EP110 Paid Advertising for Ecommerce Brands & Community with Psyberware at MMFL
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[00:00:00] Joshua Warren: All right. Hello everybody. We are backstage at Meet Magento Florida for a very special episode of Commerce Today, you may actually hear the women in e commerce networking group going next door to us, but we just wrapped up the first day in the exhibit hall and I'm here with David and Meg of Cyberware and just wanted to chat a little bit with them and actually the first thing I wanted to know is.

[00:00:30] This is my first time at Meet Magento Florida. Y'all are seasoned veterans. You've been here three times now. What should I know about Meet Magento Florida? What's awaiting me tomorrow? Gonna take this one? 

[00:00:41] Megan Deppner: Actually, I don't know what's awaiting. I, I'm, I'm looking forward to that myself. But you know what?

[00:00:45] This has actually always been a fantastic event, and I know that like the Rave Digital team has been. Trying to really encompass, bring back like that Imagine vibe and all of those things that we miss about Imagine. And they've done a great job in years past about [00:01:00] having diversity of speakers and different topics and just really just bringing everything to the table and some really fun parties as well.

[00:01:08] That's, yeah, it's been a really good event. That's why we decided to sponsor this year. This is, yeah, this is great. So, yeah, I don't really know specifically what we have for tomorrow, but I can, I definitely know you're gonna love it. 

[00:01:20] David Deppner: Awesome. Awesome. Good. Good to have some surprise. She says that it's got an imagine vibe.

[00:01:26] Some of us were at Magento Imagine at the Hard Rock. In Las Vegas, uh, quite a few years ago. Oh, the Hard Rock before that. Yeah, that was either 10 or 11 years ago. It, it was a, it was a minute ago. Well, here we are at a Hard Rock Casino on the other side of the planet in Florida, you know, to some of the people that were at Imagine back in the day.

[00:01:48] We're in a casino where, where we've got some great parties out at the poolside in the evening, and I don't know, it's just a, It's nostalgic in a sense. 

[00:01:58] Megan Deppner: It is very nostalgic. [00:02:00] Yeah, that 

[00:02:00] Joshua Warren: hit me even just walking into the casino today. Like, it really does feel like we're back at Magento Imagine, and that's something that people, especially my role in the Magento Association, people have been asking for years.

[00:02:11] They're like, we missed that 2015, 2017 kind of vibe that we had. It's never going to be exactly like that, but having an event like this and having a second meet Magento now in the U S and hopefully a third soon as well as just, yeah, um, a little spoiler there, or I should say North America, more information coming soon, but yeah, it is.

[00:02:34] It's almost like the good old days in some ways, but with our new Adobe overlords. But I've also been, I was actually pleasantly surprised to see Adobe's a headline sponsor. They had a big booth here. They sent a lot of people. It does. It feels like the good old days, but we're not just here to reminisce and tell stories that show how old we are and how long we've been around this space.

[00:02:56] So I actually, speaking of all those years ago, I have had [00:03:00] the honor of knowing David and Meg for quite some time. And you all's work with cyberware and what you do and e commerce paid advertising has always been inspiring to me and impressive to me. It's actually one of the things I always tell when I'm talking to a potential client for creativity, they'll always ask, Oh, do you have, are you full service?

[00:03:17] Do you do everything? So we will do almost everything, but there's two things we won't do. One is link building, because I think it's snake oil. Paid advertising, because you should spend your money with Cyborg and not with us. So I think with that, my first question is for those e commerce merchants out there, maybe can't afford a paid advertising agency, maybe they're trying to do it themselves.

[00:03:41] What are the most common mistakes you see them make? 

[00:03:44] David Deppner: Hmm. if folks are doing it themselves, I would say many of the most common mistakes people make are actually about doing things the way you did them 10 or 15 years ago. So, people frequently [00:04:00] overemphasize micromanaging campaigns and they set up conversion tracking the way they would have set up conversion tracking in the 20 teens.

[00:04:08] And there have been a lot of advances, there's a lot of changes. We've got all sorts of new AI enabled campaigns like Google's Performance Max or Meta's Advantage Plus Shopping campaigns. And those campaigns really depend on having much more advanced data integrations for things like product data. They depend on having much more advanced, say, server to server conversion tracking.

[00:04:30] They perform a whole lot better when you set up those integrations well. And I think that, that, that the, the key issue that I consistently see is merchants just doing things the way they have in the past and not adopting the newer technologies that are gonna enable those AI based campaigns to perform well today.

[00:04:50] Joshua Warren: Such a good reminder. Yeah, it's so true. Where so often. Merchants will get sold on a sales pitch from the ad platform of, Oh, just [00:05:00] install this one script, set up this one account. You're good to go. And they miss out on some of that deeper conversion tracking and the data integration. Moving on. What else do you see merchants struggling with or what's like a common issue that you see?

[00:05:14] When you first take on an account, you find yourself cleaning up. 

