Do you run Facebook ads, Google ads, LinkedIn ads or measure conversions from online traffic sources in Google Analytics? Then this episode of Business as Unusual is for you! Michael from Launch Online will share tips to help you improve the performance of paid media campaigns. 

Before you click play... There were a few technical difficulties during this webinar (our first in 17 episodes, we'll take that!) so Michael does drop out very briefly during a couple of moments on the call. Jon and Claire however have some excellent banter so it's well worth continuing the watch.

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Transcript

Jon Payne:

Hello. Welcome to Business As Unusual. This talk is for anybody who's using Facebook ads, Google ads, LinkedIn ads, or anyone measuring conversions from online traffic sources in Google Analytics, or anything, really. There are other things. I saw one the other day, it was Papaya or something. Michael will know, I'll ask him in a minute. It's going to include actionable tips to improve the performance of your paid media, as well as give you the understanding around some complex topping, topics... Toppings? Some complex toppings like peanuts and jam, or ice cream and dog poop. That's a complex topping. Around complex topics, excuse me, around value-based bidding. We are joined by the very smiley and very happy, and also in some sort of space chair, Michael Patten from Launch Online. Hello, Michael.

Michael Patten:

Hello there, John. Thank you. I'm glad you noticed my space chair.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Before we get started, tell us about the chair. What's that all about?

Michael Patten:

Well, I guess I could show you the chair. I've been tinkering. I like to tinker with things and now that I'm a fully remote worker, I thought...

Jon Payne:

Oh, this is great. Show us the tinkered chair.

Michael Patten:

Got to add some little amenities. So yeah, I quite like sitting here.

Jon Payne:

That's amazing. We've got our first question in the chat, actually. I'm going to come to that and then we're going to come back to the chair. Is that a Dyson in the background?

Michael Patten:

Yes, and like with a lot of people with cordless Dysons, I also have another hoover next to it that actually picks up the dust.

Jon Payne:

Excellent. Now talk to me about... Was that just colours, or is that giving you some lumbar support and some massage?

Michael Patten:

Oh, this is massaging right now. Stupidly, I've got the heat on, because it's already boiling in here, and now I've got to hot back. But, yeah I'm sort of enjoying it.

Jon Payne:

Oh, man. I tell you what, I'm enjoying the fact that you are warmed on your rear. That just makes me very pleased. So, Michael, tell us who you are, how you got into this industry, and tell us about Launch Online, as if we didn't know.

Michael Patten:

Right then. I'm going to sneakily turn this massage cushion off, because I am genuinely sweating now.

Jon Payne:

No one's noticing, we're all looking the other way, as if a butterfly has fluttered by.

Michael Patten:

Smooth. Yeah. Back on topic. So, my name's Michael, you've probably already determined that. I'm down here in Bournemouth as a remote worker for Launch Online. I've only been with Launch Online since the beginning of the year, actually, but since it's only been five months, I already feel part of the furniture, really enjoying it here. I guess, to throw out as a disclaimer, I know my boss is in the chat. So people at home are probably going to think "Yeah, he's going to say something nice about his company, because he knows how to play the game", but even if the camera was off me, we're down the pub, just me and you, the answer would be the same, really enjoying it.

Jon Payne:

I presume that's because you know that Jaye Cowle has spies everywhere and can hear criticism from 200 miles away. Cool. And how did you get into this industry Mike? Oh, Michael, excuse me.

