Episode Transcript
Lisa Raehsler: [00:00:00] Welcome to AI Ads and Beyond. I'm Lisa Raehsler. This is the podcast where we discuss how artificial intelligence is changing paid advertising, strategy and performance. Today we're talking about AI and PPC and small businesses. Some of the challenges and some of the opportunities. With me today is Jeremy Yang.
He's the founder and CEO of Digital Goliath, a paid ads agency in Sydney, Australia, focused on Google ads meta ads and performance driven growth. Welcome, Jeremy.
Jeremy Yang: Great to be here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here, Lisa,
Lisa Raehsler: it's great to have you. Before we dive into this exciting topic, can you tell me a little bit about how you got into PBC?
Jeremy Yang: Yeah, sure thing. I'll give you the short version. So basically I was late in my late twenties, had a, like a midlife crisis where I didn't do business doing at the.
I was [00:01:00] actually a technician. I was on the road a lot. And then I went back to uni full time to study just to get a degree. And the only thing I was good at was marketing came out, came out as a mature age student, couldn't really get a job, but I had did a few pa unpaid internships and bounced around until, one of my bosses at the time, where I was working said I was, he felt like the way I did marketing was very impatient.
He said, you so impatient. Because everything I wanted to work instantly and because it didn't said the only thing that's gonna work instantly is paid advertising. So I ended up getting myself into that game. Yeah, and loved it ever since, because it's still probably the quickest thing to get more results.
Lisa Raehsler: What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding about AI and PPC for small businesses? Because I know you work a lot with small businesses.
Jeremy Yang: Yeah, we do. So when we're talking about PPC, we, we, including meta and stuff as well, meta ads and Google ads.[00:02:00]
Okay. Yes. Alright. So I think that the, one of the misunderstandings is that small businesses think that the automation is gonna help them or make them do things faster. What I think the misunderstanding there is that you, it actually levels the playing field for all small businesses. If you were doing something that was quite like time consuming before, now everyone just caught up.
And if the bigger guys have more data, they can amplify everything they're doing with ai. So there's actually no advantage for a small business. Most of the time. I would say there's no advantage for a small business. I think that the only places that they kind of feel a little bit quicker, or they can start executing a bit better is on things like graphics, videos, scripting, ad copy.
But the thing about AI, when it AI's injected into all of this is it's the table stakes, if that makes sense. [00:03:00] Yeah. That's what I think People are optimistic about it, but what they don't understand is that it's actually increases competition for whatever they're doing.
So because the resource is so cheap, now everybody has that. So now everybody has that and the bigger guys have even better system in place now and can do things even quicker than you.
Speaker: What do you think they can do to win in that area?
Jeremy Yang: To me, small businesses though, the biggest problem they always had is the offer. It's hard to get customer for them. So I think that in terms of like talking to you, like someone, like a strategist, I think now they have to think even deeper and even get sharper with the offers that they have because with more noise and more higher quality advertising, like in terms of creatives and everything, the differentiator is the offer.
It's whatever that other people can't replicate.
Lisa Raehsler: Right. That's what I mean. Can you give me an example of Yeah,
Jeremy Yang: yeah, sure. So let's just say that you [00:04:00] know, you have a very generic, a space, like a local business, a very generic space. AI is gonna able to help you get sharper on your avatar.
Example. So now you'd be able to say, use AI to create a avatar, which took long time to do before, and now you can create this. You can ask question, ask about what the hidden fears are, what they're not telling you. You can even test the offers on them to see how they'll respond, how you could make a sharper, right.
That's something that I guess could do. Another thing, ai. Very good. Now. Analysis. So that's a step that I think small business will, will have to take to really work out where the open is, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Lisa Raehsler: It seems like. Competitive analysis is one of those areas where a lot of companies will fall short.
So I think that it would be a distinct advantage for small businesses if they're on top of that and they can really push that forward and build [00:05:00] a model, to monitor their competitors. They can, yes, from everything from their business strategy to their ad strategy, they can really rise to the surface in that area.
