From SEO Missteps to PPC Triumphs - Navah Hopkins Unveils Her Bad Decisions

Jim Banks [00:00:00]:
I'm delighted to have on the show today Nava Hopkins, who is part of my peer group. She is a PPCer through and through. I've known her for many, many years. I've known her through all the kind of iterations of various jobs that she's had in the past, and Nava's now currently the evangelist at Optimizer. And before we get too far into it, Nava, welcome to the show. Good to have you here.

Navah Hopkins [00:00:22]:
Thank you so much for having me. The moment you announced this podcast, I was like, this is the one podcast I really want to participate in because it's really fun to make fun of our bad decisions and then, like, what we can learn from them. So I'm delighted to be here and delighted to get to hang out with you for a little bit.

Jim Banks [00:00:37]:
A lot of the people that I want to have come on as guests are always, like, on the speaker circuit. So it's always difficult to try and compete with speaking jobs and all the travel that goes with, with speaking. And I probably say you are one.

Navah Hopkins [00:00:51]:
Of the more important. Most, though, Jim, like, let's, let's be honest, like, getting to hang out with Jim Banks is.

Jim Banks [00:00:57]:
Well, that's very.

Navah Hopkins [00:00:59]:
Than some speaking spots.

Jim Banks [00:01:02]:
That is absolutely so kind of you to say that again. I mean, like, so we've known each other quite a long time that we've done. We were both moderators of the speakers enclave, which is always a kind of a cool place to hang out and see what other speakers are talking about. So, Nava, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you're from, how long you've been in industry.

Navah Hopkins [00:01:23]:
Sure. So, hey, everybody. Naga Hopkins. I actually started out in SEO in transition to PPC. I always did a little bit of the Google Ads freelance because at the time, when I got started back in 2000, you could just get yourself certified and take on clients. I actually did that while I was in college because workaholism waits for no one. But what was very interesting is that my SEO trajectory started around the time the pandan penguin happened, and I had some very ethical quandaries about am I happy here? So I ended up taking about a year and a half off from digital marketing and started a nonprofit called Angel Ed. It's a failed nonprofit.

Navah Hopkins [00:02:10]:
It no longer works, but I consider that my non MBA MBA because I learned pretty much everything what not to do, but also made a bunch of connections in the education space. So that would pave the way for when I would eventually start teaching more on the PPC side the opportunity to connect with students and to empower them throughout the kind of in between time. I was still doing some PPC freelance and then I got the job at Wordstream which kind of put me in the SaaS mindset and really taught me that I love software and I ended up doing also a little bit of agency work, a little bit of in house, but I kept coming back to software and now in my role at optimizing optimizer, I get to do what I love. I sit with the product team, I sit with the marketing team, I sit with the customer success and sales team and basically feed information in and then feed information out into the industry.

Jim Banks [00:03:01]:
So obviously like, so again, I know Fred Valle is one of the co founders of Optimizer pretty well. I've been an optimizer customer more or less since the very beginning. I always remember like they gave us a discount on our fee for Optimizer if we gave them a testimony. I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll do that. No problem at all. But again, I absolutely love the product been using ever since. And obviously Fred was previously in a previous iteration of his life. He was an evangelist at Google.

Jim Banks [00:03:29]:
Right. So it's quite interesting that you are now an evangelist at Optimizer. So what has that enabled Fred to do more of that he wasn't doing before? Maybe you've taken off his plate in your role now.

Navah Hopkins [00:03:41]:
So it's really interesting. Fred is, I like to think of Fred as he, he is the one that loves to sit and play with all the technical toys. Whatever is new and exciting, that's what Fred wants to play with and that's what he ends up building. I tend to be more focused around, let's connect with people, let's hear the stories, let's empower everything. And not that Fred doesn't love to do that, but having a second person who is a respected speaker, a respected voice in the industry frees up Fred to do more technical play. So I can be out and about, but I can also then collect stories in a way that's actionable. We do quite a bit of focus group work. We do quite a bit customer success testimonials, do a lot of work also with empowering our clients just in general with their problem solving outside of optimizer.

Navah Hopkins [00:04:40]:
So it's a lot of, I don't, I would say that it's almost like how AI is not meant to replace you, it's meant to make you more efficient. Fred still does a lot of what Fred used to do. But he's more efficient at it and he can do the things that he truly loves, whereas I get to do the things I truly love because he.

