What It Takes To Grow Your eCommerce Business With Lior Krolewicz

Andy Splichal 0:02

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count Podcast. This is your host Andy Splichal. And today we're happy to welcome our next guest to discuss a topic of what it takes to grow your Ecommerce business, a former online marketing leader and a top advertising firm. He has personally helped corporations direct millions and online advertising dollars to generate profit. He is an expert in online marketing strategy, operations and technology. And the founder and CEO of Yael, Yale Consulting, I'm sure I butchered that. But we'll get it right in a second. Say hello to Lior Krolewicz. Hi, Lior.

Lior Krolewicz 2:29

Andy, great to be here.

Andy Splichal 2:30

Hey, Yael Consulting. How do you pronounce it?

Lior Krolewicz 2:33

Yael

Andy Splichal 2:34

Yael. Yael Consulting?

Lior Krolewicz 2:37

Yes.

Andy Splichal 2:38

Now before we dive into today's topic, which is what it takes to grow your Ecommerce business, Let's first hear your backstory. And what ultimately led you to doing what you're doing now?

Lior Krolewicz 2:51

Sure. So I started as an analyst back in a kind of startup company in Los Angeles over a decade ago. Second person in the marketing team helped them grow, they sold and ultimately moved to an agency to specialize in what I do. And as I was managing clients, million dollar month accounts, all this stuff, I loved what I did, but I wanted that deeper connection to the client. I just loved that when, with big companies I didn't feel it intimacy. So I started my consultancy, and use those best practices for small to medium sized businesses. And really just partner with them and enjoying seeing them grow, seeing their appreciation. And it's a lot more fun for me that way.

Andy Splichal 3:37

And how did you get into this industry? How did you first get hooked up with that with that marketing agency you started with 10 years ago?

Lior Krolewicz 3:45

Sure. So So originally about that first startup, I started with Hautelook. I was second person in the marketing team. And they said, here's Google ads and figure it out. And I read a lot of books, seminars, and just a lot of legwork and reading Brad Geddes' seminar, do one of those. That was really good. And a lot of experimentation. Being an analyst at heart, getting to the numbers and understanding how it interacts to marketing and how it affects the business ultimately. Just really, was it was true to my heart what I enjoyed doing, and seeing the success come through.

Andy Splichal 4:22

In your company, Yell, Yael yeah one more.

Lior Krolewicz 4:26

Yael

Andy Splichal 4:27

Yael Consulting

Where Where did you get the name for that?

Lior Krolewicz 4:32

Actually, I was the name of a military unit that was in I was in Special Ops. Many, many lifetimes ago. That was the name of the unit. So it kind of was near and dear to my heart. It's also the first of many of my firstborn my daughter.

Andy Splichal 4:46

Oh, wow. Definitely near and dear to your heart.

Lior Krolewicz 4:50

Yeah.

Andy Splichal 4:52

Now Yeah, Yael. Your consulting company specializes in a Google PPC much like ideas. So I'm excited to have you on the show today. So we can compare some notes and what we're seeing but, but before we do, I wanted to talk to you about a case study that you presented that I had read. And in this case study, you described how you took monthly sales of a company from 20,000 to 300,000. In just 30 days. It's amazing. Can you tell listeners a little bit about this case study?

Lior Krolewicz 5:25

Sure. So first of all, it was it going to actually a half a million for the first month. And the way was that someone referred to me and he said, I want to do PPC marketing for my company. We're doing about $16 million offline a year, but only 20,000 online. So the fact that we're proving business, I asked him, you should invest a lot more into PPC because it has potential. And as the old story goes, he said, you know, we tried other companies a lot and a lot of trust in this kind of thing, even though you referred, I said, I'll even pay for it because you wanted to spend like $2,000 a month, I live in pay for it. And the website was messed up and all this stuff. So I partnered with a couple of my friends that did conversion optimization and a programmer. We built them a new website. And back then it was like five years ago, and Shopify was really starting to pop, we use Shopify, and with the right website and the right marketing, and we invest our money. We just started putting $100 A day work $200-$300, you know, doubling down to spending about $10,000 a day in marketing and the sales were half a million. And we stopped there because he said we can't fulfill the slowdown. So ended up slowing down and when fulfilment caught up, we got up to a million dollars a month in sales.