Jeremy Yang: You guys see, people will, will try to AI the strategy, right? And then that's probably not a very good idea because they don't have discernment to know what, they don't have the kind of discernment to know what's gonna work or not.
AI just kind of spits out a whole array of things. And they're stuck in the same position, not knowing the direction. Do you feel that, or do you, like, what's your experience on the ground now with AI in place?
Lisa Raehsler: Well, I think in order for them to get the, do you mean the strategy in general? The strategy with competitors?
Jeremy Yang: Strategy in general, marketing strategy.
Lisa Raehsler: I think they, if they're putting in the right data and prompting the correct way, or building their, their custom chatbots with the right [00:06:00] information, that they will get strong direction from the beginning on, on strategies and ways to, on ways to approach their strategies.
Telling the, giving them the model, what their, what their goals are. All the information about their business, who their competitors are. So it can use not only, you know, its trained knowledge base, but also the knowledge, you know, from that particular business
I feed all of that into it. So I have sort of like my side strategy buddy and I can say, Hey, I'm, I'm working on this client right now, and we're looking at mixing up their CTAs. What do you think?
Jeremy Yang: So you, you're actually for it. Like you're all, all for it. Like having AI assisting a little bit in strategy, even.
Lisa Raehsler: I mean, you can work faster, can research. It can research the competitors and also [00:07:00] trends, market trends. Yes.
Jeremy Yang: Yeah.
Lisa Raehsler: In the past, it would take hours and hours to get updates on the industry. What are your competitors doing? Going to every site, looking at their press releases. And so I think it just really speeds up the process of, of the strategy. But it does, you know, it does come down to the human to review that and say, does that really make sense when I'm doing a reality check?
Jeremy Yang: Yeah, ab absolutely. And I know that with your clients, it, they're actually a bit bigger, a lot of them, right. Than just small, small, tiny businesses. Right. So that's what I think the media and the bigger guys will now even have a bigger, because they're amplifying the advantage, the leverage.
Lisa Raehsler: So how do small businesses get started? So what are the first few things they can put into play
Jeremy Yang: when it comes to paid advertising
Lisa Raehsler: well into their automation? Into their automation or how they're using automation to get [00:08:00] started?
Jeremy Yang: I think they can, there's a lot of tools where they can, they can use it to save time. Like automation around, like what you said about, about updating on the industry. I, I think that when it comes to, I can only speak on my field of paid advertising, I think the, the really good ones is the bulk analysis.
I think that you have to have that in place if you can find a way to, like get notified of certain red flags. Like that. I think that's really, really helpful. Another one I think is around using it to create, systematically create like any pages and ads, that kind of a copy. Yeah, that's a massive one because used to take so long, just get anything done.
Lisa Raehsler: Definitely I paid ads is one of those areas where the ads are so. Short, the content is so small and short that if it takes so long to do it, to write it.
Jeremy Yang: And ads like depends on the, how much small, particular, small businesses is [00:09:00] spending. I think the burnout rate is even getting quicker and quicker now.
Right. How quickly things are getting burnt out. Like the creatives or the ads, because the, the, the platforms are always starving for fresh things. Okay.
Speaker: Like
Jeremy Yang: yeah, always.
Speaker: Yeah. the ad fatigue.
Jeremy Yang: Yeah. Google and YouTube. Not as bad Meta. And meta is, is like crazy bad now.
It's like you gotta swap out things if you're spending like hundred a day even, you gotta swap out things like almost every two, three days.
Lisa Raehsler: Okay.
Jeremy Yang: Yeah. And I think having the, the resources behind you to do all of that. I think that's, that's important. So for me, it's hard for me to answer that question because straight away my head goes to ai.
Lisa Raehsler: If the small business has the results on the meta ads, are they able to take that information, like the ad performance and feed that into the AI to get the better recommendations and better versions?
Jeremy Yang: I think that the technology un, unless they're paying for some really expensive tools, [00:10:00] I think that technology is not there yet to analyze the videos and the graphics correctly.
