E218: Alexandra Stephens

Richard Hill [00:00:04]:
Hi there. I'm Richard Hill, the host of eCom@One. Welcome to a brand new episode. Today we're diving into the world of performance marketing with Alex Stevens, head of performance at my agency, eComOne. She's been running paid channels and turning content and merchandising know how into scalable ad performance for over eight years. Alex shares with us how to think about budget attribution and measuring real impact, not vanity metrics. We cover creative testing frameworks that actually move the needle, how to judge winners beyond clicks and likes, and Alex's down to earth methodology to ensure we're tracking poas profit and not just selling products without strong profits. So if you want real tactical creative and testing approaches that minimize waste and maximize learning, this episode is absolutely for you.

Richard Hill [00:00:52]:
If you you enjoy this episode, hit the subscribe and follow button so you don't miss the next one. Now over to Alex. Well, here we are. Thanks for joining me on the eCom@One podcast. Welcome. How are you doing?

Alexandra Stephens [00:01:05]:
Thank you. Yeah, I'm good, thank you. How are you?

Richard Hill [00:01:07]:
Very good, very good. Feels a bit weird. Me and Alex pretty much sit opposite each other most days or within a few feet of each other for the last year or so. Right, Alex, before we get into all things ads and what's happening in in the world of ads, I think it'd be great for you to introduce yourself to our listeners and how you got into the world of eCommerce and performance marketing.

Alexandra Stephens [00:01:28]:
Great. Yeah, thank you. So, yeah, I'm Alex, as Richard said, head of performance at eComOne. So I manage the paid advertising side of the business and I actually got into E commerce and so straight out of uni, I got a job at a jewelry company and actually did a fashion degree at Nottingham Trent University. And then I went into, as I said, John Gree jewelry and I would focus more on the content and merchandising side of the jewelry business. And then I went straight into, after a year and a half into another agency for five years. So I've basically had the in house and the agency experience and then after five years got the job at Econ1 and now running the paid advertising side of the business. So yeah, great to have that kind of, yeah, quite a solid sort of agency experience to kind of support our clients and sort of support their growth really.

Richard Hill [00:02:18]:
So seven years pretty much on the, on the coal face as it was doing quite a mix of roles in terms of like content, SEO. But obviously ads is very much the, the area area you've sort of Been attracted to more and more over the years and obviously your previous agency sort of ran the whole to the team there on the marketing side and then joined us. Yeah, very much specifically to run the ads. So obviously seven years, you know what's maybe some of the shifts you've seen in the last seven years across the platforms.

Alexandra Stephens [00:02:49]:
Yeah. So in terms of sort of this change and shift, I think specifically on the Google Ads side sort of the, it was very sort of specific targeting. So really kind of, you know, when we're talking about ad groups and things like that, really specific keyword groups that you're going after and really tight bid strategies, nothing to do with automation. So you kind of had to do loads and loads of manual labor on the accounts. Specifically on the ad side in terms of whether it's meta, whether it's, you know, Google Ads, Microsoft ads, it was so like granular in terms of your targeting. And so that shift into that more kind of AI and automation is definitely something that you know, as everyone knows is something that we're really having to adopt at the moment. And it's, it's everywhere at the moment. So that's sort of that shift between really heavy manual work to sort of AI.

Alexandra Stephens [00:03:36]:
There's always going to be that manual human element but that real shift is probably something I notice more. And then just secondly sort of the kind of the profit side as well. So I think when I first started out in sort of the E commerce space there was kind of loosely talking about profit margins. You always hear about profit margins but actually feeding that into your marketing strategy and what you do on an ad account and things like that is something that's really, I've seen sort of, I guess in the last sort of few years is really something that would we push across the agency.

Richard Hill [00:04:06]:
Yeah, I think, you know, I remember the days of you know, like right, I'm creating 200 skags as it was. Yeah, it seems like a rude word, skags but you know, it's, you know, I used to do it, I used to do it, you know, I used to run the ads and you know, right, we need to create a skag for this and a skag for that and so forth. Single keyword ad group for those that are with us. But obviously now there's different ways to do things utilizing you know, maybe a year or so ago or maybe more actually, you know, scripts and using rule based things. And then in the last year or so, you know, AI and different tools and technologies and stuff that we've developed and we, we use so obviously quite a, quite a different landscape to when you started out completely a lot of manual work and now a lot more smarter work. I think you working smarter with that. I am focused on profitability. I think as you said, you know, it's, you know, sell it.

