Lisa Raehsler: Intersection of SEO and PPC

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Unscripted SEO Podcast. I'm here with Lisa Ressler and we're going to get into the intersection of SEO, ppc, and probably given current events, talking a little bit about marketing through adverse times. So give us a little bit of your backstory, your current company and what you've been working on, then we'll dive in and find those branches in the conversation. [00:00:32] Speaker B: Sure. Well, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here and have this conversation with an SEO, because that is not my specialty. So I think we have some complimentary skills here. And my company is Big Click Co. And I focus on. For 14 years, I've had my own business and I focus on doing PPC ads mostly a lot of Google Ads, Microsoft ads, and then social platforms depending on the, the client and the type of product that they offer. So it could be, you know, Pinterest or Facebook. Just depends. So I'm, I'm really, really interested in, you know, how things are going with AI and how that has really come up has really been moving quickly forward in the past couple years and how it's influencing how we do digital ads. [00:01:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's a couple of stories, there's a couple of overlapping pieces there because if we come back to the fundamentals of SEO and PPC is that we have this search experience, you know, and Google is putting up this live auction on top of what it's displaying, you know, it's kind of putting out this beautiful, you know, stall. You know, you could think of it that way. It's like a marketplace bazaar of, oh, there's this, this stall and this stall. And these vendors are here because you were interested in ham, you know, and they give preferential treatment to the couple of merchants who come along and say, hey, can I get a prime spot for this? And so they haggle and bargain barter and say, okay, well, you can get the best stall here for this much money because this many people come to find ham. But now, and, and the, the trade off has always been, you know, the advertising. And the reason people are really there is the rest of the vendors are doing their stuff. You know, they've got their artisanal meats, they've got their, their deli cuts, and they're supposed to be selected, you know, in Surface in a way that's an as appetizing and enticing. But with AI overviews, suddenly in front of all of the other stalls is a Google, you know, laundry list that is, is basically a rehash of what the other stalls already have. And so like they don't even send people on off to those other vendors. So that's the challenge that we're seeing it. And when it comes to AI overviews and AI search, and that's just one particular facet, but I'm curious from the pay per click side from those vendors who are paying for that prime placement, often now they're getting displaced and having those AI overviews come first, it's also not clear within those ecosystems, as far as I know of. Uh, can you get a paid. How do paid ads work when it comes to surfacing information that is in an AI overview? So I'd love to get your take on what impact you've seen as far as or click through rate on your ads or adjustments to your campaigns specifically tied to those AI overviews. [00:04:14] Speaker B: So they don't give us reporting on the AI overviews. And when the ads are showing up there in relation to any other search results, they don't blend that information for us. So it's hard to say. And it's one of those things where I think you kind of manually have to go and do some research on your own as to where you're showing up in the results. They, you know, there's also, they're releasing more information actually Microsoft ads is where they're, they're starting to test ads that are actually in copilot that are integrated with your AI query, I guess you could say. And so, you know, that's really interesting. But with the ads showing up in Google, they're not really telling us if the AI overviews are coming up. But it does seem like the AI overviews that are showing up are more informational. [00:05:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:20] Speaker B: So if you're looking, if your keyword themes are more product focused or. [00:05:30] Speaker A: You. [00:05:30] Speaker B: Know, farther down the funnel, more specific, then you're more likely to have ads there than an AI overview. [00:05:39] Speaker A: Yeah. But definitely the grouping of intents does skew that. So there's less of an overview. And Google does. They're also keeping us in the SEO world in the dark in Google search console and not giving us any additional stats or information about, you know, which queries were triggered triggering organic or AI overviews and what clicks came from AI overview or distinguishing or differentiating them in a meaningful way that we can spot or identify it. It does have to come through manual. So we're seeing, we're, we're also blind. And so I know that there is an impact like we're seeing studies about, you know, increased amounts of zero click instances, you know, where people come to the serp, they type something in and then they leave because they're satisfied because well, they found the information that Google said says that they needed but at the expense of the publishers and the creators and the people, the actual authority sources that have created content. So definitely a struggle on that side. I am curious about what it's going to look like with that Microsoft Copilot test case of integrating those ads into those results. Do you know if they like have very conspicuous ad branding on them or call outs or is it kind of more googly of like trying to get by as sneakily as possible and put call, you know, put