Welcome to Episode 30. of Growing ecommerce. Today is a special episode as we break the usual format. Long-time listeners will know we did a Q4 peak season panel back in 2021 and we did it again. Time Mike is in the hot seat joined by his colleague, Agnes Zottl. Many thanks to Maria Holzinger for stepping into the moderator rule. They discuss big-picture environmental trends, what it means to have the most automated Google Ads peak season ever, and how to profit this holiday season.  You can have a look at the full interview here.

1. Beating Bestseller bias - 03:32
2. PMax - the self-driving car - 09:07
3. Stock and non-stock challenge for retailers - 11:13
4. Holiday season advice for retailers -  15:21

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 29. of Growing ecommerce. Today, Mike is joined by Mike Taylor, co-founder of Vex Power (vexpower.com) which offers courses for marketers who want to improve their technical skills. He also offers consultancy, growth and experimentation and he's a popular instructor on LinkedIn learning. Microsoft Excel for marketers and memetics (Marketingmemetics.com) are one of his big hits over there. They discuss Mike's stance on testing. When is it a waste of time? When isn't it? And his critiques of personalization. This time, you get walked through marketing, mix modeling, generative AI, and a broader definition of memes.

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 28 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike shares one of his monologues to reflect the changes in advertising, and tackles the ongoing need for modernization, including testing, and account structure. Mike looks at the recent changes in the google ads universe and talks about what it means for ecommerce experts as google becomes the merchant center of gravity.

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 27 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike is joined by Inderpaul Rai, Head of Acquisition at ufurnish.com. Indy has had a remarkable career spanning from small-scale SEO to award-winning paid work on the agency side, to enterprise in-house teams and all the way back to a startup environment. We discuss all that, and along the way we talk about what a modern partnership-driven affiliate model looks like, plus the importance of paid and organic search harmonisation – or in other words, taking a total SEM view. Also, culture is a topic that Indy radiates, and this gets a spotlight as well.

1. Career highlights and lessons learned - 2:39
2. Modern partnership-driven affiliate model - 24:19
3. Paid and organic search harmonisation - 28:00
4. What is next in digital marketing? - 36:31

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 26. of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike is joined by Alex Greifeld. Alex has a long background in ecommerce and until recently she was a director at Tapestry, which collects brands you'll know from the luxury space like Coach and Kate Spade. Now, she's acting as an ecommerce growth advisor, so she's a really perfect fit for this podcast.

We talked through age-old debates like retention versus acquisition and newer ones like Return on Ad Spend versus Marketing Efficiency Ratio, as well as Customer Lifetime Value versus first-order profit.

Listen to the new Growing Ecommerce episode and learn more about:

1. Product, forgotten P of marketing - 02:39
2. Customer Retention Vs Acquisition - 04:19
3. ROAS vs MER? -17:13
4. CLV vs first-order profit? -26:51
5. What's next for ecommerce - 36:31 

You can hear more from Alex by subscribing to her very popular ecommerce newsletter, No Best Practices: https://nobestpractices.co/

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 25 of Growing Ecommerce. This time, Mike is joined by Katherine Munro, a data scientist at smec. If you have a stereotype in your mind that data scientists are brilliant, then Katherine will not disappoint you. She is a fountain of knowledge – disciplined and scientific as you might expect, and also incredibly creative in her thinking.
We catch up about some current projects she’s working on and then dive into CLV, or Customer Lifetime Value. What is CLV exactly, what are approaches to calculating or modelling it? How can we use it in an ecommerce setting? We talk cohorts, categories, and KPIs.

1. What is it? How to calculate or model it? - 04:19
2. How to use CLV in an e commerce setting? -17:13
3. The value of CLV for your business? -26:51
4. Beyond CLV - 36:31 

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 24 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike is joined by Kirk Williams - his own professional hero. Kirk is a PPC and digital advertising expert who runs his own PPC micro agency, ZATO Marketing. In this episode, Kirk and Mike ponder about the Google advertising space, both the challenges and opportunities moving forward, as well as the role of data collection and privacy in the ecommerce operating environment. This episode gives an interesting counter or companion perspective to the recent episode with Ginny Marvin -Google Ads liaison. Feel free to have a look at the article Kirk refers to or listen to Kirk host Mike in the podcast episode.

1. What is healthy ecommerce growth? - 08:34
2. Google Ads and how to optimise campaign performance - 19:12
3. Performance Max-Google’s automation concept - 28:02 
4. Compliant data collection and privacy moving forward - 42:34 

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 23 of Growing Ecommerce.
In this episode, Mike is joined by his colleague from smec, Markus Harant. He is an online marketing expert who leads the Programmatic Advertising and Analytics team. Markus talks us through the technology behind programmatic, ecommerce use cases, how to view these campaigns, and What's going on with the dichotomy between brand and performance? If you wish to read about Programmatic Advertising instead of listening about it - have a look at the Programmatic Advertising ebook. And news of Microsoft and Xander winning Netflix's ad business

1. Technology behind Programmatic and its adoption? 
2. Top or bottom of the funnel? Programmatic Performance and how to measure it.  - 9:21
3. Programmatic Advertising budget: machine learning capabilities, cost, and value.  - 18:00
4. Microsoft to power Netflix’s advertising. What to expect?  - 31:18

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 22 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike was lucky enough to speak with Ginny Marvin, Google Ads product liaison. She supports communication and the working relationship between Google's product team on the one hand, and the advertisers and partners who use that platform on the other hand. In this episode you get introduced to Google’s latest resources to help you steer your retail business: your guide to  search automation, Google Ads best practice guide and  performance max best practices guide. 

With these resources and everything Mike and Ginny discuss in this episode you’ll dive deeper into:

1. From all search engine marketing to client interactions and product updates. How does Google connect with advertisers? 1:34
2. The future of Google Ads? Automation, maximized conversions and machine learning capabilities  8:36
3. Business or product Insights? Insights that marketers should really be looking to manage campaigns 18:16
4. Differentiation in an automated environment  31:00

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 21. of growing ecommerce. 

In this episode, Mike is joined by Karin Schallauer, smec’s product marketing team lead who just came back from K5, one of the biggest ecommerce conferences overall in the German-speaking region. Tune in as Karin and Mike take you down the ecommerce landscape and discuss:

• Managing marketplace, supply chain, personalisation, and digital transformation
• Sustainability:  the footprint of your sales - 5:47
• Marketplaces: should I stay or should I go? - 11.25
• Social ecommerce: Trend or reality? - 17:34
• Pandemic playing field: disruptions, opportunities, and trends - 27:14
• What is healthy ecommerce growth? - 30.40

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/