Emilio Murphy: We went from spending peanuts to spending six figures the next day, so it was pretty ridiculous. If people are going to be using the chatbot for writing ads, I'm happy to let them do it because everyone's ads are going to be looking the same. For me, creative is one of, if not the most important lever in my arsenal. So if I'm able to concentrate on tweaking creative to get incremental revenue out of creative and I don't have to worry about targeting, that's amazing.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Here's your host, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: Welcome to another episode of Add to Cart. I'm Bushie and I'm joining you from the land of the terrible people, otherwise known as Brisbane, Australia on Add to Cart. We welcome everyone to share and listen
[Voiceover]: to e commerce stories.
Nathan Bush: The more diverse the better. I want to especially welcome the traditional owners and the original storytellers of the land that we are on, our indigenous and Torres Strait Islander listeners to join us in our e commerce conversations and our community. I feel like we haven't had a nerdy episode, like a real nerdy episode for a while. So today we are going to readdress that balance. Strap yourself in the topic Paid Media, the holy grail of E commerce. If you are chasing cpcs, ctrs, roi, roas, whatever acronym you want, we are going to get deep into it. Today my guest is Emilio Murphy, head of Paid media at Muscle Nation, the community and culture driven fitness brand. Before that, Emilio spent three and a half years at hypergrowth startup Hydraulic High Smile. I'm sure you are very aware of
[Voiceover]: them across all of your social platforms.
Nathan Bush: He was helping them conquer the teeth whitening sector. Today Emilio gives us all his tips and he is very open with sharing the secret to his success plus the channels and formats he sees as essential for success in paid media. Free commerce. He reveals the most important lever in his advertising arsenal and shares his predictions
[Voiceover]: on the future of search.
Nathan Bush: So thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Signet. Here's our conversation with Emilio Murphy, Head of Paid media at Muscle Nation.
[Voiceover]: Emilio, welcome to ADD to cart.
Emilio Murphy: Hey man, awesome to be here.
[Voiceover]: Awesome to be here. We were just talking about how busy you are. I said you're a maniac for recording. We're recording this late September before the crazy season. I said you're a maniac for doing this time of year. So we appreciate your time. No worries.
Emilio Murphy: Like I said before, I'M a fan of the podcast, so I did my best to squeeze some time in.
[Voiceover]: That's awesome. All right, so you're the head of paid media at Muscle Nation. We are going to nerd out on paid media today, and I can't wait. Before we do, for those who might not fully understand, can you share with us what a head of paid media does?
Emilio Murphy: Of course. So my job is essentially to be the guardian of everything paid across Muscle Nation, reporting to key stakeholders and ensuring that the money that's being spent in advertising is getting a nice, healthy return on investment.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, perfect. You summarize that so nicely. And how far does that go into the choosing of channels and the creative side?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, so a lot of that does fall on me, whether it be allocation of budget across channels that have, you know, historically performed really well, and then balancing that up with almost like discovery and trying to figure out new channels or new kind of avenues to spend money potentially, you know, finding niches that we didn't know we had before, using channels that we didn't really look at before those kind of things. So it's a really nice split and a really nice kind of mix between doing what we know works well and then reaching out and trying new things. Great.
[Voiceover]: All right, we're going to dive into what we know works well, because I'd love to hear it. But before we do, can you share a little bit about Muscle Nation and perhaps some of the other D2C brands that you've worked on before Muscle Nation? Sure.
Emilio Murphy: So I guess I'll start off with what I have done in the past, but it's weird to say, but next year. I've been in marketing for 10 years, which isn't. Which doesn't seem like a big number, but I think to me it's like it just shows my. My journey, I guess.
[Voiceover]: You're a fresh face statement.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, that's it. I think before this. Yeah. For three and a half years, I was at the Startup High Smile.
[Voiceover]: Hardly a startup now.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, now these days it's definitely a little bit more than the startup. When I started in 2019, they were really cracking the code on, I guess, early paid media, utilizing influencers. So it was really exciting time for me to join the brand and then at the nexus of their kind of breaking into other platforms. So like TikTok, and now they're kind of a staple on the. Staple on the platform. Everywhere he looked, this muscle, this high smile. And they're doing really good, which is awesome to see.
[Voiceover]: Were you there when they broke into TikTok for the first time.
Emilio Murphy: Yes. So, funnily enough, I pushed the go button on those TikTok ads on Black Friday in 2021. I want to say it was. That was an exciting time. We went from spending peanuts to spending six figures the next day. So it was pretty ridiculous.
[Voiceover]: What were your initial thoughts about TikTok like in that first month or so?
Emilio Murphy: It was good. We tried it a couple of times, all the way from, I would say, a couple of years before when it was kind of like a closed beta.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Emilio Murphy: So closed beta, you had to kind of apply to be on the platform. Really, really basic kind of advertising on the platform. When it first started, all cost cap, no auto bidding. So it was really, really early on. We tried it a couple of times, a little bit of success, but we didn't really have the conversion where we wanted it to just yet. It was really good for cpm. Bidding was really good for impressions, but it wasn't quite there for conversions just yet. Fast forward to Black Friday 2022. It all changed. It became very much conversion heavy. And we can get in front of the right eyeballs when we needed to during those key sale periods.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, great. All right, cool. That's. I mean, we could talk high smile for a little bit. Let's continue the journey first, of course.