Michael Patten:

Oh, no worries. I prefer either. So you know, I have no preference, but a funny story about how I got into the industry actually. I used to work in electronics reconditioning, getting broken DVD recorders, fixing them, selling them to different markets. It's quite boring actually, all warehouse work. But I happened to see the managing directors screen when he was looking at Google Analytics. And that was enough information to make me think that I had enough knowledge to be a digital marketing executive. So I put my CV in, had an interview, must have said the right things and then basically the next six months after that was just racing to gain as much knowledge as I can so nobody found out.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Oh man, welcome. That's how we all ended up here I think. Not necessarily thinking we could all do it because we saw analytics. But certainly there's some of that where you're like, "Oh my God". And one of the things I often say to people who are either new to the industry or new working with Noisy Little Monkeys is "In the first six months, you'll realise that you don't know loads of stuff. And in the first 18 months you'll realise how much you don't know or you'll begin to realise that". And you go, "Oh, okay. I need to specialise in this because this is just a colossal piece of stuff I need to understand". And what do Launch Online do?

Michael Patten:

Well, primarily we're a paid media agency. So lots of PPC across different channels, Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram more recently, Amazon. We're looking at some new display type sources as well. I don't know how much we can go into that. But we do a lot of advertising. On the side of that, we have other services like user experience and since I joined as well, data strategy.

Jon Payne:

Wow. Ah because data strategist. Good. That makes sense.

Michael Patten:

That's me.

Jon Payne:

Cool, cool. And we wouldn't be doing this unless Noisy Little Monkey were getting a tiny bit of exposure and the person on the other end of the call was getting a tiny bit of exposure either for them personally, or as in the case with Michael, for him personally, and for the brand for whom he works and of which he works, excuse me. So just as a little bit more of a plug for Launch Online, they are our favourite PPC agency. In fact, they're the only PPC agency Noisy Little Monkey recommend because we don't do PPC, but we love Jaye and her team. So that includes you, Michael. I love you.

Michael Patten:

Thank you.

Jon Payne:

I think that's the first time I've said that on a webinar, but I mean it sincerely. Sorry, Josh, if we're making you uncomfortable. I forgot there are other people here, Michael. Thank goodness Josh has popped up in the chat to let us know that this isn't simply you and I chatting. So yeah, if you need PPC or anything like that, talk to Launch Online. If you need anything else in digital marketing, talk to us and we'll point you in the right direction of someone else. Josh, you are killing it in the chat.

Jon Payne:

So it looks like we've got three themes that we're going to talk about, about 15 minutes a piece, which should make us finish a little bit, hopefully before four o'clock. So theme one was using micro conversions as beacons for smart bidding in online advertising. What the hell did I just say, Michael? And what does it mean?

Michael Patten:

Oh, it was pretty much there, wasn't it? Well, just start off from my side I suppose, let's be a bit pedantic. Do you know what the difference is between automated bidding and smart bidding?

Jon Payne:

You know what? I would normally take a punt at this, but I know that I'm going to be so far off the base. No, I don't know what the difference is. Tell me what they are.

Michael Patten:

So smart bidding is conversion centric. So it's looking at getting you conversions in different ways, whereas automated will be looking at increasing your traffic or things such as that. Non-conversion centric bidding. So when we're talking smart bidding, very much smart bidding and conversions go together, like a cup of tea and biscuit.

Jon Payne:

Right. Okay. Okay. So using those as beacons for smart, using micro conversions as beacons, what does that mean? How does that work or how do you make it work for your clients?

Michael Patten:

Cool. Yeah. I mean, this might take a little bit of imagination, but if you try and put yourself in the shoes of your smart bidding solution that you're using to advertise with. Google is serving ads, people are clicking on them. It knows that the ad has been seen. It knows the ads being clicked, but then as soon as they go to the website, the attitude previously was the ad's job is over. You've got the traffic to the website and you can control the exposure levels in terms of who is relevant and who isn't. So from the smart biddings perspective... It's like you've sent your child off into the wilderness. The user's gone on the website. It's done its job. What happens there? Oh, am I still online?

Jon Payne:

Yeah, you are. You're here.

Michael Patten:

Oh, you've frozen.

Jon Payne:

Oh, have I?

Michael Patten:

Let me continue. Apologies.

