Inside Marketing with MarketSurge

Speaker 2: Welcome to Inside
Marketing With Market Surge.

Your front row seat to the
boldest ideas and smartest

strategies in the marketing game.

Your host is Reed Hansen, chief
Growth Officer at Market Surge.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hello,
and welcome to another episode of

Inside Marketing with Market Surge.

Today's guest is at the intersection
of AI and marketing performance.

David is a growth strategist
and innovator@growas.ai,

a company using artificial intelligence
to take the guesswork out of ad

spend and campaign performance with
a background in scaling brands.

Through data-driven insights, David
helps businesses unlock more ROI

from their marketing by combining
AI powered analytics, predictive

modeling, and smart automation.

At Grow as.ai,

he's leading the charge in transforming
how companies run ads, not just managing

campaigns, but making every dollar
accountable and every insight actionable.

On this episode, we'll dive into the
future of AI and marketing, why so many

companies are leaving money on the table
with their ad spend, and how grow as.ai

is helping founders and marketers finally
get control over their growth engine.

David, welcome to the episode.

groas: Thanks.

it's a pleasure to be here.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: And, uh,
you know, we've been chatting while

I've, read up a little bit about Grow
Has, but I'd love to hear it from you.

What problem does your platform solve
and who are the companies or individuals

that could really benefit from it?

groas: Yeah.

Uh, it's a fair question.

I mean, I think really it
started off as how can we, um.

Google Ads better.

Like that was the first core
feature that we were solving for.

Uh, it's since evolved
into a lot more than that.

I think now what grass is, it's
essentially, you can think of it as.

An autonomous team of AI agents
working on your marketing 24 7.

that's probably where we're at
now and definitely where we're

headed more and more, in terms
of who grass is best suited to.

Um, initially, again, when we
first started building this, we

thought, oh look, maybe e-comm.

'cause that was my background, I
thought mostly e-comm customers.

Now it's literally, Been working for
pretty much, uh, all sorts of business

model, all sorts of niches, um, both
at the smaller end and the bigger end.

Um, so I wanna say anyone running Google
Ads is the short answer to your question.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Wow.

Well, so, so tell me to the degree to
which it automates, like is it something

where, um, I'm totally hands off on my
ads or, um, you know, what kinds of inputs

does it require from, from the client?

groas: Question.

So, I mean, I would actually
think of grass as less of

an actual automation tool.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

groas: argue some of the things
we're doing is automation.

But for example, the first thing that
we ever built was, this idea of having.

Dynamic landing page copy matches the
original search intent of the user, right?

That I wouldn't call that
necessarily an automation.

Now there's stuff we do around, for
example, negative keywords where we

automatically block negative keywords that
aren't related to your brand, et cetera.

That's an automation.

That's something where we're
saving people a lot of hours a day.

in terms of actually going on the
search term report and blocking

things, that may not be relevant.

but I would really like to think
of it as more something where we're

trying to take over the entire.

Campaigns and just make
them perform better.

So we figure out what's not working
well and how we can optimize it.

now we have some set principles
in general that we follow.

but each campaign, each account
will have different priorities.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

fantastic.

So, you know, just as a, client
of Google Ads, you know, meta

ads, just as a side note, but, um,
I've noticed that the cost per.

Conversion and cost per action has gone
up drastically in the last few years.

do you feel like that you've
seen examples of where grass has

really helped stabilize or reduce

That increase?

groas: Sure.

if we didn't, then we wouldn't
have a business, because we're

fully bootstrapped, right?

So we live and die by our customers,
success and them actually staying with us.

Yeah, I mean, the short answer is
yes, It's a trend in all advertising.

the CPCs, the cost per
conversions keep going up.

I think, my take on this having been
involved in advertising a while that the

best thing you can do is just to try get
back as much control as you can in your

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

groas: as possible.

Um, if you just defer all that control
to the googles, to the methods,

whatever, that's when you can start to
see a lot of things possibly go wrong.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Okay.

That's fair.

do you, so you've worked
with all kinds of clients.

Do you think that just being
broad is the best, approach?

Or, you know, like are there
certain businesses that your

product works better for?

groas: So there's definitely the
startup wisdom to, when you're first

starting out, really niche down on that

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

groas: profile.

And we did that.

So initially it was like, okay,
we're gonna talk e-comm companies.

And actually in healthcare,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

groas: like the first thing I'm
gonna really niche down on this.

And that's great.

But what I ended up seeing is that
people were coming to us from a

whole host of different ends, right?

we have people with really, really
big budgets with grass selling

dumpsters, doing dumpster rentals.

doing lead gen for all these like, super
niche things like dating coaches, like

literally anything you can imagine,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

groas: now become super niche.