Emilio Murphy: And then about a year and a half ago, I got the call from. From Nathan, who's one of the co founders here at Muscle Nation, pretty much essentially saying, hey, we've been working with an external agency for the last couple of years for all our paid media, and we really think it's time we start taking paid media a little bit seriously. So what can we do? Bring it in house and start from scratch and see where it takes us. And I think it really presented its own unique challenges because there's a lot of education had to be done internally, from attribution all the way to, like, campaign management all the way through to how to even run an ad. It's quite funny because I think Muscle Nation is very unique in the sense that they built their community first and worry about paid media later on.
[Voiceover]: Okay. And that community, who are we talking? Are we. Are we talking bodybuilders or. It's much broader than that.
Emilio Murphy: So initially it started with the people who are a little bit more interested in gym, who would be going to gym quite often, who be really concentrated on those kind of things. But then it moved later on into a broader community, and I guess the trend of athleisure wear kind of really took off. And I guess with the whole advent of COVID as well, people weren't able to go to the gym as often. So I think they were probably looking for a comfier alternative to be working from home. And so that's where I guess the nation is kind of moving to. But it's really interesting to see the transition between kind of old Muscle Nation to do Muscle Nation.
[Voiceover]: And I understand that it's obviously well beyond D2C. You've got deals with some of the major supermarkets as well, which I could imagine makes your job a little bit harder, especially when it comes to attribution.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah. Funnily enough, like when you think about Muscle Nation, I guess there's two core pillars, one of which is the apparel side of the business, and then the second of which is the consumable side of the business. And they could be two separate businesses altogether. So it's really exciting time to see the consumables part of the business do so well in brick and mortar stores like Chemist Warehouse and Coles and now Costco as well. So it's really. It's an exciting time to be seeing that transformation of the brand.
[Voiceover]: Amazing. And are you in any international markets yet?
Emilio Murphy: We've dabbled quite a little bit in the US which makes it a little bit difficult because with something like consumables, there are strict regulatory standards you have to abide to. So it presents its own individual challenges. But I think apparel is definitely something that we're pushing a little bit harder for the US and we're taking strides with it and looking through, I guess, relevant content creators and kind of leveraging that a little bit overseas and just branching out from Australia.
[Voiceover]: And does that mean with almost two separate businesses, that you have two different sets of competitors, two different strategies when it comes to campaigns, do you run them like separate businesses?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, funnily enough, I do. And it's difficult because it's all in one ad account. So trying to figure out. Trying to figure out what works one well, for one is sometimes it doesn't work anywhere near good for the second. So really trying to figure out what kind of content creators work well with supplements may not necessarily work well with with apparel. And then figuring out potentially there's things and you need to see in the first three seconds that work for supplements. Sometimes statics do better for apparel than they do supplements. And the messaging and the communication method varies between the two. But it's also really challenging to maintain a strict brand voice across the two while trying to vary it Enough that it fits within the two niches.
[Voiceover]: Yes,
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[Voiceover]: Who are the main competitors you go up against if you want to name them?
Emilio Murphy: I guess in Australia, you know, we have our competitors, we love them. But brands like LSKD and kind of act and things like that, you don't love them.
[Voiceover]: Come on.
Emilio Murphy: I think there's a. I think something I've always kind of advocated for was your competitors don't need to be the enemy. I think you can very well admire your competitors and see what they are doing. Well, because they've gotten to a point because they are doing something well.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, exactly. It's not the Queensland thing of just sticking together with the local lads. So tell me, I love your phrasing around knowing what works well for us and then what we want to experiment with. So there's obviously some foundations that you have in paid media that you can take to any organization and you go look at very basics. You've got to implement this, this and this in paid media. What would be your standouts when it comes to getting the basics right in paid media?
Emilio Murphy: I think you need to have a really good understanding of attribution. I think it's important to be able to benchmark platforms against one another and not look at them in isolation. It's very well to say, oh well, this platform's doing really well, this platform is doing really well. But what does that look like from almost like an, like a multi channel kind of outlook. And I think it needs to be, for instance, there needs to be a, sometimes a single source of truth and then you should be able to benchmark platforms against that source of truth.
[Voiceover]: And what's your source of truth?
Emilio Murphy: Well, a lot of performance media marketers think I'm a little bit weird for doing this, but I look at one
[Voiceover]: day last click attribution, one day last click attribution. Explain that to us.
Emilio Murphy: So it's essentially the most conservative attribution method you possibly can do, which has come back to, you know, bite me a few times. But I think it's honestly just looking at what brought someone to the website and did they convert off that ad immediately? Immediately. I think it's definitely not a best fit for a lot of businesses. For instance, if you're like a mattress brand, you're probably not going to look at a one day attribution model because I know it probably takes me a few weeks to decide for a big ticket item of what I want to buy. And obviously there's attribution models the best fit for those people. But for a, I guess a business like Muscle Nation or even a business like High Smile, it's very much grabbing attention and doing all you can to elicit a purchase in that interaction.
