Mastering digital etiquette across generations and Performance Max: Marketer's dream or data dilemma?

Salutations, fellow marketers! We’ve got a cracking episode today that asks two important questions: are Gen Z lazy, and is Performance Max actually rubbish? Haydn is handing over the reins in a trial run for his pending paternity leave, so these questions are moderated by Fraya Willcocks and Nasya Nasseira – both first-time hosts!

We start with a discussion around a recent report released by The Adaptavist Group titled ‘Digital Etiquette: Mind the generational gap’.

The report surveyed 4000 knowledge workers across the UK, US, Canada, Australia and Germany to understand the pain points and potential of the inter-generational workplaces. It highlighted some of the stereotypes made of each generation, and raised the (slightly terrifying and definitely ageing) point that we will soon have five generations in the workforce!

The second half of the show sees Nasya moderating a debate between “the Batman and Robin of our digital team”, Ross and Michele, over whether Performance Max really takes performance… to the max. Do you want to entirely hand control of your campaign to Google, or is oversight better? Michele's data-driven defence goes head-to-head with Ross's scepticism about its opaque reporting and the risk of ad waste—yet neither shies away from revealing how CRM integration may be the key to unlocking P-Max's full potential.

Timecodes

0:00 Introduction

1:27 Digital Etiquette in Multi-Generational Workplaces

13:41 Performance Max

30:57 Outro

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Auto-generated transcript

Michele Raffaelli 

The recommendation that at this moment, up to the day, google is doing on automated headlines. They are very dangerous Still. Well, not very dangerous. They're actually stupid.

Haydn Woods-Williams 

Welcome to the latest episode of Marketers of the Universe. We have a really exciting lineup of topics. Today, we're starting by exploring a recent report released by the Adaptivist group called Digital Etiquette Mind the Generational Gap. We are going to look at how we think that can affect those in the marketing space and beyond. That conversation is going to be led by our digital marketing coordinator, freya Wilcox. After that, we are jumping into Performance Max with the Brew Digital Paid Media Managers. Nassya  Naseira will be leading a conversation around whether Performance Max is actually any good. It is nearing the end of May already, and for me that means that I will soon be going on paternity leave, so you can expect from our episodes in June and July that you'll have a new host. Hopefully they won't outshine me and I'll be back in August, but we'll have to wait and see. For now, though, let's get on with the podcast.

Freya Willcocks 

Hi everyone. You may have heard me in some early podcast episodes. My name is Freya and I was previously the digital marketing intern. I'm now back, better than ever, as a digital marketing coordinator and I'm here today as the sort of token Gen Z representative to speak about the new digital marketing etiquette report. So recently, the Adaptivist group have published their digital etiquette report, in which they surveyed 4,000 knowledge workers across the UK, us, canada, australia and Germany to better understand the pain points and untapped potential in intergenerational enterprises in an attempt to learn how to cater to the modern workplace challenges. Here discussing this report with me today is the lovely Mark Bundle, our senior email manager and, potentially more importantly, my manager and our wonderful account manager, kieran O'Neill. I think people of all generations might have something to say about this report. It's open to the public, so if you're interested, go have a look. We can link it below. Personally, I think it has some really great points and some less sound points, but I'm interested in both your overall thoughts and opinions. So let's start with Kieran.

Ross Stratton 

Misinterpreting tone and context. Yeah, I, I can understand it from both ends of the generations, even from gen z to to boomer. I mean, misinterpretation is, in life in general, is rife, isn't it? We experience it pretty much every day. I would say it's worth encouraging your employees, employers and so on to expect misinterpretation problems in the office. So you just go yeah, this is going to be misinterpretation and and in context and tone of voice and stuff, you then establish respect because you understand that that's going to happen. You build a code around that. You've got to be flexible, avoid stereotyping to the person or about the person as well. Understand that you want to learn from each other. In some cases, you can tailor your communication style as well. All of those things will help you stop misinterpreting tone and context pretty early on in the report.