Richard Hill [00:05:00]:
Working on ROAS gives you, you know, a return on ad spend when you might, you know, I think like, you know, I remember it rings in my ear that, you know, you speak to a client, what return on ad spend do you need? And I want return on what do I need? You know, they're not sure of the terminology, but when you start talking about the reality of making money in a business that's, that's the, usually the language of business is to turn a profit. So if you, you know, if they understand their costs and cost, price and most senior leaders in a, in a organization will know their costs or the, the, the owners obviously will, but the marketing leaders will know their costs and they can understand why. This is our cost and this is our margin, this is our profit. And then having those conversations, you find yourselves having more and more conversations now. Profitability and profits.

Alexandra Stephens [00:05:43]:
Yeah, definitely. I think ROAS has become slightly, obviously you still talk about roas, but it's slightly become a bit more of a vanity metric because you don't actually know the actual details of what actual profit that product is making for the client. So we utilize that, you know, we really get that data from the client. In terms of what's your profit margins for your product. A certain category of products might be as granular as each product. Not typically just because the scale of the SKUs we're kind of working with, you know, we work with clients that are sort of handling half a million SKUs sort of just in one business and more across multiple countries. So to be able to be that granular with the profit margins per product would be impossible. So it's usually handled on a category basis.

Alexandra Stephens [00:06:24]:
So profit margin per category or there might be an average profit margin and then we then can feed that data into the feeds. So utilizing custom labels in the feeds as well as the cost of goods data as well to really hone in on that data so we can pull it into our data and Google does, you know, the more data the better in terms of feeding into Google Ads. And then we can go that next step further and sort of look at giving varying, varying ROAS targets per campaign depending on the profit margins. And so kind of, you know, even segmenting out really low value items as well because they're just not going to make a, you know, they're not going to move the needle in terms of that profit for a client. So we really look at that granular detail as well as really get into grips with that, the way the business works, you know, visiting their warehouse, visiting, you know, their complete business setup to kind of get to grips with how their business works and how that whole profitability piece feeds into the business.

Richard Hill [00:07:17]:
So would you say it's pretty vital then to have a good dialogue with the, the client or the brand? Yeah, from the outset.

Alexandra Stephens [00:07:24]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:07:24]:
I think you, quite a lot of people made the mistake. Right, we've got access to the account. Leave it, leave it with us. Hang on. You need to understand the, the, the business, the profitability.

Alexandra Stephens [00:07:33]:
Yeah, definitely. So I think just being able to, you know, as soon as you can get to that, go to see them, like we've got in a couple of weeks, we're going to someone's warehouse to kind of see how they work in their business. So we can get to grips with all those details and everything. So we really want to understand how they work, how that then feeds into the overall strategy for the business. Because I think sometimes, you know, other agents can maybe miss that kind of part of that. It seems like quite a simple part of the process, but it's definitely really important as part of the overall strategy.

Richard Hill [00:07:59]:
I find it actually quite exciting when we get invited, you know, we've got, I could think of a client like fairly local to us that's got, I'm thinking about 40,000 square feet and it's three. Three, you know, I'm talking about, I think, you know, it's got three floors to it and it's like, wow, it's quite exciting. It becomes real, doesn't it? Like you sort of, you sort of understand the brand a bit more. Yeah, a lot more. If you're going in there, you're getting a tour of the warehouse, you understand, in the way they do things, the way they pack and just you living and breathing it a little bit more. You understand that they might sell this widget over here in this bin, which is a pound. Well, we can't, you know. You know, there's probably only 5p we can spend on that to sell or we've got, I don't know, 200 pound, whatever it may be.

