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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#648: Breaking down silos between paid and organic search with Matt Shenton, Croud
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- [00:00]
Domo Representative
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- [01:03]
Greg Kilstrom
Brand.
- [01:11]
Welcome to season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and Martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, E commerce and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. Now onto the show.
- [02:09]
We are here at ITAL Palm Springs and seeing and hearing the latest and greatest in e commerce and retail. Retailers are constantly shifting budgets between paid search and SEO, but are they missing opportunities by treating them as separate silos? In 2025, with search evolving faster than ever, the real question isn't which channel is better, it's how can they work together for maximum growth? Today I'm joined by Matt Shenton, Biddable Director at Crowd, a digital marketing expert who has helped brands like Amazon Prime Video, Olympus Skillshare and Clear optimize their paid and organic search strategies. With search becoming more Complex in 2025, Matt's here to break down how retailers can balance paid search and SEO to drive real performance growth. Matt, welcome to the show.
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Matt Shenton
Hi Greg, thanks for Having me, yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
Looking forward to talking about this with you. Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at Crowd?
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Matt Shenton
Yeah, sure. So I'm a paid media director at Crowd Marketing Agency based in New York with offices in the uk. I've been with the company about eight years and I would say my specialism is paid search, but cover most paid paid media channels. And yeah, I've been at ETEL for a couple of days, have a lot of great conversations and looking forward to getting stuck into this particular subject, which is top of mind for a lot of retailers.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I know. And I love being able to meet. I do so many like remote recordings here for the show. So it's nice to actually meet in person and interface and as well as hear all the content at the show here. So we're going to talk about a few things, but definitely want to start with the 2024 search landscape. Certainly lots of things changing with AI, with all sorts of things kind of in the mix. But what are some of the major challenges that online retailers faced in 2024 and now in 2025 when trying to balance paid search and SEO? Anything from algorithm updates, paid search costs, all of the above.
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Matt Shenton
Yeah, I mean those two are probably the main ones, but I think firstly, just to acknowledge 2024 incredibly disruptive for search, feels like every year the rate of change is accelerating and it can very quickly feel like you sort of lose control of certain platforms. I think from an SEO perspective, the algorithm changes, zero click searches, AI overviews, disruption from platforms like perplexity, taking market share, those have all been the main challenges. We're hearing a lot of retailers say organic traffic is down year over year. That's a big concern. And then from the paid side, you mentioned it there, but just increased costs, I think that's stemming from those platforms really pushing to bring in better first party data, better conversion data. So you then go after higher value customers. What that means is then there's an increase in CPC because everyone's doing that and so those costs are rising. And so the downside there is that if you're not doing that, then you're just seeing rising costs and flat to decrease in conversions. So I'd say those are the two challenges and I think because of that and those two challenges being quite unique to those two different channels, the two have maybe become more siloed than before because it's just harder to figure out how to bring those two together now because the problems within Each feel quite unique and different. And so we're speaking to a lot of retailers and finding that, yeah, they're kind of struggling to bring the two back together because of those challenges.
- [05:39]
Greg Kilstrom
Well, and I would imagine part of bringing them together is finding the right balance between how much focus, how much budget looks a little different when you talk about organic versus paid. But it's still there's resources to be allocated. So are retailers, are they getting it right? Are they getting the balance wrong? And what are some of the common mistakes that a retailer might make when trying to prioritize or just find that balance?
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Matt Shenton
Yeah, I think it comes down to short term strategies versus long term. Obviously SEO is more of a long term strategy, paid more short term. And I think there's definitely been an over reliance on performance channels and bottom of funnel conversion driving tactics. And that's meant that those longer term SEO strategies have sometimes been neglected. Retailers have not had great content strategies or already focused on their SEO strategy as much. It's been more about the paid side. And what happens there is that they then are too reliant on those bottom of funnel conversion tactics. And over time they see declining organic and then rising paid media costs. And that's what we're seeing for some retailers who've got that balance wrong, which is a tricky situation to be in.
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Greg Kilstrom
Right, right. And so you mentioned the just now the cost is sort of an outcome of that. Are there any other signs or symptoms that a retailer might be over relying on one or the other?
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Matt Shenton
Yeah, I would say flat to declining overall conversion or revenue and then just increasing costs. That is the telltale sign. And that goes back to what I mentioned there about those long term strategies. SEO falling off. What's happened to my SEO traffic over time, brand getting pushed down, those paid ads appearing more above the fold. So yeah, I would say it's really just about declining your flat revenue and increasing cost is the telltale sign.
- [07:33]
Greg Kilstrom
Got it, got it. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about investing in paid search versus SEO. When should a retailer invest more in paid search? Of the two, what kind of products, promotions categories are there? Are there any things where it's just clear they're going to benefit from paid search?
