Josh Leibner

Two growing trends I'm seeing across all verticals in paid media: 1. Bots 2. Attribution failing Technology has benefited the bot-makers or whatever you want to call them. The impact of bot traffic has never been greater than it is right now. In a Shakespearian twist, technology has made the marketer's life more difficult. What was once a microscope of user behavior is now a quagmire of UTM pieces and hints at information. Both trends support the idea that marketers will be shrinking the size of their data ecosystems. Opting for MORE + SMALLER data environments where measurement and access are easier to manage vs LESS + LARGER ecosystems that are more conducive to LLM training.

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Programmatic is the easiest channel to get wrong. Adops should be seasoned veterans who know exactly what they are doing or you will get it so wrong no matter what tech you’re utilizing. Too often I see junior buyers on large accounts that make terrible decisions because they don’t know better

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If linking a well setup GA account to Meta can lift conversions by 22%, and setting up Conversion API can lift it by 33%... Why haven't you done it already? It's probably because your paid social team isn't responsible for GA, site work, back-end, measurement plans, tagging, tracking, back end systems. If they brought it up at all, they likely just asked your team to do it which... your team doesn't know how to. My team does. Can we guarantee that same level of lift for either of those connections? No. But what if it was only a 10% total lift? and you saw a higher lift in other ad channels like GAds? What if it was a 20% total lift? As a bonus, you'd also get more accurate data across channels to forecast & budget off of, a better preforming site, and identify where you're at risk of being hacked or unknowingly collecting data that can get you kicked off of the platforms. To get technical, we recently wrapped up an engagement with an attribution and media mix modeling company that had iframes stripping all of the tracking - when they looked at the Shopify numbers almost everything was direct or organic. The site issues that we found identified these causing all of these. We fixed those, they saw a lift in ad performance and changed how they budgeted based on that. The media teams would have never have known to look for these, the devs didn't know that it was an issue. .. Neither Conversion API nor the GA integration would have delivered a meaningful lift. #conversionapi #GA4 #meta #paidmedia #paidsearch #seo #shopify

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Achieving Single-Digit CPL in #TX, #IL, and #CA 🌟 🚀 Strategy: Personal touch is key! It's all about connecting deeply with our audience. 📋 Details: We craft ads that speak directly to Texans, Illinoisans, and Californians. 🔍 Optimize: We use data to fine-tune our targeting and messaging. 🔄 Evolve: Constant testing and adapting keep us ahead in the digital game. 🌍 What's Next: We're pushing forward every day to achieve single-digit CPL in #TX, #IL, and #CA. 🤝 Join Us: Want to see how we do it? Follow along and let's redefine success together! Let's make marketing magic happen! 🚀✨🌟

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Starting July 31, 2024, Google Ads will no longer accept credit or debit cards, switching to bank transfers or direct debit only. Gone are the days of those sweet credit card reward points. Maybe we will see some innovation here...but in the meantime it looks like Google will reap a massive cost savings at the expense of its customers. #DigitalMarketing #GoogleAds #BusinessCosts https://lnkd.in/gKYh32EW.

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Attribution in marketing—it's the topic that gets everyone talking (or arguing). Here are 5 reasons it's such a mess: The Multi-Touch Mystery: Agencies love to claim credit for that final click. But let’s be real—customers aren’t that simple. They’ve touched your brand 12 times before they buy. Which one deserves the crown? Depends on who you ask. Data Drama: Ever seen an agency get excited about a bunch of spreadsheets? They’ll swear they’ve got it all figured out—until you ask them to explain it. Spoiler: They can't, because even they know the data’s fuzzy at best. Offline? What’s That?: Your last campaign was a hit at the trade show, but can your agency measure it? Nope. They’ll tell you it’s all about digital, conveniently ignoring those offline wins they can’t take credit for. Model Mayhem: Agencies are like kids with favorite toys—except their toys are attribution models. First click, last click, linear—they'll pick whichever one makes them look the best. But are any of them right? Don’t count on it. The Ever-Changing Customer: Remember when marketing was simple? Neither do we. Customer journeys are more twisted than a soap opera plot, and most agencies are still trying to figure out last season’s storyline. So, if an agency tells you they’ve got attribution all figured out, just smile, nod, and maybe keep a pinch of salt handy.