a, the smallest possible plain text ad disclaimer they can. [00:07:23] Speaker B: So they're doing really limited tests right now. So the only way that I have personally seen it is through the reps and through like the partner meetings and those, those sorts of meetings. But what it looks like is it's actually in, in Copilot, so it's not in Bing and the ads will, the ads will be showing up. What I saw was an example of at the bottom and what they were also talking about is that you know, rather than the, the concept of them being keyword focused that they are, the ads are being served based on the, the context of the entire conversation. [00:08:10] Speaker A: Interesting, right? That seems to abdicate even more control to a murky system of trust us, will will get it in in front of the people that matter. Which in my experience with Google Ads has been problematic at best. Set up ad campaigns and they've kind of implied hey trust us, there's lots of things that can go wrong in your ads show up in all kinds of ways and forms and to people that don't matter. So kind of feels a bit black box, right? [00:08:52] Speaker B: And you know, that's especially true when they've been really pushing broad match more. And you know, for anyone who doesn't know, that is just a much broader way for your keyword to match up to the queries so there's more room for mistakes or for you know, your ad to be triggered by irrelevant searches. So you know, while at the same time, while the AI overviews are being surfaced more at the same time they're promoting and pushing the PMAX ad campaign type more which is you know, in the search results but also on the Google properties in Gmail and just you know, all, all over across the web display ads on partner sites and that sort of thing. So I mean those two things are going on at the same time. So when you ask, you asked earlier about the click through rate, it's, it's sort of hard with all of those different variables coming into play right now to say what is the absolute reason for what's going on? [00:10:05] Speaker A: I think are you seeing a trend towards more ad efficiency with these developments or is it you're seeing people are having to spend more to get the same amount? [00:10:21] Speaker B: I'm not seeing much of a difference in the budget, but what I'm seeing is that purely keyword campaigns are having a little bit of trouble, maybe like being shown a little bit less. There's, there's less activity. Whereas if you're pairing the keyword searches with audiences and blending more targeting types, they're getting more exposure, they're getting more impressions. [00:10:52] Speaker A: So one thing I'm curious about, it was talking with a friend of mine, Michael McDougald, about a project he was working on and he was thinking about the dark social aspects of how you know, like platforms like TikTok and Instagram, um, you know, they're not really set up or, or to drive clicks. You know, they're in terms of like they're organic, like people are just there to scroll. You know, they're just doom scrolling all day long. So with more and more platforms that you know, like in Instagram, you literally cannot link directly to stuff. You have to have this, you know, profile link pro over complicated process. I'm not super familiar with how ads fall on TikTok, but when it comes to the social media side, how do you deal with that? That, how do you leverage? I suppose you're on the opposite side of it because on my side I'm like, how do you deal with that? And you're like, how do you, how do you exploit that? Or how can you benefit from most of the ecosystem not having clicks? And you know, it does seem there are path, they add those paths in for ads to make you pay to play. [00:12:16] Speaker B: Right. So there are so many different channels that we could talk about because I'll see, you know, I get exposure mostly to LinkedIn or YouTube. And you're right, there are a lot of ways that you can interact with the ad before you could click through. Yeah, before you click through to something. So it's helpful when we have that, that sort of information like you know, interaction rates, obviously the impressions, all of you know, where we're looking at a, a much wider range of data points than just if they're clicking through for E commerce. You know, obviously there, that's a completely different animal, completely different techniques to get someone to click through and purchase. But in a lot of these, you know, advertisers are offering some other sort of a lead magnet or some other type of an offer to kind of get that warm lead in so that they can then remarket to them. So it's a, you know, it can be a multi step process. So those, those views and those interactions where it seems that they might be less valuable than a click through the website. They're, they're valuable, very valuable in their own way because we can create all of these remarketing lists from it. [00:13:53] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, remarketing was something that came up on another. I think it was a, yeah, it was a, a car dealership and they were doing the ad spend and sending people to the site and it occurred to me that they were sending them to a landing page and you know, that was basically it, you know, and, and if they converted, they converted. If not, they go into the ether. I'm like, it seems to me that remarketing nowadays could be even more powerful than it was, you know, 10 years ago when I last worked with Raven Tools. And that's the last active remarketing campaign that I'd seen on the ground. It seems with these closed loop social media systems and platforms where people are engaging all of the time, that remarketing and building that exposed audience almost seems like a bigger cornerstone of any