: I think when you are sitting down with the book you’re in a special kind of mood and I mean here, the conference is like all powered through and after you absorb all the time, while with the book you can take it a bit calmer and slower.

Brad Geddes: But it depends how people learn, like I have Certified Knowledge, they are video trainings site and Mark and Modo and video training, some people are very visual learners, so videos are very good for them. Other people prefer books. For other people books are tough because they have to carve out their own time to read it. Like here we do full day 8 hour workshops, so you must sit down, you must be there all in once, it’s a lot of information at once, but so because people learn differently, it’s more about making the content available in various ways, and so depending on your learning style you can still learn and get better at what you do.

Andre Alpar: Right. What do you think that the average Joe working on their advert accounts, what time should they kind of allocate for, you know, just learning, like theoretical, and then also experimenting like doing stuff that they don’t feel secure at?

Brad Geddes: Before anyone works on an AdWords account, they should really spend probably twelve to twenty hours learning. All this little nuances is that if you mess up you can really screw up your money and that really is number one. I want to have the base and it depends on one’s spend. If you spend a $1000 a month you don’t need to spend 20 hours a week managing something, that ‘s actually a waste of time. If you’re spending a $100.000 a month then you better be spending 10 to 20 hours a week going through your data. If you spend a billion, you probably better in it all the time and hire a full time person. So I don’t think there is a true number you can lay out. It’s more about how the channel is important to you, how fast your going to grow the channel, and how much are you spending kind of manages how much you should be investing in it.

Andre Alpar: I remember when PPC started out , I mean especially when the AdWords started out, it was like the AdWords guys were also working at the end of the conversion follow and the SEO guys were also playing around, but now it seems that, especially the AdWords and PPC guys, they are getting away from that, you know, going to Google display network, going into other PPC opportunities. They seem to be working their way up the channel. Is that just an opportunity or is it necessary? Because you know working at the end of the channel is just so expensive these days? Or is it just something I’m just misguessing ?

Brad Geddes: No, lot of it depends on marketing goals. So if you’re a pure direct response marketer, then you’re going to work end of funnel and lots of many page conversion items but when you look at a lot of industries there’s a lot of touch points for conversion. And so if you don’t have those initial touch points on display or higher up funnel words then you don’t get the conversion later on. So we get better analytics data that shows true attribution management. It’s the fact that someone saw a TV commercial, they did a search on mobile phone, they saw our ad, and then went on our site, and think “ Oh it’s interesting”, they go back to desktop and see will actually research again, so they search on the desktop, they look and think “ oh it’s interesting I should learn more”, and then they forget about it. But there’s new marketing getting back to them, and then you remind them again, and they think “Ok I’m ready to buy”. And so at that point of time, in that example, your last click was a remarketing click, which means you had them ready to begin with, it all stems from this initial mobile display, which is even connected to the same use of devices, and so paid search has almost gotten to the point that we’re tolerating inefficient spends.

Andre Alpar: We knew too… it hasn’t been there all the time, but now it’s everywhere, everybody is branding while doing their PPC, like “What?”.

Brad Geddes: You asked a paid search guy for like ten years ago, “ what do you think of TV ads”? He would go like “TV ads are stupid, branding is wasting money” and now there’s a reason the company brand, I mean recognition, and rates go up, it’s finally the traditional is filtering into paid search and unfortunately the whole conversion isn’t going up to traditional as much, but they’re realizing there’s a larger world and they have to play and to adjust. I mean search is 3,5% of our online time spent and we want to play the other 96% of people´s online lives, right? And that’s what you have to deal with.

Andre Alpar: So what do you think of the tool industry? It has always been so predominant in the AdWords and PPC. What do you think of that, is there like a limit to what tools can do? What kind of tools will play a big role in the future? Because sometimes I get the feeling that the tools are becoming so good that they kind of try to make us think that everything can be automated. Well maybe it’s all exaggerating but I want to hear your opinion.