Jim Banks [00:05:04]:
Completely nerds out on AI and all that sort of tech stuff that goes on in the background. I think that was always one of my criticisms when Google first launched. I mean, I always remember, I always say to people, I helped Google create my client center and Google Ads editor because I gave them some use case scenarios of what I wanted to do. Because back in the pre ipo Google days, they used to send engineers to London. We would sit in a room with other agency owners and we would share our frustrations of things it did and didn't do, and they would sit there and make notes and write stuff down and actually, whereas I think it's almost like we're at the point now where agency owners, people like myself, and other people in our community, we're bitching about stuff that kind of happens a lot. And it's almost like Google just either I say they don't care, I don't think it's the case that they don't care. It's just they probably haven't got the listening beacons out to actually understand where this conversation is taking place, or they've gone, well, we just know better than you guys, so we're just going to do things our way. What's your kind of view on that?

Navah Hopkins [00:06:10]:
So it's interesting, I think the pre ginny Marvin era, I would 1000% agree with you. The fact that they put someone like Ginny Marvin in the product liaison role means that we all have someone that we love and trust, and we know that she has our backs. She has the collective industry's best interests at heart. And for those of you that don't know, Ginny Marvin used to be one of the amazing forces for good behind third Door media and the SMX group. So she also did a lot of account work. So Ginny Marvin is one of us. Having her at Google, we all now feel more comfortable kind of checking our biases and asking questions. So, for example, this is actually a real life example of Ginny Marvin at work.

Navah Hopkins [00:06:57]:
Someone posted that search partners opt out is going away. But the way they worded it, they correctly cited that it's only for pmags that it's going away. But you could have very easily thought that it was going away for search as well. I was able to shoot a message over to Jenny and say, hey, listen, what's going on here? This feels weird. Now, granted, I'm in a special place. We were on the board of the peace association together. We're able to chat, but she was able to get back to me and say, listen, I see the message, I see where it was confusing. Thank you for putting out the correction, but you are correct.

Navah Hopkins [00:07:37]:
I'll also chime in. And so I think having a person like that in that role is important, but I also think it's important that we check our biases. I think we as an industry are so used to believing that Google is going to hurt us or that Google is going to do us wrong, that even when Google does something that's absolutely beneficial, we see it as hurtful because it's taking away our agency or taking away our control. And so I think one of the things that we could probably do a little bit better is thinking about what are the outcomes versus how did we get there. And being okay with the fact that sometimes Google will do the right thing and also being okay calling out Google when Google does the wrong thing. And the same thing applies to all networks.

Jim Banks [00:08:25]:
Yeah, I mean, I not sure which guests I had on previously, but I was talking about some of the challenges that people had when they ran YouTube ads on their own or display ads on their own. Right, and they had a horrible experience. So they would ultimately end up going, I'm not going to run those, they don't work, when clearly with the right sort of strategic implementation, they work really well. They give you that kind of like additional inventory opportunity to give you that more scale on your campaigns. But I think the challenge is that obviously Google introduced performance Max as a way of helping to, if you like, steer people towards the right way of doing the YouTubes and the GDNs and everything else. And I think the people that are benefiting from Pmax now were probably the ones that had a bad experience with GDN and YouTube before, whereas maybe the ones that had a good experience with GDN and YouTube before are now going well, we dont really like Pmax being there because all of a sudden theres a lot more advertising on the platform that wasnt there before, that were now having to come compete with. You will have a small window of opportunity where you can capitalize on things and then eventually the kind of system catches up with everything else.

Navah Hopkins [00:09:37]:
And I think that that's a really important point you made. One of the early folks in my career made the point that YouTube is the frontier. This was ten years ago. YouTube is still a frontier because we are all petrified of making videos. So when a good YouTube advertiser has to compete with an average YouTube advertiser who's getting creative from PMax. I think that's a really valid concern because it's driving up the cost of inventory. What I don't think is a valid concern is saying that PMax as a campaign is bad because PMAx helps the bad become average and in some cases can help the average become good. I still believe that exceptional, exceptional search marketers, exceptional, exceptional video marketers will create a better experience, a better sequencing, and have better results if they use siloed campaigns.

Navah Hopkins [00:10:33]:
But what Pmax does is it enables you to take your biases out of the equation and feed in information that you care about, or that you're telling Google that you care about and then run with that. A big caveat to this, though. Mike Ryan and the folks over at SMEC, they did a study that looked at Pmax and they found that in order to have anything approaching possible results, you had to have at least 30 conversions. But ideally it was closer to 60 conversions in a 30 day period. A small business is not going to be able to do that. And when we looked at PmAx over at Optimizer, we found that the lion share of folks ran one campaign, one asset group. So when I talk about the bad becoming average, this is not to say that you as a marketer are bad, that you're not talented. It's just that you may not also have the budget to fuel the campaign type that Pmax represents.

Navah Hopkins [00:11:30]:
So that's another consideration as well.