Um, but yeah, the short answer is
when I first started this out, I

definitely tried to be like, okay,
we're gonna focus on e-comm 'cause

we can solve these problems for them.

Um,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

groas: been a case of we're just trying
to help as many people as possible.

Now the second question is in
terms of size of business that,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

groas: So when we first started off.

grass is still, I think, super new, still
in infancy in terms of as a company,

as a product, et cetera, et cetera.

But when we first started off, there
wasn't a signup link on the website.

You couldn't sign up.

It was all manual
onboarding, and we were being

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: no.

groas: careful with who we worked
with and who we led onto grass, right?

Um, so at the start, when we were first
building the product, I, and it was me,

like working hand in hand with some, some
really big Google ads, spenders, people

who really know what they're doing, um,
to sort of build out the product and,

and get feedback, et cetera, et cetera.

that we have this self-serve model,
uh, the, spend has gone down,

but we have a lot more customers.

So I'm a lot less connected to
what's happening day to day.

Um, but what I'm seeing generally,
right, 'cause self-serve has only been

live now for like six, seven weeks.

What I'm seeing from all the
signups that we're getting is

generally at smaller businesses.

Um, who are trying to manage ads in
house but don't really necessarily

know too much what they're doing.

They have like a decent
spend, maybe 10, 20 k.

They don't wanna hire an agency
'cause it's too expensive.

So they come to grow us to,
to try and get better results.

Um, we also have, you know, quite a
few really big spenders in the six,

seven figure a month, uh, bracket.

That's what we started off with
and hopefully what we'll continue

to do, uh, more and more of.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: So, you
know, obviously you, uh, spend on

ads for grass and, um, you know, I'm
sure you've been using your own tool.

Um, have you found any particularly
interesting insights about your own ads?

Or you know, like the best practices there

groas: know, we actually
haven't run any, paid

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: okay.

groas: nothing.

So

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Interesting.

groas: of our signups, I'll tell
you where they're coming from.

Two things.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

groas: obviously customers
telling other customers.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

groas: way you know

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

groas: right when that's happening.

it's actually LLMs.

seem to really like grass.

So chat g bt

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Interesting.

groas: perplexity, and that's
a great place to be in, right?

Um, also Google search as well.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

groas: But pretty much all of our
signups since we opened up the self

surf model like six, seven weeks ago.

are coming from LLMs, just saying, Hey,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Huh.

groas: Alicia, check out grass.

Um, so that's not coincidence
that's because of a lot of

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Interesting.

groas: we've been doing behind the scenes.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Uhhuh.

groas: that's obviously great.

Now the short answer is though,
we definitely will use grow for

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

groas: but

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Sure.

groas: I have a meaningful, um, actual
ad budget to spend on that, IE minimum

I think six figures a month to do it

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

groas: Um, we're fully bootstrapped,
so right now all of the cash is going

into hiring more engineers to make
the product as good as possible.

Um, but I do hope probably nearer towards
the end of the year, we can get to the

point where I can start going ham on.

Thats.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Fantastic.

Wow.

well that's, really interesting now, but
you do work with smaller companies that

are spending like in the five figures on
ads do you find that there are, big shifts

when they start using grass and are they
seeing a percentage change in their costs?

typically, or is that something they could

groas: Yeah.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge:
envision or aspire to?

groas: definitely.

Um, I mean, that's exactly what happens.

and that's why people typically stick on,
especially At the smaller end when Google

Ads is a bit more of a tricky platform,
I think, than some of the others.

A lot of people don't even know
what a negative keyword is when

they're at the smaller end.

So when grow is automatically
just pushing hundreds of things to

connect to the negative keyword list
for you based on what understands

about your brand, your offer, your
campaign, what's performing for it,

et cetera, et cetera, the suggestions
it's doing, what it's doing is.

Typically almost always spot on.

Then automatically you see a massive
reduction in wasted ad spend, right?

So that's like, I think a win
for a lot of people at the,

say sub five KA month spend.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

groas: and then there's the stuff
that we do with the landing pastry.

Like there's a lot of stuff
that we're doing, but I think

the short answer is yes.

Typically people are able to
see a pretty quick uplift.

I think one to two weeks is
enough to see the uplift.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Fantastic.

Well, that's, I mean, I think that's,
that's really what, uh, small business

needs is, you know, quick wins.

You know, they, they don't have
huge budgets and, and, uh, you know,

they need to see an impact quickly.

So that's, that's fantastic.

So maybe just like to zoom out a
little bit, um, just overall on ad

spend, do you see, uh, common mistakes
that small, medium sized businesses

are making with their ad spend?

