The Collective

Harris campaign manipulates headlines to highlight favorable news coverage: The conversation discusses the topic of political advertising, specifically focusing on the recent controversy surrounding the Harris campaign's use of text ads on search results pages. The hosts explore the tactics used by the campaign, such as buying keywords and creating misleading headlines to promote positive news...

Lending Tree has a sophisticated marketing funnel: The guys did a live audit for the “auto insurance” industry and came across a wild one During their live audit the guys broke down what they liked and didn’t like about the auto insurance industry, specifically through the lens of SEO and PPC.  And during the pod the guys discussed a brand that has the simplest form submission action and quickly d...

Is AI Positive for Society: The guys had one of their most interesting conversations on the podcast to date.   They covered the wide ranging topic of is AI positive for society and in general how we think about success in society.  For example, is building a social app that gamifies the experience to get users addicted to the platform and destroys people’s attention spans a net positive on the wor...

CrowdStrike Audit: The guys have been chatting about doing a live audit for some time and figured they’d use CrowdStrike as a prime example considering what happened with their recent software update.  They discuss tools they use to evaluate their approach to paid media as well as SEO and discuss throughout the episodes how they would approach the audit and some initial recommendations they would...

Digital marketing tools: The guys discuss which digital marketing tools they use in their day to day, during competitive research, informing RFPs, doing keyword research, etc.  The guys rattled off tools from LLMs to Google Keyword Planner to Keyword Ranking trackers to reporting tools to Similar Web and a ton of others.  They also get into specific use cases for each tool.   #digitalmarketing #ai...

Sticky Services: The guys discuss how they think about their service offerings to create long lasting relationships with their clients.  They discussed 3 specific services an agency can offer that creates a long term partnership with clients and positions their businesses for upsell opportunities.  They also spoke about how the rise in zero click and AI impact their approach to their offerings.  #...

Overreaction: The guys discuss how overreacting can negatively affect your day to day and your team’s motivation.  We discuss how running ad agencies and working with clients can feel like the world is falling apart at times and how this relates to our personal lives.  #digitalmarketing #ai #aimarketing #ppc #seo #growthhacking #googleads #searchenginemarketing #sem

Content diet: The guys discuss their content diets on today’s episode.  They do a deep dive into which podcasts they listen to, audio book recommendations, which newsletters they subscribe to and their take on how much content you should consume.  #digitalmarketing #ai #aimarketing #ppc #seo #growthhacking #googleads #searchenginemarketing #sem

Interested in learning more about Steve & Trev?: The guys discuss their daily routines, workout splits, how their views on spirituality have evolved and general personal responsibility in their lives and community.   #digitalmarketing #ai #aimarketing #ppc #seo #growthhacking #googleads #searchenginemarketing #sem

You ever wonder how to actually use AI on the day to day basis?: The guys discuss how Klarna apparently saved $25 mill per year in agency fees using AI.  The guys then go rapid fire with how they use AI in their day to day as digital markers.  #digitalmarketing #ai #aimarketing #ppc #seo #growthhacking #googleads #searchenginemarketing #sem

Are you getting less quality and more bot traffic from your CPC?: The guys discuss some issues they’ve recently seen from both Google & Microsoft search.  Not only has bot form submissions risen but the overall quality of traffic from these search engines seems to have declined.  They discussed first hand experiences with search becoming much more difficult than it once was and how they are co...

Monthly Reporting: Anyone in this digital marketing space knows that the first week of the month is usually reporting time and honestly, it can really suck.  We break down which software tools you can use and general best practices for how to approach reporting with your clients to hopefully make it suck a bit less!

One Man, 2 Mill ARR: We discuss the YouTube Channel “Starter Story” & one their episodes about the founder of Designjoy.  The founder shares his story about how he started his subscription service design agency and scaled to 2 million in ARR with no employees. Sora: OpenAI unveiled their new text to video prompt tool and some of the initial examples are incredible.  LinkedIn Audiences: Microso...

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...

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...

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...

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 dis...

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 Frida...

Which tools & LLMs Seer has been testing How Seer’s data warehouse has been impactful for analyzing changes in SGE Wil’s general thoughts around AI & LLM’s impacts How you can use LLMs for presentation feedback & daily life Training for marathons

.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. 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. ChatGPT Update:  C...

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. 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. Perform...

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. 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 iP...

Topics covered: 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.  Google Testifies to Inflating CPCs: Google admits in court to inflating cost per click...

Topics covered: TikTok's Search Potential: 51% of Gen Z users prefer TikTok over Google for search, which shows the growing importance of "zero-click" content on TikTok. We spoke about how Tik Tok is now showing Wikipedia links within search results and our thoughts for how these search results will evolve.  AI in Content Creation: Using AI tools to create or assist in content produc...

Our first ever guest, Chris LaRoche, joins the show! Chris is the Head of Small Business Solutions team while also leading paid media efforts at Workshop Digital . Chris recently published a blog post titled ' Your GA4 Conversions May Not Be Giving Enough Credit to Paid & Organic Channels ' and we had to bring him on the show to discuss. Our host Steve is calling this one of the most c...