Richard Hill [00:08:38]:
They're not 200 pounds. You know, you obviously, no doubt if you knew the margin and understood, know the commercial side, then you know the. You've got different roas potentially, but you've Got it might be the same Roas, but you're making 20p or you're making 20 pound. Clearly there's a big difference. So Roas isn't the right metric, really. Profit is the right metric because we can sell a lot of these but no matter how many of these we sell, we're still not really making that much money unless we're selling hundreds of thousands of them to cover, you know, the, you know, depending on what profit, profit numbers they're giving us, cost numbers they're giving us, there's obviously the cost of sale, cost of the agency, the market, marketing and so forth. So yeah, it's nice to get in there. In there, yeah, and have a, have a, have a look around.

Richard Hill [00:09:21]:
So let's say for the people that are listening in then, you know, and obviously your background is working in multi channel, obviously more so in performance. But looking in at the SEO side and the email side, but obviously there's all the other channels, you know, how do you see paid advertising working alongside the other channels like SEO, email, social.

Alexandra Stephens [00:09:42]:
So this is something we actually do really well as an agency because we have those dedicated specialists in each area. So we've got an SEO team, we've got my team on the performance side. So the paid advertising side, we've got the email marketing team. You know, we've got all of those joined up departments and that really talk together and work hand in hand. And there's something which we're able to do, particularly when we work on multiple services for a client, we're able to really utilize all of that data and make informed decisions for a client strategy. And so something which we've been doing a lot more of recently is kind of between the SEO and PPC side is for example, looking at where a client might rank on page two for keywords and then utilizing those to bid on those and kind of boost them up and give them more, you know, priority, allow them, you know, get more clicks, get more focus within Google search results. And it's quite, you know, it's really valuable to kind of do that until we reach a point where we've got those SEO keywords performing better on page one. And with PPC obviously you get, you know, slightly more instant results, whereas obviously SEO is that more long term gain and we're able to really tap into that easily.

Alexandra Stephens [00:10:52]:
I think some scenarios we've been in is where we're not handling, you know, the SEO and we get to a PPC account, a Google Ads account and you know, they're putting Loads of budget into brand and they're just, you know, having that vanity roas because they're putting loads of money into brand where they don't need to because obviously, you know, or SEO, the organic side really does bolster that and get, you know, the sales should come through to that. Obviously we're all about brand protection so we do appreciate there is some element of obviously protecting that brand name where you do have to bid on brand, for example if competitors bidding on your brand name etc, so there is a place for that. But being able to handle both the SEO and PPC side as an agency for a client really helps us to, you know, solve those kind of areas and not just, you know, have that oversight of not being able to see how much has been, you know, put into brand. If we're not handling that, you know, both of those channels for the client. We also utilize things for email marketing, for example, looking at, you know, SEO, ppc, what's performing well there that we can push for focuses in email marketing campaigns. And we often do as an agency have, you know, combine strategy sessions internally so we can talk about these things and really line up the strategy and something we really, you know, it's great to see how the data is performing but tapping into, you know, getting, asking the client how is performance doing? Because I think sometimes it can be different the back end of the data they can see compared to, you know, what we can see in the interfaces and the platforms in our analytics tools and being able to really join that up. And it kind of goes back to our first point in the podcast around like getting to, you know, really hone in on what the client does and what they do and looking at their warehousing system, really joining up their whole campaign and really getting to grips with everything they do. Because we do, you know, see ourselves as that kind of extension of a client's team rather than, you know, you know, we're the experts in terms of that, that area.

Richard Hill [00:12:50]:
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Richard Hill [00:13:34]:
You know, a little bit less you can do there on the creative side. But on social ads, obviously a whole different world. So how and what would you do to advise sort of our listeners, brands that are looking to resource that creative page? Because it can be quite a timely resource, intense activity.

Alexandra Stephens [00:13:52]:
So social ads and paid search are quite different in terms of that kind of creative element to it. So search is very sort of intent driven, whereas social is very sort of discovery driven. So the audiences are at different stages. So we kind of focus on that in our strategy in terms of that messaging. So with our campaigns for social we make sure, you know, we're refreshing and utilizing content regularly. And then with sort of your PMAX campaigns you can sort of, you don't need to refresh that creative as much. It is good to do it. But I think with meta ads for example, and social ads, you're kind of injecting creative quite regularly because it's, you know, you've got to capture that user's audience.