Jim Banks [00:11:32]:
Yeah, and again, I mean, I know we're probably going deep into the strategic needs on PPC, but I'm okay with that because again, I'm sure the audience for this episode will be just Ppcers, and that's fine. And those that don't do it, you should be doing it. But I think the thing that I always struggled with when Pmax first came out, it was like the complete black box. Nothing was available. You couldn't, you got no data, couldn't see anything. It was just like you had to trust blindly that Google were doing the right thing for you. But some of those restrictions have been loosened now. So again, I know that Fred's come out with some new stuff in Optimizer.

Jim Banks [00:12:13]:
I know Mike Rose is doing some great stuff with his scripts in terms of some of the things you get out of Pmax now that you couldn't get before. So you can get campaign information, you can get search term information. Right? There's still obviously going to be some restrictions in terms of what you can't do. Again, I'd love to get your thoughts on how you think things have evolved and if where we are in terms of that progress that PMax has had.

Navah Hopkins [00:12:37]:
So I actually, for those of you that don't know, don't know me, those of you that know me, this is no surprise. I'm very much a gamer. I love video games and I actually see this current era, specifically PMax, as very much the video games and modding community. So I would consider Fred, Mike Rhodes, Niels, all of the scripters as the modding community.

Jim Banks [00:13:02]:
Steve Hammerhead, put Steve Hammer in there.

Navah Hopkins [00:13:05]:
Yeah, Steve Hammer, exactly. Steve. Steve Hammer goes in there too, modding out the game or the platform and then Google sees, okay, this is consistently really useful, this is really, really important. We'll consider baking it in. There was a really good point, I forget who made it, that the modding community or the scripting community are essentially free workforce for Google because they're essentially telling Google what we as marketers want. But there's another side to that is okay, we're showing Google not only what do we want, but this is where we're willing to build tools to mitigate these issues. So this is where, when people talk about why do you need tools, why do you need SaaS? This is where SAS will always have a place because no ad network will ever build out everything. And if you try to compete with the ad network on parity, you're not going to win.

Navah Hopkins [00:14:01]:
But when you look at it as what are the things that the ad network is clearly not going to provide and how can I provide value to my users, it's a great equation.

Jim Banks [00:14:10]:
But I also think that a lot of stuff that happens within Google happens within Google in isolation. They don't know what happens in meta, they don't know what goes on in Microsoft, they don't really understand all the other channels that people have got going on so they can talk about what works for them in their ecosystem. Once people step outside that ecosystem, that's where again, SAS tools that can combine budgeting across platforms, great agencies that can understand at a more holistic level what's going on for an advertiser and all the money that they're spending in all the disparate channels, what they've got going on with SEO, what they got with PR and you know, influencer marketing and email and whatever else that they may have going on, that those are, those are things that don't happen in isolation. And Google can give you Google's view right. But that's just their opinion on what's happening within their platform. And I think that's where SAS and agencies really can, can add value.

Navah Hopkins [00:15:10]:
But I do think there's another piece to this equation that AI you brought up earlier. It came out at exactly the wrong time because it came out exactly when we as a marketing community were starting to be scrutinized for privacy, because AI needs a lot of data and privacy inherently means that we don't get a lot of data. So a lot of the things that we complain about in terms of lack of transparency, some of those are so that Google and all the other ad networks can be compliant with privacy regulations. So, for example, I don't understand how this is true. Like, I still can't quite pinpoint it, but the search term report, lack of data is directly tied to them, to Google trying to be privacy compliant. I respect the answer. I understand that that is the answer that we are given. I don't agree that it's that I see some search terms with zero impressions, but I don't see things that cost me money.

Navah Hopkins [00:16:16]:
But that's a true consideration. And it's a similar thing with PMax. I think that the idea of understanding cohorts of search queries or understanding cohorts of audiences without being able to pinpoint this as the exact person is a result of Google and now Microsoft, with their PMAx offering, needing to be privacy compliant. We as marketers need to know that we're not going to be able to report on exactly what happened with this person, exactly what every little thing that they did will instead be able to report on. This cohort of people seem to trend in this way. And that's, that's going to have to be what it is. And there are some industries that have always behaved like this because of how heavily regulated they are. It's just the rest of us now have to deal with it.

Jim Banks [00:17:06]:
Yeah, I mean, I've always said I've got this kind of hate hate relationship with goo. I hate them, they hate me, but we have to work together, so we just get on with it. But I always look at it. And now that we've got search term data in Pmax, my suspicions about the lion's share of the conversions that are happening for brands we work with are driven by branded search is coming true. So when you look at it, you can see a lot of the conversions are coming from branded search. And you go, well, those probably would have come through anyway. I think sometimes the impact of like, you know, again if it's an e commerce business, the impact of having a product image can really help. And if the branded search term with the product image is what got people over the line, then you could say, well, if it was just a branded search without the product image, would it have got over the, would that conversion have taken place? So I'm okay with it.