Brad Geddes: Yeah, well the tool market of course is only as good as available data. So as data becomes more available, tools can get better from that. Again there is no mobile to desktop conversion tool, it doesn’t exist. So that’s a market that still has to happen. We’re tool vendors so most tools don’t do things you couldn’t do yourself: what they do is they do it in a more efficient time span. So the big question is: If it took me a hundred hours to do, and maybe I am charging $300 an hour, that’s $30,000 an hour: is the tool going to charge $10,000 of $50,000? And It’s $10,000 so I should buy it, if it’s $50,000, no I shouldn’t. Tools are getting more and more important as they speed the decision-making and the ability to compressed data. But they will never make strategy. Brand strategy, branding, how a slight tweak to a word affects an ad, and affects conversion rates, that’s not going to be for a long time. I man human is…

Andre Alpar: So you think that on the one hand it’s going to be more tool-driven and on the ad creation hand, less ?

Brad Geddes: Yes. And in the ad creation hand you still have tools that help you create lots and lots of ads at once. But you still need the person to say “what’s the right input”. And tools or bad inputs are going to give you bad data. And so tool doesn’t make decisions, it makes decision on inputs. So that human strategy part is not going anywhere.

Andre Alpar: Ok so the task is going to be more “what kind of data can I feed into the tool, where do I get it from, is it get-able at all”, I mean especially if the mobile triggered, when it goes off you have to look at where are people, what could trigger the mobile search and so on.

Brad Geddes: And that’s where, in the US, we’re going to – we have the advantage over a lot of countries in the fact that, well, the advantage is an advantage when you’re a marketer versus a consumer, because there’s a lot of data available about users, so…

Andre Alpar: That’s very unique in the US.

Brad Geddes: Yes, I mean I can deal with ComScore and Pluquai and all these data sources, they can give me income levels, where have been bought a house versus a condo versus a boat in the geography and then I can tweak my ads that way and then there’s a lot more data about people here.

Andre Alpar:Are the consumers aware in the US about this? Or is it more about marketers being aware and amazed about this?

Brad Geddes: Consumers are aware of these privacy issues, there’s no question about that, the whole Snowden thing has made this pretty much a global viewpoint, right, a spotlight into this. They are not aware, sometimes of data sources, when they are giving away data they don’t realize, and things like census data are just open. I mean if you take a census you ask how many people live here, and you know that kind of stuff is pure open market. So in some cases they are worried about that, in some cases they don’t realize where some of these data initiate. Some of us have been tracked for 50 years, they just don’t know it.

Andre Alpar: Does this give you a reason to adjust your bidding strategy to it?

Brad Geddes: So it’s exact, it gives you ability to create bidding hypothesis, to say “yeah we think this would be better because we’re selling boat covers and more people own boats in this area”, or “hey this is lake over here people who live there have boats too and so therefore we should up our spends in that range and then reduce them in areas where there’s no water around them”. Whatever it happens to be.

Andre Alpar: So where’s the difference, I mean you traveled the world teaching about AdWords. What do you think are the differences between here and in Germany or other countries that you have kind of exchanged experiences in?

Brad Geddes: So you have by, okay by country there’s a different level of sophistication, right? So yours is a very sophisticated market, Germany is a very sophisticated market. You have countries, or even continents, it’s like Africa, they skipped the desktop generation, they access the internet first from mobile phone, so their viewpoint is a small screen and not a big screen. If you think of Germany, the US, the UK, I mean in most countries really, we started with desktops, but nevertheless mobile devices are awesome and great, and so we took our desktop experience and made it a mobile experience. In other countries they skipped the desktops, and so the data available is more mobile-driven, which in some cases have carried us past that into ads that are way more location-driven than our is, and some other countries you better location data, you get better consumer information data. Other places it’s more census data. So I mean your market’s sophistication is important, your business type is important, I mean if you go to South America, it’s a lot of local businesses driving people into, as opposed to huge amounts of big commerce.

Andre Alpar: So advertisers are people who want people actually in their store, they’re not selling service online.

Brad Geddes: Maybe, I mean there’s obviously some of them who are selling service online but it’s not the goal. I mean it’s the goal here. If you look at Germany, there are companies in Germany who find better success if they don’t take credit card online but they actually pay per invoices. Now in the US if we did pay per invoices this would be a nightmare right ?! It’s something that happens in Germany.

Andre Alpar: Ok, it’s good stuff. Then thanks for the interview.