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Hi! I'm Ben

I’m a CMO (and former Googler) helping DTC brands and online retailers make sense of the things that matter. Subscribe to my newsletter for my unique perspectives, relevant data, and ways to grow your business.

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Featured Post

PMAX... but make it profitable

Over the past few months, I’ve consulted with a few eCommerce brands who have been struggling to scale PMAX up to levels they used to achieve with Smart Shopping. Each have had their own theories (and conspiracies) about the reasons why this is the case but none had taken the time to dig into what was going on with their campaign and underlying product catalogs. My first move in these cases is to run this PMAX script built by Mike Rhodes (not sponsored) which surfaces a number of insights...

19 days ago • 2 min read

Spend a few minutes on LinkedIn and you’re sure to see some frustrated PPC agency owner showing how Google’s AI is matching their [exact match] keywords to some “grossly unrelated” search query. This comes as no surprise to those of us adopting modern search techniques, as keyword matching was updated a few years ago. Paid search practices have gone from the use of tightly controlled keywords to targeting search queries that have the same meaning as your keyword. This has evolved largely...

4 months ago • 4 min read

It’s been nice to be on the brand side of Black Friday week for the first time in my career. Up until this year, my role during BFCM has always been trying to tell other brands what I’d suggest they do and hoping they did it (none of them did). And now I can do what I want :) Turns out that one of the key things I always talked about as a Google rep worked out for one of my stores… In the months leading up to November, I had always pushed the concept of lowering efficiency in exchange for...

6 months ago • 2 min read

With BFCM approaching I figured I’d drop in and provide my perspective on the number one thing people mess up with Google Ads on BFCM… Accounting for conversion lags and conversion windows in their reporting and strategy. Google Ads attributes conversions differently than many expect and it’s a far departure from how performance is reported by Google Analytics, Northbeam, and Facebook. This lack of understanding leads to an interpretation using incorrect data which leads to bad decision...

6 months ago • 2 min read

I've been meaning to get back into writing and recently put together a video on how I think about structuring Google Ads accounts for optimal performance that I figured I'd share out. With the holidays coming up, yesterday now is the best time to ensure your campaigns are in a place to take advantage of the expected demand. There are a few key things I like to aim for when structuring an account: Less is more and consolidation is king. The more conversion volume you can capture on a campaign,...

7 months ago • 2 min read

Currently flying to Mountain View to attend my first Google Marketing Live event. This will actually be my first time visiting the OG Google headquarters. Funny to me how I had to leave the company to get the invite 🤔 Do YoU tHiNk ThEy aRe GoiNg to TaLk aBoUt AI? I recently got to join one of favorite podcasts, Down to Chat, with Cody Plofsker and we really dug into performance marketing on YouTube. I love how Cody uses a variety of measurement tactics, his gut, and some common sense to...

12 months ago • 4 min read

I think everyone knows that they should have a side hustle, but so few people actually have a side hustle. And I don't understand why... It's not that risky. It's challenging. It's fun. It provides actual fulfillment. If I had to sell someone on starting a side-hustle in 4 bullet points, they'd be: You'll learn new things You'll make more money You'll create and building something yourself You'll write off legit expenses against your W2 income I've been a W2 employee for more than a decade,...

about 1 year ago • 1 min read

I had planned on writing about the new way to buy performance media. Throwing your goals, content, and data into a blackbox ad algorithm and letting it do it's thing. But then Meta had to go ahead and mess all that up this weekend. A look at daily CPMs on Facebook from Common Thread Collective's dataset Their "outage" that overspent budgets and totally ignored targets certainly (and rightfully) does not help build trust in this modern media buying method that many of us would probably like to...

about 1 year ago • 3 min read

Sending this a day late, but I heard that time is just a social construct... so who really cares? Before I forget, since a lot of you has expressed interest in buying a business. Here's an interesting one I just found. Absolutely beautiful drop shipping website in an interesting niche. The listing claims all you need to do is "add marketing" soooo what are you waiting for? I needed a bit of time to polish off the first edition of a new YouTube video series I'm starting, Teach Me Marketing,...

about 1 year ago • 3 min read

Good morning. Lots of people have been asking about how I found and ultimately decided to buy Magic Pop Mic. After years of consulting and making recommendations to other businesses, I wanted to put the strategies I talk about to the test and put my money where my mouth is. I also want to build a "low effort" type income stream that can cover the costs of our childcare. I first tried to create my own thing with a buddy of mine, pickle-paddles. Where we were going to try and tap into the...

about 1 year ago • 6 min read
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