[Voiceover]: Okay, and does that limit the types of channels or the types of mediums that you can be on? So those platforms that might be more long form or more engagement versus acquisition, how do you balance that out if they're not converting immediately?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, I mean that's a great question. And I think the way we look at it is not everything has to be profitable last click. Because we understand that if we're looking at it holistically and it comes back to my point where I was talking about having a single source of truth, you're able to understand some platforms, for instance, like Google inherently are going to have a really, really healthy last click because people are going to the platform, they're generally mid funnel, so it's going to have a good last click. So that does a lot of the legwork when some other channels aren't necessarily performing as strong last click. But that's okay because you understand it drives traffic to mid funnel platforms like Google. So it's all about looking at data in context, I think.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, I bet you have some pretty robust conversations with some of those platform salespeople who try and change your mind about how you're attributing success. Sure.
Emilio Murphy: And I think the more you work with your account rep, I think the more they understand your business. For instance, with Meta, my meta account rep is fantastic. He understands our business objectives and he understands the way I measure it. So he tailors his recommendations and tailors his assistance to best fit those.
[Voiceover]: So in terms of that, in terms of tailoring, because so much of where, from what I understand where Meta is pushing is towards automated recommendations and automated algorithms to make the most out of your spend. Where does having that direct contact with a rep, what kind of value do they add over the top of that that you're not getting out of the platform itself.
Emilio Murphy: Well, for us personally, they're able to access backend tools that we necessarily won't be able to see.
[Voiceover]: Okay.
Emilio Murphy: So they're able to understand on, say, asc, like Advantage plus Shopping campaigns, they're able to see how much bidding is happening. So they're able to give me information around how much it's costing me to get people to the website, so then I can start to understand. All right, well, these campaigns are getting inherently more expensive. What do I need to do to bring this cost down? So it's almost just having like a look behind the curtain and having that access to that information I probably wouldn't be, ever, ever be able to see as an advertiser. Yeah.
[Voiceover]: Do they help you benchmark, give you an idea against how other retailers are going as well?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, they give me a broad understanding. Obviously there is, you know, they can't tell me too much when it comes to certain aspects. As much as I would love to know, they don't tell me all I would like to know. But, yeah, they give me a really good understanding. And as we were talking before as Muscle Nation almost fits into two separate verticals, whether it be apparel or whether it be supplements, they give me insights based on those two verticals.
[Voiceover]: Yep. So if you are moving into a new brand, and I know we've got a lot of people who own their own brands that are listening, if you
Nathan Bush: said, look, there are just some really
[Voiceover]: basic channels and formats as an E Commerce, D2C brand that you need to be on as the building blocks, what would those channels and formats be that you say, at least get these started?
Emilio Murphy: I think the very basic easy plugin and play one is Advantage plus Shopping campaigns on Meta. Super easy. It leverages machine learning. It's able to understand who's been to your website, who's more likely to convert. And as signals get a little bit more diluted now post iOS 14.5, it's a little bit more difficult to target people. So if you're able to aggregate signals, signals being, I guess, markers of what people may be doing on the platform, what they're doing outside of the platform. On websites, Facebook's able to target those a little bit better if they're able to aggregate those.
[Voiceover]: Can you just take us back a step there? For those who might not be totally across Advantage plus, how does it actually work?
Emilio Murphy: So essentially it leverages machine learning and AI to best serve your ads to people who are more likely to purchase your product.
[Voiceover]: Okay.
Emilio Murphy: So you, you set it at a budget, whatever you feel comfortable spending, and then you skip the targeting. I know it sounds scary at first. I was very hesitant at first because I was worried. I said, oh, well, if I can't control my targeting, I don't know if I really want to do this because I personally know what audiences work well for, for the business.
[Voiceover]: Yep.
Emilio Murphy: As I'm sure business owners are also aware of. But it gets to a point where targeting gets diluted. So you're able to give it a budget and then feed it multiple pieces of creative. I've heard stories of people putting hundreds of pieces of creative within these campaigns and then just pressing go. You can start at a small campaign, small budget, and then slowly work your way up to where you feel comfortable spending. But it's such an easy way and such an easy, such an easy result just to get wins on the board.
[Voiceover]: Okay. And do you get visibility then of the segments that it is working for after the fact?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, I think the easiest way for me to be able to do it is then by using tracking and then looking on my third party platforms.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. And then in terms of your spend on meta, how much of it would be Advantage plus versus you manually controlling it?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm probably looking at something like 60 to 70% on Advantage Plus.
[Voiceover]: Okay.
Emilio Murphy: And then I probably use the additional 30. So I use Advantage plus essentially as my evergreen campaigns. So I know that if I push these campaigns, they're going to do well and I use them as not only evergreen, but as a benchmark. So I test targeting, I test creative in other campaigns, and if I know I'm matching the performance and Advantage pluses giving me, then I know I'm kind of onto a winner there.
