PPC Audits and Targeting Strategies | Brooke Osmundson

Ann Kraus: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV, the web series and podcast for agencies, brands, marketers, and media buyers. I'm Ann Kraus. My guest today is Brooke Osmundson, the director of growth marketing for Smith Micro Software. Brooke has over 10 years of experience in crafting innovative strategies, executing successful campaigns, and leading an international marketing team. Her expertise lies in driving brand awareness engagement and revenue growth through cutting edge digital marketing and paid media techniques. Brooke has spearheaded strategies across multiple verticals with her comprehensive understanding of customer behavior and industry trends. She's also a frequent speaker at industry conferences. Brooke, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Brooke Osmundson: Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for the intro. I know we bonded over being middle children, so I appreciate the warm welcome. Ann Kraus: Somebody's got to love us, Brooke. Brooke Osmundson: Exactly. Getting the attention we deserve. Ann Kraus: That's right. This is our day. So what makes you so passionate about audience targeting? Brooke Osmundson: So I've been in the industry for 10 years, starting out as a PPC marketer, and back then it was all about the keyword research. And as a newbie, you're trying to get all the fundamentals right. But as I grew in my experience with that, I really started to understand who's behind the screen, who are you talking to? And just as everything has progressed with paid media, it's become less about what somebody's searching for or what they're browsing on the internet, but truly who is behind the screen. I've always been a people person, conversationalist, and so that's why I really started to master that craft of not only who are you talking to, but how are you reaching them and what message are you sending them across. So I kind of like the best of both worlds there. Ann Kraus: So let's talk about paid media marketing then, so like PPC. How would you, Brooke, recommend to an agency that they do a PPC audit, and how often and are there examples of pushback that probably you've received? Brooke Osmundson: Sure. So audits are some of my favorite and least favorite things to do, and so that's a great question. In terms of an agency or even somebody who's in-house, they're looking to have somebody audit their PPC programs. My hot take is before you start getting into the technical and trying to look for everything that's wrong in the settings, a lot of people start there, you really have to take a step back first and start to ask and answer the business questions. What does success look like to a company? Because if you're just looking at settings just from a technical level and not really understanding the overarching business goals, you could be missing something. So having a good understanding of are you looking at a target return ad spend or revenue goals or conversion rate, lifetime value. Starting there and then starting to pull back the campaigns within, whether it's Google Ads or Microsoft Bing ads, it's going to make your job a lot easier. So again, just to wrap that up, starting with those bigger business questions in terms of how often, I would say at minimum once a year. So whether, again, you're an established agency and you've been working with a client for years, it's still a good idea to make sure you're proactively reviewing things. I would even say six months to do more of a full audit. You should be in there every day, every week, making sure the wheels are greased, but I would say at the very minimum, six months to a year. Ann Kraus: And have you ever gotten pushback on that? Has an agency ever said, "what are you talking about that word doesn't match or shouldn't be in there? That word is my favorite word". Brooke Osmundson: So I used to work at an agency and typically the pushback I would get would be if a potential client was coming to us where they maybe weren't satisfied with their level of support that they were receiving. So when we would present audit findings, we would usually get some pushback from their agency of record of like, "well, this is why we do X, Y, Z". But again, in terms of actual client pushback, I haven't really received a ton of 'this is how it should be or why is this?' I feel like if you're going about it the right way and educating them upfront or even walking them through the process of, this is what we're going to look at and why, I think proactively answering the why before they can ask really alleviates that possibility for pushback. Ann Kraus: You said that the audit is your favorite and sometimes your worst thing to do. Brooke Osmundson: Yes. Ann Kraus: So why does it fall in both categories? Brooke Osmundson: My favorite, because I love puzzles. I love uncovering, I could go down a rabbit hole, I could spend hours on just the minute things, but that's also what makes you successful. Least favorite probably because of the same reason. Again, you could dig yourself into a big rabbit hole, so I say that more in a joking way, but honestly it is one of my favorite things to do because I typically learn something new on every single audit that I do that I can probably apply to other accounts, which is always great. It's always keeping me up to speed, up to date