[00:05:18] Oh, where do we start? So many. Where do we start? 

[00:05:21] David Deppner: You want to take this? Should I take this? Piggybacking on the last comment, there are many kind of snake oil techniques that used to work actually, but they just don't work so much anymore. We frequently see.

[00:05:34] scenarios where an ad account has dozens or even literally hundreds of campaigns in it. And each of those campaigns is really small, doesn't have a lot of data in it. It's really hard for, again, it's hard for our machine learning overlords to actually optimize campaigns like that. Frequently, when we actually work with a new merchant who's been in business for a while, they'll have all sorts of campaigns for all sorts of [00:06:00] purposes.

[00:06:01] And step one is to just. Reorganize things and simplify things and We literally had a case not too long ago. We took a Google Ads account with 300 campaigns in it. 300 campaigns in it. And when we restructured it, it went down to maybe, I don't know, four or nine campaigns. And that's what they actually needed.

[00:06:22] They just didn't need the level of complexity that they thought they needed to have to micromanage everything. 

[00:06:27] Joshua Warren: Man, I don't want you to see my LinkedIn ads account. Oh, I am very guilty of that. Is that why 

[00:06:34] David Deppner: you've never taken the bait when we say, Hey, Josh, let's look over your LinkedIn ads account, have a conversation about what you're doing.

[00:06:40] Joshua Warren: Yes. No, I, it's so easy to get caught in the trap of, Oh, I'll just create a new campaign, I'll just create a new campaign. And yeah, it's so true. You think, Oh, I can micromanage it this way, but. From my own experience with that, those LinkedIn ads, at least, like I ended up spending so little money on each individual campaign that I'm like, it's never actually going to get optimized.

[00:06:58] Never going to get the data I'm really [00:07:00] looking for out of it. And now I can't find anything in my LinkedIn ads account. So definitely challenging. 

[00:07:06] David Deppner: People frequently try to organize their campaigns because they want to think about it in terms of their own marketing initiatives, or they want to think about it in terms of.

[00:07:16] They have, they would like to report on reporting for sure. They want to say, I spent 300 on this initiative I had and I want to see what the results are. But when you're dealing with these AI optimized campaigns. They need to have a lot of data to optimize well. And so if you're advertising to the same people, the same target audience, for example, perhaps you might want to combine multiple marketing initiatives together into a single campaign in order to just get more data in there and pool those budgets together.

[00:07:46] So. The machine learning models that are actually driving your ad placements and your bidding get more data to operate on and they have a better chance of finding success for you. 

[00:07:56] Joshua Warren: What else would you say to merchants in optimizing [00:08:00] their paid search? 

[00:08:01] David Deppner: In the e commerce space in particular, we're all dealing with shopping feeds.

[00:08:08] And your typical Magento merchant is probably. Sending a shopping feed Google that has maybe 10 or 12 attributes in it. And the full Google product data specification has more like 75 attributes in it, maybe 74. And there's some additional optional attributes to drive very particular programs that you can participate in.

[00:08:31] So, there are dozens of fields that you can fill in. And most merchants don't take advantage of all those opportunities to pass richer data into the ad platforms. Over on meta, it's fewer data fields, but there's still quite a few that the average merchant doesn't take into account. And frequently, especially with, say, more technical merchants, they might have a lot of Magento attributes in their database.

[00:08:55] That they're just not even considering that they could send over to the ad platforms. And that would enable the [00:09:00] ad platforms to better optimize. Who's looking for what, who's potentially going to buy what. So I continue to think that product data feeds is one of the most underutilized ways of improving ad performance.

[00:09:12] And it's something that's open to everybody. It's not that hard to do. 

[00:09:15] Joshua Warren: That's such a good, good call out to one of the things that I find so interesting is how y'all focus just on e commerce paid advertising and the differences there. And I think too many people. Think, Oh, I have a marketing agency that has their Google partner and they also do my print advertising and do all these different things that, Oh, they can handle my e commerce ads, but.

[00:09:38] It really is different. There really is having that deep focus and specialization around the data, I think really makes a difference in the results that y'all are able to drive. It is why I've always enjoyed your presentations at the different Magento conferences, because you go so deep around the data and the differences in e commerce paid advertising specifically.

[00:09:57] Yeah. I'm glad you can share some of that knowledge with us [00:10:00] here in commerce today. So what else would y'all like to share? 

[00:10:05] Megan Deppner: Tomorrow is the main day of Magenta, Florida. That'll be February the 6th. 

[00:10:10] Good day. 

[00:10:11] Megan Deppner: I believe this guy over here has a birthday. Really? And I believe it's a milestone. 

[00:10:17] Joshua Warren: Really? I'm not 

[00:10:18] Megan Deppner: supposed to talk about it because apparently you can age yourself out of tech. 

[00:10:23] Joshua Warren: Ah, okay.