Typically?

Like, is there, you know, you, you're
very experienced in this space.

Is there like low hanging fruit that you
typically catch right outta the gates?

groas: Yeah.

Okay.

Well, where do I start?

Um, okay.

I'll just say what comes to mind,
there'll be more things that I can

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah,

groas: out.

But I think the, there's the

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: that's great.

groas: things that I've just seen.

I'm like, okay, well, first thing,
if you're, working with a smaller

budget, don't use branded keywords.

if you're a small brand that no

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

groas: about, don't bid on your, it's
not like if you're a small budget, I

would probably say against that, no.

Point two, your keyword match types.

Now, I'm not here to,
you know, speak badly on.

match does get a lot of hate.

Sometimes it can actually work
super well in a lot of instances.

Um, but people need to be a lot
more careful, I think, how they're

selecting their, their keywords and
then the keyword match types, right?

Don't just go for something, don't come
up with a broad term stick it on broad.

that's just gonna make things even worse.

So I think

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

groas: keyword selection
and keyword match types.

And then there's other things, right?

Like making sure you have a decent list of
negative keywords to, not waste budget on.

there's just so many things.

Right?

And another thing I wanna emphasize
with ads, which I think a lot of people,

again, the small, which I'm seeing now,
'cause we're working with all these

smaller businesses now, it's, they
think it's like the solution, right?

Oh, I'm not getting
sales ads when we sell.

even if your ads are perfect and we
do everything correctly, if your offer

is bad, there's just nothing that
grow as or Google Ads can do for you.

Right?

Uh.

So you need to get the basics down first
of having a good offer in the first place.

IE is your pricing correct?

Do you have enough social proof?

Is your website easy to read?

Is it good on mobile?

these basic things need to always
get sorted out first before we

can start to be like, all right,
we need to do more Google ads.

Um, so I think those are the main things.

It's, keywords, et cetera, et cetera,
but also making sure that at a base

level your offer is ready to scale.

and a lot of times it's just not.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

No, that's really helpful.

do you find that, brands are using, so the
people that you're interacting with, the

clients that come to you or that you've
consulted with, how well-versed are they

on AI typically when they're coming to you
and how much of an education gap is there.

We have to inform them how this works,
what outputs to, really embrace and what

others to take with a grain of salt.

groas: Great question.

Uh, it's a massively,
it's a very big scale.

Um, some people really know about it
and like really in the mix and use

LLMs daily for their own tasks already.

And therefore they're like,
okay, grass, this sounds good.

I'm ready, acquainted.

Great.

And then some people, uh, really not, not
necessarily super up to speed with it.

Um, in terms of education, I
don't think I have to do too

much education on that side.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

groas: We try and make it as
easy to understand as possible.

And we are still working
on that, by the way.

that's a big shift we've had to do.

'cause before we were working with big
spenders who knew Google ads really

well, Now we have people who maybe
don't know Google Ads really well in the

first place, then they come to grow us.

So maybe that's another level of
complexity they have to get familiar with.

so we as a business have
to work incredibly hard.

Now we've made this product worldwide.

To make sure that there's an easy learning
curve, for people, but I think generally

on the topic of ai, necessarily, I'm not
here talking about LLMs to them all day.

It's more like, what's going
on in your Google Ads account?

how can you optimize it?

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

No, That's fair.

Um, do you think that your, so the ai,
the LLMs, they take big leaps forward,

you know, they have frequent releases
and they are getting more and more

powerful, more reliable, uh, you know,
and I assume with that, you know, comes

a lot more opportunity for your tool.

Uh, you know, so as those,
um, the LLMs that, that, uh.

Support your tool, uh,
grow, you grow with them.

Do you, do you see any interesting
innovations in the future that you, um,

would like to implement in your tool
that, that, you know, if you, if the AI

were, uh, more capable or more powerful,
um, like what's next for, for gross?

groas: One thing that lm, you're
right, LM is gonna continue to get

better, cheaper, et cetera, et cetera.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

groas: it's gonna be good for
a lot of things, no doubt.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

groas: one thing they don't do well
in my opinion, is write good copy.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

groas: Now even humans
struggle to write good copy.

Most people suck at writing copy.

It's really hard.

It's not easy.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

groas: So LMS are also gonna struggle
and I think they'll, I dunno if or when

they'll get to the point where I think
they're writing a really good copy.

We have our own methods for doing that.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

groas: a simple API call to, uh, whatever
it's chat GPT, and try doing that.

Uh, you'll see the results you
get, they won't be as good.

Um, so that's on the copy side.

We have our own methods.