Andy Splichal 6:36

Wow. Now that's not typical, what you do, right? You're you're not redesigning the websites, you're more just handling the paid ads, or is that typical?

Lior Krolewicz 6:47

So beginning I tried to stick more to my guns of what we knew that know the best is, you know, Google ads. But nowadays, if we go on a site and we see something's broken, or, you know, the heaven doesn't make sense, or something's messed up and responsive, and how the site, we just either take care of it, if we can, you know, give us access, or just give him some tips to make sure it works, because ultimately, you want the PPC to be successful. And if the website isn't, I always say we can bring a horse to water can was make him drink. So helping tweak up the website, helps I find will confirm.

Andy Splichal 7:22

Yeah, no, absolutely. There's only so much you can do as far as you can drive perfect traffic coming from great search terms. But if conversion is poor, it's just not going to be successful. Now, do you specialize more in Ecommerce or home services or lead generation are all of them are? Or Where Where does your where's your consulting company really specialize?

Lior Krolewicz 7:48

Sure, so in Ecommerce, we definitely do well, because a lot of the data is there to kind of get the tracking and know analyze and figure out the rights angles. Also in lead generation b2b also b2c lead generation home services a bit tricky. It's very niche and a lot of tricky, weird things going on there from competitors clicking each other's ad when there's high CPCs to Google Home Services. We do that as well, but I'm quite selective when it comes to home services, everything else, Ecommerce, Lead gen, b2c b2b, all those.

Andy Splichal 8:23

Now speaking of competitors clicking ads, do you recommend to your clients use any sort of click monitoring service like a PPC protector?

Lior Krolewicz 8:34

Yeah, actually, I use click sees. Yeah, I found out about them a few years ago, and I actually reached out to CEO and very, very nice guy on it's great person. And actually, as part of a service, we pay for it for all our clients. I just as an agency and our clients we just added in as part of the service.

Andy Splichal 8:51

Okay, great. Now, I also see the Manage Facebook ads, is that for all those different kinds of businesses, the Ecommerce the lead generation home Services, or, or no?

Lior Krolewicz 9:03

Yeah, it's all across the board. A lot of that case study was done with Facebook ads, and since I invested my own money was successful. We added that as a service back then. We primarily use it for remarketing of the gate dynamic remarketing, regular remarketing for Legion and we do some expansion as well. Since Facebook relies a lot of uncreative, you don't have creative in house right now. We don't dig too much into it. But we we pretty much do it all a Google ads, Microsoft ads and Facebook, watch the data and invest where we get the best return.

Andy Splichal 9:38

Now how do you find Facebook ads perform for your Ecommerce clients?

Lior Krolewicz 9:44

It's it's it's tricky. I think the fact that it's less of a BlackBox and I'm used to Google ads where you know every lever and what it does and how it affects no matter how tricky it is you understand they have a lot more control whereas face Look, it's more of put the creative and let the BlackBox do its thing. And it's going to be inconsistent at times. So it's sometimes it works great. And that sounds sometimes disappointing. But

Have you found that different verticals perform better than others?

Not really, I don't focus on as much in that sense to find such disparity but between the different industries. Yeah, can't don't think so.

Now, what about running ads, specifically for Ecommerce using YouTube? Have you experimented with that?

I haven't done too much with that. Honestly, a lot of the budgets that we work with my small businesses are at the point where they're scaling up. And our focus has been more on direct response, you know, they're looking for something, get my friend, the right person to optimize it. Some go kind of started growing to skip the size of getting their name out there exploring more, but it's definitely something we're looking into more. Now that, you know, Facebook is a little trickier looking at them.

