Andrew Foxwell and I go way back. We recorded our first podcast together over 6 years ago!

Andrew is a seasoned expert in the advertising industry and the driving force behind a remarkable Meta agency that collaborates with renowned brands like Trek.

He also runs an amazing community of brand owners, agency owners and marketing professionals called Foxwell Founders. (Over 400 members strong and collectively spending 250 million plus per month on ads.)

Join us as Andrew shares his invaluable insights on the ever-evolving advertising landscape.

Here's a glimpse of what we cover in this episode:

• What creatives are working best right now on Meta and Google, and are TikTok-style ads worth testing on multiple platforms?
• How answering questions is essential on more platforms than just Google search.
• What strategies are working right now with different Meta campaign types.
• Why having great creatives is only valuable with proper creative testing.
• How to focus on what's really unique about your product in your ads.
• Andrew's approach of "scaling in place" and how it applies to Meta and YouTube.
• Operational AI vs. Platform AI.
• What Andrew's "not, not excited" about AI means (I tend to share his perspective).

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Founders Community
• Foxwell Digital
• GLG Insights
• Northbeam Newsletter
• Andrew Foxwell (LinkedIn)
• Andrew Foxwell (Twitter)
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and I am absolutely thrilled about today's episode and today's guest. I go way, way back with this guest. We used to do podcasts together five years ago, six years ago. Feels like an eternity now. My guest is Andrew Foxwell and he is the co-founder of Foxwell Digital, which is a leading Facebook social agency and more also Foxwell Founders, which is really the reason we reconnected. I could started hearing all this buzz about the Foxwell founders community and everybody's raving about it. I was like, oh dude, I got to reach out to Andrew, see what's going on. And he's doing even more than that. So we'll dive in. We're going to talk about what's working right now in terms of Facebook and Instagram. We're going to talk AI a little bit. We're going to talk about what is Andrew's connections with Wall Street, which I think will be super fun. And so really looking forward to it. Andrew, thanks for taking the time, man, and welcome to the show. How you doing?

Andrew:

Yeah, man, thank you so much. I'm doing well. Glad to be here.

Brett:

When do you think was the last time we were on a podcast together? I think it was five years ago. Six years ago. Easily

Andrew:

Six years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Crazy. It's been a hot man. But you know what? We're here now and we're better. We're back and better than ever, baby.

Brett:

We're here now. We still got lots of energy. We got more wisdom. I got more gray hair. We're just doing it. Oh, absolutely. We're out there

Andrew:

Doing it. Absolutely.

Brett:

So we're going to Bo share our perspectives on kind of what's working on now and what's, we're going to talk about AI a little bit, which is fun. And what's cool, Andrew, you've got this perspective. You run an agency, I run an agency over G Commerce, but you've got a bigger perspective even than that. I mean, your agency is amazing, but you've got this community of 400 people in this community. So if you would, Andrew, talk about what is the community? Cause I think this will set the context for your perspective and some of the things you share on the podcast, but what is the community? Why'd you start it and give us the low down? Yeah,

Andrew:

Definitely. I mean, a couple of years ago, our daughter was born in three years ago and was really coming in pandemic times, feeling lonely and feeling like, am I the only one seeing this? And I felt like Twitter wasn't the best place for my mental health.

Brett:

Not always a positive place to hang. That is for sure.

Andrew:

Yeah, and I'm not saying it's all negative, but it wasn't the greatest place for me and I was feeling really down. And so I decided, Gracie and I talked about it and I decided we, let's figure out a way to get our v I P course customers who've bought more than three courses in one place talking and let's see if we launch a community. And that was just the idea was can we build something that helps people feel less alone and more supported? Yeah. Now it's 445 members from 25 countries spending over 250 million a month just on meta. It's brand owners, agencies, in-house, people at brands. We have, I think five or six agencies. Our whole staff is in the membership. That's how valuable it is. And we talk about everything under the sun, meta adds, creative, creative testing, cro, Google Ads, TikTok, all that. And running an agency, big or small, we have places for both. So my perspective is not just my own, but is here's what we see across the landscape. And primarily these people are in the United States, Canada and in Europe. So we do have members in South America as well, and Eastern Europe and Thailand and places like that. But it's primarily focused in the uk, or excuse me, in the EU and the United States and Canada.