- [07:59]
Matt Shenton
Yeah, I think everyone's pretty aware of the tactics that work best from a conversion driving point of view within Google Ads. So performance max, broad match in many cases, DSA standard shopping for some retailers, I think that's kind of the baseline. Everyone has to do those. You have to feed good conversion data. If you're not doing that, then you're definitely going to get left behind outside of that. It's really about diversifying and this is kind of really the theme that we're trying to get across is diversifying that media mix, whether it's organic or paid, but even within paid diversifying and even within Google Ads diversifying because sure pmax standard shopping, keyword, core keyword search. It's great, good driving conversions. There's other tactics that also do well but just have to be measured on a slightly different, in a slightly different way. Demand gen YouTube diversifying into the tactics that you know, slightly longer term in terms of payback or different measurement frameworks. But you've got to expand into these other tactics because it just doesn't work to just focus on the easy stuff anymore. Just P max alone. You've got to diversify.
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Greg Kilstrom
And what do you think is holding brands back from diversifying? Has it just been made too easy to do certain things or like what are you seeing?
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Matt Shenton
Yeah, I think it does come down to measurement framework. Sometimes it's about marketing philosophy as well, but a lot of it is measurement framework. You know, if you're relying on a last click model then you're going to be prioritizing potentially non incremental or just a very small subset of bottom of funnel conversion driving tactics, getting a good MTA model. And then lots of talk on this yesterday actually at Etail, the sort of progression of measurement framework from MTA to then mmm to incrementality and like you're getting quite advanced there in terms of marketing measurement but that's really how you articulate within your own business, like how to, you know, if you're trying to sell this to leadership, how you then diversify media into areas that are not always great from like a last click attribution point of view.
- [10:05]
Domo Representative
We all know data is valuable. We use it to tell a story, to make informed decisions for our businesses. But turning data into actionable insights can be a challenge. It's time to unlock the true potential of your business data with Domo's AI and Data products platform. DOMO lets you channel AI and data into innovative uses that deliver a measurable impact. Ask your data anything at any time. Anyone on your team can use DOMO to easily prepare, analyze, visualize, automate and distribute data, all amplified by AI. Domo goes beyond productivity. It's designed to transform your processes, helping you make smarter and faster decisions and drive real growth. All powered by Domo's trust, flexibility and years of expertise in data and AI innovation. Data is hard. Domo is easy. Make smarter decisions and propel your business forward with Domo. Learn more today@AI.domo.com that's AI.domo.com Want to learn more and join the discussion About Marketing and AI? Attend the premier conference dedicated to marketing and AI. That's Meacon, the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference. From October 14 through 16 in Cleveland, Ohio. Meikon brings together the brightest minds and leading voices in AI. Don't miss this opportunity to connect with a dynamic community of experts, visionaries and enthusiasts. The Agile brand is proud to be the lead media sponsor of this important event. Register today@marketingai institute.com that's marketing AI institute.com and use the code AGILE150 for $150 off your registration fee. I can't wait to see you there.
- [11:58]
Greg Kilstrom
So you talked a bit about kind of the the short term versus the long term. I guess. You know, how, how should brands be thinking about that? Like are, are they what do you think is causing this focus maybe on short term over. Over long term? Or, or do you see it that way? Is there is sort of is the organic being done or not being done at the expense of more focus on paid search or is it just kind of not an understanding of how the two kind of work together?
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Matt Shenton
I'd say it's probably more the former than the latter. So yeah, coming back to it's just very easy to set these or not very easy, but relatively easy now to set these platforms up to drive conversions and revenue. And so that does take away some of the focus. And there's been a period of time where there's been headroom in those products to continue to grow. But what we're seeing now is that there's just retailers are hitting diminishing returns for those campaign types, those paid media channels more quickly and they may have neglected their SEO and content strategy because sometimes that can get expensive. It's a longer payback. And so I think just the pressure to hit numbers and drive more revenue, some of that focus and budget has probably gone to the shorter term tactics and that's worked for a little bit. But now getting to a stage where that's coming back to bite for your retailers.
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Greg Kilstrom
And so I've seen how, you know, in some cases paid search can inform a longer term organic strategy. What about the reverse though? Can, you know, organic SEO insights inform paid search strategies?
- [13:40]
Matt Shenton
Yes, for sure. And I think this is one of the things that we're talking about more and it's really Interesting because with the way search is changing, you know, becoming more conversational, we're seeing huge increase in like mid to long tail searches. Why that's interesting is because with a good SEO, good content strategy, you know, you're using the sources in that data sources to see those search terms that can then inform content on landing pages. And then if you're hands on keyboard in Google, you'll know that some of these campaign tactics, they use a lot of landing page signals to figure out what to match to. So if you are focusing on getting the right data from your organic, seeing the change in search behavior, creating content around that, putting that on the landing page, that help then improve paid from like a matching perspective. So I think the way that's all developing and evolving is these two things, paid and organic, are going to come back together again because they are very closely linked. And just lastly on the paid side again, if your hands on keyboard, you know that, you know we're losing control to, or potentially eventually losing control to, you know, select individual keywords. So it is going to become more about what signals the system can use and that's probably going to be landing pages which comes back to content, you know, technical SEO. So yeah, I think over the next 12 months those channels are going to be forced together, which is really interesting.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. Well, and to talk maybe a little bit about the signals part, what about the reporting aspect of this and how reporting tools are playing into both paid and organic. So how are you seeing AI powered reporting tools whether it's reducing manual effort or just improving some of the reporting and insights?