So you're more concentrated on the Google ads, such as the shopping and the search ads?

Correct.

Okay. Now, speaking of that, leads me into the next question. So Google has really been pushing over the last, you know, 18 to 24 months, their automated programs, including Google smart shopping, what has your feeling been regarding Google smart shopping?

It definitely performs well, let me launch it. I don't like the fact we don't have much control, probably sucks in some brand terms in there, etc. But I usually build out a manual shopping campaign in certain ways, put a shopping campaign in certain ways. And if the performance shows that smoking, my shopping is doing much better, I just go with that. Let the data tell the story and guide us.

Now, you're not worried about where the ads are appearing, or or not being able to add negative keywords or, or some of the other drawbacks that come with a Google smart shopping campaign?

Yeah, it pains me it doesn't isn't much control. But if when I run the manual campaigns side by side with the smart shopping, I'm optimizing the manual one. And if I can beat it, they just go with smart shopping. And there's there's taka two that Google gives preference to the smart shopping or the automated ones or dynamic ads and things like that. So without getting too into it, or thinking about too much about I say, lay the side by side tests, if it's doing better. Great. I'll just go with that.

No, that makes sense. Now, there are automated bid strategies for those campaigns that you do do better. Do you use Google's automated bid strategies? Or are you optimizing those manually?

Good question. So I prefer using manual bidding. Got too much more control? What I found that the other ones are very tricky. You know, when you do target CPA, you might look at the search terms, you might see that's some you know, it's a set at the $50 cost per conversion, your target CPA, and you'll find things converting at $10. You know, and then other things, overspending and wasting money. So Elantra 50. So it's really hard to find that, right. So Google will deliver that 50, but not in the most efficient way. Same thing with ROAS as sometimes a little tricky things when you dig deep into the data. So by the same token, we bid manually. And every so often, we feel like we reached a good equilibrium with performance. We say let's just give it a test as one campaign, with men with automated bidding, and if it outperforms our manual. Great.

So well, I likedI liked the fact you're always testing. That's a great philosophy. Now, I see you also you offer Google Ad reviews, when when you or your team does these reviews, what are some of the major cost wasting gaps that you might see?

Great. Yeah, so I've been doing, I do hundreds of audits myself a year. And a lot of it is the first thing I always check is saying is the conversion tracking. Oftentimes, people have conversion tracking and it's not tracking the right things. I've seen people be tracking just clicks so they're saying any visits my site is a conversion. Well, every clicks, this is your site, but then they're optimizing based on that, which doesn't really mean anything, or they're optimizing to five you know, 10 second phone calls, or just things I don't even know what they are in there. So oftentimes when I go to the segment, it's a conversion to see a different types I asked them, Do you know what each of these are and you know, But they're accurate, more or less, you know, not perfect, but at least 10-20%. Within what you know of your business in the real world, offline, and oftentimes the answer is no. And that's where it gets tricky. So they have incorrect conversions, and they said, maximize my conversions or automate. And then it just Google going wild on the wrong things. And they're like, that's why it's not working. The conversion tracking is the main thing. The other one is broad keywords, I think people don't really understand how it works, exactly. And how broad it can get and match to whatever he wants. And then, of course, the combination of broad keywords and automated bidding. It's just a, when you show the client that exactly what's going on, it was very clear whether it's way too inconsistent and not giving them the results you're looking for.

Now, I think he had kind of hinted to this a bit. But if there's somebody out there, they're a smaller company, and they can't afford really to take their advertising, they need to do it in house. What are some top ways that you can suggest for somebody to optimize their own Google Ads campaigns?