Jon Payne:

You've now frozen. That's interesting. You know what? I'm going to fill until you unfreeze. You are hopefully online, because what I'm going to do is repeat verbatim Michael's definition of smart bidding versus...

Claire:

I like that you're speaking slowly so that you can fill the time even better.

Jon Payne:

Smart bidding versus automatic bidding, and automatic bidding is focused around just driving you traffic. Is that correct, Claire? Do you remember?

Claire:

Absolutely. I was taking notes. Smart bidding is conversion centric. Whereas automated is about increasing traffic. I definitely wasn't looking up race across the world locations in South America and Central America.

Jon Payne:

That's important, isn't it? Oh, Michael's completely disappeared now.

Claire:

This is going to be awful, because I don't know anything about smart bidding. Do you, John?

Jon Payne:

No, we're just going to have to get Jaye on.

Claire:

All right, Michael's back. You are muted, Michael. So you may want to unmute yourself and then I'm going to disappear again.

Michael Patten:

Glad you told me that. Apologies. I do not know what happened there.

Jon Payne:

Just keep the chair massaging you. Correlation equals causation. When you turn the chair off, the internet fails.

Michael Patten:

I like to think "just massage yourself through the pain", but I like yours better.

Jon Payne:

Hey. Weirdly your unscheduled pit stop there gave us a chance Eve Houghton to ask a question, which is, "Is automated the same as programmatic?"

Michael Patten:

No, not necessarily.

Jon Payne:

Good question though, Eve.

Michael Patten:

So automated bidding is more about how much you pay per click or how much you're willing to pay per click. In the olden days, you would set that statically. So you say, "I want to pay no more £2 every time someone clicks this". But when you got big accounts with like 500,000 conversions, that takes a lot of time. So what automated bidding does is it takes that off of your hands and it tries to set the bid for you depending on certain circumstances to get you the best result. What programmatic is, is a little bit more like display advertising. So it'd be not necessarily like Google display, but the sort of ads you'd see on newspaper websites say typically towards the bottom at the end of the story, you see quite a lot there. So it's more a more of a platform than a method, if you see what I mean.

Jon Payne:

Oh, that's a smooth answer. The end of that was just... You absolutely nailed that. Thank you. That's brilliant. So you were talking to us about smart bidding. And so, my background is we did a bit of PPC when clients demanded it of us yonks ago. And when you said you used to set your limit on what you were prepared to bid and it was £2 or 50p or whatever, because in my day, you could get it for under a quid for really good stuff. And then when smart bidding came out and even up to I suppose, three or four years ago... When smart bidding came... I'm thinking about automatic. When smart bidding came out around conversions, it seemed a bit hit and miss. What's it like now? How does it work? Does it work effectively?

Michael Patten:

Oh, so much better, so much better. I remember, probably 2015, 2016, it would be a repeated cycle. You'd get on the phone with your Google premier partner rep and they'd say, "You should try a hard CPC". "Doesn't work." "Oh, we changed it. It works now. Leave it for 30 days." 30 days later, "It didn't work". "Oh, try it again. We've just changed it, it's going to work now." So wasn't really sold on the whole smart bidding thing until years later and then once I really got hold of it, then it was game on.

Jon Payne:

And when we're talking about micro conversions as beacons, what's the difference between a conversion, a micro conversion and a macro conversion? Is there even a macro conversion or...?

Michael Patten:

Oh, technically I guess a macro conversion would be a standard conversion. So I think that's defined as accounting of anything that is equal to something that generates value for your business, whether it be a purchase, a lead, a sign up. Typically you'd count a conversion whenever a user completes that action. And that is still very much how clients see it and that's part of the challenge of using micro conversions in the way that we have been doing. So I guess to rewind before I got kicked off the internet or whatever happened there. Smart bidding, send your user off into the website, can't see it. It's all foggy and dark. And then if they complete the conversion, it's like they get a postcard to say that they made it to the other side, if you like. But there's only a certain amount that you can learn from sending people off into like a dark zone and then hoping that they make it to the end. So using micro conversions, it's almost like sending a ping when they move down the funnel towards that action you want them to take.