That's really a good barometer of where performance is a lot of times on things and obviously still have the New Zealand and Australia members because they always get new features first. So that's always good to have too.

Brett:

They're living in the future as we'd like.

Andrew:

That's right. Nice. Yeah, so a lot of it, the things that I talk about, it's not just me and here's what I'm seeing across this breadth of people, and these are primarily direct response D to C people. We need to spend money to make money, and that's what we're hired to do.

Brett:

Love that. Well, so this will be fantastic. You obviously want your perspective too, but I know you'll be able to pull some examples and you've got this influence of this amazing community behind you. And so as we dive into what's working now primarily on meta, but we can talk a little bit about Google and YouTube as well, but what are you seeing, and we'll try not to get too nerdy or too technical here, but let's just talk creatives for a minute. What are you seeing that's working now from a creative standpoint?

Andrew:

Yeah, I mean I think from a creative standpoint, a couple different things. One is building creatives that look sort of TikTok centric or answering a question or have a good hook at the beginning from a video ad standpoint is helpful. So the more that you're answering questions and instead of thinking about, here's what I want to tell you about this service. Somebody the other day that was there, remember brought to me an ad and it was for a conference and it was talking about the conference and all the things that were going to be happening at this conference and he's selling tickets to this conference. And I was like, well, what are you ultimately trying to solve with people? Come to this conference? What are the issues that they have? And it's for business owners. So it was, are you missing quarterly sales goals? You're identifying the problems and you're having ads that address those particular problems with the hook at the beginning and an explainer of what it does and making that ad more informative.

So that's the kind of thing that we look at. And you're looking at it generally in a four to five aspect ratio. So it's more of a tall video format and you can also have static images that mirror that kind of idea too. So from a creative standpoint, that's part of it. And having at least somewhere in your mix creators or influencers or people on your own staff creating these ads with you and understanding how quickly the cuts need to be cut up in the video. So two seconds, two seconds, that kind of thing. And keeping an ad moving is as long as those kind of elements are integrated, that's some of the best performing creative that you see across the board right now.

Brett:

I love that so much. And I would echo that and I remember a quote from Google years ago as they were talking about their very first product, Google AdWord, and they said, Hey, what if a good ad was just an answer to a question, right? And I think that's still true, and it doesn't just have to be true for search. It makes sense with search because people are typing in a query and they're asking a direct question and you're giving an answer. But I think it's true in other platforms as well. We've all got these questions and these thoughts and these concerns that are banging around in our head. And so maybe the greatest add or the best ads are just answers to those questions and hitting those point blank. And so a couple things we're seeing, and we do not run traffic on Meta or TikTok or any of those places.

We do a lot on YouTube, one of the top spenders on YouTube, we're finding now YouTube shorts. Those are working fantastically well for remarketing working in other areas as well. And we've been able to successfully pull content from TikTok ads and from Instagram reels and use those almost unchanged on YouTube shorts. And that's a bit of a new first for us because if we look at what YouTube ads typically work for standard pre-roll TrueView YouTube ads, it's usually ads that are minute and a half to three and a half minutes. It's more of a direct response field, is what we run anyway. Almost feels more like an infomercial, but it doesn't have to look like an infomercial. Exactly. And so you've never really been able to take videos directly from Meta and run them on YouTube. But now I think you can with YouTube shorts depending on a few things. And I think one of the things that we'll continue to focus on here is just like how can we continue to write better headlines and better descriptions even in search? Cause I think a lot of times you forget about search or forget about your headline in Google shopping or some of these things, but making little tweaks there, looking to constantly improve there makes a big, big difference. So creatives mean as machine learning and AI improves, I think more of our job is going to be related to creatives, but we'll see. Yeah,

Andrew:

I agree with you. The question the creatives is a really interesting piece. There's actually an incredible YouTube series by one of the agencies two two a couple members of our community, Jess Bachman from Fire team runs a show called Autopsy on YouTube and you can just check it out. Barry Hata a regular contributor as well, and they go through and dissect ads and we have some of this in the membership and it's really amazing how much it can be broken down and how little tweaks can make a major difference. Another thing that's interesting about it is how much Jess is the one that told me this, which is I always think about is what can you say that others uniquely that others cannot, that you can uniquely say? And that is a real, that's an interesting question to start to go after as part of the ad because a lot of people can talk about reviews, you can talk about it's the best window cleaner out there, whatever it is, but what is the uniqueness of it and how is it being pitched?