[Voiceover]: Okay, that makes sense. And your evergreen campaigns, are they predominantly product focused or are they brand focused or otherwise?
Emilio Murphy: So they're predominantly, I guess, product focused. So when I'm looking at my Advantage plus campaigns, I split them off into, I guess, three major groups. So one would be men's apparel, one would be women's apparel, and then one would be consumable slash supplements. There is times where I feel that I could probably push a particular supplement. So as an example, we recently launched our daily Greens online. They were doing really well in Coles for a long time, but we're finally able to push them online. And then that would be an example where I'll probably break them off into their own Advantage plus campaign. Gotcha. And as the kind of hype wears down and it kind of gets aggregated into the broader, I guess, consumable space, then I would probably bring them back into that supplement Advantage plus campaign.
[Voiceover]: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And is that obviously a live feed of products that are available and in stock?
Emilio Murphy: Yes.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, yeah.
Emilio Murphy: So I do my best to ensure that the items that are online are in stock. There are times that you sometimes can't keep on top of it and you do your best. But Meta does also have a feature where you can see if the items in your catalog are out of stock. And that way you can just keep track on things a little bit better.
[Voiceover]: Okay, that's a great tip. Advantage plus as a great way to get started with Meta.
Emilio Murphy: What.
[Voiceover]: What else would you recommend as a building block for someone who's just setting up their paid media strategy?
Emilio Murphy: I would probably look at something as rudimentary as ensuring that you have good third party tracking. Yeah, it's not to say that Meta's tracking isn't up to standard, but I think as long as you have access to as many points of data as you can to cross reference each other, I think that's really beneficial. So doing something as simple as third party UTM tracking, I think it's so, so overlooked. And I think a really strong UTM structure is really, really important. And then when you're creating ads within Facebook, you're able to scroll down within the ad creation and there is a field there for dynamic targeting. So you're able just to do it dynamically. And then when you want to create a new ad, literally just duplicate the ad and then the tracking preserves. And then if you're doing something like GA or Shopify tracking, you're able to pull the report on there and then see what is pulling through to the website.
[Voiceover]: What's your source of truth for tracking? Are you using GA still or have you gone to Shopify or using something else entirely?
Emilio Murphy: I use a combination between on platform tracking for certain things like click through and then another metric I call dumb stopability, which is really interesting. So. So it's something to understand what ads are stopping people in their feed.
[Voiceover]: Okay.
Emilio Murphy: And then I use, I use on platform analytics for those kind of things.
[Voiceover]: Yep.
Emilio Murphy: And then I use an external tracking so something like Shopify to best dive into conversion tracking. And then I cross reference it with on platform tracking. So it's never really exclusively. One side is for conversion and one side is for engagement. But I use all sides for all pieces of tracking. And then I like to combine the two and then compare them.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. Have you ever used something like a triple whale to combine all of that together?
Emilio Murphy: I have. Yes, I have. So it is triple whale is super beneficial. I've used it in the past. It's a good way to aggregate or you spend if you're not using an internal custom built which is becomes really expensive. But if you're not using something like that, it's probably a really good stepping point.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Emilio Murphy: For you to kind of just aggregate all you spend and figure out what your broader marketing spread kind of looks like. And using things like me are so marketing efficiency ratio, which for those who don't know is total spend or your advertising when it's compared to the total revenue of the business.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. Great. In terms of. You mentioned tracking before and how important UTM tracking is for you. Apple just released iOS 15 and you alluded to it where they're going to make it easier for users to opt out of tracking. I understand that UTM might not be impacted yet, but do you have concerns around the long term trackability of your spend?
Emilio Murphy: I do and I think it's something that a lot of businesses should be taking seriously now and not wait until after it's been announced. I likened it to I guess when iOS 14.5 first came out and it gave people to track to opt out of third party tracking.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Emilio Murphy: A lot of brands decided to put it in a strategy after it happened and not before it happened. Even though it was delayed multiple times, brands didn't really weren't really sure about the impact of what was going to happen until it happened. So I think brands should be looking at it now and figuring out what's going to happen. I mean there's rumors that in the future they'll be dropping UTM tracking of things like email. So things like that are really important to kind of take note of and figure out benchmarks now that lead to I guess compared to what performance happens on the website. So instance, you might understand that if an email has a combination of really good click through rate, has a really good open rate, you can kind of set benchmarks around what's expected conversion based on those pieces of data.
[Voiceover]: Gotcha. So it's more about using the data while you've got it to set those benchmarks rather than making any significant changes. But while you've got it, use it and get the most out of it. Because it could go away.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, exactly.
[Voiceover]: Okay. All right, that makes sense. And in terms of the emerging platforms coming through. So if we go. Yep, great. There's your bedrock. Can I assume that search is still a part of that, that bedrock as well?
Emilio Murphy: Of course, yeah. I think search for us plays a part when we know that we are driving traffic through the testing platforms. So things like TikTok or Pinterest or things like that and we're able to kind of measure While I guess TikTok traditionally isn't a platform that converts as strongly as others as meta because inherently it's a platform designed to keep you on the platform for as long as possible. I know, I'm guilty of it. I, I, before I know it, I'm spending two hours a night on TikTok. But yeah, from there we're able to use that as not only a conversion platform, but a way to measure impact from other platforms.