Jon Payne:

Oh, right. That's really cool. I need to check ahead and check that I'm not asking too many questions... It doesn't matter, actually. We always fill the time, even if I ask all the questions about the stuff we're supposed to be talking about later. So if I'm sending you a ping, I'm that person, I've clicked the ad, right? And I'm hopping down the funnel or around the flywheel, whichever method we're following on my journey from stranger to interested visitor, to engaged and delighted customer. What would those little pings be? Give me some examples of what a micro conversion might be. If you want to put that in context of e-commerce or a lead gen site, please do.

Michael Patten:

Yeah, I guess e-commerce is a good example or the easiest example because you could fire a micro conversion when they add something to their cart, when they view their cart, when they start check out, when they view the payment screen because these are all actions that show the intent that the user wants to buy something. They're not just there to read the blog or window shop. If they add something to their basket, you'd hope that they're looking to buy it at least at some point soon. Traditionally, what you'd do is because it's a micro conversion, you wouldn't count it as a conversion. It would just be just a counter. It would just count how many times that happens, but it wouldn't be treated as a valuable action. And when you think of that from a client perspective, they've got to report to their internal finance managers or something like that and all they care about is bottom line. How much did we spend on advertising? How much did we get back? And there is a cynical view, it's like, well, we're going to add micro conversions as...

Jon Payne:

Great. You've gone again. That's scary, but this is good. Well, I'm just assuming the fuse has blown on your chair.

Michael Patten:

[inaudible 00:15:55].

Claire:

Oh, here we go. He's back. He's back. I'm going to disappear again.

Michael Patten:

Ooh. Am I back?

Jon Payne:

You are back. You are back.

Michael Patten:

I don't know what's going on. I'm sorry.

Jon Payne:

You know what, if this was a client call, it wouldn't be happening, but because it's a webinar, it is. Don't worry. We'll get through. So where you got up to is someone had gone through various little micro conversions, and it could be considered quite cynical by some of the senior people who just want to go, "Well, I've spent £50,000 on ad words. Where's my £500,000 pounds return? Or where's my £70,000 return? Where is that return?" And we, as marketers are going "Well, we had 15 people put stuff in their basket"... 15, God, that would be terrible, wouldn't it? How do you overcome that cynicism? And have you got any real world examples of that working? You don't have to say the name of the client. Tell us how you overcome that cynicism to begin with.

Michael Patten:

Yeah. And I guess I could give you an example and change all the details to protect the innocent. Let's see, so we've got a client I've been working on recently. Do you know what clay barring is?

Jon Payne:

Is it...? No. Sorry. It sounds vaguely dirty. What is it?

Michael Patten:

No. So actually it's do with car cleaning. So if you want to wash your car, take it to the carwash, get washed, polished, waxed. They might do tyre blackener, but if you're really serious about cars, if you take your car to a show or you've got like an investment that you keep garaged and nice and clean, ready to sell one day, you get it detailed. So really hardcore cleaning and protection. One of the things that's part of that is clay barring. So it's like a little bottle of resin, which they rub on the paint, which gets rid of impurities before you protect it with like a coat of wax or something like that. So got a client that just does the clay barring bit, very specialist, very niche service. And they only operate in say North Hampton, but not everywhere in North Hampton. Selected North Hampton postcodes aren't covered.

Michael Patten:

So the first challenge is finding the people in those select postcodes that are covered within North Hampton to come to the website via an ad. So that's the first challenge. Second challenge is they go put in the postcode and it says, "Yes, you're eligible for the service. Now, how many months would you like?" And then the user thinks, "Well, how many times a month do I need the service? Do I have to be at home for the service? Do I have to take my car to have the service done?" And then they leave the funnel, go to an FAQ page, might find the answer might not, get bored, go away. So what we found, we had lots of relevant people, despite being quite an impossible task, starting the process. Yeah, exactly. And then not reaching the bit where they actually hand over their card details and pay.