Jim Banks [00:17:54]:
I think where I'm slightly uncomfortable is again, I think that in the good old days there was a lot of agencies that existed purely because they made all their money on branded search, which was incredibly cheap and they were charging clients a lot of money for the sales that were generated from branded search. And you could argue and say, well, if somebody is typing in a brand, they're looking for the brand. So in most cases that that branded search shouldn't carry the same value. I mean I work with a lot of companies that do subscription based businesses, so quite often the way the consumers work is they will type in the brand name, go to Google, theyve already got the product, they just want to buy another something else. So theyll just type in the brand name, go there and buy. And clients dont really want to be paying to acquire their existing customer over and over again every time they go, they want to be paying dollar, $30, $40, 50 to acquire an existing customer. They want to be, be able to pay less. And even though you might say, well here's a list of all my existing customers and it almost seems like Google, Facebook and everyone else don't care, I mean you can say these are my existing customers, don't show my ads to these people, they still do, right?

Navah Hopkins [00:19:12]:
So I will chime in. Google heard this feedback and gave us a beautiful form that we could upload every possible negative we want to upload into those PmAx campaigns any topics that we want to exclude, any places we want to exclude. So I think this complaint about branded is fair and valid. I feel like they have created a solution around it. What I do see though is that folks tend to build campaign structures that let them be lazy and that's where I get a little bit more frustrated. So for example, I was working with a consulting client and they had branded, not only mixed in with their non branded terms, they had their branded ad group, had non branded keywords in there and they refused to do ad group level negatives, they refused to sequester the branded out and then they were saying, look at all these results that were driving you well a your double triple counting conversion. So we don't even trust your conversion data. But the other problem is that if you don't sequester your branded traffic from your non branded traffic, you're getting false positives and negatives about what your search terms cost.

Navah Hopkins [00:20:31]:
You're getting false positives and negatives about how good your ads are. Because if branded is driving, it doesn't matter if you have an image asset that would be an image with it or not. It doesn't matter because branded, as you see, is going to convert better. So I do think it is important that we acknowledge how much the ad networks, not just Google, all ad networks are guilty of things that frustrate us as well as things that are lovely or to blame, but also negligence on practitioner parts. And I don't love calling out bad actors, and you'll never get me to say, like, this person is a bad actor, but I do see themes, and one of the big themes is what you were just saying about taking advantage where you tell someone that you're bidding on Google, but it's all just branded and you're driving a ton of spend and then you charge a percentage of spend that's really not great. And then worst of all, agencies that hold accounts hostage that you don't actually allow the advertiser to own their account. There are some people that believe that they can't keep a customer unless they own the account. If that's the case, you probably aren't a good practitioner.

Navah Hopkins [00:21:45]:
Yeah, I'm sorry. We are just there to help people achieve amazing results on the ad networks that we know and love. We're here to empower our customers and to be their evangelists and help them succeed. We are not here to hold them hostage with their company asset. That's just not great.

Jim Banks [00:22:09]:
Yeah. And it's, it's funny. In, in the good old days, way back when overture existed, there was always two things that made me laugh. There was always the, what was, what was better than sex? And it was always like the search volume for sex would be compared with something else. So I remember one month, David Beckham was better than sex because he had more searches for, for David Beckham than there was for sex. The other one that always used to make me laugh is like, so, so overture, their main kind of property was Yahoo. And there was something like 30 million searches a month where people went to Yahoo looking for Google. So they typed in Google.

Jim Banks [00:22:50]:
So they went to Yahoo, typed in Google, saw the link, clicked to Google and sent them across to their site. But the point I was going to make, to your point about the bad actors, so way back in the day when it, when you could buy a keyword for like two cent or $0.01 or something like that. There was a company here in the UK that basically created a model where they would go and see a small local business, right. And basically guarantee them that they would show up on the search results, right, on Yahoo. Yeah. And basically they would choose the keywords. I think one of the keywords that they chose, I think it was a business in something. Lets say it was Newcastle.

Jim Banks [00:23:31]:
So it would be specialist cheese in Newcastle. So you and I both know that the number of searches for that term every month would probably be about six. And more often than not those six searches would be the brand looking for themselves. That would be the number of people looking for that term. But this company was charging 1000 pounds a year for that term, which probably in realistic terms only costs them as an agency about three pounds, something like that. So incredibly cheap. So the margin or profit margin for the agency huge. The value for the business non existent.