We've, we've trained our own models
for that, where I think that there

are opportunities and what will come
to the product, I think quite soon.

Which we're not doing yet is stuff
around image and video generation,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Okay.

groas: all the dynamic, uh,
landing page stuff for the ad

assets, et cetera, et cetera.

not doing that yet.

Um, we've held off on that for
a little bit, but I think that,

that could easily come next.

Um, and could, yeah, I dunno if we would.

Take the same route as
we did for text based.

I tried to go from scratch because
that, that, that's a big pain.

Um, but TBD we'll have to see.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Well, I'm looking forward to it now as a
business owner, what have you found as.

Most effective ways to
get, product direction?

have you been interviewing, former clients
or, you know, obviously you have a lot

of, experience and ideas in your head.

where else have you been polling?

where else have you, been getting ideas?

groas: So.

When we first started building
grass, it came all from, here.

As in, I had spent a

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Sure.

groas: ads over the years,
so I knew the platform

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

groas: and it was like I was

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

groas: where I'm like, okay, this here
would work for me and what I'm, you know,

what I'm trying to accomplish right now.

Um, so just for context, we started
building grass probably back end

of last year, started this year,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

groas: between.

and then first starting letting
people onto the platform.

I think mid-March, right?

We set

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

groas: crappy little
website, a waiting list.

People would submit their email and
if they looked interesting to work

with, then we would do a manual
onboarding, et cetera, et cetera.

Right now, it was really with those
customers there, let's just say like

a small group of 10 people with very
high spend who knew what they were

doing in that March to April period,
maybe earlier, maybe, early March.

That's where I think a lot of product
took its shape because I was there 24 7,

but I had all these people on WhatsApp.

We were talking 24 7,
like, what's missing now?

What do you need?

Oh, this is breaking, very
sorry, et cetera, et cetera.

and that's ultimately, I think
that really intense period where

I was there on that 24 7, shaped
the product to where it is now.

So now when I take product decisions, of
course there's still stuff coming in from

the self serve users, it's amazing how.

there's a lot less comments now
with so many more users than

there was before, which kind of
makes sense intuitively, right.

But, um, I think that period
was, was extremely useful.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge:
Yeah, that is interesting.

So currently you're
doing Google, ads, data.

Um, do you, you know, I know
people that are in the ad

space, you know, they dabble in.

I mean, obviously Meta is a
huge player, but they dabble in

some of these other platforms.

do you have any predictions about what's
the next big thing or, um, you know, what

might be the main player in a few years?

groas: Good question.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge:
I mean, are we gonna

groas: Where ad spend is
gonna go, which of the

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, do you think we'll
see ads on chat, GBT?

Is that gonna be a big player?

groas: A hundred percent

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: yeah.

groas: Yes.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

groas: is where they're going.

That's why their valuations
are worth that much.

it's because that's ultimately
their, their business model.

that's what it's going to be.

'cause it's probably the best
business model ever invented, right.

Um, that these guys have.

So yeah.

I think chat, GPT, all these
players will start opening up ads.

and Google's gonna have to adapt, uh,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

groas: Google search is gonna change.

That means, by the way, our
business is gonna change.

So we're gonna have to figure
out how to adapt to that.

But Google search is gonna change,
um, to, I think an LLM type of,

like, there's no doubt about that.

And that's gonna change like the
ads ecosystem as a whole, because.

Google was built on keyword bidding.

people are just searching
for keywords, et cetera.

Now with these LMS people are
coming up with long queries.

Where is the best restaurant near me
that serves Chinese food between eight

and nine, right, you get the idea.

So,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

groas: that's gonna also
change advertising as a whole.

It's gonna change.

Like we, we are gonna have to adapt
as well, grow us as a company to that.

but yeah, I think that's the
biggest thing we'll see is these

LMS open up, uh, ad platforms.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Well, that makes sense.

Um, well, David, I, I'm
excited for what's next.

you know, I think you've got
a great product in your, uh,

sounds like you're growing like
gangbusters, so that's fantastic.

Um, where if people would like
to work with you, people that are

spending money on ads, where's
the best place to find you?

groas: Sure.

Uh, so our website is
Grow Do ai, GR oass.ai.

Um, you can sign up directly, get one
of plans and just get going immediately.

Or if you're a bigger spender, we
can do a demo, and walk you through.

Um, otherwise email, contact the gross ai.

my email is DP across ai.

yeah, those are the best places.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Fantastic.

Well, it's always nice to stop to talk
with a real expert, real entrepreneur

that's building a really valuable tool.

So, um, like I said, I look forward
to hearing more and, uh, good

luck on the continuing journey.

groas: Appreciate

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