Michael Patten:

So before what we were doing is we were setting a micro conversion to show you all the times people had started the process, but didn't end. And that was in a way almost to cover our own backs, to say, "Look, PPC is working. It's doing its job, driving the right people, but we need to look at the purchase process to get you the result you're after". But of course the smart bidding is looking to get those conversions and where it's not getting conversions despite thinking all of these users are relevant. It runs out of ideas, it gets a bit tired and depressed and it stops working. So if you can say that first bit where the people have confirmed they're eligible for the service and they're after the service, as a full conversion, by law of averages, if you can drive a hundred people into the funnel and two make it out the end and make a purchase, two purchases is better than no purchases. And that is the basic concept around it.

Jon Payne:

So it's knowing your broad conversion rates, but not being able to see it on almost that first conversion journey, is that right? Have I got that broadly right?

Michael Patten:

Yeah. Or it's more taking it away from just purely analysis where we can come to a client and say, "Look, we're doing our bit. It's your website that's the problem". And instead of just analysis, we are giving more information. We are feeding our smart bidding strategy more information to work with and finding the people that are eligible for the service in the first place.

Jon Payne:

Ah, okay. So then Google, I presume in this case would then present that to more relevant people?

Michael Patten:

Absolutely. Yeah. Google, Bing, Facebook and by extension Instagram. It's all quite a wide concept.

Jon Payne:

Cool. Excellent. Excellent. I mean, I've been doing this for years. You think I'd know about it. I'd love to tell you that I was feigning ignorance for the purposes of this call. I'm not. I remember when we used to... When I was hands-on setting up analytics, I'd often assign different like goal pages... Do you remember goals in Google analytics? I don't know if it still exists. You could assign them a value. So even if you had a lead gen site, you could say, "Well, this one's worth $1 and this one's worth $50 or pounds or whatever, because that one's a really high intent page that's worth more and that one's worth less". And it was kind of an estimation. Do you use that? Do you assign value to any of these things at all?

Michael Patten:

In fact, I'm glad you said that because you've highlighted there that assigning value to conversions or value based bidding even isn't a new concept, it's been around for years. I remember when maximise conversion value came out in beta on Google and that must've been two or three years ago, so it's nothing new. But this year Google are calling it value based bidding... They're calling it smart bidding 2.0, because they're now considering it. Oh, yeah.

Jon Payne:

2.0.

Michael Patten:

Lovely name to reel the people in. But they're finding... I mean, this is conjecture. This is what I imagine they're finding, is that we're reaching a saturation point with the smart bidding at the moment. It's doing really well, it's learning from all of these accounts around the world but now it needs to know more. So you need to add a new dimension for it to learn from, and that is value, conversion value. So if it just looks for conversions, it's going to treat every conversion as equal, but if conversions are different value, either monetary value or value to the business, then it can adjust bids accordingly to bid higher for the higher value. So you get a better return on your money.

Jon Payne:

Right. And how do you tell the machine that?

Michael Patten:

Simply by assigning value to the conversions. However, it can be done very wrong and with very disastrous consequences.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. What happens when you get it wrong?

Michael Patten:

To give you an example, a few years ago, I had a client, they were a car dealership and what they wanted to drive from the ads is first of all, get people to download a brochure about the cars that they had for sale and to get the brochure, they'd have to hand over their email address and telephone number so their sales team could follow up.

Michael Patten:

So brochure download was important, but the main goal was to drive test drives, book in for an appointment to drive this car, get in the dealership and then the salesman part takes place. Yeah, reel you in, give you a coffee, become your friend. So we thought, "Okay then, well, you want ultimately test drive appointment bookings. So that's probably a value of £50 and brochure downloads a nice, massive value of £5". So off we went, we set those values. We set it to maximise conversion value as a strategy. What happened is we got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of brochure downloads, but not any additional test drive bookings. And the client was like, "Well, we can see you're smashing it on your end, but we're not actually generating any extra sales for our business".

