Power Marketing with Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee interviews Sarah Stemen, an experienced paid search consultant who has run major paid search accounts for years — some with very large budgets — for clients in numerous industries. Kevin and Sarah discuss the substance of her forthcoming presentation at the Brighton SEO conference and then take a deep dive into how marketers are using Google’s Performance Max, a goal-based campaign type whose aim is to allow advertisers to increase conversions across Google’s wide range of advertising channels.

Unfortunately, as they discuss, the drawback of using Performance Max is the loss of control over targeting and the blurring of campaign data that might provide valuable insights to the savvy marketer.

Sarah and Kevin explore the challenges associated with understanding customer lifetime value (LTV) and how it impacts marketing campaigns. They trade notes on how paid search data can serve as a barometer measuring the effectiveness of other (non-search) marketing efforts, with Sarah noting that the advent of Performance Max has made it harder to use branded search in this way.

They discuss the GA-4 transition, which has led to considerable frustration among marketers, and speculate on whether non-Google alternatives might be good choices for marketers seeking to restore the robust analytics functionality that was formerly available. Sarah shares her experiences with clients and the need for a conservative approach when implementing changes in ad campaigns, as well as the importance of considering geography and purchasing power when optimizing ad targeting.

The interview concludes with a discussion of what Sarah is excited about for 2024 and beyond in the paid search ecosystem.

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Kevin Lee talks with Ashley Segura, the co-founder of TopHatRank, about her upcoming presentation at the Brighton SEO Conference. Ashley’s primary topic is “topic ideation” in the context of content creation.

Kevin and Ashley discuss how AI tools like ChatGPT and AHREFS can assist in generating content ideas and how to identify successful topics through content audits. They touch upon the importance of working with internal teams to gather insights and pain points from customer interactions. Additionally, they discuss the idea of brand as a publisher and the value of creating content that appeals to the brand’s audience (even if it’s not directly related to the product or service).

Ashley emphasizes the need for authenticity in content partnerships and the importance of relevance. The conversation delves into considerations relating to when to create video content and how to decide if it’s worth the investment, taking cues from what’s currently ranking in search results. Ashley suggests that the presence of video content in top-ranking pages can be an indicator that video should be incorporated into the content strategy. She acknowledges that video production can be time-consuming but stresses the importance of using it when it aligns with user preferences and search trends.

They discuss various content strategies and approaches, including influencer marketing, content summaries, and the repurposing of content. They highlight the importance of creating snackable, summary, and abstract versions of content to cater to different audience preferences and consumption habits. They also explore the use of infographics, which can be time-consuming to create but add value to content.

The discussion continues with the concept of future-proofing SEO against voice search and featured snippets. Ashley advises including summary sections in content to increase the chances of being the source quoted by voice assistants. The conversation concludes with Ashley’s excitement about the evolving landscape of content creation and the opportunities AI tools provide for content strategy and optimization in 2024.

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Kevin Lee interviews Lee-Sean Huang, Senior Director of Learning & Programs at AIGA (the American Institute of Graphic Arts). The conversation covers how the design profession is evolving, how creative briefs are changing, and how the design community is adapting to new technologies, including AI, which are already having a significant impact on how designers work.

Big shifts have already happened in design – driven by the pandemic’s transformation of the workplace and the arrival of a new generation of design and collaboration tools — and these shifts are accelerating. As Lee-Sean notes, clients “are being more collaborative with their creative teams, whether it’s with agencies or in-house.” He also sees increased investment in in-house creative and design teams.

Lee-Sean acknowledges that while in-person dynamics can be beneficial for certain creative and strategic projects, there are trade-offs; including the need to manually memorialize in-person “analog” interactions via notebook or other analog devices and then transmute this material to the digital realm.

Regarding AI-enabled design tools, Lee-Sean mentions that designers, especially content-focused professionals like illustrators and photographers, are surfacing real concerns about AI tools replacing them. Lee-Sean clearly recognizes that AI tools can be beneficial in terms of the ideation and concept development phases of any project, saving time and providing more opportunity to focus on higher-level creative processes.

Kevin and Lee-Sean discuss best practices for creative briefs. As he notes, a brief that is too narrow may limit creativity and innovation, while an excessively open-ended brief may lead to “wheel spinning” and a lack of direction. Finding the right balance between open and closed briefs is essential.

Lee-Sean reflects on some common themes discussed at recent AIGA conferences, including the imperative that designers expand their scope of knowledge beyond traditional parameters of design to include fluency with AI tools, become more business-savvy, and become expert at aligning creative work with strategic business goals.

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Kevin Lee talks with Ola King, who will be speaking at the Brighton SEO Conference in San Diego this week. His topic at the conference is “Why SEO is a UX Discipline.”