I'm gonna tell you Agy way to do it and not everyone's gonna agree with me, it's gonna come down to the naming convention of your ads and the campaign that ad sets. So with that on a spreadsheet or even piped straight in through the, like the link integrated, through the a, I think that's gonna be a lot easier for the small business because model can do language model.
We talking about reading what the graphic was is dark tree, or you were wearing a bright dress that day, do more of those ads. That's the dream, but it's not there. I'm testing. So models not there and, and honestly I think that for a small business, that kind of analysis won't even help that much.
Lisa Raehsler: So how do you think small businesses should approach that? Or do you think they should hold on and wait until there are better technologies?
Jeremy Yang: I think they definitely should wait for the technology to converge a [00:11:00] little bit because I think that right now, the technology is too divergent and whatever they're gonna use and implement, it's gonna change very quickly and they're gonna have to learn a new system again, a new system.
So I think that the, they have to find the stuff that's gonna, sustain the business, not about the technology. The stuff that really matters. Like sharpening their offer, sharpening their, their ways of doing business, looking at the broader strokes and not focus on the actual tool. That's what I think.
Lisa Raehsler: Do you think, you know, one of my questions is around trust and small businesses, relationships with the platforms. For Google ads meta ads, and. The automation and the internal tools that create assets for them. Tell me your point of view on that, and if small businesses who have a lot to lose, should they be trusting the AI [00:12:00] in their platforms right now?
Jeremy Yang: I think that when it comes to AI platform recommendations, definitely look at it with a skeptical eye because the, especially small business, because their, their money, their ad spend is like their lifeblood asking small business $3,000 a month in ad spend is, is huge for them. They could have done a lot of things with that money, even though the platforms don't see that.
So the recommendations don't really think about. That human level of, you know, that hundred a lot of money for them. So they'll recommend anything. They'll recommend increase their budget. They recommend test something. Tell their clients, man, like if you spend like thousand dollars outta a thousand budget and it hasn't work, it's not gonna work, it's not gonna miraculously do some machine learning all of a sudden, you know, are gonna pop up.
So definitely don't, don't trust that type of stuff. In terms of how risky, it's, I think it's even more riskier than, than for businesses where there's like a legal implication [00:13:00] around courses, around government, around, because when you trust the AI to write some of that stuff,
They'll make a click baiting. Information from other businesses that doesn't apply to you. So yeah, if, if that's the layer we're talking about. Yeah. That you can't, you can't trust that. What it can do really well now is, again, going back to the same thing, which is images and, and videos. Platforms are building it in into their things.
Google is building in, video creation software. AI text overlay on top of image used to take forever to do it, right? So now it's all fold into one. So if you were trying to save a bit of time on that, you can trust that, that's no problems. And then another thing that, the platforms are adding into both Meta and Google is the, allowing to prompt natural language.
do a comparison of this it for about a minute and a and a table come out that tech used to take forever to do in meta. What they've added recently [00:14:00] is the natural language of talking about who you wanna target. Right. So that, that's good. I think that's a good addition because I think with my seven years in the game, that has always been like people are fascinated over the targeting options, which is not a needle mover for a very long time.
Maybe 2019 maybe, but it's been a long time where it doesn't really matter. And now people, even small business, they, they don't have to worry about that mystified site anymore. They can just type it in. And Facebook will know who they're trying to target.
Lisa Raehsler: How does that work? If you could explain for the people listening, are you sure Typing in, I'm looking for families who enjoy outdoor activities.
Jeremy Yang: Not all accounts have it yet. Some accounts have it, you're allowed to put it in. And then it'll tell you what, what's what the line is, was targeting.
Lisa Raehsler: Okay, so will it like pop up a list of different audiences that you can select from?
Jeremy Yang: It'll show you, it'll give you suggestions where you [00:15:00] can tick the box for it.
Lisa Raehsler: Okay.
Jeremy Yang: And that's, to me, that's still a combination of what your, what your videos like. You know, just say you're making a video ad. Right. I always recommend my clients to do the call start. Right. Hey, if you're going through this or if you're doing that. You know, I think that still matters. I have no proof, but I think that still matters, right?