Michael Patten:

So we thought "We have to pivot this strategy a bit. We have to take a step back, see where we're going wrong". And when you look at the data, when you get the total amount of appointment bookings and the total amount of brochure downloads, it was more that it was say out of every a hundred brochure downloads only one user would book a test drive. So you then need to adjust the values, just in the law of averages. So if you can drive a hundred brochure downloads, and one of those is likely to book a test drive, you'd set the value of the brochure download to £1 and the test drives a £100. So then Google knows exactly what it's dealing with. And even if it's like something which fluctuates seasonally, you can continue to review those proportions and adjust the values accordingly.

Jon Payne:

Oh, man. That's amazing.

Michael Patten:

Thank you.

Jon Payne:

That is brilliant. Oh, I'm glad I asked what happens when it goes wrong. Those are always some of the best questions. Oh, I really like that. I really like that. What proportion of your clients do you think you're using this for now or of Launch Online's if that's possible to estimate?

Michael Patten:

It's hard to say. The thing is we're blessed with so many different clients. So I don't have view of every single one of them. So I mean, even though I'm not a paid media manager on the data strategist, still I only have a limited view, it's basically anytime anyone needs some help with something they come to me and then I get visual on it, if you like. But yeah, it's something that is ever increasing, that we are putting clients on, adopting. The early adopters, we've had stellar results from. You know in presentations where they show you an effect and they have like a graph of months or days and they have a line where the change was made? Put it this way, you don't need the line. It is so significant. You can tell when we started value based bidding. Exactly.

Jon Payne:

Right. And I know this is almost a how long is a piece of string question, but is there like a minimum budget that you need to be rolling to think about doing that? And if you said, "Look, all of my money's in Google, what's my minimum budget to really maximise this or to really see any value out of it?" Excuse me.

Michael Patten:

It's a bit of a tricky one of course, because you've got all different kinds of marketplaces, different industries that's going to fluctuate in terms of budget. The thing you do need to consider is first of all, volume. So it needs a certain amount of conversions to reach the threshold where it can make sense of the data and time as well. Before you can properly start value based bidding, I think it's three conversion cycles it needs before it fully learns. And that's Google's recommendation. That's on Google's version if you like. And a conversion cycle is the time it takes between the first ad click to the macro conversion. So depending on your industry, it could be a day, could be six months.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Okay. Wow. So if you're in an industry with long conversion cycles, the sooner you start, the sooner you can get ahead of some of your competitors?

Michael Patten:

Oh, absolutely.

Jon Payne:

I was talking budget because that was a very unsophisticated way to say, what volume do we need to be at? That was a much better question. What volume do you need to hit? What's that minimum threshold to get over so that you can start to have a bucket of data that's big enough?

Michael Patten:

Oh, I mean, it's a common question. I think it comes from the client view, "Like, oh, okay, how much is this going to cost me?" Like, "No, no, it's included".

Jon Payne:

But in terms of the bucket of data, you said there was a minimum threshold that I need to get to so it can learn. So we've got the three cycles. How many people need to go through one of those cycles or whatever?

Michael Patten:

So for the bidding strategy on Google called target return on ad spend, TROAS for short as we love an acronym.

Jon Payne:

I've seen that, I've seen that written down on a presentation that wasn't listening to. Brilliant.

Michael Patten:

I mean, when you see too many acronyms, it all just blurs, doesn't it? I appreciate that. For target return on ad spend, you need 15 conversions and it all depends how you set them up. If you set the strategy at campaign level, there'll be 15 conversions for that campaign or if you group campaigns together in a portfolio then the whole portfolio just needs 15.

