Welcome to Episode 8. of  Growing Ecommerce. Today Mike is joined by two guests, Kirk Williams, owner of ZATO marketing making his second appearance on the show, and Ben Kruger who's a senior ecommerce growth consultant at Google.  In exchange for a packed agenda you get a stimulating conversation about the grand brand-non brand debate in Google ads, the ways in which PMax is like paid social and the discussion about whether or not CPCs matter anymore. 

About smec (Smarter Ecommerce):

At smec - Smarter Ecommerce, we specialize in transforming business goals into optimized ad campaigns. With over 16 years of experience in Google & Microsoft Ads, our intelligent software and expert services help retailers achieve superior results.

We're committed to giving you the tools and insights needed to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

• smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
• Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/

Welcome to Episode 7. of  Growing Ecommerce. 
Today, Mike is joined by Lucas Gordon, a solution specialist in native advertising at Microsoft. With 20 years of experience in digital media and advertising, working with brands like Revlon, Decathlon and many others, he's particularly strong in real-time bidding technology. Lucas walks us through Microsoft's ad tech offering. Why audience matters more than placement? Why he sees Microsoft as a low fraud environment? And we talk about partnerships including Xander Netflix and Open AI, We really enjoy this conversation and we hope you will too. 

About smec (Smarter Ecommerce):

At smec - Smarter Ecommerce, we specialize in transforming business goals into optimized ad campaigns. With over 16 years of experience in Google & Microsoft Ads, our intelligent software and expert services help retailers achieve superior results.

We're committed to giving you the tools and insights needed to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

• smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
• Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/

Welcome to Episode 6. of  Growing Ecommerce. Today Mike is joined by Sam Tomlinson, of Warshawski, a boutique marketing agency in the US. Sam is also teaching at Johns Hopkins, University and Georgetown. Mike caught him while he was attending SMX Munich and discussed the conference briefly before diving into Sam's views on forecasting and emphasizes that forecasting is not out of reach. Then, we switch gears and we discuss the intersection of large language models and search. It's not a new topic to this podcast, but here is a new perspective, Sam explains where he's not quite as convinced

1. The importance of forecasting, and its types -  8:53
2. Cohort base and Bayesian regression.  - 16:20
3.  How to determine forecast type?   - 26:30
4.  What is good growth to you?   - 29:34
5. AI in marketing. - 25:37

About smec (Smarter Ecommerce):

At smec - Smarter Ecommerce, we specialize in transforming business goals into optimized ad campaigns. With over 16 years of experience in Google & Microsoft Ads, our intelligent software and expert services help retailers achieve superior results.

We're committed to giving you the tools and insights needed to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

• smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
• Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/

Welcome to Episode 5. of  Growing Ecommerce. Today, Mike is joined by Mike Taylor, who is making his second appearance on the show. He's the co-founder of Vex Power and author of the upcoming book marketing memetics. Last time we talked about testing, marketing, mix modeling and generative aAI,  but this time we are digging in:  we talk about the prospect for marketers in an age of AI, an interesting field called Prompt Engineering and so-called war of the search engines between the new BING experience powered by chat GPT and google's Bard.

1. AI Introduction  - 3:30
2. Is Ai coming after your job? - 16:40
3. Prompt engineering- 22:10
4. War of search engines - 28:08
5. How wrong are we dealing with AI  - 42:22

About smec (Smarter Ecommerce):

At smec - Smarter Ecommerce, we specialize in transforming business goals into optimized ad campaigns. With over 16 years of experience in Google & Microsoft Ads, our intelligent software and expert services help retailers achieve superior results.

We're committed to giving you the tools and insights needed to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

• smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
• Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/

Welcome to Episode 4. of  Growing Ecommerce. Today Mike is joined by his colleague Mark Haupt, smec`s UK commercial director. He brings years of online retail experience in several different contexts to the table  as he talks to Mike about the Post Brexit, post - pandemic economic situation in the UK, how Google's Performance Max has landed with the UK market, the increasing allure of Microsoft ads and the agency in-house relationship.  

Join Mike and learn more about the paid marketing in the UK .

1. The big picture - 4:15
2. PMax in the UK - 13:20
3. Microsoft and AI content - 28:00
4. In House vs Agency  - 34:25

About smec (Smarter Ecommerce):

At smec - Smarter Ecommerce, we specialize in transforming business goals into optimized ad campaigns. With over 16 years of experience in Google & Microsoft Ads, our intelligent software and expert services help retailers achieve superior results.

We're committed to giving you the tools and insights needed to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

• smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
• Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/

Welcome to Episode 3. of  Growing Ecommerce.
Today, Mike looks back at ecommerce in 2022. He reviewed the data and prepared a market report for 2022. He first looks at macroeconomic data like consumer confidence and inflation and then  talks about trends identified in channel data for Google Ads, Shopping and Performance Max in particular. The focus of the market report is on  Germany, Netherlands, UK, and France. 
Join Mike and learn what are the key trends to build on in 2023. 
  