Alexandra Stephens [00:14:35]:
And with search ads, you know, they've got a real high intent to find what they're looking for. So you know, your messaging and your creative copy in your search ads, for example, need to be very driven to what a user is looking for and strong call to action, etc, so you still need that, there's still a place for that on the meta platform, on the social ads platform. But you're really trying to capture people that are discovery phase. So you need to capture their, capture their eye when they're sort of scrolling through their feed on the meta, you know, on matter and things like that. So there is that kind of split between the two in terms of what phase, different phases the audiences are at. So it's really important that you create assets that are able to be adapted to different formats. You're still being efficient, but you're delivering the right message and the right creative to the right audience. It's really important that you come back to that and kind of think is this the right message for the right audience? And kind of utilize that.

Alexandra Stephens [00:15:27]:
So kind of just going back to the previous question, you know, working in synergy with your social ads team, your PPC team, you know, we've got in house here at the agency, we've got those, that creative team working, we've got, you know, the Google Ads team, the social ads team and you know, we all literally sit opposite each other in the office so it really adds to that synergy of being able to create those joined up campaigns that are kind of talking to each other and working, working cohesively.

Richard Hill [00:15:52]:
So right at the beginning we talked about skags back in the day and the manual sort of pain. But obviously now and over this last quite a few years, you've got pmax, you've got Advantage plus, you know, from your real world experience, where does automation genuinely sort of help and do we still need manual intervention?

Alexandra Stephens [00:16:10]:
So from my experience, automation is really great for scaling and being more efficient. It's really great when you've got a large SKU count, a large catalog you're dealing with and being able to utilize the automation in terms of your automated bidding strategies, et cetera. Obviously that's something there's no shying away from. That is, that is part of, you know, Google Ads these days. Something else that it's really great for automation is, is for, you know, complex bidding decisions. So, you know, allowing Google to optimize and work out what's performing well. And it can obviously do all that learning a lot quicker than, you know, any human could. So that's why we utilize it in that sense, you know, with all those different data points, lots of data flowing through, that's when it really shines and kind of the performance really drives through.

Alexandra Stephens [00:16:53]:
You still need that human element of the creative strategy and you know, tapping into business nuances. What's, you know, really understanding that client and obviously it kind of touches back on the point where we were discussing at the start, understanding the client, understanding that profit margin data, being able to optimize that data and those feeds and then obviously inputting those into the campaigns. So it's something that we, you know, use as part of our strategy.

Richard Hill [00:17:17]:
It's January 21st, it's literally, we've, I've literally just eaten my last mince pie last week and we're going to sit here and we're going to talk about Black Friday. I think, you know, enormous pressure for econ brands and stores and merchants and so forth to perform. So how does your approach to Google, Microsoft or social change during these sort of fairly high stake periods?

Alexandra Stephens [00:17:39]:
Christmas and Black Friday is something we really like to capitalize on. Obviously those peak periods for E commerce businesses, even if it's like Valentine's Day, you know, Easter, etc. Obviously Black Friday and Christmas being those peak periods, something we do quite well across the SEO and PBC teams and work quite cohesively is creating dedicated landing pages that you can utilize across your Paid ads and meta ads, you can obviously rank in search results when people are searching. Something which we recommend our clients doing is keeping those pages active and to catch that demand early when Black Friday comes back around again. And so, you know, completing keyword research, we obviously optimize the landing pages. They can be used across, you know, ads and you know, really going after those keywords that people are looking for, whether they're looking for sort of, you know, searching for Black Friday promotions in a specific niche type of product, et cetera. You know, we, we recommend keeping those pages active and re optimizing them early when that time comes around. So you're capturing the demand early and really tapping into that.

Alexandra Stephens [00:18:41]:
And something specifically on the PPC side, on the Google as Microsoft ad side is if you've got like a group of products that you know, you know, you know, quite early on from the client are going to be in the Black Friday promotion like a month ahead of time, getting them segmented into a standalone campaign, you're capturing that demand early, allowing the algorithm to learn, ready for when they're to be pushed for the Black Friday promotion during that period. So there's nothing worse than just rushing a day before Black Friday and setting up a standalone campaign. If that's part of the strategy, we recommend doing that, you know, a month in advance. So that learning period has happened and the Google's algorithm knows, you know, where to push those products. Who's, you know, tapping into the audiences that are going to be purchasing at that time.