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DTC managers at multi-channel revenue brands are getting under-credited. Let me explain. I talk to dozens of brands per year that: • Sell across 3 primary channels (DTC, in store, Amazon) • Have "growth" or "performance" laddering into the DTC team • Track P&Ls separately across each rev stream It's usually the CMO or the VP of Growth or whoever manages the DTC line item who reaches out to me. They say something like this: "Ben, I keep having to cut my ad budgets because my DTC revenue is barely growing and efficiency is terrible! Can you help improve our marketing program?" This is a classic case of where company structures and KPIs dictate performance. The poor DTC manager is out here thinking that their growth marketing program is bad, but, in reality they've misdiagnosed the problem. When I dig in further with them, I end up finding out: • The DTC marketing budget is 90% of the ad budget • Amazon and in-store are both growing very well • There's no clear reason why a customer would buy direct Here's the harsh truth: it is very very VERY hard to make people buy in an experience that they don't prefer. Direct to consumer ecommerce is still only 13% of all retail transactions in the US. 13%! That's it! People prefer to buy on Amazon, or in Target, or at Sephora. Why wouldn't they? They've spent tens of billions of dollars building a brand that has a wide assortment of access, best prices, best fulfillment, etc. How can the lil ol' DTC manager compete? When I start to ask how the DTC team is being measured, it is usually some combination of: • DTC revenue over performance marketing costs • Touch based attribution performance • Customer surveys and trends How is it fair that 90% of the marketing budget is going toward something that's likely to only produce 13% of the sales? That doesn't mean that the marketing is ineffective, on the contrary, it means that the brand is measuring wrong. The Amazon and in-store team get all the credit while the DTC manager gets shafted. So how can you fix this? Properly understanding the contribution of ALL marketing across ALL revenue and customer interactions. We often see an equal if not GREATER contribution to incremental revenue and customer acquisition across Amazon and in-store than in DTC, even from "performance" campaigns that are driving directly to the website. Yes, really. For example: a performance Meta campaign might have a 1.5x incremental ROAS on DTC, a 1.5x incremental ROAS on Amazon, and a 1x incremental ROAS on in-store retail. That's a total of 4x iROAS vs the "proven" 1.5x iROAS. See it all the time across hundreds of tests and marketing mix models. Reach out to me and I can help dig you out of this pit. #dtc #attribution #incrementality #omnichannel

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There's still quite a bit of unknown of how Google integrating Gemini into its standard search experience (referred to as Search Generative Experience, or SGE) will broadly impact SEO. But more and more data is coming out about the current state of the SGE. Search Engine Journal published an in-depth report with their findings today. Below are the key takeaways: 🔥 This is critical: websites can only accrue organic traffic from the SGE AFTER users click on the source of the AI-generated content. We all know how much adding an additional click to the process of the user journey can negatively effect traffic. This alone will likely decrease how much organic traffic is being driven to everyone's website 🤖 Some results (around 5%) don't even have original sources, meaning the content of the results are produced by Google 📈 The appearance of SGE's varies drastically by vertical, but will holistically increase over time. Of the industries analyzed, Beauty saw the highest rate of SGE at 95% and Finance saw the lowest at 47% 📊 In some cases, Google will show a generate button prior to showing the AI-based results. Safe to assume Google is experimenting with different layouts of this new experience, and testing how users will engage with Gemini if the AI results aren't delivered right away. The discrepancy between these two experiences also varied drastically by vertical 📉 Verticals with a higher portion of SGE results will have less time to pivot their SEO strategy accordingly. The Health industry has the highest portion of auto-generated SGE results, and therefore will be the most impacted by this change 🤑 Primary conclusion - This change will drastically overhaul everything we know about SEO, and everyone needs to be ready to pivot to this new reality very quickly. My personal opinion: everyone will likely see less organic traffic, and have to become more reliant on Paid Search. https://lnkd.in/gRj_Gwp9

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I LOVE the approach Liquid Death took to rapidly grow on Amazon. Here’s what they did: 1. Leveraged Their Own Website to Drive Traffic Anytime a visitor clicked “Buy” on the Liquid Death site, it redirected them straight to Amazon. This way, all their brand-level marketing—from social media to national ads—funneled customers directly to Amazon. External traffic is gold for Amazon’s algorithm. The more external traffic you drive, the better your product ranks. So, Liquid Death wasn’t just getting buyers—they were boosting their organic visibility. 2. Became Their Own Amazon Brand Referrer Liquid Death took it a step further by signing up for Amazon’s Brand Referral Program. This means they earned an additional 5-10% commission on every sale they drove to Amazon. They essentially paid themselves back for sending customers over! In a low-margin, high-shipping-cost category like sparkling water, every dollar counts. This allowed them costs and gain a competitive edge. 3. Rapid Category Domination Within 3 months, they snagged a Best Seller badge in the insanely competitive sparkling water category. That’s nearly unheard of. They mastered Amazon’s ranking system with external traffic and reaped the benefits of their own referral program. This combination spun the Amazon flywheel faster than typical PPC alone. If you have strong brand equity outside Amazon, use it! Drive external traffic, capture Amazon’s algorithm boost, and use the Brand Referral Program to recoup your ad spend. Liquid Death just proved it’s a winning formula.