Jim Banks [00:24:08]:
A bit like the empress new close, completely worthless, no value. But ultimately somebody capitalizing on the market kind of existed at that particular point in time.

Navah Hopkins [00:24:20]:
You asked me at the start around the evangelist role and what does that mean? And one person in particular, I think I know you had them on Purna Virgie. She's actually who inspired me to really pursue the evangelist path specifically for that reason. That it's not just about being a cheerleader. It's not just about being warm and likable and connecting. You also have to know what you're doing and know what you're talking about. And there's an authenticity that comes with knowledge that if you are just a likable face or you're just charming, you'll eventually fade away. The ones that last, the ones that stay. And there's a reason why Purna, even though she does really nothing in PPC anymore, is still seen as a PPC legend.

Navah Hopkins [00:25:17]:
She's amazing content marketing hero, high impact marketing. Everyone should go, should go buy it. She built such a strong base of authenticity from the Microsoft to the LinkedIn move that no one would ever reproach her PPC knowledge. Even though she herself says like I'm not a PPC anymore. Where there are other folks who cling to their PPC moniker even though they haven't done PPC in years or they haven't provided helpful advice in years. So I think part of being an agency is that you are an evangelist for your clients. You have to be knowledgeable and you have to be supportive and helpful. It's not just about being really, really good that they keep you because they like your results.

Navah Hopkins [00:26:07]:
And the one where they don't like your results, you're gone. And they don't keep you because you're just likable. And they enjoy talking to you like you have to make the money. It needs to be both.

Jim Banks [00:26:16]:
Yeah. And I think I always say there's a couple of things you can't fake, and one of them is longevity. So you can't really sort of like, again, you can't survive in an industry for a long time unless you've got sort of, you know, something about you. And again, I mean, as you say, Perna's coming on as a guest, which I'm absolutely stoked to, to have happen. Funny enough, Perna was actually put in touch with me through Dave Roth, who was a guest on a previous episode. So again, it's almost like there's this kind of six degrees of separation. And as a community, we're obviously a very small group of people. We all know each other.

Jim Banks [00:26:52]:
We all like each other. We all trust each other. Interestingly enough, I always remember there was a group of people and they were sort of going to bring me in, and all the people in the room basically said, you know, we all love Jim, he's great, blah, blah, blah. And they said, have any of you actually ever worked with him before? Not one person in the room had ever done any work with me, not on the client side, agency side. But they all trusted me implicitly to know what I was doing. Because again, I mean, like I said, I put myself out there, put myself on the speaking circuit again. I used to do so much more speaking. I'm actually jealous now.

Jim Banks [00:27:28]:
I saw that you and Perna were both at Friends of search. I did that event a few years end ago. Loved the event. Fantastic. The really, really well organized, great speakers. Funnily enough, you mentioned Wordstream. Larry Kim was one of the keynotes when I was on that particular time. But again, you know, for me, I'm jealous of people that are now traveling around doing the speaking because I miss it.

Jim Banks [00:27:52]:
I think for me, it's something, at some point in time, I remember saying to somebody, I don't speak now because I'm too old, I'm too white, and I'm too male, because I think, you know, that there is, there is this, this situation now where I think, you know, Dei has become a big, a big deal. It is a big deal, right? I mean, I looked at my podcast guest list, and I think you're the second female that I've had as a guest. It's not that I don't, I don't know lots of females. I think the challenge I have is that you guys are always super busy speaking, traveling and whatever, difficult to get people on. So. So again, I'm obviously pleased to have you on here, not because you're a female, but because you are incredibly smart and gifted in your ability and sort of paid search arena. So for me, it was like a complete and utter no brainer to have you on. But how are you finding that in terms of the DEI and weaving your way around that?

Navah Hopkins [00:28:48]:
So it's interesting, when I first got started in the speaking circuit, I had to deal with commentary or like speaker comments of, oh, the speaker was hot or I got cold eye candy. And that was, that was frustrating and that was, that was really bad and annoying. But at the same time, I took it as, all right. It's my job just to smile and nod. I think one of the things I'm very happy about with this current cohort is that people feel empowered to own that those sorts of things are not okay, that it is good that folks are made to feel safe and their intelligence is what gets them on the stage. With all of that said, I actually do think that there's still quite a bit of work to be done in certain markets, whereas other markets are perhaps overcorrecting. So you made a really valid point that people should be on stage because they're smart and because they're good, not because they check certain demographic boxes. It's an incredible disservice to someone to put them on stage in front of an audience where they'll get ripped apart if they are not ready.