Richard Hill [00:19:27]:
So looking ahead over the next sort of 12, 24 months, what trends are you seeing and what do you think is going to be happening? And brands need to prepare for, you know, where should they be investing time and resource now.

Alexandra Stephens [00:19:39]:
So something that's really key for E commerce brands, which we've been utilizing as an agency, is running incrementality tests. And so, you know, on the face it might look like your campaigns are performing really well and you know, there's nothing to worry about there. But there might be some, you know, testing that needs to be done in terms of holdout tests. So, you know, not showing ads to a certain location to kind of see how they, you know, is it necessary to push that location because it's, it's just not performing and just seeing how you can be more efficient with your spend. So it's really easy to kind of assume that campaigns are working, but without running these tests, you're never going to know. So we do recommend running these tests and it's something that we're we're doing a lot with our clients at the moment. It really tells you where to spend smarter as well. You could run these incrementality tests on Google Ads, for example, and find that you don't need to spend, you know, as much as you are spending on that platform and that that money could be spent actually, you know, for agency fees for managing TikTok for that advertising spend so you can actually scale your business faster.

Alexandra Stephens [00:20:39]:
And so I think it's really important to do that and it's something we're having conversations with, with our clients to kind of utilize and push because I think it's, it's just something that's necessary in 2026.

Richard Hill [00:20:51]:
So we've covered a lot and I feel like we're nearly there. But we can't really do an episode about ads and obviously Google etc without touching on sort of the ads that are coming. You know, I think the LLMs, you know, chat GPT announced literally like three, what, a week ago for ads are coming when they are almost probably there now by the time people are listening to this ads on lms, ads on GPT, no doubt Claude Gemini, you know, massive opportunity. Do you think, you know, how do you think merchants should prepare for that and what should they be aware of and see?

Alexandra Stephens [00:21:28]:
I'm really excited about ads, you know, coming to Chat cbt, as Richard mentioned, in a few weeks it'll be rolled out to the US and then I imagine not too long before it rolls out to the UK with the ChatGPT side of it. It's really, you know, it's really important to be part of that natural conversation with the ChatGPT search. Compared to Google, it's a bit more conversational. So it's thinking about how you can naturally appear in those results with your content, with your ads, et cetera. I think there's still in terms of that intent with buying. I think I saw something on LinkedIn the other day which was kind of saying about that split between, you know, purchase intent on Google Ads and purchase intent on, on Chat tbt. You know, there is that there is still that higher dominance with Google Google Ads being higher search intent, higher buying demand etc compared to Chat cbt. So I think that's still, still going to be prominent.

Alexandra Stephens [00:22:19]:
But as, you know, as ads develop in ChatGPT, as you know, the platform develops, there's definitely going to be a place for it.

Richard Hill [00:22:25]:
It's been great having you on the show and I think it's very, very timely with what's happening in the industry. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I like to end every episode with a book recommendation. You have a book to recommend to our listeners.

Alexandra Stephens [00:22:37]:
So it's not on AI, it's to do with mindset. So it's called Good Vibes, Good Life by Vex King. And it's not about generating revenue. It's not directly related to, you know, really directly to business. But you can apply a lot of the principles to business and work in agency and sort of business. People in general really would find it quite insightful. So, yeah, brilliant.

Richard Hill [00:22:58]:
We'll hook that up in the show notes. Thank you very much. For those that want to find out more about what you do and the agency and what we do in the performance side, what's the best way to reach out to you?

Alexandra Stephens [00:23:08]:
Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn and I'm posting quite regularly at the moment. So, yeah, find me on LinkedIn. Message me if you've got any questions you want to start a conversation. Yeah, that's the best place to get me.

Richard Hill [00:23:17]:
Brilliant. Well, thanks, Alex. Thanks for coming on the show. If you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe or Follow button. Wherever you are listening to this podcast, you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day and I'm and I'll see you on the next one.