The Collective

The Collective

By Trevor Norton & Steve PeronBusinessMarketing
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The Collective episodes

  • #014 - How to Stay Up to Date in This Fast Paced Media Industry

    Industry updates: If you work for an agency, own one or just do marketing work in general, you know how rapid things change.  There’s constant movement within algorithms, new campaign formats and trends.

    And if you’re in this game the key is to stay up to date so you can produce results for your clients.  In this episode Steve shares results from a recent LinkedIn poll he ran and the guys discuss who they follow on social and how they stay up to date with all things media.



    29 min
  • #013 - How to Generate Business As an Agency Owner

    How to get leads as an agency owner: Quite possibly the most important thing in running your own agency business is acquiring new customers.  But how do you do that?


    The guys discuss 7 different ways in which they’ve been able to acquire new customers to grow their agency businesses.  This is not a nonsense fluffy episode! Lol.  The guys dove into specific examples of exactly how they’ve generated new customers reaching out for their services and how you can too.

    47 min
  • #012 - Google’s Creepy Policy Update, Google’s Auto Updates to be Weary of, Shopify Partners with X & Social Posting Declines

    Google’s Creepy Policy Update: Google announced an update to their ‘Inappropriate content policy’ that seemed eerie heading into 2024.


    Google Ads Auto Updates: We speak about two cases in which Google automatically creates extension assets as well as video assets with Performance Max campaigns.  This is a huge one to keep in mind for your clients. 


    Shopify & X Partnership:  We discussed the potential impacts of this partnership.


    Is Social Media Posting Declining:  We discussed recent data that shows daily posting across social media accounts per account on average is decreasing.

    47 min
  • #011 - How Plunge Scaled to $100 mill in 3 Years Using Influencers & Hacks To Be More Productive in the Agency Game

    Plunge’s Success Story: We discuss how this cold plunge company scaled to $100mill in 3 years using Andrew Hubberman and other key influencers.


    How to be more productive: We brought on Ricardo Figueiredo, co-founder of Collective 42, to discuss hacks to be more productive.  If you’re running an agency or working for one you know how insane things get working on tons of different projects.  We discuss tactics on how to improve your efficiency when it comes to cranking out work and accomplishing what you need to on the daily and weekly basis.

    49 min
  • #010 - Newsletters Are Blowing Up, Founder of Beehiiv’s Story, SNPL & Economic Trends, Top YouTube Content & Shorts on Social

    RSS Feeds: Steve shares how he built a custom RSS feed of his favorite blogs to stay up to date on the latest industry news and trends.


    Newsletters are blowing up: We take a deep dive into the founder on Beehiiv from Morning Brew and how they’re looking to change how newsletters monetize and their goals to become the Facebook ads of newsletters.


    Shop Now Pay Later:  Cyber Monday & Black Friday showed strong sales data across the U.S. but does it come at a cost to the American consumer with the rise of SNPL? We discuss some interesting and concerning economic trends across the economy. 


    Top Viewed Content on YouTube:  We discuss Tube Filter and what trends we’re seeing from the top viewed content on YouTube and the overall rise of short form content, specifically from YouTube Shorts.

    53 min
  • #008 - Another Google Core Update, Backlinks Deep Dive, Starlink Update & The Importance of Companies Driving Innovation
    1. .ING Top-Level Domains: Cool update for top-level domains where you can now purchase domains ending with “ing”. The guys discuss potential marketing tactics.
    2. Google leaks most profitable terms: Google’s currently in court for their antitrust case and a PDF leaked with their most profitable search queries for a week in 2018. There’s a surprising trend within these search queries.
    3. ChatGPT Update:  Coming soon to ChatGPT are “context connectors” where you will be able to scan your Google Drive & Microsoft 365 drive.  Tons of possibilities here with these integrations.
    4. Google Core Update:  Google announced yet another core update and the guys discuss potential implications.
    5. Backlinks deep dive:  Curious about what type of backlinks you should acquire? Or how many? Or what anchor text to use? Or what page to send traffic? Steve breaks this all down.
    6. Starlink update:  The guys speak about s recent Starlink announcement which aims to supplement LTE connection for sending text messages and potentially hints towards a future cell phone company by Elon.  They end discussing the importance for private companies and entrepreneurs to drive growth and innovation.
      7. 54 min
    7. #007 - Holiday Season Ad Prep, Keywords are Dying, Pmax Search Themes Beta, How Recessions Impact Agencies

      1. Preparing for Holiday Season: The guys recommend a bunch of things to consider if you’re advertising during Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the greater holiday season.

      2. Ads appear in Google’s SGE: Surprise, surprise!  Google controls SGE and shockingly is testing ad placements in the experience.  We saw this coming but it’s interesting to see when and where these ads are beginning to appear.

      3. Performance Max Beta:  Google just released a Performance Max Beta where advertisers can now add “Search Themes” to their asset groups.  These are different from search terms, but it does beg the question, is keyword bidding eventually going away?

        4. 4. Agencies hurting in this economy?:  The guys talk about what they’re seeing in the marketplace for agencies during some tough economic conditions.  They also spoke about some past experiences and things to consider if you’re an agency owner.

        46 min
      4. #006 - Tik Tok & Google Partnership, ChatGPT Can See & Hear, $84 Bill in Ad Fraud

        1. Tik Tok & Google partnership?: Tik Tok previewed links to Google within search results which we’ve hinted at in previous episodes.  We give a preview of what this looks like and how it might impact your strategy.

        2. Google’s Legal Issues: Google’s in court and there are massive implications on the line with the possibility that Google search might not be the default of search engine on Apple’s iPhones.  We spoke about the implications of this and how difficult it is in general to build a search engine. 

        3. ChatGPT can see & hear:  Really cool updates from the OpenAI team that enabled the ability to have ChatGPT speak in different languages and visually interpret images as it could only interpret text in the past. 

        4. $84 Billion in ad fraud:  A ridiculous analysis just dropped showing that 22% of all ad spend in 2023 was fraudulent, which accounted for $84 billion in total fraud.  We discussed potential solutions that teams should implement to safeguard against fraud. 

          5. 5. What makes for long client relationships in the agency game: With 20 years experience in the agency world, Ricardo breaks down what he’s seen lead to long-lasting client relationships in the agency space. 

          57 min
        5. #005 - Google Admits to Inflating CPCs, Bard 2.0, Bing launched Connected TV ads

          Topics covered:


          1. Google’s Auto Apply Tab: Be careful with this one!  Located on the ‘Recommendations’ tab Google will auto-apply certain things that are preset, like enabling search partners network and display network for search campaigns.  Make sure you take a look at these settings before launching campaigns. 

          2. Google Testifies to Inflating CPCs: Google admits in court to inflating cost per clicks by 5% in order to meet revenue targets.  We discussed how testing manual bidding vs smart bidding could be a nice tactic to save ad dollars and maintain performance. 

          3. Bard 2.0:  We break down some of the key updates from the new release and our overall thoughts on SGE.

          4. Microsoft Ads announces Connected TV ads on platform:  You can now run Connected TV ads through Microsoft Ads.  We discuss how this might impact programmatic DSP vendors. 

            5. 5. Pay to appear on podcast: Steve goes on a rant!  We talk about some shady stuff that happens in the industry.  Spoiler alert:  We don’t charge anything to appear on our podcast!

            48 min

          About The Collective

          From the publisher's feed

          Welcome to The Collective, the hub of digital marketing insights and business intelligence. Join us weekly as our co-hosts Trevor Norton & Steve Peron riff on the latest things going on in digital…