on things that maybe I have opportunities of my other accounts to take advantage of. Ann Kraus: Okay, great. That makes sense. You could share that knowledge with other accounts. That's fantastic. So in that difference between how you are targeting and who you are targeting, still talking about PPC, how is this swayed by, let's say the latest trends or consumer behavior? Brooke Osmundson: This is going to be big in the next couple of months, next couple of years. So in terms of who you're targeting, you should always have, whether you call it your personas or your audience segments, having a good idea of who you're targeting is the first step. How you're targeting, it can be pretty similar in terms of if you have certain demographics that you're going after, whether it's age, range, location, household income. Say you're targeting based on a certain life event, somebody's getting married, or somebody's looking for a house or anything like that. Each platform has different levers that you can pull based on campaign type. So that gets into the how you're targeting. So it just really depends on a couple different things. So I would say in Google Ads specifically, what campaign type are you using will then kind of dictate what targeting mechanisms you can and cannot use. So more like life event targeting, for example, you can use that on display and video campaigns but not necessarily for search. So you really have to keep in mind the mechanics behind how those campaign types work. It's going to influence how you can target somebody and what might you have to put your creative hat onto maneuver if you can't quite get your ideal, that perfect target audience without using your own first party or customer list data. Ann Kraus: I think that your response right there was a great lesson for anybody who thinks they can just dive right into PPC, 'I got this, no problem' [inaudible 00:07:46] there's so many things that you have to know prior to diving in that's important. Brooke Osmundson: Right. And to that point, if you're not using your first party data or a customer list and you're relying on the platform targeting, Google's not always right in how they categorize somebody because they're taking signals if you have an active Google account. I personally have six different ones, so I could probably be grouped into different categories for different audience segments based on my user behavior. And so you also have to take some of that with a grain of salt. If we get into the mechanics a little bit, a lot of people would like to exclude an unknown category from their campaigns, and they've really seen performance actually take a nosedive because they do that well. That's just simply Google doesn't know enough about you. So that's where you have to marry the mechanics of how you're targeting. And also kind of leaning on your intuition as well when it gets down to who are you reaching at the end of the day. Ann Kraus: Fantastic. I'm so glad that we talked about that. Now, do you have a podcast or a book or something that's been instrumental in your success? Brooke Osmundson: So I wouldn't say there's a certain podcast or book because typically I'm one of those weird people where when I'm working, I have to have it silent. I can't even listen to music. But what I will say is something that I ran into early in my career was actually an online community. It started on Twitter, now X, but it's just a weekly chat, and it's still going on today and it's called PPC Chat. So they meet weekly, and there's been a couple moderators throughout the year, the years excuse me, but it's just a chance for anybody who is a digital marketer. They have a different topic every week, and you really get to just talk with people in the industry and learn from another. So I have been part of that community probably going on 10 years now, and I have met just the most amazing people that I would consider them friends outside of just peers in the industry. So if anybody is listening and hasn't checked it out, you can just search the hashtag PPC Chat. I do know that some of them have moved into the Slack community channels, which you can find that online as well. Ann Kraus: I love that there's a collaborative community like that. That's such great news. Brooke Osmundson: Yes. And again, probably more than 10 years older than I've been in here, but again I've met so many people that I still keep in contact today and there's always room to learn. Ann Kraus: Speaking of meeting people, what's the best way for viewers to get to know you a little bit better? Brooke Osmundson: Oh gosh. I would say I'm pretty active, or I try to be, on LinkedIn and Twitter. I keep saying Twitter, X, I got to get used to that. Ann Kraus: We're all struggling, yes. Brooke Osmundson: LinkedIn and X is where you can probably find me the most, and you just search my name @BrookeOsmundson. That's also my X handle, but then also my LinkedIn profile. And then we have our company website, but again if you're looking to reach out to me specifically, one of those two platforms. Ann Kraus: Brooke, thank you so much for being my guest on Simpli.fi TV. Brooke Osmundson: Thank you again for having me. Ann Kraus: And thank you all for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit simply.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Ann Kraus, and I look forward to seeing you next time.