Because if it's a hundred percent compostable, whatever, even if other people share those, but they're not using that as something that you feel like you can uniquely say because it represents your brand, then that's a big deal. So yeah, the creative thing is such a nuance to gain, but once you start thinking in that framework, your whole thinking changes. And I've had to really learn this over the last two years because one of the big shifts obviously that we've gone through from the med ads standpoint is we are no longer just pulling levers on Facebook ads. You used to be able to launch something with a white t-shirt and a white background and launch it to a PDP and it would convert. I mean not all the time and not create, but it wouldn't do bad. Now we're in this place where we've had to become marketers really we're have to think of the whole funnel and it's made us better, I think ultimately is where it leaves us. And creatives is part of that too. The ads are better and we're better at describing and pitching people on why they even should care in two or three seconds.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so interesting. So I want key on a couple of those points. The first one, looking at what makes your ad unique or your product unique, just do the talk at Ezra Firestones Blur and Mastermind on seven ad tests to evaluate your ads on before you run them. And one of them, the first one was actually called the scratch out write-in test where if you could take your ad and remove your brand, remove your logo, put in a competitor, if the ad still works, it's not a good ad. The ad needs to be unique to you and only, it doesn't mean that every element has to be unique to you, but the story as a whole, what you're saying with the ad needs to only fit for you. So what's unique, what's different is someone going to look at this and say, I don't know that I've seen anything quite like that before.

And that's not always easy to do, but I think it's really, really important. And so that's something to keep in mind. And what's also interesting to me, and we'll talk about AI more in just a minute, but I think as things progress and there's more machine learning and ai and yes, AI can into creating images and headlines and descriptions and write you whole novels and stuff like that, I still think that there's this great need for strategy and someone who can understand marketing and understand product market fit and what does a customer want and if this thing worked, why did it work and what should we test next? And so there there's going to need this to be this strategic component from really smart marketers that partner with the machine so to speak. And so any thoughts on that before? I want to hear your thoughts on overall strategy and what's working right now.

Andrew:

Yeah, I mean I think that you're right in reference strata strategic part of it and where that comes into mind is we have a lot of meetings of agency honors and it's a big, big group in our community and one of the things is trying to help them get more leads. And I really am a big believer right now that if you're an agency or even you're somebody, the DNA of how we were brought up, it was on this foundation of pulling levers. And like I said, yes. And now if you can be someone where you're pitching your services and you're talking about being an outsource CMO for example, or thinking more strategically and being a true growth partner, that is a very different pitch and ultimately will benefit you in the long run more than this other guy over here that's Jimmy who can run Facebook ads.

And I think that we know this, but that's really what we actually need and what the client needs to be successful and why I think a lot of us, sometimes you feel stuck and I certainly back myself into this corner where I feel stuck because I'm only thinking in one dimension and I'm not thinking about, well wait a minute, what's even the bundle that we're trying to sell? And I mean of course, what are the economics behind all of this? And really what is the understanding of it? So I think it's that strategy and how you think about it not only and work with clients on it is helpful and useful, but it's also how you're pitching it to the client to win your agency and yourself more business because it's underutilized in my opinion. And there's very few people that I can turn to know that I'm going to get a true strategic read on it all.

Brett:

And I think in a lot of ways things have gotten as this things have gotten more advanced, it's more complex, it's maybe more difficult to approach some of these platforms than it was before, even though it was more automation and to the subject of pulling levers. That was hard for some of our specialists internally. Like, hey, I've always pulled that lever that that's what I do. I'm really good at pulling that lever. But now you got to kind of raise up a level and think I'm moving bigger pieces now. I'm moving platforms or entire channel types, or now I'm looking at performance match, which is all Google channels rolled into one and I'm still manipulating things, but at a bigger level. And I like the analogy of an offensive coordinator, so to use football analogy, the offensive coordinator not on the field, not carrying the ball, not breaking tackles and throwing out stiff arms. They're elevated, they see the whole field, they're calling plays, they're calling in players, things like that. And that that's more, and I think that also ties into this outsourced CMO type role that's I think where agency of the future really valuable marketing team members more in that role. So still driving things but just moving bigger pieces instead of pulling small levers.