[Voiceover]: Okay, so Google is almost at the end of the funnel for you to catch everyone that you've impacted along the way. So I could assume that in your reporting, given your attribution model, Google's looking pretty good.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah. The Google reps elated. He loves it.
[Voiceover]: And is that primarily, are you still getting a lot of impact from branded terms, from product terms, from Google shopping? What's that landscape looking like for you?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, I think it, I think there's definitely ebbs and flows when you think about the year as year as a whole, I think kind of always on Evergreen is generally always branded. It's always important for me to ensure that we're it's almost a piece of brand protection. And the way I look at it is some marketers are kind of in two camps where they allow organic to do the heavy lifting on that side. But the way I look at it is you're making the money back on the money you spend on the branded anyway. So it's worth ensuring that you're always on top of that search. And then I look at something like shopping as a really big play for something like a key sales period because so much traffic is being pulled in from other sources, whether they remedy or TikTok or Pinterest. Because you are driving that spend higher and higher, you're bound to get that money back through shopping for those periods.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
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[Voiceover]: What experiments have you done recently that have really caught your attention? You're like, oh, that was, that wasn't what I expected, but I'm glad it happened.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah. So something that's really interesting at the moment is using customer caps on Advantage plus campaigns.
[Voiceover]: Okay.
Emilio Murphy: So the way you do it is you pretty much upload a customer list on your Advantage plus campaigns. So existing customers.
[Voiceover]: Yep.
Emilio Murphy: And then you can set a new customer percentage cap on the Advantage plus campaigns. So you might say, hey Meta, I only want to these campaigns to see 10% new customers of 10%. So that way you can kind of mitigate how many new customers are seeing your Advantage plus campaigns.
[Voiceover]: And what are the scenarios where you would want to mitigate new customers?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, sure. So I think leading up to a Black Friday period is probably a really interesting way to do it because you want the new customers to be purchasing leading off to Black Friday, if that makes sense. Yeah, you definitely, I guess if they're going to buy, you should really want them to pay full price. I mean, your existing customers know that there's a Black Friday sale coming. Everyone does a Black Friday sale coming. But I think only your existing customers know how hard the brand goes for Black Friday. So it's probably worth the new customers purchasing leading up to Black Friday and then hopefully double dipping when the discount comes into effect during those couple of weeks.
[Voiceover]: So really, anyone who already has the intention to buy or is likely to buy with you, you're trying to hide discounts from them, correct? Yeah, yeah, makes sense. And then does that mean that you treat them differently when they get to the website as well?
Emilio Murphy: No, I mean, I try to. The only difference I do is I try to pull people away from I guess them seeing like Black Friday landing pages and things like that. But I think just pulling them straightly straight into the product and avoiding pushing them into what kind of a Shopify collection page or something like that just to elicit that list of that purchase as Quickly as possible to get them in and out, reduce friction.
[Voiceover]: And I could imagine the majority of your spirit spend goes towards driving customers towards product pages or the homepage. Are there any other pages that you've found to be really profitable to drive traffic towards that you weren't expecting?
Emilio Murphy: That's a good question. I think what I've seen as well is depending, because we sometimes do kind of, I guess, giveaways depending on, like, if a new exciting product is coming up. For example, we're releasing our energy drinks in the next couple of weeks, which is really exciting. So we'll do like a. A giveaway for that. We're giving away. I think it's a couple of like, say, mini fridges with like, energy drinks in them. So. Yeah, so it's fun. Yeah, it's super dangerous. All my friends are entering and I'm not sure if they're allowed to win or not. Hey. But we're seeing, like, we see good, really good revenue from those. So it's kind of like, well, while I'm here, I may as well have a look and we might find that people might find that this product's adjacent to their interest based on those energy drinks.
[Voiceover]: Yep. Okay. And in terms of experimenting, have you been exposed to any beta programs or tests that you can give us hints on that might be coming through that you've seen good results on?
Emilio Murphy: I guess we were on the beta for search ads on TikTok, which is interesting as well. So they've been experimenting with search ads to appear. So when people search on a platform or search on TikTok or other brands appear in that search. So, yeah, there are ads that have been placed in there. So we will get put on the beta for that, which is quite interesting. I'm pretty sure that's in market now. If not, it's probably coming quite soon.
[Voiceover]: Cool.
Emilio Murphy: And then other than that, there were some betas in Facebook. Hopefully I'm allowed to talk about it, but if you're hearing it, I was allowed to.
[Voiceover]: Otherwise we'll edit it out because we try and avoid lawsuits where we can.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, it's probably. It's probably for the best. Yeah. But yeah, testing like there's new Advantage plus campaigns coming for leads.
[Voiceover]: Okay.
Emilio Murphy: So doing things like that and trying to build that lead list, coming into key sales periods. So like Black Friday or end of financial year to get as many people on those lists as possible. So we can let email and kind of organic do the heavy lifting.