Freya Willcocks 

It states that 43 percent of people say that misinterpreting tone or context is one of the biggest issues they face when it comes to working with different generations. I would have to agree, for me personally, that misinterpreting tone and context is definitely something that I deal with. I can't lie. This often leads to me sending large amounts of smiley faces to people so they understand. I'm not angry or upset, especially if I'm correcting people. So if you've ever had an email review from me, you'll see what I mean. But I'm interested to see your opinion here mark as well, on tackling tone and context, especially when it comes to remote work yeah, I think what kieran said about tailoring is probably the key.

Mark Bundle 

For me, emojis are definitely king amongst younger kind of generations, I think.

Mark Bundle

Um, I kind of stand at this as an older millennial veering towards gen x not quite there, thankfully, even though they had the really cool pepsi max ad, which I'm very jealous of back in the day.

Mark Bundle 

But yes, if I'm communicating with people my age and under, I will generally try and cut across the tone or mark the tone with an emoji. So if I'm putting a joy laughing, I'm putting a smile, I'm putting a little purple devil, to say kind of a bit cheesy and a bit naughty, whereas if I'm talking to people that are probably more senior to me, chances are I might not even be doing it by a like a slack or a text or something. I might pick up the phone, I might do a face-to-face zoom call because it's much more appropriate. They're going to be. They're not going to have the same issues with taking time and context from a text that they will do from a face-to-face conversation. So I think tailoring who you're talking to, or telling you how you're talking to who you're talking to, is quite important. It's going to recognize how you're talking to people how they need to be spoken to no, definitely.

Freya Willcocks 

I think choosing your platform, depending on who you're speaking to, is also really important. You'll be happy to know, as sort of the head of email, that in the report, email is described as unparalleled, enabling us to communicate with anyone anywhere and hosting our own servers. Even all of that wrapped up in functionality. Email and choosing your platform is definitely a very good idea, depending on who you're speaking to. This report also looks into how remote work and hybrid work slash flexible scheduling opportunities affect each generation. Considering different preferences and obligations amongst each age group, do you think there's a way that businesses can support their employees more, especially the ones who may struggle to work from home, for instance, or adapt to hybrid work using software such as slack, etc.

Ross Stratton 

Let's start with kieran I mean it's interesting, isn't it? There's been a lot around this since, uh, especially since covid happened and remote working, flexible, became the door every, every generation has, you know, different priorities. Now, gen z have less dependence than millennials and gen x, which changes, uh, potentially how they they look at work-life balance and how they look at remote working and so on. But there isn't really a massive difference between each generation because there's benefits for everyone there. To just understand what those benefits mean to each individual generation, to ensure that they're comfortable in the office and at home and just in the workforce in general, they're being catered to.

Freya Willcocks

No, completely.

Ross Stratton 

What I've seen and what I've read with, nearly all generations are enjoying hybrid working because it allows them to get things done around the house while still working effectively. They can tend to the kids, for instance, and for many of the generations, they enjoy the fact that they're not having to rat race it across the city, which saves them time. It saves them money, keeps everyone's blood pressure a bit lower.

Freya Willcocks

Very true, that's a very good point, mark. Have you got any thoughts?

Mark Bundle

bit lower. Very true, that's a very good point mark. Have you got any thoughts? Yeah, don't miss commuting at all an extra hour in the morning, in the evening, just to scream at traffic. I'm going to call out a company called the inclusive I think they're called the inclusive workplace company. Now they work flex point, which is run by a former colleague, and they work on the basis of the hybrid or hybrid working.

Mark Bundle

Remote working isn't kind of the only thing that you need to take into account for stuff like this. So to make sure you're a properly inclusive workplace, that is, across generations, across genders, etc. There's other things to consider as well. So it might be that for Gen Z, for example, that working hours are more important. I've been reflecting on that, because you want to knock out a game routine and then first thing in the morning, and so you want to start at 10, um, whereas remote working for parents might be brilliant for the millennials and, uh, the exes, so that they can stay home and they can kind of have someone in the house loosely supervising children while they work.

Mark Bundle

So, yeah, there's there's different escorts of different benefits for different generations, I think, and it's just being able to support everyone how they're doing their thing, being able to come on things like Slack and being able to have Zoom calls brilliant. It creates some communication. But I think actually having physical offices as well is still really important. Or if you're a smaller company, having a shared workspace that you use that you can go into. So if people do want to meet up, they do want to kind of have those walk, all the moments, as they're called. That's really beneficial as well, because some people still want and still need that and, looking back to our last podcast where we talked about mental health, for me it's yeah, I think you really benefit as well. If you have to, if you need those social moments, you need that connection to still be able to have it no 100, I agree.