Andrew:

Yeah, I completely agree.

Brett:

Sweet. Love it. So let's talk a little bit about what do you see as recurring themes for, okay, if you're really going to make improvements, my meta ads aren't where they should be or this platform's not working the way it should. What are the things we should focus on? What are some of the recurring themes of this is what we need to focus on to get better results?

Andrew:

Yeah, I mean I think from a, speaking through the lens of meta ads and people that are spending forward on meta ads, I was reading the North Beam newsletter where they put out weekly

Brett:

Love North Beam newsletter, shout out the guys there

Andrew:

Spending is and how many people, it's like, well, 70% of people, it's still the primary channel and meta is for traffic for chop funnel traffic. So I think if you look through that lens, what you end up seeing is number one, a breakdown of those that want to improve. You have to number one, have an idea of what the economics are behind your brand. And that's something that a lot still don't. And that's a hard thing to do because it's really outside of our zone of genius. I mean I got to see in accounting, no, and I can say that publicly, but it's not a math guy. So that took me a while to figure that out. And thanks to members sharing worksheets and things in the membership, they will say, okay, here's what we understand about that. And I think I was doing that a little, but I was not doing it a ton and was leaving it to people internally to do at the company and now we have to become that partner. So that's number one. I think if you look just at meta itself and the things that strategically need to take place, it's making sure that you're customizing and setting up shops is another one because meta shops is going to continue to be a place that people are spending money and that meta's spending your money forcibly or not kind of you're going to be continue to be pushed there for onsite checkout with shops and things like or on shop checkout

Brett:

And influencer has been pretty solid. And most of the chatter I hear about, it's been alls all green.

Andrew:

Yeah, it depends on who you ask, but yeah, the point is that you have to have, we used to have, you know would just set up, I don't know, phenomics or something and it would build your catalog and then you were going to pixel my site pro or whatever. And now you can't just have that. You have to have, having a customized catalog as part of the shop is a really important part of it. So customizing that commerce experience is helpful and I think is something that can improve. I think from an account, obviously creative, we already talked about that. Having an inbound of creative that is consistent and constant based on how much you're spending on different angles and hooks and having a plan of how you're going to test them is a must because a lot of people have that, but they have no plan of how they're going to test it.

And so you end up with all this information that doesn't mean anything. And that same goes for landing pages and having landing pages that and best case scenario match the creative that you are talking about so that the click experience is more clean and people understand what you're trying to sell them. So I think that's another one. And then I think from a technical standpoint, having and testing advantage fall shopping campaigns, if you have not, is something that's going to continue to be a priority, especially in 2023 Met has GI given access to it now to basically every account. And what it does is you know, put in assets and there's no targeting really. You just set an existing customer cap. And so it seems to be a good vehicle for top funnel traffic and for literally all funnel traffic, but it's utilizing a different algorithm it seems thus far and we're still learning about it to get top funnel traffic in or get quality traffic into your site. So I think those are some of the foundational pieces that we need to be aware of in terms of what's working and changing the plan that you have.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. I want to highlight a couple things. One, looking at metrics and what are we measuring and what are we focusing on? And I think there needs to be this hierarch hierarchy of metrics. We're at the top is our financial goals, what are our business financial goals, whether that's contribution margin, ebitda, whatever that top level goal is, and likely the in platform goals that we usually focus on roaz or CPA or cac, they're important, but they're only as important as they help guide those financial metrics. So yeah, understanding that understanding why do we want a 200% row as or a 400% row as why, what is that contributing to or what is that rolling up to for the hierarchy of metrics? And a quick example, we had a client come to us recently for Google Ads management and they said we really want to be at a 400% return on that spend.