[Voiceover]: There's been a lot of talk and kind of. It Feels like dipping in and dipping out of actually being able to convert E commerce within social platforms. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, they're all saying it's coming soon. They kind of go in and then come out. Do you actually think we're going to get the point of being able to check out within platform soon?
Emilio Murphy: God, I hope so. I've been waiting for it for so long like I was. I mean it first got announced internally probably three, I want to say like three years ago.
[Voiceover]: Feels like it.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, yeah. So here's hoping. I've seen such great things from Live Shopping as well. Like I've heard such like amazing success stories from Live Shopping. Yeah, I really, really would like to see that. It's going to be really, really interesting to see how the E commerce landscape changes once that happens because less people will be going through to the websites. So it's going to be really interesting to see what that's going to look like and it's probably going to do wonders as well for on platform tracking.
[Voiceover]: Yep.
Emilio Murphy: No longer people going to the websites and you're going to have to do your best to hope that they've locked it into third party tracking. All these interactions will be happening on platform so it's going to be doing wonders for things like remarketing.
[Voiceover]: What do you think is holding them back? Because you can see now with Shopify's revenue, they're mainly getting their revenue from payment now rather than platform fees. So there's obviously a model there and if the social platforms can take a clip of that as well, there's a huge opportunity there. What do you think's holding them back from being able to do it?
Emilio Murphy: From what I've heard, I think it's a lot to do with how Australia is not really lumped into Oceania, but it's lumped into Asia and I think there are stricter regulatory standards when it comes to third party payments through Asia. So that's probably something that's they're going to have to do a lot of to deal with. And I know the focus has also shifted a lot of post Covid to AI and ensuring that these platforms are ready to deal with the wave of AI that's coming, whether it be through things like Advantage plus or whether it be through people just using AI in their own kind of applications. So a lot of the focus from these platforms has been shifted to there to ensure they're ready for those kind of things.
[Voiceover]: Do you ever worry about your own job with AI coming? Like you already said there that 60 to 70% of your Facebook spend is automated. It's done. Do you worry like fuck 5 years time, what will you be doing?
Emilio Murphy: Well, see, the way I look at it is I guess AI I look, I break it into two, two categories and one of which is I guess your traditional chatgpt kind of chatbots kind of thing. And then I break it into on platform applications. So again, things like AI driven campaigns like Advantage plus or TikTok's SPC campaigns or things like that.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Emilio Murphy: And the way I break it up is if people are going to be using the chatbot for writing ads, I'm happy to let them do it because everyone's ads are going to be looking the same. So I'm happy people are doing those kind of things because it means my job is probably even safer. But I use things like those chatbots to do more menial tasks. So things like, hey, do this merge of these two sheets for me or hey, do a Vlookup for me because I really don't want to do a Vlookup. So things like that, those are the applications I find it. But I think the other approach to it is on platform. It's probably freeing me up to be able to pull other levers within the account. So for me, creative is one of, if not the most important lever in my arsenal. So if I'm able to concentrate on tweaking creative to get incremental revenue out of creative and I don't have to worry about targeting, that's amazing.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It takes the dumb work out for you 100%. Is there any AI tools that you're using or playing around with for either research or productivity that you're like, this is a game changer. Everyone's got to get onto this.
Emilio Murphy: Honestly, I don't use them too much. I'm pretty wary with them. But honestly, like, I love Google Bard. I probably use Google Bard more than I use ChatGPT. I do like, I like Google, but a lot because it integrates with the whole G suite.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Emilio Murphy: So you're able to integrate it with email docs, a bunch of stuff. And I'm, I'm probably speculating it's probably going to be pretty soon before it integrates with things like keyword research and Google Ads. So it's going to be really interesting to see if Google kind of take the punt and go into that because I know they've probably thought about it in the past, I know they're probably playing with it, but I'm really excited to see what that application is probably going to look like.
[Voiceover]: I heard from a source that I think is very credible and I've known them for a long time, that they've had very strong hints from Google that the total search experience will change either end of this year. I'd say they won't change it mid season, end of this year or early next year. Do you predict that we'll be sitting here this time next year with a totally different looking Google experience?
Emilio Murphy: I think so. And I think what's really interesting is that I think the statistic is between the ages of 18 and I think 30. The most popular search engine is TikTok. So it's going to be really interesting to see how they adapt and how they go up against that or if
[Voiceover]: they go against each other or whether they partner. Because there was another article that came out this week around them looking to partner and how Google can bring TikTok video into its results.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah. And I think it's going to be really interesting because I know as an example, the other day my battery died in my car because I stupidly left the light on inside the car.
[Voiceover]: Rookie mistake.
Emilio Murphy: Right? Rookie mistake. And instead of going to Google and saying how do I jumpstart my car? I went to TikTok and just looked for a video because I knew I could get the results in two seconds and watch the 15 second video and I'd be sweet and it was fine. So it's one of those things where I think it's going to be really interesting to see what the, what the search landscape is going to be like. Because search isn't just text anymore.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Emilio Murphy: Searches wherever someone is wanting to know something.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Emilio Murphy: So it's going to be really interesting to see what, what that kind of competition is like between TikTok and Google.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. And obviously Google have the options with YouTube, so they've got their own video library. The biggest video library in the world. But I suppose it hasn't been utilized or with search as much as it could be. Correct.