- [15:27]
Matt Shenton
Yeah, at Crowd, we've developed a number of tools to help advertisers with this. So we have a product called Unity which brings together paid and organic data and just creates that holistic view at a keyword level. And that's great because it means that we can make strategic decisions based on what's costing a lot of money in paid. We're not ranking very well for organic, but has high commercial value. Let's change our content strategy based on that and vice versa. If we're ranking really well in organic, do we need to be there and paid particularly for brand? So having all that data together, it's really, really useful to make those decisions. We then also have a couple of tools that will pick out data within search term data. So we have tools that find patterns in keyword data within Google to then figure out what's the kind of the way people are searching for this product or service. How is that changing over time? What are the keywords and phrases? How do we then use that in our content strategy? How do we use that on landing pages, ad copy? So we have a number of tools that do that, but it's really about a bringing that data together for the two to understand where's one doing well versus the other. To then figure out trade offs and cannibalization and then the other is surfacing those deeper level search term insights to use in content and out.
- [16:39]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, I mean that seems valuable because I know there's tools that do organic and you can log into Google or whatever and see but having those in one place, I mean it's one of those things that it sounds obvious when you say it, but it's like that's great to hear that that's possible because yeah, based on what you're saying, there's a nice complementary relationship here. Even though I know a lot of companies, they have these siloed teams that are. One team is solely focused on organic versus paid but being able to tie those together, I would imagine this is also something that you know things as, and you've mentioned sort of some of the changes with, I mean anything from like Google's the search generative experience to Perplexity to you know, all the AI tools are doing search in some way. How are these things, you know, how do you see this changing search even this year?
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Matt Shenton
Yeah, it's a great question. I think rather boringly it does come back to fundamentals or just like foundational things that we've been talking about for a long time. Just good SEO, good technical SEO, good content. It's incredibly easy now to create massive content, but it's usually pretty poor. And I think the algorithms are generally able to suss out what is written by an AI. So the importance of human created, sincere targeted content is really important. I think if you're not focusing on that in some way, then that's going to impact organic campaigns and how that then impacts things like new search platforms like Perplexity, which are using lots of different sources. But it's all content, it's all written content. It's not all written. It's also image and video which we've not touched on but is also super important. I think if you're not focusing on that, it's going to get pretty tricky.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah, definitely. As we're wrapping up here, you know, if, if there's one more, you know, one more either a takeaway or maybe, maybe it's talking about video. But you know, what would you recommend retailers be paying attention to.
- [18:54]
Matt Shenton
I just really pay attention to the platforms and channels you're relying on too heavily. Like diversifying is going to be key. You know, a bit of a boring answer, but I think we have seen too many people focus on a small number of platforms and you're heavily reliant on those platforms. If there's a change, it can really hurt your business. So diversifying is going to be super important and it's going to get interesting. You know, platforms like Perplexity, I think I saw they announced they're creating their own browser, Comet, which is coming soon. So that may lead to more market share, be a take away from Google. So actually we're going to have more opportunities to diversify within search, which is great. But it's about staying on top of those developments, understanding how they work from a ranking point of view. And if you can do that in house, great. But otherwise just, you know, get a good agency like Crowd to help you do that, to stay on top of it. Because that's, that's all I do. I just, I stay on top of this. It's all I care about. And I think LinkedIn's a great source for that.
- [19:55]
Greg Kilstrom
Wonderful. Well, Matt, thanks again for joining. One last question for you before we wrap up. I like to ask this to everybody. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
- [20:06]
Matt Shenton
Yeah, I guess I kind of alluded to it a little bit just then. LinkedIn's a great source. There's so many great creators on there that are really in the detail, myself included, I think also just staying curious, you know, I think it can be, it can be very easy to feel like there's a lot of new products coming around and it can feel like you have to keep an eye on everything. So it can be difficult to know what to focus on. But I think if you kind of a pretty methodical approach to like, you know, what is really taking market share. How is search behavior changing? Yeah, I think speaking with people in the industry is how I do that most and LinkedIn is a great source for that.
- [20:42]
Greg Kilstrom
Wonderful. Well, again I'd like to thank Matt Shenton, biddable director at Crowd, for joining the show. You can learn more about Matt and Crowd by following the links in the show notes.
- [20:54]
Thanks again for listening to the Agile brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagilebrand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me if you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.gregkilstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
- [21:48]
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