Hey, everyone. Scott Austin here. And as you all know, the world of e-commerce and advertising in e-commerce is getting more and more challenging as time goes on. So we've done a lot of episodes recently talking to different ad experts, and I don't think you can just get one point of view on this kind of stuff. I think you want to talk to lots of different points of views, and to see what works best for your brand.

I have another ad expert, Andy Janaitis from PPC Pitbulls who's going to talk to us about his experience in small brands and advertising. Welcome, Andy.

Can you tell us a little bit about you and PPC Pitbull so people can understand your background and expertise?

Yeah. I'm like you. I focus just in small brands. And I absolutely love it. Because, you know, there's a whole bunch of reasons why I love it,

but one of the big ones is your talking to the decision maker, and they don't have a whole posse of people. They have to get on board with their ideas. So you just talk about something, make a decision, execute on it, and like 30 minutes later you're doing something completely different for the brand.

And I love that speed of execution that you get with small brands.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm not a fan of bureaucracy.

talk to me a little bit about today's ad ecosystem. You know, you know, everybody read the Four Hour workweek. You know, now almost a decade and a half ago, they have all these preconceived notions of how easy it is

to

just build a website, and people are going to flock to it.

Just throw a couple ad dollars down and teaching. You're making money.

Tell us you know how that's true or not true. And where do you see the trends going currently that

e-commerce store owners need to be thinking about how the dynamics are shifting?

So the computers are now smarter than the people.

That makes sense.

And, you know, because we all think we know better, but we just can't think as many variables as the computers can. So it's. And it's it's always funny when I see something like that's never going to work, and it totally does. Like, we think we know things, but we just don't know as much as we think we do sometimes.

You know thats the person who’s gonna be you know most

The highest divinity to your brand

remember

Yeah. That's a good way to illustrate why you should just let the system do what it wants to do.

Now, let's say I'm a small e-commerce brand, and I make a food product, for example.

And I'm not doing advertising. I've just launched. I'm starting to get traction.

How do I know that I should start advertising? Are there like key indicators?

And then what is that high level roadmap look like? What sort of ads should I turn on first? Like I've heard you say, Google and Meta, you didn't mention any other ad platforms, and it's probably we want to stay focused. But I'd like to hear like, here's when you should start advertising, and here's the first couple steps at a high level, like these types of ads.

And this system kind of kind of roadmap.

The.

We heard who. Where the.

yeah. So one of the things you'd mentioned was, you know, making sure that your product market fit is in place.

You know, one of the things I've heard before is that the first 100 sales in your e-commerce store are harder to get than your first thousand, because you got to figure all those things out for the first 100. And then once you do that, the next 900 are easier to do. So I'm just going to throw a stake in the ground like get 100 sales through your store

before you start doing the advertising.

And then, you know, when you start talking about the advertising. I love the distinction between the intent based and interruption based, and you have to think about for your product, which one is that? Are they searching for my product

or do they not know it exists and I need to make them aware of it. Therefore, you're going to determine, you know, there you go.

You know. And when you said the intent based, you mentioned what I consider Google shopping ads, you know, do you start with Google Shopping ads first or PPC or both at the same time? How would you differentiate between those two?

Remember what we were looking for there?

Boom boom boom boom boom. Boom boom.

Yeah. You.

Boom!

Now.

 

Boom!

Other than that, you. Know. Boom.

Or, Will that will be

will. Will be,

And is remarketing included in the performance? Max.

But.

For me. The.

So when I'm setting that up, you know you had mentioned the shopping ads.

Do you do anything beyond the Google and YouTube channel inside of Shopify to send that feed to Google. Or is that good enough.

To.

I find that many store owners are challenged by content or creative. You know what? What is the keyword phrase or, you know, what's the copy they're going to put on the return for the keyword phrase?

What sort of photography, what sort of video? I tell all my stores in 2025,

every e-commerce brand should be doing video, and I think literally only 5% of them are,

what do you think about creative?

You know, how do people create them? What are some best practices?

What are the must haves? You have to just get off of the or get over the hump of making videos. You know what? What do you recommend there?

Yeah. I have one client, and he's, you know, just getting to advertise in the past few months and doing pretty well.