Jon Payne:

Right. Okay. Okay. But that would be 15 macro conversions?

Michael Patten:

That's correct. Or even micro conversion so long as you set them up with value and as full conversions.

Jon Payne:

Right. Okay. Wow. Okay. So it's not huge. That's cool. Okay. That is really good. Now I'm going to be really selfish and ask you a question that really pertains to people do my sort of stuff. I've got a thing, let's say that you've got... And actually lots of our audience and our community will have businesses where they are like Noisy Little Monkey, where there isn't an end point where Google would necessarily know that this has turned into a new business.

Jon Payne:

So for instance, in fact, actually from one of your ads that you set up for us, a client came to the website, couldn't find a phone number... Thank goodness, otherwise, it wouldn't have tracked so effectively... filled in the form... Deliberately we couldn't find the phone number, I don't want people calling my team. Good grief [inaudible 00:29:41] precious animals. So couldn't find a phone number, came through the form and then so in a basic ad set up, right, that's the conversion, it's done. He's come through the form. We've then got HubSpot, which then tracks him through to when revenue starts and then we can see how much revenue we've made... And you've frozen and congratulations, Claire, I think you're the closest at 1541 and Michael is frozen.

Claire:

It's as if I fixed it. I'm just in the backend, tinkering away. Yeah. That's a good question. Natalie says, "What do I win?" John, what do I win?

Jon Payne:

What you win is a holiday to Bali.

Claire:

To Bali, yes.

Jon Payne:

You know what guys, if Michael is away for another minute, I'm giving everybody on the call a holiday to Bali. Come on. First class, all expenses paid. Oh, Michael, what a shame you made it back. I was just saying, if you didn't make it back within a minute, I was going to pay for everybody to go to Bali first-class, expenses paid.

Michael Patten:

You win some, you lose some I suppose.

Claire:

That's still time for you to freeze and drop out again. So we're going to hold you to that for the next 20 minutes, John.

Jon Payne:

I'm afraid that was a one-time only deal on this dropout. On the next dropout, there will be a different price that can be won.

Claire:

Okay. I'm going again, goodbye.

Jon Payne:

Hello, Claire. Bye, Claire. Hello, Claire? What the...? Oh, he's gone. Oh, no.

Michael Patten:

No.

Jon Payne:

No, you're back. You're here. Stay.

Michael Patten:

Oh, you scared me then.

Jon Payne:

You did that. So I can't remember the question I asked because you were dropping... Oh yeah. Claire said she could see the panic in your eyes... You've come through. So I can measure that now with something like HubSpot, that someone's converted into something that is now driving us revenue. But most people don't have HubSpot. If you have got HubSpot or Marketo or Eloqua or one of those systems, can I assign micro conversions in there that will talk to ad words? Or how do I do it?

Michael Patten:

Yes, you can. And it takes some doing and it's something that Google are trying to make more accessible. I think that Google themselves have their own, what they call their tag team to try and get this integration working because again, this is going to add a whole new dimension to smart bidding in the future, knowing what actually became a sale, all the stuff that happens offline. So, a simple way to do it is if you've got CRM system, you can get a developer to take what's called the GCL ID on Google or MS Click ID. It takes that little code.

Jon Payne:

Oh, thank you for the Bing translation.

Michael Patten:

Oh yeah. You got to have a Bing translation every now and again for the people at the back.

Jon Payne:

For the corporates. Right. Okay. Yes.

Michael Patten:

So yeah, it takes that little code out the cookie or the URL depending how it's applied and it will submit it as a secret form on whatever it is the users submitting. So if it's a lead form, contact us form, it will be submitted along with that code.

Jon Payne:

And then the magic wand of Marketo is waved...

Michael Patten:

Now, when that becomes a contact...

Jon Payne:

You're okay. You're back.

Michael Patten:

Oh, apparently my internet connection is unstable. Tell me about it.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. There's a surprise.