good campaign. Is that true? [00:14:55] Speaker B: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean there's, there's almost this unlimited number of opportunities that you can use for remarketing and you can create lists based on, like I said, those interactions. If someone's going to your like, for example, just use, use YouTube as an example. If someone's going to your channel on YouTube, if somebody watched your video on YouTube, all of that information is integrated into Google Ads. And then you could, you can layer that with other types of audience targeting. So you, and as you know, Google is looking at the billions of different signals about that person who is, who is doing these actions. Right. So they know who I am, what I'm interested in. You know, if I go, if I'm, if I'm searching for a car, I'm obviously going to be, be conducting several, several searches, watching different videos, looking at reviews. There's a lot of steps in, in that type of a process. And so at many of those touch points we can capture those audiences and you know, we lead them through the funnel until they get to the click. So I mean, unless it's in the majority of cases you don't really need to click to, to see a car. You know what I mean? You're not buying, in most cases you're not buying the car online. So you know, you just want to get them to, you know, to come in. You want to get them elite the lead information so you can give them a call if they're you know, doing personal selling. So all of that is you know, getting very sophisticated. I like how you kind of threw out that 10 year mark. Yes. It used to be a lot simpler. Like here's the, you know, here's everybody who came to our website. Here are all the visitors. Now we can just follow them around. It's way more complicated than that. Now in also along with that is the push for the first party data and advertisers uploading their customer lists. [00:17:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:11] Speaker B: And almost every platform offers that as a, as a feature. [00:17:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:20] Speaker B: So you know, they're matching, the platforms are matching your customer list to their known users and you can use that in you know, a wide variety of ways to reach people and mix and match it with different audience like audience lists and in market lists and interest lists. And the other cool thing you can do with it is they take the, you know, the profile of your, of your customers and they will find, they will identify the like similar lists, lookalike lists, they have a couple of different types of names so they can find new customers they that fit that Persona or the profile of who your current customers are. [00:18:03] Speaker A: So then if you're, you know, if you're a commercial real estate company like your goal should be, hey, I want to gather as many client emails that I currently can get my hands on legally and relevantly and get them into these different parts of the ecosystem through to these different tools because then the, the stronger, the bigger the bucket you have then the better that lookalike audience is going to be. Right. Like if you. So that kind of ties back to your own thinking about your content marketing campaign. And instead of your objective being okay, I want them to convert it almost makes it as valuable ultimately just to get them into your email system like focusing once again on you know, giving them a deliverable, giving them a downloadable, giving them an event to go to where or giving it, you know, giveaways and other things to capture that email makes it not quite as valuable. Obviously if, if it's commercial real estate that's like million dollar deals. But you can be sure to better target your ads, better target your reach and demand building to those people that actually matter. If the people that if you are Doing your work to create content to convert them to an email. So then you can circle back and feed the top of the funnel. Is that. [00:19:43] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yes, definitely. Especially when you're talking something like commercial real estate and cars. I like those examples because they have a really long buying cycle. So you have plenty of time to reach them, reconnect with them, nurture them along. If they're downloading a brochure on LinkedIn, you can retarget them later, knowing that they've, they've already expressed interest and take them to the next message, the next phase. Phase in their research. Yeah, and you can, I mean, there's this unlimited amount of ways you can mix and match all that. But yeah, like you said, the more data you have, the, the richer data set that you have, the more, the more valuable those like lookalike audiences are. Or there's, they call them all kinds of different things like new customers or lookalikes. That's been around for a while. But, and, and those lists are also a lot more sophisticated than they used to be. Also, like you're saying like 10 years ago, I'd be like, oh, yeah, this is, you know, here's, here's a guy and then here's another guy. So they're, they're the same. They can, you know, look at all of these different signals to match them up a little bit better. [00:21:06] Speaker A: So it kind of struck me there, that 3%, I know that there's a stat floating out there that, you know, 3% of the people are actually trans. Transaction ready for any particular vertical, vertical search category. Like, if somebody is searching for something, the chances that that person at that moment is ready right now, they got money in their hand and ready to go. That's really just 3% of the people. So how do you structure your campaigns to kind of nurture that 97% or coach your potential clients to look at their ad