Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

The ultimate guide to performance marketing | Timothy Davis (Shopify)

July 28, 2024

AI Summary

5 min read

Performance marketing leader Timothy Davis, who runs paid growth at Shopify and has consulted for companies like Pinterest and LinkedIn, shares tactics for starting, scaling, and optimizing paid channels like Google, Meta, and YouTube.

Identifying channels and running signs-of-life tests

Examine analytics to find where users already arrive organically, then amplify those with paid—such as scaling Meta or TikTok if organic traffic shows there. Run small-budget "signs of life" tests using 1% lookalikes from existing customers (increment to higher percentages if budget allows), prioritizing tight targeting over broad reach. Check click-through rate for engagement signals; if impressions hit the right audience but CTR lags, test creatives via A/B or focus groups. Platforms differ in user mindset—adapt content accordingly—and accept early failures as learning, since each has unique behaviors.

Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.

Read Full Summary →

Free • No credit card required

Open in App

What you'll learn

1 `* (02:04) **Performance Marketing Basics**`
2 `* (06:32) **Paid for Every Company? Platform Priorities**`
3 `* (11:38) **Signs of Life Tests: How to Run**`
4 `* (28:08) **When to Start/Scale Paid (Pre-PMF?)**`
5 `* (33:31) **Agency Pitfalls & Transition to In-House**`
6 `* (48:01) **Key Metrics, Reports & Benchmarks**`
7 `* (62:35) **Attribution & Incrementality Tests**`

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Timothy Davis has led performance marketing for all of Shopify for the past 2.5 years, and as a consultant has helped companies like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Redfin, and Eventbrite kickstart and scale their performance marketing teams. In every one of those cases, he got them so performant at paid growth that they significantly scale spend and investment in these channels. In our conversation, we cover:

• When and how to start investing in performance marketing

• Common mistakes companies make with paid ads

• How to build and structure a performance marketing team

• How to get your creatives performing better

• Strategies for optimizing workflows and team efficiency

• How AI will change performance marketing

• Much more

—

Brought to you by:

• BuildBetter—AI for product teams

• OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster

• Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments

—

Find the transcript and references at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/performance-marketing-timothy-davis

—

Where to find Timothy Davis:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothypatrickdavis/

—

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Timothy’s background

(02:31) Understanding performance marketing

(06:31) The importance of paid search

(08:39) Identifying growth potential

(09:54) Case studies: Hairstory and Ipsy

(12:22) Experimenting with new platforms

(18:57) Choosing the right platforms

(20:23) LinkedIn for B2B marketing

(27:56) When to start investing in paid growth

(33:33) Common mistakes in performance marketing

(37:41) Working with agencies and consultants

(40:36) Hiring for performance marketing

(47:33) Metrics that matter

(54:43) Competitor analysis and CPC insights

(56:15) Custom reports and data visualization

(56:38) Understanding impression and click share

(59:10) True competition metrics

(01:02:14) Attribution and incrementality

(01:08:52) Building a performance marketing team

(01:10:53) Creative and ad copy