Navah Hopkins [00:29:59]:
Like they don't have the content or they don't have a stage presence. It is our job to mentor folks and to get them ready. On the flip side, it is not our job to put them on stage with a white guy that's going to hug all the attention and an event that's all white guys, or there's like a token one person that's not a white guy. I mean, those. Those still happen, but what's interesting is that the events where those still happen, those tend to be what I would call quote unquote guru events, where they're all the guru brands. They're not actually the actionable ones.

Jim Banks [00:30:34]:
So it's funny, if you analyze the speaker list historically of particular events, there'll be people that will be specifically have an affinity to a particular group. So let's, let's. Again, I'm not going to name names, but there will be some events where the speakers are almost always the same people, and there might be one or two additional people that kind of get added on, and that could be because they're great speakers. They put bums on seats, they sell tickets that, you know, whatever, whatever the reason that they're there. Fine. But I think, again, I think one of the kind of the challenges is that there is this thing, you know, you want to get, you know, that, that balance between, you know, men and men and women and people that are non binary people of color. There's so many different kind of landmines that event organizers could stand on. But equally, I think speakers have to, they absolutely have to take a kind of ownership of the fact that they're there not just to speak, they're there to, you know, make themselves available to the delegates and everything else.

Jim Banks [00:31:41]:
And I've seen a lot of people. Right. Some of my really, really good friends in the industry, I've seen them come in, they present, and then they just leave, and they just go out the door. And I'm thinking, what's a two day event? I always make sure I go in early. I'm there for the full, full duration of the conference. I'm there to support my speaker cohort to any other speakers. I'll always, always watch this session. It's not that I'm necessarily interested in whatever it might be, link building, pr, whatever.

Jim Banks [00:32:11]:
If it's not, my kind of, my core competency doesn't matter. I'm there to support other speakers. I usually sit at the front. I will always give other speakers feedback on what they did well, what they could have improved upon, because I think that can make a difference. And also, that then means if somebody is organizing an event and say, hey, I want a good speaker to come and keynote my event, I could say, well, you should talk to Perna or you could talk to Nava, because I've seen you present. I know you're good at it. Whereas I think a lot of people just get picked because they're trying to make up a quota. I mean, I always remember that there's a.

Jim Banks [00:32:44]:
Again, I think it's actually a great concept, shock talk. I don't know if you've seen or heard of shock talk, right? But shock talk, when they first launched, they raised a ton of money. The first event that they put on in Vegas, every single person that was presenting was a CEO. So consequently, virtually all of the people that were there were older white males because that's the demographic of typically CEO's of companies. That's something completely different kind of conversation to have. But what they did was they said, okay, let's completely change the bias. So they made it. The following event was hundred percent female speakers.

Jim Banks [00:33:24]:
Not one single man on, on the speaker list. So, so again, it's sort of like you go, well, are they there because they're a good subject matter expert or they're there because they're a woman and there wasn't a good subject, you know, that there wasn't a. So it's kind of like, you know.

Navah Hopkins [00:33:41]:
I think there's an important line that if you notice that everyone is all a woman, people tend, have only started recently noticing that it's all guys. So I think that's, if you notice that it's all women, that probably means that the conference either made a point to make it all women and that's a choice. And we can debate the pros and cons. But the other thing is a subject matter. Friends of search, for example, I was actually very, very proud that Friends of search managed 50% female speakers. That's really, really good. For that part of Europe to have 50% women on stage is amazing. The stat that maybe wasn't as great is I think it was only 10% people of color.

Navah Hopkins [00:34:41]:
But to be fair, again, the fact that it was all that amazing representation, it's progress. And the thing that's interesting is that I didn't notice in the speaker quality any difference between anybody. They all deserve to be there. So I think that the bigger issue is not our conferences picking and choosing based off demographics. It's how can we make talented, incredibly useful perspectives that otherwise maybe wouldn't get their chance given their shot. So I actually had a really interesting dinner right after SMX Munich talking about this exact issue. How can we empower women to lean into these opportunities? Because one of the complaints that conferences have, and even you mentioned it, is that it's hard to get women to present and to share. And there's a consideration into what I mentioned at the beginning when we started talking about this, of oh, she's eye candy or oh, the speaker's hot.

Navah Hopkins [00:35:52]:
That kind of feedback is really detrimental to a first time speaker if they don't have the confidence or they're able to just let it slide off their backs. The other piece to it too is not every speaker is going to have the income or the supportive employer that will let them go. And talk. I had actually, a high friction moment at words J my very first pubcon, and I did great and I got great scores, and I made a great impression of Ritz Bieger enclave. So I was able to prove that I deserve to be there and that I should go. But there was actually a lot of, like, I was. I was yelled at over how much it was costing for me to go to Pubcom, which was the event that launched my speaking career. So it's one of those things of, yes, you can absolutely have all of these things in place, but if the.