campaigns? Not only that, that transactional level that, hey, they're buying right now, let's target just keywords where they're just like, they're just going to buy right now because it's such a small window. How do you, how do you have that conversation, sell that value without lying or without like overselling the, that upper, you know, upper echelon of that process, that 97%, like, how do you balance those two things? [00:22:27] Speaker B: So the, with, with the keyword themes that we're using or the types of audiences that we're using, they, they usually fall into some sort of logical bucket for searcher intent and you know, very loosely. They're, you know, going to be, you know, researching the concept, then they're going to refine, refine their searches or they're going to be on more like detailed kind of audience lists. As they go down. I still like the, the funnel analogy, but as they go down the funnel, as they get to that 3% and then, you know, at the 3%, they're, you know, we're looking at search intent by say, specific, very specific products, brand names. You see there a lot price, that, that sort of thing. So it's really a matter of, you know, designing the campaigns around that customer journey because it really does, it does work that way. And I think we're, you know, kind of circling back to the AI overviews. I think where we're seeing those is sort of is, you know, way up at the top of that, that funnel where they're getting the most general information. But as you go further down and people are refining their searches and their research experience, their. We're not going to see as many of those AIO reviews. And that's where we can target them with a different messaging. [00:24:05] Speaker A: When people are coming on board with you, what's, what's your top two go to items. How do you, what do you look at first when evaluating a new client for a campaign? [00:24:19] Speaker B: That's a good question. I think, man, it's like what, you know, we say in the search industry, how, it depends. But I mean, you want to, let's see, evaluating a client, I mean, you want to make sure that they're dedicated to it, you know, and I'm sure this happens in SEO a lot where you'll have, you'll have businesses that are looking for help, but they're also really skeptical of the process. And I look for, I look for somebody who, you know, is all in, I guess, you know, who's really, who is really dedicated to making it work. And a lot of the setup where, where we begin, you know, having, making sure that the metrics are all set up, that they have analytics, that they have all the tracking, because if they don't have those resources, we're not going to be able to accurately measure the results and, you know, get and optimize, you know, get down to, you know, where they're seeing a good return on their investment for the ads. So I think that, you know, making sure we have a stable foundation from the beginning in terms of budget. I. When you, it gets a little trickier when you're working with clients that have a small media budget. But at the same time, that is really an opportunity to help them grow because if they are getting results, they're going to invest more into the ad programs. You'd be crazy not to, right? [00:25:58] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, you guys have, have a huge advantage over the SEO industry because you really are a demand, demand generation program. You know, like you're taking concepts and putting them in front of new people to kind of generate demand. And on the SEO side, it's very more reactive of like, you look for the demand and then you build the content to kind of support it. So I've been encouraging my SEO folks and peers to, to kind of look at how to partner up and couple the two. You know, like there was an example of an influencer campaign where they, you know, secured an influencer to promote these specific pink pants and they went, you know, semi viral and they, they got a whole bunch of influencers at the same time to wear those same pink pants. But the generic search for like those, for pink pants, they didn't have any. They won the item that they were trying to sell. They only had a limited stock, so they sold out of their pants within like a day. And then because they didn't have stock in place, they were bumped out of the SERPs and they basically just spent a bunch of money running ads and influencers to promote something where they didn't rank anymore because, you know, TikTok and other Instagram, that traffic for that item that was so hot, you know, they, they didn't have the organic presence for it. So I've been encouraging, looking, you know, SEOs to look at how we can partner with good PPC programs and good PPC partners and think about the demand generation process, but couple it with, you know, knowing what your organic SEO strengths are like what you currently rank for. Because there's always that, I hate the word but synergy, like there's that 10% magic of oh, hey, I rank number one for this and I run an ad and we get 10% more out of it than a keyword where we don't rank out of it. So what's been your experience with cross channel working with outside SEO teams that have been a success or, or any best practices that you, you use or encourage other PPC practitioners to use to couple and tie those two sides of the equation together. [00:28:36] Speaker B: The, I don't, I don't remember what the stat is for that where you, what you talked about having an organic result and having an ad, but it boosts everybody's, everybody's activity. It boosts all of the numbers. So that's, and then that, then this like tangent in my head is, it's like I'm, you know, when they said you shouldn't the debate over if you should bid on your brand name. I'm sure you've heard that