Kevin and Ola discuss the challenges of future-proofing SEO, especially in the context of AI-generated responses replacing traditional search engine results. Ola suggests that even though search engines may be moving to “SERP-less” results, they will likely continue to prioritize delivering accurate, fast, and comprehensive information allowing for some measure of user choice. He notes that, at least right now, AI-generated responses provide surface-level information, acting as “knowledgeable friends”” who can direct users to more detailed, more authoritative content residing on websites.

The conversation touches on the importance of user experience (UX) on websites, emphasizing that websites need to deliver on the promises made in search results to provide a positive user experience. Kevin and Ola highlight the significance of branding and how content should align with a brand’s promise, ensuring users know what to expect when they encounter a brand’s content.

They discuss the challenges of incorporating storytelling into content marketing, particularly for businesses in less exciting industries. Kevin points out the difference between traditional journalistic writing and storytelling, where storytelling tends to have a more flexible narrative structure. Ola suggests that it’s essential to redefine what a story is and focus on the narrative aspect. He advises businesses to understand their audience’s needs and frame their content as a solution to those needs, noting that every business can find a compelling story within its operations or by addressing the concerns of its target audience.

Ola emphasizes that everything can be turned into an interesting story. Even in less exciting industries, businesses should consider what keeps their customers up at night and use that as the basis for creating engaging content. He suggests that businesses should think about the hero’s journey within their industry or customer experiences to make their content more relatable and engaging, and advises marketers to start with the end goal of pleasing their audience and optimizing for the right channels, rather than focusing solely on search engines like Google or social media platforms such as TikTok.

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evin Lee interviews Michelle Covey, Vice President of Innovation at GS1 US, a global non-profit organization whose mission is to help businesses solve problems through standardized processes, such as identifying products and tracking them through the supply chain. Doing so is especially important today, in an era when corporate sustainability goals typically include waste reduction and product recalls are, if not exactly commonplace, not terribly unusual.

Kevin and Michelle discuss the fact that direct-to-consumer sales of products by influencers, celebrities, and other individuals with their own custom formulas have increased in recent years, creating new opportunities for supply chain optimization and product traceability. As Michelle notes, being able to correctly identify products throughout the supply chain is critical, even if these products don’t seem destined for large retail chains.

Michelle outlines the evolution of barcodes, highlighting their potential to carry more information and be scanned by phones, expanding their use beyond checkout lines, and explains the importance of Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) in tracking inventory and preventing counterfeiting. She also notes that RFID — whose first real use case was in the apparel industry, is expanding into other sectors, notably the food service and health care industries.

They address the fact that retail systems will need to be ready to scan 2D barcodes by 2027 by investing in new scanning technology to accommodate 2D barcodes. Here, GS1 US will be of assistance in terms of providing resources for companies to learn about and implement the new standards; resources will include a website, YouTube channel, and a data hub.

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emphasizes the importance of understanding your business, ideal customers, and creating a content strategy to drive business outcomes while providing value to the audience. They discuss the role of executives and salespeople in thought leadership, suggesting that it’s not limited to the C-suite and can include sales representatives.

Purna breaks down content marketing strategy into its three core areas: understanding the business, ideal customers, and building a strategy that balances key messages and distribution channels. She also has some great advice for brands whose content marketing efforts may be restrained by the need to metaphorically “herd cats” within the organization. Purna suggests focusing on different stages of audience awareness rather than traditional funnel stages and adapting content accordingly. She recommends repurposing content to reach different audience segments.

Kevin and Purna discuss the role of executives and salespeople in the effort to build organizational thought leadership, suggesting that it’s not limited to the C-suite and can include sales representatives. She advises that one best builds thought leadership by starting with a limited number of active and passionate employees and working out from there. She has some excellent advice for anyone seeking to create audience-resonant content from trade shows or other events. She, like myself, agrees that repurposing content for different channels and contexts is a useful tactic that can maximum content impact.

Purna has been following the AI revolution from a content marketing perspective for some time, and she’s clearly optimistic about lies ahead, but believes that one should not become overly enamored by the technology itself. She notes that “We’ve seen the power of what AI can do to empower the human, which is really the key.”

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Kevin Lee interviews SEO expert Shawn Huber. Topics discussed in this free-ranging conversation include Shawn’s talk at the Brighton SEO Conference in San Diego, which will focus on encouraging Google’s crawler, SEO strategies for small business, the wisdom of pruning content that has outlived its usefulness, digital PR and syndication strategies that can “future-proof” current SEO efforts, the role of AI in optimization, and possible revelations that may emerge from the various lawsuits pending against Google and their potential impact on the SEO profession.

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Kevin Lee interviews Bryan Barletta, who created and runs Sounds Profitable, a company dedicated to the proposition that podcasting can be profitable. The company’s mission statement is “to educate and empower the podcasting industry at all levels” by providing insightful content, events, research, and advisory services.