Sure, the first thing is to make sure you're tracking the results you want. But ecommerce, it's easy, it's a sale, it's revenue, even pull it in through there. And then if it's lead generation, making sure you have that part correct. If you're not exactly sure technically how to do it, I'm sure there's people out there that can help you figure that part out specifically. But once the conversion tracking is in place, then you can see how Google ads is contributing, adding value, right conversions, actual means value, you know that for a fact. And then from there having a very solid structure. Granular is, again, it's awesome. Also many ways of doing this, right, I would never go as far as SKAG, or those those things, but having themes. So if you're, if your business offers, if you're a plumber, and offer like you know, four to five types of services, just have a campaign for each that when you log in, and high level, the first thing you see is campaigns, you can see how much money you're investing in each campaign. And how much conversions are coming out of it. And then you know, if you're a small business, how your business feels like I did book five jobs for leak repair. And I'm seeing most of the money go there that feels about right. On the high level. When you do it on the ad group level, the odds of you start clicking in and remembering it's leaked there, and there's another leak another campaign, it just gets complicated. So it can be hard, it can be harder to manage. So I advise look, high level your business, oftentimes, you know, old school is look at your website, and how you break it down your menu. And each of those things usually becomes a campaign and have that structure, get granular in the ad groups. Make sure your keywords are using not modified broad anymore. Phrase match exact match, the ad matches it like the fundamentals, have those in place. And then just watch where money's going. And make sure that the money you're investing results in the conversions that you actually want. That means something. And that's a good place to start.

No, I like those. I mean, that's a great tip, especially to kind of look at your website and how that's organized. And then to create campaigns that mimic that. And just to clear up you had mentioned SKAG. Listen, for those that don't know, it's kind of a lingo. And it just means single keyword per ad group. Let me ask you a question. I don't want to get you in trouble here.

It's okay.

So what are your favorite types of clients to work with?

Honestly, the best clients are the clients that just want results. And don't care about all the that. I mean, no, I would say clients that want results and trust us, but it doesn't have to be out of the gate. A lot of times clients come to us and they're in the first month, they're very seem agitated, very skeptical, because they got burned four or five times before. And I'm cool with that. I'm fine to prove what we do. But the ones that really want to show trust and really want to partner and want just want results. Those who say I'm okay, if I pay $2,000 I don't care to Google the ad agency by 2000 and get results. The ones that get stickier, like well, what percentage of the spend is that for you would like, you know, and concern about what percentage of spend they're going to pay or versus the actual results. You know, I would go to a client and say, here's what you're spending 3000 And I show them in the audit within 5-10 minutes. Here's why you're wasting you know, 2000 of that. And then I said how our fees are well what percent is that for you? I'm like what I just showed you you can save is twice as much and we charged you save twice as much. So why are you still concerned about that and then If it comes from an innocent place, I just want understand that's fine. But those who are too caught up in that just gets aren't focused on just getting results and working partnering with someone, it's a little more challenging.

So your agency you charge fee based? Or is it a flat fee base and not flat fee?

We do it by tiers of spends like zero to 5000, 5 to 10, that we can maneuver within that certain range. You know, when we say go from four to 5000, nothing for us just really for you, you know, we really feel as potential.

Now, when you start with a with a new client, how do you first define goals of that customer?

So I asked them, what do they want to achieve? What's the pain point? What is the issue they're facing right now? And then I make sure I can have the conversions in the advertising accounts. reflect those goals, they want to increase, you know, a certain dollar amount or set, make sure I'm covering revenue, I'm pulling in revenue into the accounts, they want a certain type of leads, and make sure I'm tracking that in the account. And basically, I tell them within 30 days, right, we do anything month, a month, first 30 days for 30 days just see a difference. And that's why I do the audit as well, because I want to make sure I actually see the value, I can see where we can add value. So we can make changes, and offense and it happens sometimes someone comes in with a budget of $500. And I just say, hey, we can't really help here. But here's a few things we're doing correctly, here's what I recommend, or even on the audit just tweak a few things for them to get them, you know, set on their way.

Now, if somebody is looking around, they've not happy with their experience with a current agency or, or they've never used an agency, but they've gotten to the point where they need somebody an expert to really take it over. What are some tips you can give interviewing agency looking for an agency etc?