Freya Willcocks

I actually personally have only ever apart from retail roles, have only ever worked remote or hybrid. So it's really interesting to get your perspective of someone who has worked in the office nine to five, five days a week and someone who now works fully remote. And I can definitely see the value of having an office or a location that you can go to and meet in person, because zoom and slack is great, but in person is just another level of depth and, leading on from your point on mental health, some of the stereotypes that are flagged in this report can potentially be quite harmful. These stereotypes of things such as Gen Z being depicted as lazy as well as being easily distracted Easily distracted also. This stereotype also stretches to millennials. Do you think this is for any specific reason and is there a way that millennials Gen Z can help fight this and break the stereotype a little bit?

Mark Bundle

This is one of those cases where the people doing the research are the important thing, and their generation and their biases, because, yes, millennials, gen Z, are less work-focused. I think that's fair to say. There are other priorities. We've got lives, we have mental health, we want balance. We don't expect to commit to one company for 20 years and crack on with this career growth and progression and jumping around. But if you are, as an older person, taking on this research and doing this research, you're seeing these people spending more time on the screen, more time away from their desk doing other things and going. Well, that's lazy, it's not, it's just different. I think it's making sure that we try and take those research biases out, which is obviously an incredibly difficult thing to do. But yeah, the stereotypes are stereotypes and yeah, okay, there's probably a grounding for some of it, but a lot of it just depends on what lens you look at it through have you got any thoughts, kieran?

Ross Stratton 

Yeah, I absolutely agree with what Mark was saying. Unfortunately, we do live in a divided world which likes to dehumanize each and every one of us. Obviously, with social media as well, being what we look at and read almost every day, those lazy stereotypes used to punch down on all of us are very prominent Gen Z are lazy, millennials are disorganized, gen x are bossy and boomers are tech illiterate. It's nonsense, I think. One suggestion I have for gen z to help fight the stereotype which, by the way, millennials we had it, uh, when we entered the office as well. It's just silly, but open a line of communication with your older workers and also communicate with your line manager about it.

Ross Stratton 

I hear this quite a bit, that Gen Z have been set up to fail. So if you feel unsupported, let people know. Make sure your employer is aware you want a roadmap to promotion. Let them know you're afraid of failure or you're unsure of soft skills that you see other people having, like phone etiquette and things like that, because you may have not been taught it, because, as you say, you have only ever worked remotely. It's been a wild experience being millennial, where you get brought into something which does feel very traditional, then kind of having a bit of ownership over it and then all of a sudden you're just working remotely. But I'm really enjoying this kind of hybrid thing right now. That we're that we're doing. I just hope that it does work for everyone, especially gen z you both have some very, very good points.

Freya Willcocks 

I think the reason some of the stereotypes have come about is that people are forgetting that gen z, some of their most formative years, were COVID. For me personally, I was 19 through to 21,. 18 through to 21 in lockdown, and that is when you're supposed to be doing the majority of your socialising. That is your first two years of uni. I spent in my uni room locked down during COVID, so people need to go easy on Gen Z for a little bit. Anyway, anyway, my final question, and a bit of a fun one, a bizarre fact that has come out of this report is that 50% of workers feel annoyed when their younger colleagues don't have a pen. I know it doesn't really apply to us because we work from home the majority of the time, but quick fire, yes, or in an office situation with someone not having a pen, annoy you, mark.

Mark Bundle 

Yes, and that's why I bring spares.

Freya Willcocks

Okay, Kieran.

Ross Stratton 

No, I can type on my phone, on my Mac, far quicker than I can write, so I don't care.

Freya Willcocks 

And that's why Mark's bringing your pen hello everyone.

Nassya Nasseira 

I'm your host, Nassya , now. Typically you'll find me on the other side answering questions and diving into topics, but today we're switching things up a little bit because I'm in the hot seat as your host and I couldn't be more excited. So today we're delving into a topic that's been making waves since Google rolled out this feature back in 2021, and it continues to dominate discussions even now, in 2024. If you guessed performance max, you're absolutely right, and if you're not familiar, you're in for a definite treat. Joining me are two brilliant, talented colleagues of mine, michele and Ross, who are the paid media managers here in Brew Digital.