Navah Hopkins [00:36:55]:
The places that house these. These speakers within their women, whether they're part of the LGBTQ community, whether they're people of color, whether they're like some whatever else category folks find themselves in, whether you need to make sure that we hold companies accountable for supporting their evangelists and that there was a really interesting article, actually, that talked about people don't need pay raises, they need emotional raises. And I thought that that was absolute. I mean, you used some interesting language earlier, but it was like B's that, like, you don't need an emotional raise. You need to be paid for what you're worth. But I do think that there's something that should be baked into careers, and it's something that I fought for in every job I've had since Wordstream, that it is baked into my employment contract, that I will go out and speak and you will cover my expenses because I'm representing you on the speaking circuit. And I think more and more people need to advocate for that because it is a very powerful tool to be an evangelist for yourself that you build a brand for yourself outside of your company.

Jim Banks [00:38:10]:
Absolutely. And like I said, I've always. Again, I don't know if it's because I grew up in Hong Kong. Right. Which is a multicultural, multi diverse, like, environment. Right. But again, I've never, ever looked at the industry and thought of the problems and the challenges that, you know, my female friends, my. My people of color friends, like, you know, I've got loads of people that are not like me.

Jim Banks [00:38:37]:
And I don't. I never really thought it was an issue until, I mean, it was always there, but it was just like, I never really thought about it. So now I'm trying to be a lot more thoughtful about it being an issue. I'm trying to do it. I mean, again, I think I know a lot of female SEOs, and they come out almost, like every year, almost by, like, clockwork at the end of the year, there's always a top 25 SEO women. And if you look at that list, you go, well, it's fantastic, they're on the list. But most of the people that I know, they're horrified that this list even exists because they don't want there to be this comparison. There's never a top 25 men in SEO, so why should there be a top 25 women SEOs? Because they could absolutely compete.

Jim Banks [00:39:27]:
They could absolutely compete. Yeah. They could absolutely compete on the same level as all of the SEOs. Regardless of what gender they are, they are the top 25 SEOs and, you know, and will quite happily kick people's butts because they are, like, in that, like I said, in that top 25 on merit, not because they're a woman. I've never been a big fan of the whole top 25. I know they have the kind of PPC hero, top 25, whatever it is. Again, if I ever appear on that list, I've done something wrong. So if you ever see my name on there, I've completely failed in my mission.

Jim Banks [00:40:01]:
My mission is never to be on the receiving end. I always want to be on the giving end, which is the, you know, which is one of the reasons why I do judging for the UK and US and so on, search awards. Right. I love to make sure that there's integrity in the judging process and that people that win deserve to win. Right. And, you know, I think it's. Yeah, it's something that we are a long way from a solution, but I think as an industry, we need to keep trying to chip away at it a bit of a time and just be, be, be conscious of it, be aware of the fact that it exists and try and do something about it. But I do want to get it back on the speaking circuit.

Jim Banks [00:40:36]:
Right. And I'll, you know, you should.

Navah Hopkins [00:40:40]:
We miss you. Before we move on from this topic, though, I do need to give a shout out to Fred and to the optimizer team in general for how amazingly supportive that environment is. I would not have closed down essentially my consulting business for anyone other than Fred and optimizer. And a big reason for that is just how amazingly supportive everyone is. I had actually a really interesting debate with another tool talking about how hard is to hire women in tech roles. And I was like, what are you talking about? Most of our product leads and most of our engineers are women. It's like, well, you guys are big. That was choosing when we were small.

Navah Hopkins [00:41:25]:
So it's not about how hard is it is, are you an environment that supports that sort of culture? And I'm very honored and very proud to be part of optimizer which does.

Jim Banks [00:41:39]:
That's good. And yeah, I mean, like I said, I've been a fan and again, I mean, I think it's not just about what the product is. I think there's more to it that goes beyond that. And again, I think a lot of it is, as you just pointed out, some of those things, but equally the kind of the stuff that Fred does in terms of giving back the PPC, town halls, stuff like that, which again, it's time consuming. You can go, well, what does Fred get out of doing them? He's giving back to the community that's been very good to him. And like me with a podcast, why am I doing it? I want to try and help put people up on a pedestal and help give them a platform to talk about some of the issues and challenges that they're facing so that as an industry we can break them down and make sure that they clears the pathway for kids, grandkids and whatever else comes down the line from this point on. Really.