And I saw one of his ads on YouTube, and I said, just give me the raw file. And then we just made six new versions of it, right? We did a men's voice, a woman's voice. We did, you know, small subtitles.

We did bold subtitles, we did sound effects. Right.

same ad, same message. We're just doing six different creatives. I think it might be even eight. I'm like, let's go throw this against the wall and see what sticks kind of thing.

Yeah. I want to keep going on video here because

all my clients that I talk to, you know, I got 1 or 2 that I make videos and. And the rest of them, like, you know, I have to. I have to, like, literally, I scream at them sometimes.

Because they're just so resistant and they're so, you know,

am I doing horizontal?

Am I doing vertical videos? Am I doing selfie videos on the cell phone? Is someone setting up a tripod? What do I need for lighting? You know,

I hear the just get it and do it, which I totally agree with.

let's give them a little more advice so they feel a little more confidence and they're just doing it on, you know.

You know, is it just me talking? Is it you know, me talking to customers? Is it customers talking. Is it me showing the the production floor, all those kind of things?

Yeah. And, you know a couple things there about video, like, the example I always give is Janet Jackson,

if you saw her first video, she was so stiff and so awkward in it. And then ten years later, she just exuded love to the camera in her music videos because she was not a natural in front of the camera.

But she got so good at it, she looked like a natural by the end kind of thing, and everybody can get that level of comfort. It's just one of those just do it, just do it, just do it. Nike's totally got it right there. And the other thing is, you know, with video, it's so much more forgiving than text or photos, right?

In text, if you have a spelling or grammar error, it sticks out like a sore thumb in in photos, if you know there's a finger coming in out of the corner or something that's not supposed to be there, it sticks out like a sore thumb because video has multiple signals of the visual, the moving visual and the audio.

It's completely forgiving of mistakes. Like you can stutter and say, in a video, and it's not a big deal, but saying, in your copy would be horrendous kind of thing. So because of the multimedia, you know, functionality of video, it's way more forgiving of mistakes.

You know.

You know.

So we're encouraging,

our store owners to create some videos,

and it sounds like a lot of it is. What I think it should be is like a spokesperson talking about the product kind of thing is the best way to get started in video.

Let's shift now to photography. And what should their photography look like that they're throwing up for these ads.

You.

Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned the infographics, which I'm a huge fan of. And what really surprises me is I'll have clients and on their Shopify store, or they'll have known for graphics. And then I look at their product on Amazon, and it's full of them, like they pick up the best practice over there on Amazon, but they don't bring it back to their Shopify store.

But those are great assets when you create those for Amazon or your Shopify store to reuse inside of your ads. Also.

So now I want to get into the little bit of the technical hassles that I see with Google. So people understand, like one of the things I find myself explaining to a lot of clients, because they're small teams, they don't get the feedback from other people and their team is, yes, this is actually that hard, right? And what I mean by that.

So I'm going to walk through a couple of things that I think they need to do the steps to get this all working. And you tell me if I'm right or wrong about those so that the audience can go, oh, I do have to do 14 different steps to get all this working kind of stuff just from a connecting the system.

So

you've got your Shopify store, you add your Google and YouTube channel to it,

you create a Google Analytics account, connect that to your Google and YouTube channel,

you create a Google Merchant account, which, by the way is a separate account setup process. Then Google Analytics is nutty as that sounds,

and then you connect that to your Google and YouTube channel.

You create a Google Ads account, which, once again as nutty as it sounds, is different

from your Google Merchant and your Google Analytics account.

And then you connect your Google Merchant to your Google Analytics and to your Google Shop. Is that accurate?

Okay.

Yeah. And that's always fun for me with clients is like when we do all that. The only way I can get that to work for them is we get on one of these calls. You know, you know, sharing a screen

and, like, type this in, do this, you know, give me access to it. But it's such people once you get to set up it's really nice.

So now I want to go run my first performance. Max campaign or set up my first performance max campaign. I go to Google ads to do that. What are the steps that I have to walk through to get that? You know, what are the must haves at the store for you to think about, to make sure they've got their initial thing running properly?

What? Or. The the.

On your,

do

do we know?

Small.

Excellent.

I want to go through that same conversation, which is quite lengthy, but probably a shorter version of it

on the media side of things.

You know how easy is it to get set up for those people who you just remind people? Those are for the, the interruption based ads. If your product isn't something that people are searching for, you have to let them know you exist.