Which ecommerce verticals grew in 2022?  -1:36 
Inflation and consumer confidence, what to make of it? -5:33 
Retail mobility vs. Covid stringency - 17:25 
Full funnel metrics - 19:31 
PMax adoption?  - 37:37

About smec (Smarter Ecommerce):

At smec - Smarter Ecommerce, we specialize in transforming business goals into optimized ad campaigns. With over 16 years of experience in Google & Microsoft Ads, our intelligent software and expert services help retailers achieve superior results.

We're committed to giving you the tools and insights needed to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

• smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
• Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/

Welcome to Episode 2. of  Growing ecommerce. Today, we are  joined by Scott Kennedy. He's a senior director at Franklin Sports where he's responsible for ecommerce analytics and tech capabilities. In the US, Franklin is synonymous with baseball and baseball for many is synonymous with stats. It is a numbers game, so it's only fitting that Franklin is a remarkably data driven organization and Scott is at the forefront of that. We discussed that data culture in quite some detail, getting into employee mentoring and we discussed Amazon advertising, the amazon data landscape, and the balance of retail and direct to consumer at franklin with advice for smaller brands too. 

1. Effective stock management- 12:30
2. How to build a data driven organization  - 15:05
3. Amazon for direct to consumer ecommerce businesses - 23:01
4. How to build competitive advantage in online retail  - 29:45

About smec (Smarter Ecommerce):

At smec - Smarter Ecommerce, we specialize in transforming business goals into optimized ad campaigns. With over 16 years of experience in Google & Microsoft Ads, our intelligent software and expert services help retailers achieve superior results.

We're committed to giving you the tools and insights needed to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

• smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
• Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/

Welcome to Episode 33. of  Growing ecommerce. Today, we are joined by Arend de Ruiter from bol.com,  a dutch retailer and retail platform generating over €5 billion in annual revenue.

Arend leads SEA measurement and data activation at this retail giant. We discuss what it's like to advertise 60 million products, how to approach segmentation in supersized accounts, and how to deploy automation in this huge oil tanker like organization.

1. Advertising 60 million products - 10:30
2. What is the right amount of segmentation - 14:32
3. SEO and SEA management - 16:32
4. Full funnel marketing and KPIs  - 24:59
5. What technology to focus on? -  39:00

About smec (Smarter Ecommerce):

At smec - Smarter Ecommerce, we specialize in transforming business goals into optimized ad campaigns. With over 16 years of experience in Google & Microsoft Ads, our intelligent software and expert services help retailers achieve superior results.

We're committed to giving you the tools and insights needed to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

• smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
• Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/

Welcome to Episode 32. of  Growing ecommerce, the last episode of 2022. Today, we are joined by Philip, Ivelio Vellin who is an expert in analytics and tracking.

This time, Mike and Phillip talk about google analytics 4, the complaints, the benefits, and how to get it right. They discussed cardinality, data retention, migration strategy, consent mode, and model data plus server side tagging. 

It's a great introduction to the topic and now is actually an opportunity to update your data strategy as Philip explains why this is core to succeeding next year and beyond. 

1. What is GA4 and what makes it different? - 03:00
2. What is cardinality? -10:48
3. How do we benefit from GA4? -15:00
4. What is a consent mode? - 16:55
5. GA4 in ecommerce? - 22:25

About smec (Smarter Ecommerce):

At smec - Smarter Ecommerce, we specialize in transforming business goals into optimized ad campaigns. With over 16 years of experience in Google & Microsoft Ads, our intelligent software and expert services help retailers achieve superior results.

We're committed to giving you the tools and insights needed to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

• smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
• Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/

Welcome to Episode 31. of  Growing ecommerce. Today, we are joined by Tim Aton, COO at Range Leather, where in a classic scale-up fashion, he wears a lot of hats. From paid, and owned media channels to product merchandising to managing shipping and wholesale teams. We discuss approaches to blended ROAS, meta advertising, Facebook in particular, and how is life looking post-iOS 14. Then we move on from marketing and discuss the interplay of marketing and operations.

1. Meta & Facebook advertising - 7:12
2. Life post-IOS 14 - 15:41
3. Blended ROAS in ecommerce - 18:48
4. Interplay of marketing and operations  - 28:59

About smec (Smarter Ecommerce):

At smec - Smarter Ecommerce, we specialize in transforming business goals into optimized ad campaigns. With over 16 years of experience in Google & Microsoft Ads, our intelligent software and expert services help retailers achieve superior results.

We're committed to giving you the tools and insights needed to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising.

Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:

• smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.com
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbh
• Newsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/