Navah Hopkins [00:42:33]:
You mentioned judging and it's actually very interesting. I actually like, I used to judge and now I work at optivizer so I don't judge anymore because we enter awards. But it is really interesting seeing, at least from when I would judge awards, how few people actually put effort into something that they're paying 300, 400 pounds to do. It's nuts. So I don't know if you, you all wanted to talk about that, but award season is.

Jim Banks [00:43:07]:
Yeah, I mean, it is a difficult one. I mean, I think there are definitely some companies and agencies that have worked out the formula. Right. Not again, there's no tricks, no hacks. It's a, again, just read what it says and answer what it asks you. That's really, again, don't use times in roman and pink. Yeah. And equally don't use superlatives.

Jim Banks [00:43:30]:
I was going through some stuff recently and everyone's like, the results we got were fantastic and amazing and the best we've ever seen. It's like, well, how about you let me be the judge because, you know, but, but yeah, I mean it's, it's honestly, it's massively time consuming to do the judging, but I absolutely love it. I've done it for quite, quite a lot of time now and again. I just think for me it's, I just want to make sure if somebody is an award winning agency or in house team or whatever it might be, PPC tool, right. That they're worthy of winning it so that's where you need to have the ability to be able to put forward your opinion and if you like, sway the decision towards the people that you think are the kind of best, which is one of the reasons why I love the judging day. When we get together and we talk about the entries and what we liked and what we didn't like, and eventually we arrive on the winners. So a lot of people, they enter things and they're almost like they give them away. They're like confetti thrown around like awards for anything, you know, definitely if people win some of the awards, certainly the ones that I'm involved in, if you win an award, you absolutely deserve to get it because it's not something that is easy to get at all.

Navah Hopkins [00:44:48]:
Oh, thank you very much for your service in judging because I don't know if people realize how many awards typically judges have to read through, but it's a lot. And thank you very much.

Jim Banks [00:45:03]:
And invariably, I was leaving till the very last minute and I'm kind of like, I wish I'd started this sooner, but that's by the by. So, Nava, obviously, I've been really enjoyed the conversation. At some point in time, hopefully in the not too distant future, we'll get the opportunity to reconnect personally so we can make some bad decisions in person rather than like on here. It only remains for me to say that anyone that wants to reach out to Nava, all of the information will be in the show notes, which will be available somewhere on wherever it is you're watching, whether it's on YouTube or Apple, Spotify, wherever it is you grab your podcasts. And if you do know anyone that is looking to get into the industry, then definitely recommend this podcast to them. Because the only way the industry is going to continue to evolve and grow is if we can recruit more good people into the industry. And certainly the guests that I'm trying to bring on are people that I know will help fuel a decent career in this industry moving forward. So thank you so much for being a fantastic guest today.

Navah Hopkins [00:46:13]:
Thank you very much for having me. One little note. You mentioned that there's a lot of events. One bad decision that we didn't talk about is people holding themselves back. If there's award winning, whether it's winning an award, whether it's speaking, whether it's joining a podcast, the worst decision you can make for yourself is not to pitch. So there are some events and there are some opportunities that it's just who knows who? But many of them do have pitches to speak. Please, please, please consider raising your hand getting, getting involved. Follow the women in tech SEO group.

Navah Hopkins [00:46:56]:
Follow the Pacers association for those opportunities. Foxwell founders, if you're curious. I'm always happy to push people in a good direction. There's also a group called Innovation Women. That's whole thing is helping women get speaking spots. They're historically all guys. So sorry, Jim. This is, this is.

Jim Banks [00:47:13]:
No, no, like, honestly, for me, like, and obviously all of those at, what would they be called? All of those groups are. I'll make sure that all of the information about those is available in the show notes that people can just click on the links and go straight to them. Yeah, I mean, I think the, certainly the women in tech SEO is a phenomenal group put together by Areg, and I think she's done a phenomenal job in pulling that group together. I know, again, it's kind of like, it's weird. I support wholeheartedly women in tech SEO. I support whole heart the women at link unite. Right. Again.

Jim Banks [00:47:51]:
Because I just think they're such phenomenal initiatives. I'm not a woman, but I don't see any reason why men can't support and champion the women in the industry that they're involved in. So again, if you're a man, don't go, well, I can't champion them because I'm not a woman. Doesn't matter. You absolutely can champion them because a lot of the women in the industry may not even know their existence. So again, it doesn't necessarily need somebody like yourself, Nava, to kind of point, point out to them. But I appreciate you doing that for sure. Great.

Navah Hopkins [00:48:23]:
Thank you very much.

Jim Banks [00:48:25]:
Okay. Thank you for that. And we'll see you on the next episode of Bad Decisions with Jim Banks.