Paid Media Pro Tips and Insights | David Forman

David McBee: Hello, and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is David Forman, Chief Operating Officer at Clarity Creative Group. David's journey into the world of computer code began in middle school where he embraced his inner nerd and found his true calling. During the early days of the internet, he took to constructing websites, and as the digital landscape grew, so did David's expertise and passion for invention. Deciding to forge his own path, he channeled his talents into creating unique websites with a data-driven model. This innovative endeavor led to the establishment of Clarity Creative Group, a platform for David's unique blend of brand-building creativity. David, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. David Forman: Thanks so much for having me. David McBee: I understand that you and I have more than just our first names in common. We both share a passion for paid media. I actually started my digital career in the early 2000s selling Google AdWords and then transitioned to targeted display ads a decade ago. So I'm a fan of paid search and paid display. But in a world where social media is what everyone is talking about, do you believe there's still a place for paid media? David Forman: Oh, absolutely. I believe that it's pretty much almost all businesses should have a budget for some sort of paid in their flow. In the data-driven model, I would say it's a lot of times your lower funnel people that could be there in the search intent that they're already looking for probably your product or service, and you could show up easily for that. So I think it's a win-win. David McBee: And you're talking about specifically paid search as in Google AdWords, right? David Forman: Google Ads, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Google Ads or Microsoft Bing Ads. David McBee: So what is the key to running a successful paid digital advertising campaign? David Forman: Oh, it's really easy. Very simple. Very simple. We got 10 minutes, so let's go. But, overall, it's buyer intent keywords and leaning a little bit on what the paid search platforms do well, which is finding you ideal clients, but overall making sure you're showing up for the keywords that your buyers would be looking for. So if you're a marketing company and you build websites for chiropractors, maybe chiropractor websites is the keyword. At that point, does your ad talk about that? Do you have a landing page that talks about that? Can you make sure that you come across as an expert? Not only do you show that to a client when they click on it, but Google's also taking in that information too and serving your ad based on that. They have an ad quality score that they give you, and some of it's based on that information that you have on your landing page. So if you don't ever talk about chiropractors on your website page, there's a little bit of, "Are you the right person to show that?" Doing a few things like that really just helps you get the visibility that you're looking for, maybe for your brand or possibly selling for somebody else. David McBee: What are some of the new and upcoming interesting technology updates that are going on with Google AdWords? David Forman: So Google AdWords, there's... Well, you know what's interesting is I would say for the world of AI, they've been in AI for a while now, and many, many years ago, they are very conversion-driven models that they've put out there. So that's been really nice to lean on. So their AI model has been good. They've recently dabbled in these dynamic ads that are a little bit lacking of the data, so I would say that those are still probably for people to probably more test and do. So there's those, and then there's these Performance Max. Google, this is their super AI smart... You put some information in there, let... Sometimes you'll give some images, maybe some videos. Google can sometimes create a video for you with some images. But you're creating a full marketing set that you're going to give to Google and you're going to say, "Google, I trust in you to find a lot." I've heard good and I've heard horrible. In all things, I think it doesn't hurt to try. I have yet to find it really successful. I'll run them while running other ads to see what works and what doesn't. They do say that you need to pause your other ads because, if not, then you're just competing with yourself. But it allows you to not only show up in search but show up in Gmail ads, show up on display ads, and you can put in YouTube ads. It allows you to easily go out there and have, I'd say, four or five campaigns that you really only have to build once. So it's efficient. Is it probably a good start? Yeah. If you really want to get into lowering your cost per conversion and playing around with some of that stuff, it's probably not fully there yet. Wouldn't say it's replacing an expert fully in creating ads. David McBee: One of my closest friends is a paid search expert, if you will, and he's been complaining to me that Google is leaning so heavily on their AI that they're actually taking away some of the controls that he was used to, like the exact match keyword phrase and things like that. What are your thoughts on that? David Forman: I dislike it to no end. It feels like a game of Whack-a-Mole. Yeah. With that, we're losing a little bit of some of the things that we want to show up for. When they feel like they can overthink what we're doing, I don't love it. However, it just means that I have to be a little bit more on top of what's going on. So I have to look at what search terms are actually showing up and being a little bit more creative maybe in some of the keywords that I'm putting in there. I was a big phrase match type of guy. I'll figure out the word in the middle, and then the before and after I'll let Google figure out, and I'll put some negatives in there depending on it. So, for me, I always enjoyed playing around with it that way, but I could also see where you start getting into phrase matches still start showing up your competitor's names that you don't love. It's not fun. But, yeah, I just think sometimes you have to stay on top of Google. They mean well sometimes in what they're doing, but you just have to... Just because they say it's supposed to make your life easier doesn't mean it's going to. David McBee: Definitely not. What advice do you have for other paid search managers out there who are watching our interview today? David Forman: Yeah. One of the things that we kind of talked about it is that when it comes to Google Ads or any of the platforms, is to test so many different things. Test headlines, test ads, test images, test different call-outs and other things, play around with the keywords, pause things, add things. Google also has the abilities to do ad variations and AB testing, which is helpful because it's within Google Ads. Used to previously have to put together a few different things to really get a good AB test going. So they add a little bit of ad variations that you can do. They have, I'd say, probably maybe half a dozen to a dozen things that you can switch out. Maybe it's a different landing page, maybe it's different headlines or different things that you could change that could hurt or possibly help in what you're doing. So I would say lean on some of those things that do exist out there that can hopefully make you do better without having to start over from scratch. David McBee: Well, I think that's a lot of great advice that you just shoveled our way in less than nine minutes, so congrats on that. Do you have a favorite book or podcast that you'd like to give a shout out to? David Forman: Yeah. So I would say every week, and I know this because it came in my Spotify yearly reminder, that I listen to a great one called Marketing Clock. It comes out every Friday, and it's another marketing agency up in Buffalo. They usually go through paid, social, and SEO, and they usually talk about the headlines. They talk about a lot of times what's happening on Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it. But it's just so helpful because, well, there's so much going on and they can really go into what the topics are that are trending and what's happening, the latest news, because there's so much going on out there. Instead of having to read 100 articles, I try to at least give myself the hour that that podcast is a week just to at least take in, "Ah, yeah, I did hear about that. I know about that. Okay, do I need to now view the tweet versus having to doom scroll on Twitter all day to try to see what's happening?" David McBee: Well, David, thank you very much for being my guest today on Simpli.fi TV. David Forman: Yeah, thanks for having me. David McBee: And thank you guys 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 software solutions. For more information, visit simpli.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.