Nassya Nasseira 

Now, for our dear listeners who don't know, picture them as the Batman and Robin of our digital teen. Who is Batman, who is Robin? That's up for a debate in another episode. These two are like fire and ice when it comes to their opinions. Michele brings the heat while Ross keeps his cool, and it's always a fun time hearing the banter. That being said, personally, I'm very excited to hear what they have to say about Performance Max said. Personally, I'm very excited to hear what they have to say about Performance Max. To kick things off, I'm sure for those out there who haven't tried experimenting yet with Performance Max or P-Max. They would want to know does it actually take performance to the max? Ross over to you for the first question.

Ross Stratton

Thank you, nasir, for that colourful introduction. I'm hoping we can insert some boxing ring bell noises into the podcast. That'd be great For me. I'd say my experience with Max has been a bit of a mixed bag In terms of whether we love it or hate it. I'd say we're pretty agnostic.

Ross Stratton 

I can understand why people are pretty apprehensive about using PMAX. It essentially means you're handing over the keys to your entire operation to Google and letting it run wild, and anyone that's got a run automation on Google could know it likes to take the Michael sometimes, so it needs to be monitored. It can lead to a huge amount of wastage for advertisers and a lot of people are blissfully unaware because the lack of reporting capabilities. So there are ways around these, these, these lack of capabilities with with scripts, but your average joe running a pmax campaign isn't going to have this visibility. For me personally, 95 of my experience with pmax has come with large ecomcom clients. Well, we've got kind of mountains of data and search volumes to feed the algorithms and we have seen some pretty good results. But on the other side of that coin we've got your small service companies with relatively low budgets where I've definitely seen a struggle to kind of drive, the same level of performance.

Nassya Nasseira 

Thank you, Ross, for your answer. That was very insightful, and to hear your personal opinion about PMax Michele. Same question Does it take performance to the max? Do you love it? Do you hate it?

Michele Raffaelli 

Thank you for the intro, Nassya. That was beautiful. As a fully data-driven person, I can't love or hate anything. The only thing I can look is data, so no space for emotions or feelings. The real question is does it work or does it not work? Now, the way I try to explain clients how PMAX works is like a sports car one of the fastest that you can imagine. If you put them on a circuit, it will reach the highest performances. Put the same car on a country road you won't go anywhere. So performance max is the same. If you pave the way and prepare everything around it, it will always perform well. If you want to use it and you don't give it all the necessities that it requires, it won't take it to the max, it will just waste your money.

Nassya Nasseira

That was brilliant, kelly. I love the sports car analogy. Okay, so moving on to the next question. This is a sentiment that's been buzzing around everywhere, from LinkedIn discussions to various forums and even other podcasts, while I was researching more about PMX. So the general sentiment that I see going on, and here's the statement don't use PMX for lead gen or non-e-commerce campaigns. Naomi Kelly, I'm curious to hear your take on this. Do you agree and, most importantly, why?

Michele Raffaelli 

I disagree. I discovered recently that actually performance marks work better for lead gen than e-commerce, mainly because you want leads and you don't care as much how you get them. From what I've experienced so far On an e-commerce-based background, performance Max will limit, in a way, all your learnings. I'm not saying not use it. You can, if you have to choose, prioritize it for lead gen, just because the journey to a conversion is somehow different, where, if a standard e-commerce purchase just follow a straight necessity, a lead gen may require a longer journey. The algorithm of performance marks will understand better the journey, in my opinion.

Nassya Nasseira 

Interesting perspective, michele. Better the journey, in my opinion. Interesting perspective, michelle. It's clear we see the versatility in performance max. There are pros and cons there. I guess we just have to know how to apply it.