And the ad copy still matters. I think you have to be really clear, right? And now the targeting is also helping it, instead of having be a mystery and you selecting yourself each one. Now it's even move onto that, the natural language way. And I think that's a smart move.
Lisa Raehsler: Well, I think that's great for, especially for small businesses.
Who may not have that detailed background in how to select lists and how to identify the right ones and getting pretty close to what they should be targeting.
Jeremy Yang: For sure.
Lisa Raehsler: Yeah. For now, so for you, were talking about [00:16:00] the, creating the ads. And is that the Google Asset Studio?
Jeremy Yang: Yeah. Google.
Lisa Raehsler: there. Okay. The nano nano banana.
Jeremy Yang: Yeah. That stuff that's all in there. The VO and all that stuff. That's all in there now. So that saves a lot of time. I mean, if you're talking about like automation, the platform automation, even the, remarketing audiences and all of that.
Used take forever to crack. Like there was no chance. Now it's like all automated. It's already set up for you. Yeah, but that doesn't change the fact that, you know, if you don't have something that's selling well, you have all audiences in the world with someone to make any difference.
Lisa Raehsler: And I think that's also where you said have a skeptical eye and. Because I have seen some very bad ad suggestions, the platform will suggest different calls to action including buy now when the client doesn't sell anything. Yeah. And that, that, that really, that [00:17:00] frustrates me because sometimes I think people don't even read the suggestions and there's a lot of like, you know, rapid clicking
Jeremy Yang: Yeah.
Lisa Raehsler: To accept and, yeah. What do you think in PPC should stay human?
Jeremy Yang: So first, you know, all that stuff around the creative automation. Meta is worse. Meta is suggesting to remove the background in somewhere else. Worse. I have something to say about that too, because, you know, when it comes to e-commerce clients, like the products, there's automation around that where you can put a, you know where, where you put a image of the product.
Tell what we wanna make it to. Right. And then make my eye, because I'm not the owner of the product, or not the owner of the, the client's business. So to my eye, the product looks fine after AI's modification. Right. But has three, four different occasions. The client said, that's doesn't look like my product anymore, or, that's changed a little bit.
It doesn't look like the end [00:18:00] product that the client gave you anymore. So that's actually very dangerous, right. To allow, you know, those small modifications. Yeah. That, that's what I think about that in terms of where, where should be. I think that with the AI development, it's actually crowded out a lot of the, the busy, the busy work stuff.
So for me personally, I've had to do more. Across the entire spectrum of ads, like the strategy, a little bit of that, like the creating the assets for them, running the ads, the post-analysis, even, you know, integrating into the CRM. And the next one I'm gonna do is probably work out lead score for them, landing page optimization.
It's about human more, like the human has to do more now just to keep up, just to stay competitive.
Lisa Raehsler: So why are those tasks not able to be automated? [00:19:00]
Jeremy Yang: I think they can be automated.
Lisa Raehsler: Okay.
Jeremy Yang: So now how do you stay competitive? How do you justify the monthly invoicing, right? So now, if you are good human in PPC, I think you have to go wider.
And that's how you differentiate yourself because you kind of gotta know, make more use of your knowledge. Around creative, around scripting, around discernment, what work, what doesn't work, and also the conversation around lead quality.
So I don't think that the human factor is gonna go away, but like if you have a human in there, it's gotta go wider. Whole spectrum. That's what I think.
Lisa Raehsler: I think that it will enable us to dig deeper into some things that we always tended to get cut off because we didn't have time.
Jeremy Yang: Yeah. You think that it's makes it harder for the VAs and interns and all that to come into the game now [00:20:00] because whatcha gonna do,
Lisa Raehsler: what are they gonna do?
Jeremy Yang: Yeah. like, because the, the simpler task that they used to do is automated away now.
Lisa Raehsler: The automations, the suggestions, all of that needs to.
Be checked, edited, and it requires guidance from humans right now. So even setting the conversion values, the, you know, the automatic, automatic bidding and the budgets, we, if it's not working. There isn't a button that we can push that says, please make this work. Yes, we have to go in there and we have to tweak it with our knowledge of the, you know, the client, the industry, and how the platform works.