a million times. And the, you know, cannibalization of this to that one and I mean that's going to vary for everybody. But it does, it does boost everything. All of the click through rates and results. The, you know, one of the other advantages for ads is that we can help to fill in the gaps of the SEO. But it's definitely, it's definitely important. It's definitely a key, key piece that we want to be looking at that we can learn from by you know, looking at the queries, what, what, where the, where the traffic is going. But yeah, we do, we, I mean we have to pay for it. But we do have the advantage to give, you know, to be able to put out certain messages, specific messages where it gets a little more difficult with SEO. So think, you know, so think about, you have these, these results, the organic results and then you can serve an ad that is likely to show up near the organic results. But in the ad you can talk about the promotions for that month. [00:30:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:15] Speaker B: So I mean you're just getting so much power out of using those two channels together. So there's, I mean that's just one small example. And when you go into using the various channels across the channels, so maybe doing something on LinkedIn that you can retarget that, I mean Google or there's just, you know, again, endless possibilities for that. And they do all have to work together if you just do, you know, one, you really are not, you know, you're gonna, you're going to be fine. But you know, you could get a lot farther if you can get all of these channels to work together in a strategic way. [00:31:03] Speaker A: You kind of just inspired me because I, I've seen two problems. So one was a brand called Save Fry Oil and they're in the commercial kitchen space and they've got a special tool that they sell to commercial kitchen owners. And but when you search for their brand name, they literally do not show up. It shows, you know, save your file.com results. And then another guy just messaged me on Twitter. He said, you know, we launched our brand last month, but when we search for Lead Truffle, all my personal stuff comes up. My videos come up. The interview you did with me comes up, you know, because I did a unscripted interview with him, but lead truffle doesn't yet come up. And I know that there's a feedback loop Google has told us or implied. And we've kind of figured out, hey, if you, if you have a certain quotient ratio of branded clicks versus non or non branded clicks, Google sees you as, you know, trustworthy. But that's extremely hard when Google won't even show your site for your specific brand query. Um, I know I was mulling it over this morning of, you know, oh, we can go to build their knowledge graph entries and try to get branded backlinks, which is great, but if we could just show up for that serp. You just inspired me to say, well, why don't we run some ads specifically to that branded phrase to incentivize Google to surface that SERP differently. So that kind of comes down to a question of how do you approach for a new company, for a new site that hasn't existed? What do you do for ads in Google search and or other platforms to help establish that visibility? What are the hallmarks? I know Morty Oberstein loves to talk about brand when it comes to SEO and how we've ignored it, but I'd like your take on how, how companies should look at their brand, especially if they're brand new and want to get gained visibility, particularly for their brand name. [00:33:19] Speaker B: Yes, I think that's, that's great. I mean, we, obviously, we get that a lot and there will do keyword research, but there's nothing. There's nothing because it doesn't exist yet. So now you have to figure out a way to say, I have this kitchen equipment. No one knows about me. How do I, how do I say, hey, we're here, we're new, we're awesome, check us out. Because they're not going to be searching on the brand. They don't know your brand yet. Also, when companies do brand changes. [00:33:54] Speaker A: Yes. [00:33:56] Speaker B: I love how they just make that decision so, so quickly or, you know, so nonchalantly, like, yeah, let's just change it to this. It's like, oh my gosh, that is a lot. But one, you know, besides, actually when I, when that happened, when I work with those types of clients or products, the brand name, I just don't, I don't even, I, I put it in there just in case and you'll see it grow over time, but it doesn't really have a ton of value at that time. But what is really valuable is doing competitive campaigns. [00:34:28] Speaker A: Okay. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Doing the sort of like the Generic product offering. So you know, kitchen equipment for like this example, you know, so the different types of kitchen equipment, the brand name, like I said, the brand names of those competitors. Brand names of the competitors. [00:34:45] Speaker A: Okay. [00:34:46] Speaker B: And you would, you might want to do audience targeting in like in market audiences so that you're looking at the specific buyer of the kitchen equipment. So I don't know if that's like owners, managers, chefs, but you can, but you can find them and you know where they are on the web and say, hey, we've got this, this piece of equipment that you probably haven't heard of yet. And you know, that's where the ad copy is really important, you know, to kind of say, hey, we want to, you know, introduce our brand here. We, this is what our offering is, here's what the value is. So all of those tactics, just like right off the top of my head is what I would recommend for people. And it's so I love doing that type of thing. It's such a challenge and you get to be very creative rather than when you have, you know, sort