Ross Stratton 

So, ross, I'm I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this yeah, I think it's important to add a bit of context here and that for e-commerce, pmax campaigns, we know the value of each conversion, which is the revenue from the sale that's attributed, whether that be a hat or a bath or whatever you're selling. But when we talk about lead generation, the main problem we have is kind of lead quality, and this can be so drastically different from one lead to the next, and google can't necessarily distinguish between high quality and poor quality leads, which again presents a problem from an optimization standpoint. How can you ensure that your lead quality is there, moving forwards if you don't have that visibility? One optimization we can do is to integrate customer relationship management tools CRM, so we can import offline conversion data, whether it's Salesforce, pipedrive or, in this case, hubspot, successfully linking this to Google Ads, which means we can enrich the campaigns with data and help Google understand lead conversion quality. So, yeah, it's all about kind of making sure your audience signals are on point, so to speak.

Nassya Nasseira 

Interesting take. Thank you so much. You so much, both. All right, the next statement. It's rather a controversial quote from a well-known marketer that's just begging for some discussion. I would not name the marketer, if you know. We know so. When google first unveiled Performance Max, the idea was to cater to those businesses or individuals who didn't have the necessary skills or expertise to navigate the platform fully. Well, this marketer has stirred up the pot with the statement Performance Max is perfect for people who don't have the time or knowledge to optimize their campaigns.

Ross Stratton 

Now, that's quite a bold claim and I'm very eager to hear what our experts think about it yes, I think the main thing for performance max that's what's going for it is that it's accessible, so they're very easy to set up. That's the. It's the equivalent of a plug and play campaign. I think the main idea that people have is that you don't need an agency to run PMAX, but, that being said, it's definitely not a set and forget campaign, which I think is the mistake that a lot of people make. You still have to optimize PMAX campaigns, as Michele mentioned in the last segment, to eke the best performance, and I would argue that PMAX has made things even harder to optimize with the lack of variables. Google actually lists.

Ross Stratton 

One of the benefits of PMAX is transparent insights, but with almost any other campaign format, you can quickly identify areas that can be optimized Keyword scheduling, audiences whereas PMAX just doesn't give you this freedom. When PMAX first launched I just wanted to mention as well you can even add negatives. I remember flagging this to support and they just said yeah, yeah, there's nothing we can do, sorry. So that used to be the general sentiment, so I would adjust Mr Patel's statement to PMAX is perfect for people whose mantra is ignorance is bliss, where they're not concerned with their campaign performance. I thought we said not to names.

Nassya Nasseira

I heard them. I heard them the name drop. What are your thoughts on Mr Patel's statement?

Michele Raffaelli 

What I can tell about my personal experience is that I had the chance to work for a very big company in UK and we were Google tester, so we had the chance to use Performance Max six months before it was released to the public. Now, what probably Mr Patel didn't consider is the fact that Google has products to sell. If these products don't work, they will get changed. I'm talking about a bit old marketers now, if you remember smart shopping campaigns. So they came as the evolution and the solution of bringing shopping campaign to a next level. We tried it for a couple of years. They didn't work. So that's when Google decided to evolve them into performance max and mix them with display discovery video and just put all together.

Michele Raffaelli

Now, if this campaign type wasn't really working, after three years, google would already have released a different campaign type working. After three years, google would already have released a different campaign type. So if they are not working, it's probably because we don't fully prepare the way they are easier to use. No, I think to set up performance match campaign is one of the most difficult things to do because of all the requirements. Ross mentioned some of them. There's plenty of elements that you need to have ready, whether it's lead generation only or e-commerce, where you need to link all your data feed for shopping products, etc. So I would not say that Performance Max is a passpartout that you can use when you don't know what to do.

Nassya Nasseira 

Thank you both for your insightful take on this. It's clear that, while Performance Max may offer some form of convenience, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution and I would say understanding the platform remains important for maximizing its effectiveness. In any sort of platform, you must know how to use it properly. Okay, so, now that we've unpacked PMX a bit, thank you both for sharing your insights. So let's dive a little deeper. This question is especially helpful for our dear listeners who are interested in launching their first PMAX campaign. When is the best case to use Performance Max and when to avoid it?

Michele Raffaelli

Things to do when you want to launch a Performance Max campaign. There's different steps. The basic one is to set up everything as Google tells you to do. Just follow the instructions. You can't go wrong there.