Sure, you want to make sure that you're that you get to speak to the person that's going to be running your account.

That's, great.

Yeah that's fundamental. I mean, I worked at a large agency and you get a salesperson get a great pitch sounds great. And then you get a poor account manager to deliver on that magical unicorn performance, which is impossible. So make sure you speak to the person that is going to manage your account. It's okay, there's a salesperson, but haven't looping become manager and make sure that the expectations are aligned out the gate. So there's no miss disconnect there. The second thing is, I would make sure that they're asking questions about your business, they're really trying to understand what you want as a business and not assume Okay, your name is Joe, you have this business, it's your budget, here's what we're gonna do for you. Now, what are your specific pain points? What are your goals? Do you want to grow? Do you want to cut you know, cut fat and get more lean, and just more efficient, profitable? So when they start asking about your business, specifically, and getting into the nuances of that of how you work, that's probably more like, more likely to be an agency that's going to go a little deeper, and help you hit your goals.

Yeah, no, I love those tips. I love those tips. Now, I also I see on your website, that you help companies invest profitably invest profitably in their advertising instead of advert gambling.

That's right.

I've never heard the term advert gambling, can you can you explain that to us?

Yeah, absolutely. And that trademarks rent. Yeah, because I think like, broad match, when you have one keyword matching to 500 terms, when you increase the bid and one keyword, you're really gambling, that you're gonna get more of the right terms, that's not going to happen, right, you're gonna get your to get the cheaper terms. So getting more control over your account, knowing where your money's going, making sure that you're getting that your account is aligned with your leads. Even when a client we make sure that the conversion tracking is tracking leads. When we start with the client, when they get a lead, we call them up say, Hey, you got three leads today? Were they good leads? I want to make sure that right? Because oftentimes people think that they're because there says one zero and a 123 conversions in Google, that means it's good for the business. But oftentimes, leads are not very good. So we make sure that yes, those are good leads. And if they were in to try to ask why, and making sure that your advertising, that whatever the value is shown there reflects real value in the real world, right bottom line. That's how you make sure it's profitable.

Now, I also say that you have some custom SEO services that you offer, what are those services? And how have you found that SEO has changed over the last 10 years?

Sure, so so SEO, I'm gonna have a limited speech here because I actually pull in one of our SEO guys, I'm not an SEO experts. We don't offer it to anybody that comes in and we'll come into that one. Do we usually don't really work with them too much? And we prefer not to because SEO is a tricky thing, right. I mean, give us You never know how long it's going to take a lot of trust involved. And what we like most often is saying, start with PPC, within 30 days and see how we work to see results. We'll see what keywords work well. And then with that trust results and extra cushion budget, let's reinvest in SEO strategy. And we tend to deliver but in case, it doesn't work exactly what we thought, because Google's always changing, at least you know that we're kicking butt on the PPC side. And it's a relationship.

So what what are you doing for SEO after after that month or so if you do start?

I really defaulted our SEO Guy David, tech, technical audits, you know, and then after that, expansion in the name out there, and all that other fun stuff.

Now, how like, how involved do you recommend a client be? How do you like it? Do you like if, if they're, you know, hey, this weekend, it wasn't as profitable this has been what's going on? Or? Or do you prefer them? Just stay hands off? And we'll talk at the end of the month kind of thing?

Sure, that's a good question. Because there's a misconception in the, from what I've seen him do for decades work with small businesses. And then there's a theory that says small businesses just want to talk all the time and want to call you up all the time and take up all your time and not pay anything. And I found that small businesses have time to talk to you when you're not doing your job. So if we're doing our job, they don't have time to talk to us. And when they're not there, just save a lot of time to call up and say what's going on? Why isn't it working, right? So that's why we tend to move really fast, and try to get the results within the first month that we know what's going on. Oftentimes, we're chasing customers and saying, how's it working? I think it's going right, you know, or, or we, you know, have a time, how hard time trying to reach them. When we see results not going exactly how we want we proactively reach out and say we're seeing a little slower. And we're doing this isn't this just so they know. So I mean, I like to get as much feedback as possible to make sure we're aiming at the same target. And then let the laser kind of be iterative. We there's no limit on hours. They want to talk to us to pick up the phone, you know, pick up the phone, I answer so.