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Marketing's role is to empower the prospect. A lot of tools abound in the mar-tech and sales-tech space: traffic stats, visitor ID snooping, marketing automation (a completely useless phrase for an art), lead tracking, and another 8000+ more. And now AI that regurgitates content at scale, all content assets will read like infant formula without any particular intent. I was speaking with a head of sales who leads large deals in the insurance outsourcing space, and she shared a powerful insight that reinforced my belief in what is marketing's purpose. "My job in sales is to build trust with a prospect: that we understand their context, that we have the capability to help, that we have done this in the past and can demonstrate a way forward. But all this happens only if I get a foot in the door. That is where I need marketing's help." "You mean qualified leads?" I asked. She rolled her eyes. "Leads are nothing if there is no intent knowledge there." What was her interpretation of intent? "For me, intent is all about discovering if a prospect is in a browsing mode, search mode, comparison mode, or (gasp) buying mode," she said. "I want marketing support that is constantly discovering this and helping me to publish to those signals. I mean, how many of you even ask a prospect if the content they read is helpful, if they are seeking something else, or what they are comparing to? Why is all content just hanging there doing nothing?" Clearly, as marketers, we are missing the forest. "So you feel your marketing team's publishing is not sufficient?" "I don't care for a high volume pipeline of data. I would ask marketing to focus on just one thing: listen more, ask more, understand more. How will you empower the prospect to feel they are not being constantly targeted, constantly nurtured, or constantly pushed?" Food for thought, indeed. #marketing #b2bmarketing #sales #prospecting #mentalhealth #technology #ai #marketingautomation #content #publishing

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Dealers must pay attention to the DSP (Demand Side Platform) used to place their ads for several key reasons: 1. Ad Placement Optimization: A good DSP ensures your ads reach the right audience at the right time. If a DSP isn’t optimized, ads may miss potential buyers or show up in irrelevant spaces, wasting your budget. 2. Data-Driven Targeting: The right DSP leverages customer data (like from STEALTH’s CDP) to precisely target high-priority leads. This enables more efficient ad spend, showing ads to users likely to convert based on their profile, behavior, and intent . 3. Performance Monitoring: Dealers need a DSP that provides real-time data and insights into how ads are performing. This allows you to adjust strategies swiftly to improve ROI and customer engagement . 4. Maximizing Budget: A poorly selected DSP can inflate costs without delivering quality leads. Focusing on performance-driven DSPs ensures you’re not only spending wisely but also increasing conversions through precise targeting and dynamic bidding . Understanding and selecting the right DSP is critical to drive sales, reach your target audience, and optimize ad spending. So ask your agency partner who they use. If they refuse to tell you or give you a line about using multiple DSP’s run far, run fast and don’t look back. #DealershipMarketing #DigitalAdvertising #DSPOptimization #TargetedAds #CustomerData #AdPlacement #SalesBoost #MarketingROI #AdTech #LeadGeneration #AutomotiveSales #RVDealership #MarketingAutomation #DataDriven Coast Technology LLC

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We've just revamped our cold email deliverability strategy. Mainstream methods weren't cutting it anymore. So we went advanced. No sticking to the old playbook. Here's what we did: - Diversified ESPs: Using multiple providers, including private infrastructure. - Diversified Resellers: Bought accounts from multiple trusted resellers. - ESP Matching: Leveraged sending platforms' options. - Technical Setup: Ensured SPF, DKIM, and DMARC were configured. - Proxy Secondary Domains: Used proxy domains or hosted redirects instead of 301 redirects. - Warm-Up: Slowly ramped up warm-up volume and kept it enabled indefinitely. - Rotated Warm-Up Keywords: Refreshed every few months. - Ramped Up Sending Volume: Started slow and increased sending volume over time. - Double Verified Leads: Always validated lead lists, including catch-alls. - Placement Tests: Regularly tested where our emails landed. - Limited Emails: Sent as few emails per account/domain as possible. - Avoided Spammy Words: Used tools to filter out spammy language. - Sent Plain Text: Leveraged sending platforms' options. - DNC List: Never sent emails to those who unsubscribed. - Advanced Spintax: Leveraged complex spintax everywhere. - AI-Generated Data Points: Enriched lead lists with extra data. - Replaced Accounts: Rotated accounts every few months. And the most important part – sent relevant emails to boost reply rates and reduce spam rates. This is how we stay ahead. Feel free to use this playbook, free of charge.