And as we started asking questions and digging a little deeper and trying to understand why it became clear that the 400% was just like what other people said. And so as we started actually running ads and experimenting a little bit, they found that a 200% return on ad spend actually contributed to their metrics better, more new customers. Their new customers were sticking it fed to overall profitability and so now they're growing at a much faster rate and hitting those profitability targets. So I love that really understanding the numbers. It's not just I'm following some random benchmark, but I'm understanding my business numbers and then I'm optimizing to hit that. So any tips on how you coach people or help people? And I know you said accounting wasn't your thing. I didn't like accounting class either, although I do like numbers. Any tips or suggestions there

Andrew:

Mean? A lot of it is the get some sort of worksheet or framework that you're able to look at with the business owner and walk them through it and how it can then tie to the ad goals that you're looking at in terms of transactions or conversions or return on ad spend from either the in platform metrics or in platform metrics. Plus it's like a scene of comedy. It's like yes, yeah, and a third party tool and GA four, make sure that not only you have a plan and understanding and walking through it with a client, but then you have an understanding of what are the daily metrics you're looking at and how are what making sure you're looking at the same thing. So that's the big one that I don't think a ton of people do right out of the gates and you have to make sure that you're agreed on that as much as possible.

Brett:

Yeah, I think that this train triangulation of data is really important. So in platform, yes, got to look at it, that third party, whether it's triple whale or North Beam or what have you, and then of course GA four needs to be there as well. And yeah, I think trying to simplify a little bit where you're looking at what's our MER or our media efficiency ratio to our total money in total money out, how are weekly sales changing as spin changes on various platforms. Looking at really simple stuff that you can use to make some general directions or observations and then digging into the details inside of triple oil and North Beamer or GA four, I think that makes a lot of sense for sure. So very cool. Yeah, and then looking at really understanding what kind of testing we're doing or rather how to approach testing. I love that you added that because even if we're getting really creative and really thoughtful with our ads, if we don't have a methodology to test them, then either we're not going to give them enough runway or we're going to give them too much space and waste money. Any tips there? Again, without getting too detailed or too into nitty gritty, any tips on testing methodologies or where someone should start?

Andrew:

I mean testing is number one, establish what you're trying to learn. So actually what do you want to know, number one, and if you want to know, well, I want to know what creatives work and I want to know what landing pages work with them. Okay, totally do that, but let's not do them at the same time and let's make sure that we understand first that probably creative itself in terms of understanding. If you've taken over an account and the person has not really done creative testing, the number one right out of the gates is try four or five different angles in static ads and figure out what on a broad audience they're responding to based on what we call soft metrics, like the ad level metrics. So that's number one is just figuring out what are they responding to and then from there going into testing different variations upon that particular things that they're responding to.

And then from there, going into landing page testing, which can be a big unlock. So it's more about what are you trying to figure out? And also then being patient and knowing that to figure a lot of these pieces out, it's going to take time and money to do so. You're not going to be losing money, but it's not going to be a major money maker right away if this has never been done. A lot of times two people testing to a lot of agencies and I think as an insulation for their own agency is they make it really complicated to make themselves look really smart. And in the reality, the best testing that I can do for you is putting things in a broad ad set. So 25 to 65 men and women or split by gender, whatever, and just launching it and seeing what creative metrics are going to work.

It's not necessarily anything. We used to have a thing where you would graduate, then you would or would say, okay, that ad did really well, now I'm going to pull it into my other ad set and run it. Not something you do anymore, what we call scale in place. If it's working, keep it rocking. You don't need to move it. Love that just to have it be there. So a lot of times, and well, what am I going to do? Launch another broad ad set? Yeah, launch another one and eliminate the one that did well keep that baby rolling. And so I think as humans we want to complicate things and in reality put the complication in your brain power into the different variations on creative and the different hooks and the way that you're talking about them and the different angles you're going for and how they can speak to different segments or problems that your customer has. And that's going to be more beneficial than trying to complicate it at the other side when it comes to testing.

Brett:

Love it. And yes, I can attest agencies are guilty of that and I can pick on agencies, you can pick on agency, you're an agency owners, so I sounds cool when we invent our new way of this is a proprietary way of testing and this is our model and it's a 75 point test and it's like, okay, yeah, you probably don't need all that, but that does sound impressive. So yeah. Yes, simplifying is great and I love the idea of scaling in place. We do the same thing on YouTube. If you're testing a new ad and it blows up in a campaign, don't move it. Let it live there. So got all the oxygen and all the data, just let it roll. So I love that. Hey, let's pivot a little bit. You and I can geek out on ads and strategy and what's working, what's not forever, but I want to talk about AI just a little bit. Sure. What are you hearing in the community? What are you testing? Are you extremely bullish on ai? Are you a little nervous about ai? How is it impacting things right now from your perspective?