Kevin quizzes Bryan about Sounds Profitable’s origin story and then the conversations plunges into specific issues germane to podcasting planning and production. They discuss best practices with regard to podcast frequency and ad delivery, along with the importance of treating podcasting like a business, investing in it, and building quality content to stand out in the crowded podcast ecosystem.

Bryan highlights the need for podcasters and marketers to define success beyond mere download numbers, and to focus on building relationships and creating value through their podcasts. They delve into the issue of attribution, which can be challenging due to a lack of platform-level data sharing but can be addressed via various available solutions.

They discuss the potential for niche podcasts in both B2B and B2C contexts, with examples such as sports podcasts in the offseason and election-related podcasts during election years, and address the issue of budgeting, with Bryan providing examples of different types of podcast production budgets. They chat about the growing trend of podcasters recording with video, which allows for more visual cues and the ability to create graphical assets for branding and social media deployment.

Finally, they trade notes on the importance of having the right equipment in place to properly execute professional podcasts, and the importance of consulting with a professional to produce a polished podcast.

If you’re a podcaster, or are thinking of becoming one, I’m sure you’ll get a lot out of this interview.

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Kevin Lee interviews Charlene Li, author, keynote speaker, advisor, and coach, to chat about her new book, The Disruption Mindset: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail, and discuss some of the biggest issues facing the technology industry — and the world — today. As Charlene writes, “disruptive transformation is so difficult because it upsets the status quo and shifts power relationships. It requires not settling the table that has been set for us and instead committing to run toward a future that is radically different from — and better than — we are today.”

Kevin and Charlene converse about AI’s positive impacts, as well as some of its potential threats, including deep fakes and phishing campaigns, along with the need for organizations to have guidelines in place to stay safe and focus on innovation. They discuss AI’s impact on startups and how AI “co-pilots” have measurably improved productivity among coders. Charlene notes that the startup environment is vibrant and well-funded right now but also risky, given the likelihood that large companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook will eventually disrupt and/or co-opt AI startups’ business models.

The conversation shifts towards the transformative potential of AI in marketing, with Charlene emphasizing the power of generative AI to generate content efficiently. She expresses a mix of optimism and skepticism about the impact of LLMs on the research industry, acknowledging both their potential benefits and the potential for laziness in relying on AI for answers, as well as the potential for generative AI systems to “hallucinate” false and potentially dangerously misleading results. They then chat about AI’s role in generating targeted, personalized advertising and in marketing and branding generally.

As Charlene notes, the AI ecosystem is thriving “because we can see how generative AI can be used in almost all aspects, and start transforming the way we do work; the way we live, the way we play. And so marketers, I think… if you’re not using it every day, you’d better start using it as much as you can to explore how can we really transform the way we work. And don’t use it like a glorified search engine. Really think about the work that would completely change the way you’re doing things today if you have this incredible tool at your disposal.”

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Kevin Lee interviews Stephen F. Johnston, Jr., CTO of Pubwise, a company that helps publishers increase revenue through programmatic advertising by offering header bidding as a service. As its web site describes, Pubwise came about “after a long, frustrating road of expensive consultants delivering empty promises, combined with the arrival of Header Bidding to the adtech scene.” After “getting wise to the murky, sometimes dishonest and inefficient programmatic advertising world; we decided to create the technology ourselves – to see the data inside the black box.”

Kevin and Stephen do a deep dive into Pubwise’s Prebid technology, which optimizes ad auctions for better win rates and revenue for both buyers and sellers and then broaden the conversation’s scope to discuss the evolution of the ad tech industry, which is currently undergoing a phase that blurs the lines that once separated SSPs, DSPs, and exchanges.

They tackle issues pertaining to ad auctions, latency, and monetization, with Stephen noting that today’s environment requires publishers to constantly monitor and remeasure auction metrics to avoid long-term performance issues. Additionally, both publishers and sellers must surface the right data to connect audiences with interest, or risk a period of low fidelity and decreased campaign scale. As Stephen notes, observability is key to optimizing ad performance, as it provides contextual data for both publishers and advertisers to improve their systems.

They chat about the issue of environmental sustainability and how it intersects with the traditional need for programmatic ads to execute multiple, energy-consuming server calls. Stephen expresses optimism about industry progress but raises concerns about efficiency and carbon footprint due to browser changes such as those entailed in Google’s post-cookie proposal. He also notes that while there is a lot of focus on reducing requests and carbon impact, the solution is still fragmented, with many companies vying to be the solutions provider.

As Stephen notes, uncertainty in the digital advertising industry will likely prevail for the foreseeable future, providing an opportunity for companies such as his own to show their value.

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