of these old established brands where it's kind of like the same formula. [00:35:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about when it's like not a sexy industry and you're trying to come up with ad copy like your land clearing or stump grinding. Like how do you, how do you approach creativity for you know, waste oil heater commercial B2B plays. [00:36:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Like slurry pumps. Yes. Right. Water. What's that? Water remediation. [00:36:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:26] Speaker B: Different. Right. So how do you, how do you approach that? The, you know, someone, if, if it's a business, someone is buying it. So some, they're, they're, they're going to be searching for something related to that. They're still going to have competitors that sell whatever this thing is. I think the competitive campaigns are, are really important because if they're looking up the competitor, they're, they know what they're, they already know what they're looking for. So all you're doing is saying, hey, we offer that too. [00:37:02] Speaker A: Putting in your bid as an alternative at that point, which they've self identified that they are far enough down the campaign, campaign trail of. They're, they're not wondering what is stump grinding. They're, they're doing that active analysis of okay, I need it. I think I found one. Are there others? [00:37:24] Speaker B: Yes. Or they're look, yeah, they're looking for Jeremy's stump grinding. And because they've heard of you, they saw a truck or, you know, who knows? And you would want to bid on, on those keywords or those themes to just to offer them an another option. Here's another option. Here's Lisa's stump grinding. [00:37:52] Speaker A: Got it. So it's about finding the, so it, it's interesting because you know, like in order to reach the same conclusion in SEO it's you so much more work to try to stage in position and create content and get backlinks so that it ranks for that. But you have the superpower of testing the market with ppc, of seeing what the potential is and kind of testing some of your value propositions on your, on what you put out there, how you define your usp. A part of a good pay per click campaign is, you know, running those AB tests and variants on your ads to find out what resonates and what doesn't. [00:38:39] Speaker B: Definitely. Yeah. And that's, and, and the example of the competitors, I mean we are, you can have different ad groups per the competitors. It's a very competitive market. There's a lot of stuff going on. I'm thinking of a software client that has, they did like influencer software type of product and you know, there's like 10 other people that do this software. If you're searching, if you're researching this software, you're not necessarily, necessarily like married to the concept of any one of these. So to, you know, get messages that show up from, you know, different, a different alternative and maybe you know, this is an easier alternative, this is a cheaper alternative, whatever the messaging may be. Um, yeah, that's super valuable. Plus we can see based on say those 10 competitors, say there's five or 10 competitors, we can see which ones are showing up more. [00:39:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:41] Speaker B: So where are we? Like I like, I like to think of it, I'm like where, you know, like which one are we getting the most action from? So you can see what are the most popular competitors based on, you know, the impressions, the clicks and the activity that's coming in and you see who your biggest threat is. And a lot of times we'll also find out that your competitor isn't as significant as they thought it was. [00:40:07] Speaker A: What are the rules when it comes to advertising to show up for competitors when it comes to copyright, trademark and domain protection limitations? Like what is the current state of play around that in Google? How aggressive is it and is it something you have to worry about on other platforms and, or am I making up a problem that functionally doesn't actually exist? [00:40:36] Speaker B: No, it's been a problem that has existed forever. So when I, when I first started out there would, it was actually a lot, it was actually a lot more dramatic because you know, companies would be very offended if you were showing up for, you know, their brand name. And so the, the last time I checked the, the guidelines around that is you can't use the competitor's name in your ad in the ad copy, but you can use it as a keyword to trigger the ad. [00:41:11] Speaker A: Okay. [00:41:12] Speaker B: And in, in some cases you can't. [00:41:16] Speaker A: Use the what about exact match domain. Like somebody registers stairhandrail.com and their brand is Stair Handrail. Does, does Google ident allow them to, you know, have that trademark like homes.com like obviously it exists. You know, is there trademark on homes? Can you not include homes in your ad because they've claimed that space by calling their company Homes. [00:41:48] Speaker B: That probably wouldn't fly. Like that's a, that's a, that's an interesting use case. But you can't, you know, you can't be like QuickBooks competitor and then use QuickBooks in the ad because it's deceptive and then on one side and it is a trademark violation. So some of the bigger companies will also, they file these trademark papers with Google. So you can't even use it as a keyword. So that's, that's how it usually works. [00:42:22] Speaker A: Got it. So once you get enough clout, you can stop Google from using your, your brand name as an ad. But most, most markets will probably not have that level of competition. [00:42:38] Speaker B: Yes. Again, you cannot put it in the ad, an ad copy that shows up. You