Andrew:

I mean I think it's two prong. One is, I think there's the first one is there's operational ai. So what are you doing in terms of operations for your agency or for your brand in terms of coming out with more iterations of things, copy hooks and angles, language, I mean that's one part of it. And then there's sort of like meta AI and what is meta doing with it and what are they trying to go for? I think on the first one, I mean I think across the board I'm bullish on what it can do for us. I think as we all say, with a healthy dose of skepticism, I think for sure on the first one, operational stuff, well, how do I even begin to say this? The issue I see in the landscape many times and a lot of us, you're in the space, just like I talked about, the complication of ad testing.

There is very little that differentiates a lot of creative agent or a lot of agencies now in terms of the skills, a lot of us have the same skills and so people are looking for anything they can do to message about that they're doing that's different. And AI is currently it. I mean remember the days of ManyChat it was we're the ManyChat agency or it's this little thing that doesn't actually do. And a lot of people have put their eggs in the creative basket and are saying, well, we're a creative shop, but we do add buying, which I'm not saying is bad, but a lot of people are saying that and AI is currently being used in this. And so they're saying, okay, well I have a 50 point AI framework for your agency. So I think number one, as you think about this stuff, you have to be really careful of what is that actually doing and is it creating more volume of copy or videos and are they actually productive or is it actually helping?

So that's really where my mind goes on the first part of it. On the operational side, I think that there's a lot that can happen to summarize and to look at data and help you interpret data and things that you would not have seen. So that's an interesting one. I mean watching sessions from Clarity or whatever, hot Jar or whatever where it's giving you a readout from what happened with people mean that stuff's really helpful. I think from the mind journey type creative of video, that's AI and that kind of thing. Images that are ai, I think it's okay, it's in its infancy. Some of it looks a little corny and I don't think feels genuine to it now, but people are pushing the envelope on it, which I think is good. So that's one thing on the meta AI side, what's going on there?

It's clear to me that Meta is investing in this and will continue to take more controls away from us as advertisers. The they're going to put in assets and Meta's going to decide where to put 'em, and it's going to be an Advantage plus shopping campaign and it's going to be kind of a performance Max style. The issue with that I have with this is Meta has a bad track record with allowing freedom in terms of ad placement and display. So we have a client that's running a sale right now and we turned on in Advantage while shopping campaign, the automatic optimization, well, it put the texts in all the wrong places and it cut off one of the texts and it made the ad look terrible. And the client's getting screenshots and sending it to us and saying, this looks terrible. So like I think an AI issue right out of the gates.

But there's other things. They came out and said they're, they're testing this Lattice framework where it's looking at essentially federated learnings, which are learnings across a whole bunch of accounts and they're calling it Lattice and saying, okay, here's what we know and we're matching this color background to this person because we know they respond to things in purple. So the early tests of that stuff haven't been doing anything. They've been performing way worse than anything than we've created. And so I'm not saying it's trash, I'm just saying right now it's not proving to be anything big, but it will be more. I mean, there's going to be endless options and I think you're going to have to be one, pitching your clients to be more comfortable with the changes that are taking place and with the fact that they're dynamically changing your ads often. And number two is you're going to have to be more patient because the AI is going to take some time, I think, to learn and figure that side of it out.

And I think ultimately it will be, there could be instances where it's more profitable, but it's going to, and the initial side of it when it's learning going to be really tough because you're going to be getting screenshots of your clients from the ads that look really like that don't look good. So it depends on how much customization they're doing in this too. So that's like my honest answer about ai. I I think it's a lot of people that are really excited about it. I think that's great and I'm not excited about it. And Meta doesn't have a great track recorder when it comes to this stuff. And ultimately I think about what creates more work for us as agencies. They're saying it saves us time, but if a client's blowing us up with ads that look like crap, that's not going to be good for anybody.