Now a little bit about you. So you named the consulting company after your daughter. Yeah. And you are you in Southern California then or where are you guys based out of?

Yeah, so the so it's named after my daughter and again, the special ops unit that was in? Yeah. And that's kind of how I think about the business being very straightforward, efficient, working together, caring about, you know, the mission, the goals. And right now actually, in New York, we relocated.

Oh, okay. When did you guys move there? A couple years ago? And do you have the one daughter or?

No, I have three daughters and a son, daughter, daughter, son, daughter?

Well, you're you're busy. You're busy. Do you? Do you have time to read? What? What kind of marketing books do you like?

I like the fundamental one I read in books nowadays. You know, Brad Geddes, has had a book from awhile ago events, I don't know up to date it is but he's definitely a great resource and an amazing part of the PPC world. And then other things is marketing books. leadership books, efficiency books, you know, processes and team building things like that.

Okay. Now what what sets apart your your PPC agency from others?

That were very hands on. Were very fast to move. And, and it's really no fluffs. What we're doing, I mean, even from from the moment we do the audits right there, then within 510 minutes, I'm telling you everything, we're gonna do soup to nuts, I'm not holding anything back. It's not hire us and we'll give you the secret sauce. It's, here's what you have to do. At the end of the day, it's a lot of legwork, and small to medium sized businesses, the ones that are fit for us, they don't want to do it themselves, really, they don't want tools, and they just want to get done and go back to doing what their job actually is. But it's so hard. So I really enjoy take pleasure in you know, working closely with them delivering results, being on the up and up no fluff and enjoying the wins when a client tells me when goes from on what was my business last month. And then two, three months later, they're saying we're going to expand, we're getting a warehouse. We're all just happy in the office. There's like it's just amazing. It's fun. It's fun to feel like you're really in it with them.

Now how can people learn more about you and working with your agency if they're if they're interested?

Sure. So our website is Yael yaelconsulting.com. You can read up about their look at their reviews, not just because they're nice, but how we work and how, what they should expect. Also call us directly the number on the site? And I'll answer and those types of videos on YouTube lectures and tutorials, and other things that can learn from.

Now, last thing before I let you go, what would you say to a business owner listening right now that says, Well, I've been burned working with agencies in the past, and I'm a bit hesitant to take my paid advertising to an outside agency again.

Sure, so I would look for an agency that doesn't ask you to commit for too long, I mean, we do one month, and within one month, you might not triple your business or go from 20,000 to half a million, but at least you'll see how it's different from other agencies, how you will get different results or how the communication is, at the same time, some often find the company. You know, some people say it's too expensive, or it's, you know, we were used to paying $20 a month, but I look at it, but if you look at your PPC and advertising as an investment, even like a stockbroker, whatever, you're not going to pay the cheapest stockbroker to make the most of your money, right. So get the page, make sure it's telling you everything they're going to do speak to the person doing the work, and limit your risk to a month or so. Right? And if it feels different than what you experienced in the past, then it's probably worth a shot.

Now, before we wrap it up, is there anything I've been amiss and asking you?

know, I think I think we covered a bunch of it.

Well, great. Well, I wanted to thank you again for joining us on the interview. And that is it for today. Remember, if you liked this episode, please go to Apple podcast and leave an honest review. And if you're looking for more information regarding Lior or connecting with him, you can contact him through his website, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes below. In addition, if you're looking for more information on growing your business using Google paid ads request to join the Make Each Click Count Facebook group, then releasing some new free live training it's a more will be happening soon. In the meantime, remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing and I'll talk to you in the next episode.