Michael Patten:

I feel like the man is trying to keep me down so he's trying to hack my router.

Jon Payne:

Yeah. It's Tim Berners Lee, trying to sell that NFT thing and for some reason taking you out on this webinar. Anyway, sorry. So GCL ID or whatever it was and the Bing version of that, put that on your contact page or whatever your conversion page is...

Michael Patten:

Yep. And then goes into your user contact in your CRM. So you've got name, address, telephone number, GCL ID. Then as that moves through the stages of the sales process in your CRM it's always going to be tied to that GCL ID. So if anything like an appointment booking or a pre-meeting, if you like, you can then turn that into a... Sorry. I just saw you stare in the [inaudible 00:34:07].

Jon Payne:

This is good though, because some of your screenshots, not screenshots, but when you freeze sometimes you have like a real far away look on your face and it's lovely, which you've done now. I'll tell you what, why don't you kill your video? That might give you the tiny bit of bandwidth you need. Oh, God.

Michael Patten:

Let's see what happens.

Jon Payne:

Claire's just said, "Maybe Michael should kill". Don't lose it, Mike. Okay. So we've got the GCL ID in our CRM.

Michael Patten:

[inaudible 00:34:53].

Jon Payne:

Oh, God. You've really gone.

Michael Patten:

That's correct.

Jon Payne:

You're absolutely dead.

Michael Patten:

Am I still here?

Jon Payne:

No, yeah. [crosstalk 00:35:06].

Michael Patten:

Oh, okay. Stop me if I break up again, but basically anything that's a sales event or an event that leads up to a sale, the ultimate goal for your business. That can then be exported by just a simple CSV spreadsheet so as long as it's got that ID, that Click ID, it can then be re-imported back into your ads platform and it can tie that sale all the way back to that first ad click.

Jon Payne:

Perfect. We got there and that is a really useful thing. Brilliant. Thank you. That's a really useful thing to know. Look, I think in the discretion being the better part of valour, give us the top three things that you would like people who are on this webinar to know about smart bidding and what they should do following this webinar, give us the top three things. We'll get through those and then we'll just bail and you can go and kick your router.

Michael Patten:

It's like you're a mind reader. It's top three. Okay. Number one, I suppose, is tackle the biggest challenge first and that's client understanding. So really work with your client or even if it's in-house, whoever you have to report to on what everything means and it very much is the future. It's the way that everything is going. There's no avoiding it unless you want to be left behind. These are all the things you have to understand and translate to any stakeholders that anyone involved has to report to. This is what's going on and this is going to help a business. So that's the groundwork if you like.

Michael Patten:

Step two then is I'd say to make sure that the data you're collecting is as pure and as accurate as possible, because if you are getting data inflation, missing data due to a setting being wrong or some sort of change that hasn't been reported, then your smart bidding is not going to be in the best fitting because after all it's learning from conversions. So if those conversions are wrong, it's learning wrong.

Michael Patten:

And then I suppose number three would be to, I guess, exercise patience. I mean, again, depending on the industry, your website experience, your competitors, sometimes the advertised learning period can be longer. So traditionally whenever we speak to Google, it'll be "Oh, yeah. Give it 30 days. It'll start working". When actually, when we looked at it, even things like target CPA would be a minimum of 10 weeks and that didn't matter if your conversion cycle was 12 hours, for some reason 10 weeks always seemed to be the sweet spot.

Jon Payne:

Right. Okay. So that was educate your stakeholders?

Michael Patten:

Yeah.

Jon Payne:

I can't think of a three word one for the middle one.

Michael Patten:

Audit your data.

Jon Payne:

Educate your stakeholders, audit your data and then number three was... Now that you said audit your data, that third one's gone for me.

Michael Patten:

Oh. How about patience and understanding?

Jon Payne:

Yeah. Oh, man. And we need a load of that on this.

Michael Patten:

Tell me about it.

Jon Payne:

That's really good.