can only use it as a keyword like behind the scenes to trigger it. So in that like behind the scenes, you can use their brand name, their URL, all of their product names. You can do anything you want. [00:42:59] Speaker A: Got it. [00:43:00] Speaker B: You're. Yeah. You're just bidding on it as a keyword. No, no one knows what, what you're bidding on. And oftentimes when you, okay, so companies think, oh, you're bidding on my brand name, my properly my brand name. It could be some variation of it. It could be like some kind of even generic variation of it. So you never know really what people are doing. But to use it in it's like it's purest form is really, you're just saying I have other options. If you go to the grocery store, you're not going to see just one type of potato chip. So this is just, that's how I think of it. You know, we have the, we have the right to see all of the potato chips available. [00:43:51] Speaker A: That makes Sense. That makes sense. I love that. So kind of wrapping up the conversation. If there was one action item you'd recommend, any listener, whether they're an SEO or they happen to be a small business owner, what's your strongest, like, do this right now and you'll see some sort of benefit. [00:44:16] Speaker B: Right now what I would do is take, do a special audit of your campaigns and your digital marketing program to see what the impact has been from the economy, the slowing economy, and if there's any ways that you can minimize risk moving forward. Since it seems like, you know, we're, we're going to be having issues with that for a while. [00:44:48] Speaker A: Got it. [00:44:49] Speaker B: That's the first thing I would do is, you know, look at, you know, make sure that the messaging is appropriate for the economic environment for what consumers are searching for right now. [00:45:02] Speaker A: Right. [00:45:03] Speaker B: And, you know, sync that up because you'll be more successful. You're going to have a, you know, better results if you're speaking to people based on, you know, the conditions of the world right now. Like, like, for example, I, I was on YouTube. I love to watch YouTube and I don't know why, but I was served an ad for a Rolex watch. Yeah, that, well, that was probably bad targeting. But at the same time, you know, I don't know if, you know, luxury brands are not, are probably not going to be faring well right now. And you know, they really would need, I think that's somebody who would really need to rethink their strategy and that might be something where luxury brands are, you know, looking at those types of products as an investment maybe. Yeah, so that's what, you know, that's what I would, I would be doing. I would be looking at these things. Oh, I just thought of this. The, you know, obviously with the international trade, I would very seriously look at, you know, how that, how that will affect your business. But remember to carry it over to your ads. So if there's going to be a problem with inventory, don't, obviously don't advertise that anymore. You know, you gotta make adjustments. And the ads, a lot of people forget that sort of thing. So. And likewise, if you're in a, in an industry where somehow your product is made in America, that might be messaging that you want to add. Maybe it was not a big deal last year, but it is this year. So. [00:46:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that's definitely true because there's two sides of that coin of like to taking the caution and pulling ads, but also, you know, it's winners and losers. So like, if There is a stronger messaging if, if you want to reinforce that, you do that. You, you haven't had problems with it because you have an alternate supply line. That definitely makes sense. So I'm thinking like how to echo that back and you know, kind of economic situationalize organic content as well. Putting on that bigger, you know, supply chain hat, thinking about that type of play. That's brilliant. I like that very much. Thank you for your time, Lisa. It's been interesting. Kind of crossing the streams and having a conversation with two pieces of the puzzle. I think I'm going to a panel and see if I can get an email person and an AI search person. So would you be down for being my PPC person on a panel coming up? [00:47:49] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I, I love that. And yeah, email is, email is another, another good one. I'm not an expert at that, but that's just, that's such a great opportunity to cross pollinate our marketing channels. Right. [00:48:05] Speaker A: I know. It's this whole organ organism where we've kind of, kind of niched down and we're so focused on our own specific things that we kind of forget to bump elbows and like, you know, talk to each other because there are so many opportunities to thread that line through multiple channels. Get the social media manager with the PPC with SEO and email, you know, getting it all tied together in a nice little bundle. Because there used to be a time where we were asked to do all those things as a single person, as the webmaster. You know, like, I'm glad we're not in the webmaster days anymore because, like, there's a reason that we've specialized because there's so much more to know. But I think with that specialization comes the growing pains and the growing up of like, okay, now we need to talk to another person or another team or department or department head and collaborate and tie these things together. So, yeah, I'm going to set that up. I'll message you and anybody listening. I'll be put out more firm details as that solidifies as an idea at the end of a podcast, something real. But thank you so much for your time, Lisa. I've really enjoyed the conversation. [00:49:28] Speaker B: Me too. Thank you so much.