Michele Raffaelli 

Once you're finished, you need to improve those. You need to have, since the beginning, clear objectives. You need to understand the budget for your campaign. You need to decide before going live if you want to optimize per conversion value or conversion volume. This makes a massive difference in the algorithm. You need to know at the beginning what you're selling. Am I selling products or I want to convert leads? Those are fundamental questions that you know you have to answer before starting.

Michele Raffaelli 

If we want to go in a bit more specialized way, the concept modes that Ross mentioned before especially if you are targeting in Europe and UK, make sure all your conversion tracking are properly set up and you need to understand the difference in your marketing objective. The conversion goal and conversion action are two different moments in the journey of your client or potential lead, so you need to understand how those affect your final campaign. This one, I'll keep it for last, but it's really the most important one. Give it time. Even if it's AI driven, it needs time to learn. Don't put it live and post it after two days. If you don't see results. It may need even two or three weeks. Be upfront immediately if you're setting up for a client and then audiences. We still see clients with accounts where the audiences are not fully set up. So you can't pretend a campaign like this works well if you just target 7,000 million of people with different interests Over to you. Ross.

Ross Stratton 

I think maybe it's better if I talk about areas to avoid, because Michele just expertly explained the best scenario for setting it up. One common mistake that you see people making is that people think you don't need to run PMAX alongside other activities. They'll be pausing their search or discovery campaigns. This is not necessarily the best practice and I think if you pause search campaigns, for instance, you can end up jeopardizing campaign reach and performance, because PMAX does not use keywords the same way that search does or any format in that scene. So it's important to recognize the distinction between pmax and other campaigns. It's not all things to all men can pay. We've touched on it previously. But obviously one common mistake is the kind of set forget attitude. Um, you do have to make adjustments. What little freedom you do get?

Nassya Nasseira 

you're gonna have to make optimizations to the best performance out of it give it time to home, cause your campaigns immediately and fully set up your audience right. Thank you so much, bill. To wrap up our discussion and I believe this question will benefit both newcomers and seasoned marketers alike hear your best quick tips on how to structure performance max campaigns, whether it's about creative approach, bidding strategies, budget optimization, frequency. Maybe your top four three to four best quick tips first tip categorize.

Michele Raffaelli 

Don't include different categories in the same campaign. I know it could be easy, but try to separate type of product in categories. The more granular you can go, the more your algorithm will be able to serve the ads to the right person. Try to start from macro category and then split the lower you go. Assets refresh. It takes time to write 15 headlines and four descriptions, as Google requires, but you will have results on those and after two or three weeks you should consider to refresh all those elements. So don't launch the campaign and then, when Black Friday approach, reminds oh yeah, maybe I should change something. Don't tell Google. I told you, but try to avoid to use their suggestions, the recommendation that at this moment, up to the day, google is doing on automated headlines. They are very dangerous. Still, well, not very dangerous. They're actually stupid. They are not able to understand really what you need. So keep your human people writing your ads. Don't trust the ai. Anything else.

Ross Stratton 

I'm missing ross one thing maybe to keep in mind is when you're kind of setting your, your bidding goals. Set a realistic goal, um, hopefully based off previous results. I think a lot of people's instinct tends to be they'll reach for the stars and they'll. They'll set a goal, say, to achieve an 800% ROAS, when they've never achieved anything like this in the past. And what this means. If you're kind of setting a target ROAS too high or a CPA target too low, all you're doing is limiting the discovery section of the campaign. It just means you'll be no longer discovering new audiences because Google's just desperately trying to achieve this unrealistic target.

Ross Stratton

One thing to keep in mind is to stop optimizing every week. I think McKinley mentioned it in the last segment. Google's cadence for learning phase is supposedly six weeks at least that's what they said in the latest update and every time you make a major change to a campaign, this resets, so you're just kind of pushing it back into learning phase every time. You do have to give it time to get the best results that is all we have time for today.

Haydn Woods-Williams 

Thank you everyone for listening. We hope you found some useful snippets in this session that you can go and put into your own marketing strategy. We love making this content and we love sharing with you. So if you could recommend the show to one friend or colleague, please do feel free to follow us as well on whatever platform you listen to your podcast on. And finally, thank you to the Brew Digital team for their research and input into today's session. I've been Hayden. These are the markets of the universe. Bye.