[00:10:24] Megan Deppner: But it's a big one. 

[00:10:25] Joshua Warren: Thirty, right? Thirty is the point at which you age out of ten. He 

[00:10:27] Megan Deppner: is going to turn thirty years old tomorrow. 

[00:10:31] Joshua Warren: So wait, how old would you have been ten years ago anyway? Happy birthday. I'm not going to sing. No, I'm sure, I'm sure. At least not on the recording. Maybe later, but. What an awesome place to celebrate a birthday. Not necessarily the hard rock in Florida, although it is nice, but at a Meet Magento event surrounded by this community. Did you know that we got engaged at 

[00:10:55] David Deppner: a Meet Magento 

[00:10:56] Joshua Warren: event? No, it wasn't Meet Magento. 

[00:10:57] Megan Deppner: It was a Developers Paradise in [00:11:00] Ibiza. A 

[00:11:01] David Deppner: Magento event.

[00:11:02] Megan Deppner: Why? It was a Magento Developers Paradise in Ibiza. 

[00:11:05] Joshua Warren: We will have to compare Magento relationships. But we'll have to compare calendars. If I can ever remember. My very first Magento event was a Developers Paradise in Ibiza in 2012, 2013 ish? 

[00:11:22] It's been a little earlier. 

[00:11:23] Joshua Warren: Okay, or maybe it was 

[00:11:24] 2011. Maybe it was 2011.

[00:11:26] I don't think you were there that year. No, but the interesting thing, and who, who would guess this since I'm on a podcast now, but I went to that event and I didn't talk to anyone. I was so shy and so blown away at all these big magento names because I had never met them before. Yeah. I remember, I think it was Christophe Foument and a few other people that like, I finally just walked up to him and was like, Hi, nice to meet you, and then ran away.

[00:11:52] Megan Deppner: Yeah. 

[00:11:53] Joshua Warren: We may have actually, that may have been the first Magento event we were at together and didn't even realize it. 

[00:11:57] Megan Deppner: Thomas Flake was doing that event. That's, I [00:12:00] remember that. 

[00:12:00] Joshua Warren: Yeah. 

[00:12:01] Megan Deppner: But I thought we met before that. I didn't meet Magento in New York. I met you and Jenna when But that 

[00:12:07] Joshua Warren: would have been 2014, 2015.

[00:12:10] Megan Deppner: That was Cause 

[00:12:11] Joshua Warren: Meet Magenta New York didn't start until, It was later. Oh, maybe. Oh, that was later. 

[00:12:17] Megan Deppner: Okay. So maybe that's possible. We crossed paths. 

[00:12:20] Joshua Warren: I'm gonna have to go back and look at my photos. Cause I took a lot of photos of the event. I wasn't in any of them. Look, look at them. I was very back. But you were there.

[00:12:28] That was, that was the 

[00:12:28] Megan Deppner: year that we got engaged. Well, very cool. Yeah. 

[00:12:31] Joshua Warren: And that is the fun thing. And that's where community. Yeah, it's, it's so true. 

[00:12:36] Megan Deppner: No, seriously. I really, seriously love this community. So it's, we like to travel. We like to go to all the meet and gentle events and we submit talks wherever they'll take us.

[00:12:45] We just love it. But it's just, I run into the same people, like we're in Australia. We're in Singapore. We're in Poland or. And it's just, we come back together and it's just, it's family. It feels like family, you know, and that's, that's quite good fun. 

[00:12:58] Joshua Warren: There's other platforms that [00:13:00] are spending a lot of money on marketing.

[00:13:02] There's other platforms that have mass market adoption, obviously like Shopify, but none of them have this kind of community. And I know that there was a lot of, there was a lot of talk of, Oh, the community is dying, the ecosystem is dying. But if anything like this event, I have never seen that many people.

[00:13:18] In the exhibit hall of a conference before the conference even really starts. It was a lot. I know it is late, so we will start wrapping up, but where can people find you? Where should they look for more information about you or Cyberware? 

[00:13:31] David Deppner: our website, cyberware.

[00:13:33] com. It's 

[00:13:33] Megan Deppner: P S Y B E R W A R E. 

[00:13:34] David Deppner: Yeah, it's spelled pretty funny. It's P S Y B E R W A R E, Cyberware. And yeah, we've done a bunch of talks over the years at different Meet Magento conferences and including Meg. Yeah. 

[00:13:47] Joshua Warren: So. That's all on our YouTube channel. Yeah. It's on our blog. Nice. And I will link to all those things in the show notes.

[00:13:53] Yeah. Very cool. Awesome. Thank you. Thank y'all. I know David, you were battling a illness, so I especially [00:14:00] appreciate you being here. You can hear 

[00:14:01] Megan Deppner: it in his voice, can't you? Yeah. 

[00:14:03] Joshua Warren: And thank y'all both so much and looking forward to the next episode of Commerce Today. 

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