So that's still very hands on. And very tactical, and I think that is a perfect space to start out when you're new to the industry so you can understand the, how things work in order to improve how they move forward.
Jeremy Yang: I'm [00:21:00] just saying for somebody who's coming into the industry now, like where, where are the opportunities?
I mean, I wouldn't have a role for them. I, I know who has a role for them anymore because whatever value they used to bring is being kind of like ai, right? Like what is Job now? Like we can't teach for free, right? So that's, that's, that's one of my things as well. And try to work out like where, where did they go?
How?
Lisa Raehsler: Yeah, I mean, I think it's more of them, monitoring the machines and monitoring the automation.
Jeremy Yang: Right.
Lisa Raehsler: And doing some of that analysis, that machine can, a machine pops out the analysis. There was X, Y, Z percentage of change month over month in these campaigns.
But it can't tell you why. It can't really tell you why. It doesn't see, a lot of [00:22:00] things and there's still a lot of creative energy. And gut instinct that goes into advertising. Massive.
Jeremy Yang: Yeah. A hundred percent.
Lisa Raehsler: So if, small businesses, what should they do right now in the next 30 days?
If you were going to give them advice on, upping their game or just surviving, what's your top advice?
Jeremy Yang: Are they running ads already?
Lisa Raehsler: I would say, yeah, let's say they're running ads. They're running ads right now.
Jeremy Yang: Alright. If they're running ads, small business, I would say 30 days, I would say definitely to survive.
And just to yourself properly, I say, go figure out your conversion, right? That the ad platforms are providing. Match reality because you know, if you have Google advertising and meta advertising, they all inflate the numbers to claim that they're doing more than what they're doing. And be very surprised when you look at your [00:23:00] real point of sale data to make sure that matches.
And if it doesn't, then you should really fix that up because you're giving the platform bad data to
optimize around. So second thing is, I think look at the, the lead quality and compare it to your referrals and your organic leads. I guess my advice is really around just getting to know a bit more about where your money is going and if it's worthwhile or not.
Ad costs has increased a lot over the years. CPCs increased a lot across all industries. There's almost no exploits anymore. So I say when people are floating around that low budget mark, I think they're getting the worst of both worlds.
So they're not getting the, they around the middle of the page with like second or third position, and they're getting the kind of clients. I think that they should bite the bullet and either pause for a few months and then save up their war chest or just increase the budget, because that's money,
Speaker: [00:24:00] right?
Jeremy Yang: Yeah.
Lisa Raehsler: Okay, so if I hear you correctly, if a small business is running ads right now for the next 30 days, you think they should, number one, audit their conversions. Make sure that it's matching up with the ad platforms. Yeah. Number two, check their ad quality.
Make sure that the leads that they are getting through, that are coming through are quality. Yes, and I would add, check the close rate, right? Yeah. The lead to close rate, like recheck that.
Jeremy Yang: Yep.
Lisa Raehsler: And number three, consider increasing their budget so that they can get over that threshold to get more data in so that the machine, the automations can actually work better for them,
Jeremy Yang: I think that once they go over a threshold of spend, things definitely change. If you, they're hiring an agency or whatever, like that fee doesn't change, right? So the more you spend, the more you're [00:25:00] making the most out of that person that's there, you know? So, which is super important, I think.
Yeah, because I think the, the clients that's doing like 10,000 or, or around 10, 15,000 a month, they're, it's a lot easier to get them results. Right. And the fee the same because it's almost the same amount of work. Right. But one, you're kind of bidding and, and you're always going for the best word, you're always hanging around the top.
Lisa Raehsler: If anybody wants to get ahold of you and learn more about what you do, where is a good place for them to contact you?
Jeremy Yang: think LinkedIn is, is quite easy to get a hold of me or just go to my website at digitally com au That's it.
Lisa Raehsler: Sounds good. Thanks for listening to AI ads and beyond. And if you found this episode useful, helpful, and entertaining, please subscribe to the show and share it with someone in marketing and small business that can make use of those three tips that we just shared at the end.
Jeremy Yang: Thanks for having me.