Like you have a brand new like, I have a client, they're named palm. They'll they're going to be launching here in a couple of months.

And they have a cowbell pom pom cheer. Your sports team on product completely new right. So they can't go in and do the, the, keyword one. But they can go to the interruption side of things.

So how does you know a brand that decides they want to start with the interruption side? How do they get started with meta?

Now in meta. Is it sort of like in Google, where you have a performance, Max, and you're not telling it where to put things. And Meta's just being smart about it and is it putting it in Facebook and Instagram and other channels on its own?

But in this world, it's video, video, video.

Building trust in your store is essential, but let's be honest. Most trust badge apps make your store look worse, not better. Their badges clash with your brand and give your store a Frankenstein like feel. That's why we built Godzilla, the Shopify app that delivers trust badges that seamlessly match your brand. Originally crafted for our private clients, but Zilla was so successful we turned it into an app for every Shopify store.

With Badge Zilla, you'll access hundreds of badges, all customizable to your brand guidelines, making them a natural part of your customer experience. Place badges on product pages, collection pages, the home page, and more. Take it a step further with conditional Logic. Show a made in Canada badge only on products made in Canada or tailor badges to highlight your unique selling points.

And the best part? Badge Zilla comes with a robust, always free plan so you can start building trust. Risk free transform trust into conversions with Godzilla.

we talked a lot about, you know, the really small brands getting started. These small brands. I bet I've heard a lot of best practices from the big brands. What are the things they shouldn't be doing that they've heard about that are successful for big brands that they're not big enough for yet, and they don't have to worry about?

know, if I'm getting started running some ads, how should I be measuring the effectiveness of that ad? You know what kind of metrics should I be looking at? And where am I going to find those metrics?

So when you say site wide, does that mean we're looking at Google Analytics

So you're at that site wide level. You're taking all your new customers, the total dollars you've made from them, and dividing it by the total amount of marketing dollars you put towards your campaigns. Regardless of which platform neuron.

Okay.

when I'm doing all of this and I'm, you know, setting up my campaigns, what kind of Roas should I be getting when I start? And I know it's going to differ for everybody? I'm just looking for general guidelines. Like,

you

know, the big one is, are you going to be losing money when you start and setting that expectation for people?

How long you know, are you going to be losing money if that is the case?

And then you know, what sort of improvements are you going to able to to see in the first 3 to 6 months as you get better with this system, put more content to it. The system is smarter in those

kind of things.

Now, when I get started on this, how long does it take for the system to be. Have enough data that it's run through, that it's running at its steady state? Is there like a warmup period?

Move.

Hum.

You

Do the. You.

And what sort of spending strategy should you know? We have. Should we start it? $6 per day. Per month.

And then when do we start ramping it up?

So we've been talking about Google. We've been talking about meta. And let's say that I'm. You know, I'm a real hip, trendy person. And I know it's all about TikTok today. And TikTok's got this beautiful store shop thing going on, and that's where I'm going to start because I'm cutting edge. What do you say to that store owner?

for small brands. When is this a DIY type of effort? And when is this something that you hire an external expert to to manage for you?

Well, over Purdue verbal group through group of maybe the the the the the the the Mobutu

group.

Would be. The move. You.

Yeah. And, you know,

kind of related, but kind of tangential. One of my best practices is never engage someone who reaches out to you for for buying from them. Right? In any way, shape or form. If you're coming to me, I'm not talking to you. Right.

I'm going to go find you. I need you.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah. Their goals are not aligned with yours.

Would. Which is true in many, many situations. Right.

So when, as we say that. Right. How do I go find an agency to help me out? What should I be looking at?

Now, if somebody is listening to you talk right now like. Hey, I want to talk to a little more of this Andy guy. How can they reach out to you?

I love how in the. You know the way the internet works today. You and I do this all the time, right? We give out lots of free information and just everybody sort to benefit from that. It's. It's amazing how much you can learn through these free resources.

That's awesome. I totally agree. It's. It's so much fun talking to all these different people.

we covered a lot, a ton. Thank you for all that. Is there any, like, last piece of advice that you haven't told this audience that they should know?

Thanks for your time today, Andy. This is awesome.

Thank you. Scott, it's been great.