Nathan Bush: Okay.
[Voiceover]: So if you're a brand today and you're. I know we're venturing into SEO more than paid here, but if you're thinking about 12 months time, total Google experience might be looking differently. Different. What would you be adjusting now to still be relevant in search in 12 months time?
Emilio Murphy: I think a lot of brands aren't doing the very basic stuff. I think ensuring that your website is super accessible. Google's been pushing accessibility for so long, but I can't tell you the amount of times that I've gone on to buy just whatever it is online. And I'm not, I don't have any difficulties when it comes to like colorblindness or anything, but I find it difficult to sometimes read things or I find it difficult to even navigate websites. And I think before anything, I think brands need to make sure that the websites are accessible.
[Voiceover]: Yep. Great tip. Great tip. I have been really impressed and intrigued by your ability to talk data and analytics and investment and then flip over to the creative side and make sure you know that there's a fine balance between the two. Right. It's not all spreadsheets and numbers. It's all going to work together. What advice would you have for someone who might be starting out, might be in a coordinator position or just learning the ropes around paid media to really get the experience that they need to feel confident to step up to the bigger brands and take that investment on?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, I think it's a. I was definitely in that spot as well. And I think as far as I'm concerned, I think if any E commerce person or any head of paid or any E comm director genuinely likes what they do, they're more than happy to talk about it with people. So I think it's really important for the people who are starting out just to reach out to brands that they admire and reach out to the people who are running the ads. It seems scary at first because I know I was terrified of doing it. But reaching out to brands you admire and chatting to people at those brands is super beneficial because it's kind of where you want to be.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Emilio Murphy: And it puts you on their radar as well and connect with them and interact with them because who knows, in a couple of years time, you might make a really cool move to a new business or another brand and then that might set off their radar and they might keep an extra close eye on you and the brand you move on after that. Might be that your dream brand.
[Voiceover]: Absolutely. And it works both ways. Right. Is that the best way of teaching is to explain? So having someone ask you those questions of things that you've done for so long can often trigger new thoughts. So if you've got the opportunity to mentor other people coming through, it's a great personal development lever as well.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: What kind of sources do you go to to stay up to date? Because this stuff is changing so rapidly. How do you stay up to date?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, that's, that's, that's interesting. I think I keep a tab on a bunch of different. I have a Lot of search alerts on.
[Voiceover]: Okay, just Google search alerts.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, it's a weird one. So I, I have search alerts for PPC stuff or like AI kind of marketing stuff. And then every now and then I get like a really weird kind of curated search alert for, for an article that I might find really interesting.
[Voiceover]: Yep.
Emilio Murphy: So as opposed to like going out and looking for all these articles, I just have all these articles coming into our inbox.
[Voiceover]: Go.
Emilio Murphy: And I was talking to someone about this the other day about kind of books and this kind of topic and he brought up a really, really good point and he said, do you ever go back and read your university textbooks? Like no, I haven't touched. They're just sitting in my, at my parents house and they're sitting in a cupboard and they've probably been there for years now. He said, go back and read, do me a favor, go back and read them. Because when you're at uni and you're reading these textbooks, you don't have any practical experience to compare that theory to.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Emilio Murphy: So going back and reading these textbooks now with the practical theory that I've got, I get a weird amount of use out of them. So it's a really interesting tip.
[Voiceover]: I would never think of that. But you're totally right. It's like I remember being so bored going through those textbooks, but now you'd come at it through a totally different lens.
Emilio Murphy: Absolutely. And there might be something in there that you might say, oh, I could probably. It could be a term or it could be a theory, like a psych. I know I've got all my consumer psychology books still at home. So like looking at those and saying, oh wow. So I could be making a campaign or an advertising kind of piece of creative around this theory. This is really interesting and it's a way to just test things that you haven't really thought about.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. Tell you what's also interesting. Today I saw someone repost a video and would only be about 2 years old of Gary Vaynerchuk at a conference talking about NFTs and how like 12 months time NFTs will be everywhere. Everyone will own an NFT. You'll be boarding an airplane using your NFT boarding pass. And it was so far off the mark. And it's not a go at Gary Vaynerchuk. But sometimes it's just having that perspective to go, look, everyone's right and everyone's wrong occasionally. And being able to go back and balance that out is actually really interesting as well, I think. Yeah.
Emilio Murphy: It's really funny. I think not always taking something as a source of truth while someone have. Someone might be amazing at what they've done, but it's not about taking 100% their word for it.
[Voiceover]: Exactly, exactly. It's taking it as an opinion. Yeah. So not having a go, but I just think that's really interesting when we think we're. When people speak so confidently. There's plenty of evidence now to show their track record. So I know we're speaking end of September. We're coming up season. What's exciting, what's next for yourself and the Muscle Nation team?
