The ultimate guide to paid growth | Timothy Davis (Shopify)

Timothy Davis has led performance marketing for all of Shopify for the past 2.5 years, and as a consultant has helped companies like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Redfin, and Eventbrite kickstart and scale their performance marketing teams. In every one of those cases, he got them so performant at paid growth that they significantly scale spend and investment in these channels. In our conversation, we cover:
• When and how to start investing in performance marketing
• Common mistakes companies make with paid ads
• How to build and structure a performance marketing team
• How to get your creatives performing better
• Strategies for optimizing workflows and team efficiency
• How AI will change performance marketing
• Much more

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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Timothy’s background 
(02:31) Understanding performance marketing 
(06:31) The importance of paid search 
(08:39) Identifying growth potential 
(09:54) Case studies: Hairstory and Ipsy 
(12:22) Experimenting with new platforms 
(18:57) Choosing the right platforms 
(20:23) LinkedIn for B2B marketing 
(27:56) When to start investing in paid growth 
(33:33) Common mistakes in performance marketing 
(37:41) Working with agencies and consultants 
(40:36) Hiring for performance marketing 
(47:33) Metrics that matter 
(54:43) Competitor analysis and CPC insights 
(56:15) Custom reports and data visualization
(56:38) Understanding impression and click share 
(59:10) True competition metrics 
(01:02:14) Attribution and incrementality 
(01:08:52) Building a performance marketing team 
(01:10:53) Creative and ad copy collaboration 
(01:15:48) Managing workload and hiring strategy 
(01:20:52) Training and onboarding new hires 
(01:24:41) Impact of ATT on performance marketing 
(01:25:56) The power of creative in ads 
(01:29:47) Using AI in performance marketing 
(01:37:16) Lightning round 

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

[djswoll]

This was a phenomenal episode on performance marketing and paid media. Timothy Davis is a wealth of knowledge and gave me some great insights and takeaways as a performance marketer myself.

[theadsdude]

Great episode, it hits me that we all do the same things even at different budget levels. I would even say that with smaller budget the level of complexity and analysis is even deeper.

[Tushar]

Thank you, Lenny, for sharing this insightful content. It would be fantastic if you could create an episode dedicated to 1x1 performance marketing. This could include a step-by-step guide from zero to one, using a sample product such as a t-shirt, which is in a crowded market, or books, which cater to a niche market.

While we often discuss great strategies, seeing them applied in real-time would be incredibly valuable. This practical demonstration would help me and others replicate similar approaches in our day-to-day work.

By the way, I’m writing this just a few minutes into the video. I’m a huge fan of your content and look forward to seeing more. Keep up the great work!

[GabrielOliveiraOne]

Thank you Lenny for sharing this episode! It was full of valuable insights.
Please bring more paid media content like this. 😀

[saibabaalapati]

I want request for more content on inhouse or marketing, initial days marketing.

[TariqAbdul-Rasheed]

There's a widespread notion in the content creator community that customers who are acquired through paid ads are high churn or not as loyal as customers acquired by organic marketing.

But it seems to me that a paying customers - whether acquired by paid or organic has taken the ultimate step.

At that point it's a matter of customer retention.

Lenny, do you have any insights on the topic from this guest or others.

I think the paid vs organic is a superficial way of viewing the issue.

[immerhashope]

This drove me bonkers. Please don't segment Meta LALs by percentage unless you have different creative or a very clear testing framework in place to determine your upper limit % [ie at which % point it's ineffective to exceed. 1% WILL ALWAYS OUTPERFORM 4-5%] Also 1% in the US will always be ~2.3M people, so if you did a 2-4% vs a 1%, the 2-4% audience size is 3x greater, and audience size has a massive impact on costs in Meta.
Just be careful following this - some of these practices are outdated and drive inefficiencies

[Yoannpavy]

About team structure in 2024: There is no more team haha

[Dhruvmarketeer]

@TheDigitalEdgePodcast Your content agrees with Timothy's!