Brett:

That does not save you time for sure. I like the way you frame that. I'm not excited about it. And that's the why I feel about some of the AI related topics. Just got a key in on a couple points related to operational ai. I think it's really the place right now where it's all about augmenting not replacing. It's about helping you do more with less, faster, give you ideas, helping you not start with a blank canvas, that type of thing. I've got some friends who are developers and coders and they're saying, Hey, with the proper use of Chad G p t or whatever their favorite tool is, it makes them 20% faster with coding or maybe 50% faster for certain things. It helps them, if you look at a really good copywriter, maybe you're using AI to kind of get you some thought starters or to tweak things or rewrite some things.

But as I've looked at stuff that AI just creates on its own, I'm not finding subject lines that are better than what great copywriters write. I'm not seeing descriptions that are better than what great copywriters write. I know it's improving. I know it will continue to improve, but I really think it's augmenting not replacing at least so far. We'll see how it progresses. What's really interesting, and I'll be very curious to watch how meta AI unfolds and want to keep up with you on that with Google Performance Max, one of the concerns I had when I first heard this talked about a couple years ago was, man, we're not going to have any control. This is going to all be Black Box. We're just going to serve Google our assets and step away and hope for the best. Actually, you can do that. There's some ways to run Performance Max that are very much automated, but there's also quite a bit you can manipulate and quite a bit, you can move around based on the way you structure your campaigns and then also looking at performance data, changing your creatives, changing a few of the signals and things like that.

And so I think that's probably the future too, where there's, there's going to be this option where you just like, here you go, here are the keys, Google my Money, here are my assets. And same with Meta. But I think there's also going to be this way of, okay, I'm going to leverage some of the automation, but I'm still going to apply my strategies and I'm going to apply my testing framework as best as I can to this tool. And I think that's where we're going to get the best results. So far, we've had great success with Performance Max, almost across the board, but companies that are spending like 50,000 a day on Performance Max, usually it's not just one campaign that they built in an afternoon and don't think about its, it's more of a complex structure. So we'll see. Man, I, I'm bullish, but I think I may have to copy your, I'm not excited. So

Andrew:

I love that. Yeah, I mean, I think to me the practical implications of it, a performance Max. Look at, I did a webinar with North Beam a month ago with John Moran and John's talking about

Brett:

Love That dude, it's super smart,

Andrew:

Was talking about something along the lines of running a Performance Max campaign, but then running something that then suppresses a certain part of this Performance Max campaign that it actually spends in the places you want. And I don't remember exactly what it was, but the point is, I could see that happening with Meta ads. There's going to be like, yes, you're running a manageable shopping campaign and AI as part of it, but you're also then taking and creating a separate catalog or something or product catalog with things that you want to suppress or it's that kind of manipulation that I think is going to have to take place and probably will. It just remains to be seen what that'll be and how much money will be spent figuring that out. Right? I think we're sort of in this place of a lot of people during the pandemic had businesses that were running online and now we're coming through this piece of man operationally things aren't looking as good, or ads aren't performing as well, and there's less levers to pull.

And I think it's, when you think about AI and giving people, like you said, longer timeframe, if it's a $50,000 a day thing, they're going to be fine. But it's these little guys, I think about that spending 25,000 a month, they're going to be the ones that are hurt because they're not going to be able to test this, and they might not be resourced enough to know where to direct, to direct the dollars more appropriately. So that's going to be really challenging, and that's a harder place to be as a business owner, especially when all of your traffic has come from Meta,

Brett:

Totally

Andrew:

From one source.

Brett:

We know so many small businesses that they really built their brand, built their business on Facebook and maybe partially in the glory days of Facebook. And Facebook is still going strong and still working. But yeah, it will be those with smaller budgets that don't have the ability to adapt, that will be hurt the most, which really is a great reason why someone needs to get connected to a community of other smart people and learn and ready, be ready to adapt and improve. And so tell us a little bit more about the founders community. Who's a good fit for that? How do people find out more? Yeah, give us a little down there.