Emilio Murphy: I think I'm so excited about Black Friday. I know it's, it's a, It's a catch 22 because you know how excited you are, but as well as you know how difficult it's going to be.
[Voiceover]: Are you the kind that will, like, sleep in the office under the desk?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, that's right. So do you think it's going to
[Voiceover]: be bigger than, than last year?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, I'm hoping for a. Well, last year was our biggest yet and I'm hoping that this year is going to be bigger yet again.
[Voiceover]: Wow.
Emilio Murphy: And from. Honestly, from what all I've seen this year, I know the economic kind of market has been a little bit funny this year, but I think people are just hanging out for sales. And I think from what I've seen this year as well is that after pay March and the financial year and afterpay August have all beaten last year. So it's going to be really interesting to see how that translates through to Black Friday.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So a big Black Friday. And then beyond that, any big initiatives or adventures coming up?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, I think we're looking at. We're always looking at our consumers. So we've got energy drinks that are launching in a couple of weeks and then we've got an additional protein kind of RTD ready to go. So that'll be launching quite soon after that. So RTD is ready to drinks.
[Voiceover]: Great.
Emilio Murphy: And then, yeah, we've got such a great product line in the works coming up for, for retail in the next. In the next 12 months. I'm really, really excited for that to kind of hit the shelves.
[Voiceover]: Awesome. And what's the, what's the culture like in there? Do you have to hit the gym? Do you have to be a gym junkie?
Emilio Murphy: I've gone to the gym once in like 12 months.
[Voiceover]: You're just, you're just there for the energy drinks.
Emilio Murphy: I'm there. I'm there for the free, free energy drinks. But yeah, no, it's. It's a great culture. It's a, it's a very much of a. I know it's a kind of a cliche to say it's a family culture, but everyone's kind of been working together here for such a long time. You know, I'm relatively new to it. Even though I've been here for a year and a half, I've still kind of one of the newbies. So it's. People here have been around for so long and I think that's just testament to the, to the culture that, you know, Chris and Nathan have built. But yeah, it's great. It's such a good place to work. Super open and collaborative. And everyone hasn't has an opinion on, on the future of Muscle Nation. You know, I talk to customer experience and quite often and say, hey, what are you seeing in the ads and what are people commenting on and what do you think is performing? And then I use that information to kind of further build campaigns.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, fantastic. What a way to get information. I love that. I love that you connect in with the customer experience team. Now, if people have heard this and
Nathan Bush: want to get in touch, what's the
[Voiceover]: best way to find you?
Emilio Murphy: Honestly, the best way just hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm always happy to chat and always happy to talk shop. So please, if you're interested in having a chat, then, yeah, by all means, let's go.
[Voiceover]: Awesome. Emilio, it's been so great to chat with you today. Thank you so much for sharing everything that you've, you've shared today. You've been really open and generous knowing that, you know, lskd might be listening and we really don't like those guys.
Emilio Murphy: We love you, lskd. If you're listening, we love you.
[Voiceover]: We're not burning bridges here. Thanks for joining us, Emilio.
Emilio Murphy: Thanks, Nathan. Pleasure.
Nathan Bush: I hope you had your notepad out for that one. Oh, my God. How much of an old man did
[Voiceover]: I sound like just then?
Nathan Bush: Just snap it or talk it or bump it or whatever you do. Anyway, here are the three lessons I took from our chat with Emilio. Don't ignore the Meta advantage. Emilio was very open with saying how much reliance he now has on Meta's Advantage Shopping plus campaigns. These are the ones that automatically select your audience and match it with creator. For someone who has carved a career out of being a paid specialist and controlling the ads, to say that he relies on it for 60 to 70% of ad spend is a huge show of trust and faith in the output that he's seeing. So if you're not using Advantage plus, run it as a test alongside your existing campaigns and compare the results. Number two Go back to Attribution Basics I was genuinely surprised when Emilio shared that he relies on one day last click attribution that is very, very close to the source. It is the most direct source and it hasn't been in favor lately given the huge variety of multi channel experiences that customers can go through in order to affect a sale. Emilio argues that attribution is tricky and only getting trickier with UTM and privacy changes. Having a good grip on your benchmarks is more important than getting attribution perfect. And number three look up and reach out if you are struggling to break through with paid media, don't just wallow in your Zuckerberg donations, reach out to those who you think are doing it well. I think it's fair to say that those passionate about paid media in either ecommerce love talking about it and are usually more than happy to share their tips. A 10 minute chat might be the breakthrough that you need and save you huge amounts of money. But don't forget it goes the other way too. Thanks for joining us today on Add to Cart to listen to all our e commerce conversations now in the hundreds. You can head on over to Add to add to cart.com there. You can also join up to our free private Slack community to share e commerce ideas, tips and questions with other listeners. You can also subscribe to the Add to Cart weekly newsletter and browse some of the video highlights from our chats. There is a lot there that's add to cart.com and if I can ask you one thing before you go. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague who could benefit or leave us a review. It really makes a difference. Thanks again for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to cartoon.