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Hot take: selling in B2B is actually easier than DTC. (My B2B team is probably rolling their eyes right now). In DTC, the brand is selling and communicating to the buyer directly. That buyer's decision making is non-linear and subjective: • Do I want this thing • Do I even need this thing? • What about these 5 other things? • Will it actually make me feel better / happy? This is where a lot of the concept of "brand" comes from. There's a status association with certain products and the network effect of that individual buyer's psychology with all of their other "inputs." In B2B, it's actually super simple. A product or service needs to do one of two things: 1. Make the company money 2. Save the company money Really highly valuable products do both. If you -- as a seller in a B2B context -- can demonstrate to your prospective client justification for why it will do one or both of those things (make or save money), then it's an "easy" decision. The difficulty in B2B comes in from the nature of the buying committee, high contract values, budgets, and long decision cycles. You have to do the convincing at multiple points of the organization, and those stakeholders might have different priorities, might not believe you, etc etc. But again, if your pitch is clear and credible, and the scenario that you present is pretty undeniable, why would any organization refuse you? (Note: this doesn't really apply to true enterprise sales because enterprise is more like dealing with a small country than an actually functional and coherent organization). But if you're, like me, selling services for 5-6 figures a month to brands that are sub $1 billion in revenue, it's straight forward: "Here's how I'm going to make you more money than I cost." "Here's how I'm going to save you more money than I cost." If you want to see my pitch first hand -- reach out and I'll show you how we can pay for ourselves easily. #b2b #sales #revenue

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B2C Unsubscribe Stats (56% unsub with 4+ monthly emails, etc) #email #emailmarketing #optout #unsubscribe #b2c #consumerbehavior #loyalty #canspam #spam #privacy #junkmail

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Being able to work with Christine Packer is always one of the highlights of my day. She’s our in-house paid search guru and absolutely crushes it for our clients. Check out this video she did with Austin LaRoche for the latest and greatest we’re seeing on the Google Ads side of our business! #googleads #b2bmarketing #paidsearch

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Is Amazon the yellow pages of products? The seasoned sales reps who sold ads in the phone book had a phrase... They'd say, "When someone picks up the phone book, they are going to spend money. The question is, who are they going to select?" They would say that to advertisers who were considering pulling their ad spend and putting it into another channel. What’s interesting about this phrase is that while mostly true, it says something about the business model of the phone book. The yellow pages was a demand capture play. When your roof had a leak, you’d thumb over to the roofing section and select a roofer from the category based on an ad that caught your eye or some kind of brand recognition from the depths of your memory. But the phone book didn’t create the demand for roofers or plumbers or dentists, they captured it. To capture that demand, the yellow page companies would distribute a free phone book to every home once a year. Roofers, plumbers and dentists had to pay to be seen in front of those customers, since that was where those customers went when they had a problem. Amazon is the yellow pages of products. Amazon doesn’t really create any demand. They just capture it. They capture it because they can offer things like 2-day shipping, low prices and a good return policy. Brands generally have to pay to appear in front of customers if they want to be seen and selected, since that’s where roughly 50%+ of online customers go when they are ready to make a purchase. The companies who were successful in the yellow pages deployed a similar strategy to the ones that are most successful on Amazon. One option was to outspend their competitors and buy the famous 'double truck' ad, covering two full pages at the beginning of their category heading. On Amazon, there's ways to dominate the SERPs if you're willing to outspend your competitors as well. The other way was to build brand recognition outside of the phone book. That way, when a customer saw your ad they would remember your brand and choose you over your competitors. If you're declining in the search results on Amazon, you might want to start by looking OFF of Amazon to determine why. Is one of your competitors building brand equity on channels like Meta or TikTok or YouTube? When customers browse your products in the SERP, is yours one they would have a chance of recognizing? Amazon rewards sellers who drive traffic to their site from off-Amazon sources - since they don't create demand, they want sellers who can. Next time you’re scratching your head about why your sales are declining, zoom out. Think about what’s happening in your category and amongst your competitors off of Amazon. #amazon #ecommerce #dtc

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Robin Bonn from Co:definery helps agencies create a future-proofed, high margin business by creating their ‘Market of One’. Robin joined me on the Creative Agency Account Manager podcast and explains why the agency market isn't oversupplied, it's under differentiated. He shares how he is helping agencies define their market of one and accelerating their growth. We also discuss the challenges agency owners are facing right now and tips for how to remain positive in the current climate. Link to the full episode is in the first comment below 👇

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