Andrew:

If you do digital advertising, you're an agency owner, you're in house at a brand, you're a brand owner, and you spend anything on Meta or on TikTok or on Google, it's going to be a place for you. We have the Founders community, which is the original, it's been around for two years. That's for people that are primarily spending on Meta. And a month ago we launched the PPC community, the PPC B, both the main founders membership is foxville digital.com/membership. The other one is foxville digital.com/all caps ppc. And they're, they're places that are supportive to you. We have between five and 10 calls a week that members can join, led by different members of the community on of myriad of topics. Everything's recorded, put into a database for you lives as a Slack community. You can ask anything you want. It's a safe place. It's moderated by me. I have an outsourced moderation. It's me, which is a big part of it because it's a big

Brett:

Tax,

Andrew:

It's a big job, stays high, and the quality stays high. I mean, we just asked, we just did a monthly member survey. A couple hundred members filled it out. 99.9% of the people said, yes, I'd recommend it to a friend. So that's a fit. If you're looking, you're, yeah, and big and small spenders. I mean, we have people that are spending, that are brands that are spending half a million a month just on one channel. And we have people in there that are running, their whole book of business is a hundred K spenders. And I've tried to build a community for both of those people and also running an agency and how lonely that can be. So if you feel like you need a little bit more support, then that's a good place for you.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so important because it is kind of lonely, whether you running an agency or you're serving as a marketing director or media buyer because you're going to talk to your family about changes on Meta or Google or talk to your family about, Hey man, my margins are just really down this year. It's really getting me down. It's hard to have those conversations with just anybody. You need a community like this where you can connect. So love that. I'll link to everything in the show notes. And then also Foxwell Digital. So you run an agency, talk about what services you guys offer and who is that a good fit for?

Andrew:

Yeah, I mean, we run an agency. We do meta ads for people and take on a couple clients a year. It's not a huge book for us. And we do a lot of strategic advising to agencies. We do a lot of strategic advising to brands. So if they're looking for a new advertiser, sometime we'll come in and do an audit and say, here's what we'd recommend and help them find a new partner. We've successfully placed, well, let's see, what year is it? 2020. 2023. Yeah. So I just looked at the numbers and I think it was something like 21 leads we've placed in agencies this year.

Brett:

Wow.

Andrew:

So that's a big part of what we do is playing matchmaker. And as far as I know, they're all still there. And that was part of the work, the due diligence that we're doing is checking out on it. So that's a big part of it too, is kind of that matchmaking process. And then we do this consulting with Wall Street as well, which is fascinating to talk to them about the public side of a lot of these companies and what they're doing.

Brett:

So you've got banks, you've got people on Wall Street that are talking to you on a regular basis saying, okay, give me the inside scoop, what's actually happening inside of Meta and inside these communities, because we need to know.

Andrew:

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, the best part about being a direct response advertiser always has been, is that we are always the one out there hustling, right? We are the ones that are testing everything. We're trying everything. I mean, Lord knows we'd all love to be a brand advertiser and just be doing freaking a hundred grand in video views. Right.

Brett:

How did you optimize your campaign? I turned it on. Yeah. Yeah,

Andrew:

I did. I used to actually do some of that consulting work four, three or four years ago with a brand or a, I guess a publisher that did a lot of partnerships with those brands. And it was amazing. It was so awesome. You could just turn stuff on. They just had endless budgets. But I mean, the good news about being a Dr. Advertiser is you have the look into here's what's working, here's how it's going, here's exactly why. Here's what sucks. And it turns out Wall Street's willing to pay for that. So if any of you're interested, you can go to GLG or Guidepoint or the two networks and you fill out an application and then they reach out and you can be connected basically to people on their staff. But then they send you calls and you can talk to people and they pay you for your time. Cool.

Brett:

Super cool, man. So interesting. Well love all that you're doing, Andrew, it's been an absolute pleasure to catch you up.

Andrew:

Yeah, man, thank you so much. I'm looking forward

Brett:

To that PPC community, man. I'm looking forward to hanging out a little bit with my PhD kids in there and talk. Wait. And so yeah, I'll link everything in the show notes. Do check out Foxwell Digital. He's got some courses as well if you want to learn through courses, if that's your jam. But Andrew, super fun, man. Thank you so much. Thanks. And we'll have to do it again.

Andrew:

Sounds Absolutely. Thank you.

Brett:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We would love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? Do you have any suggestions, any guests that you're like, Hey, this guest has got to be on the show. I would like to know about that and hit us up. Look at me on the socials now, man. I'm more active on LinkedIn and on Twitter sort of, and would love to connect with you in the socials are on the socials as well. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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