← The Paid Search Podcast | A Weekly Podcast About Google Ads and Online Marketing
The Paid Search Podcast | A Weekly Podcast About Google Ads and Online Marketing
Answering 5 Questions from Listeners (Episode 514)
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Foreign. Hello and welcome to the paid Search podcast. My name is Chris and today I'm going to answer five questions from listeners who emailed me and I thought were great questions and going to talk about those on the podcast today. If you'd like to reach out to me to get a question answered about your Google Ads, you can do so paid searchpodcastmail.com to send in your questions and we're going to jump into the first question right now from Andrew. So Andrew actually wrote in two questions, still counting this as one, but I'm going to answer each one separately. So Andrew says hi Chris, I would like to submit two questions. The first is short Is conversion data stored at the account level or the campaign level? I have asked this before and never got a straight answer from anyone. So will a brand new campaign already have conversion data if the data is at the account level? Okay, so this is a tricky question. I can tell you why you haven't gotten a straight answer is because you, your question is asking for A or B and it's not actually A or B, but I'll give you a straight answer. The conversion data is stored at the account level. That's not actually how it's attached to the account, but it's stored at the account level. What I mean is you can't take conversion data and move it to a different account. It's always stored and stayed with that account. There is a certain Google Click ID number that is associated with a conversion. That's technically where conversion data is attached and it's attached to specific clicks to certain keywords. That is actually how the conversion is attached to the campaign. To answer your question, because it sounds like what you're asking, this is to, to try and get an answer about new campaigns. The answer is new campaigns will not do not recognize previous conversion data. You can't just assume that a campaign understands what you're looking for because another campaign is doing really well. Let me explain it this way. Let's say you have one campaign that has gotten 1,000 conversions over a certain period of time and you set up a brand new campaign with a bunch of really bad or broad or completely different keywords. And you assume that you're going to get conversions because the other campaign has gotten tons of successful conversions. So this one is going to have that same conversion data which is attached to the campaign level. That is not true. That is not going to happen. So just because conversions are at the account level does not mean that a new campaign will will be just as successful as Another campaign, it is still a separate entity. No matter what type of success you have had with a Google Ads campaign, bad targeting, bad ad copy, bad decisions in your Google Ads campaigns, search, display, whatever, can always fail. Just because you've gotten conversions even in the same campaign, you can still ruin it. You can still have bad outcomes. Okay, so I'm gonna get to the second question. Before I do, I want to remind you this podcast is brought to you by Optio. They have produced a brand new software that if you have not tried this software, there's a reason. They are my favorite Google Ads optimization software out there. I've talked about them for years and they're offering my listeners an exclusive offer to try their brand new tool. With AI integration, multi channel tracking, you can chat and work with your data, you can analyze your data, you can get answers quick and understand why things are happening the way they are and how can, how you can improve them. All of this in this brand new tool. You get an exclusive access to this tool for 28 days for free. To try it before anyone else. You can do that@optio.com PSP that's O-P-T-E-O.com PSP and you'll try it. I'm certain that you'll like it. It's a great software. Try it@optio.com PSP okay, onto Andrew's second question. He says second question has to do with manual CPC. If I choose manual CPC as my bid strategy and my bid is $15 for a high value keyword, for example, if my competitor chooses a maximized conversion bid strategy which will bid higher than me for high value clicks and leads, wouldn't I lose every single auction due to the fact that max conversions will always raise someone's bid to win the auction, wouldn't their bid always be a little higher than mine? Because that is what their bid strategy is supposed to do as a maximized conversion bid strategy. I love this question because I think it gets to the heart of what a lot of people assume Maximize Conversions does. And it's such a testament to the name of a system. I mean, your government knows this, Google knows this. Anyone who wants to convince you of something knows the power of naming something. And if they name it something, then you're going to assume that's what that thing does and you're not going to ask questions, you know, well, that's the name of it. It maximizes conversions, right? So it's, it's going to get me more conversions. It's going to bid the highest, it's going to win auctions for the clicks that are going to get me conversions. Let me shine some light on this. Ignore the fact that the name of the bidding strategy is Maximize Conversions. Maximized conversions does not always outbid other bidding strategies. In fact, the opposite is true in most cases. And I'll explain that in a moment. But I want to be clear. Maximize conversions is a guessing game. It's an algorithm. It's a system of bidding that assumes based on certain data, it has certain patterns that it recognizes to say I think this click will get a conversion. I can tell you many, many times I've looked at accounts that are running Maximize conversions and there have been many clicks that are over a hundred dollars, over $200 and they are not getting conversions. Guess what? That wasn't a converting click. There might have been clicks that were only $5 those got conversions. Some were 150, $175 click, they didn't get conversions. It is a guessing game for the algorithm as much as it is for the human who's running manual bids. Okay, so here's the truth. Typically maximize conversions bids around a 30% lost is rank ratio. So it's going to bid aggressively, but it's not going to bid to the point that it always wins the auction. That is actually an incredibly irresponsible way to bid. I mean, even the algorithm knows that Google wouldn't build a system that just wins every single bid out there. Even if 100% of the bids are highly likely to convert, it's not going to bid like that. It's going to take its chances on ones that it thinks is going to convert, but it will lose many, many, many auctions. Now here's the truth, Andrew. The opposite is actually true of what you said. Manual bids is the only bidding strategy that I can set up that I can guarantee my client that I will win every single auction and get them in first position. No question. There is no bidding strategy that can do that except for manual bids. Only manual bids can accurately push specific keywords to the top of Google and show every single time in first paid position, period. Nothing else can do that. Maximize conversions won't do that. Target CPA won't do that. Maximize clicks certainly won't do it. Target impression share won't do it. You can try and push it to do that. It won't do it. There's still a small percentage that it will miss. Manual bids have a greater chance of outbidding Maximize conversions if you want them to. If you want to outbid your competitors and you've isolated specific keywords and you say this keyword is critically important. If someone needs, you know, let's say a storm, big, huge storm came through and you are a roofer and you need to make sure when people are saying, you know, roof repair near me, roof roofers that repair roofs or you know, post storm roof damage repair, something like that. And you want, and you know specifically the exact searches you want to show up for in this for a certain area and you want to push like crazy for the next two weeks to try and make sure you show up for that stuff. Do not run that as maximize conversions because this is a brand new campaign. As I talked about in Andrew's first question, it's a brand new campaign. It may not know what conversions are going to convert. Even if it's an old campaign that has conversions. This is a new test and you just want and your main goal is to show up to outbid, to outperform the other searches. You need manual bids. There are times when manual bids are the only thing that can get it done. Maximize conversions just kind of gets it done. But in no way is it a winner in all cases. In no way does it outbid everything. In no way is it superior in any facet. Let me, let me say that again because I feel like a few people let that roll by and they didn't hear it. I am telling you. And by the way, email me you think I'm wrong. I never get these emails. Nobody argues with me, but please argue with me. I've talked to people around the world. Tell me if you think I'm wrong. Tell me where maximized conversions can outperform manual bids. Just head to head. I mean it does not happen now. There are times when maximized conversions over time can learn and get certain strategy. Yes, I'll grant you the fact that maximize conversions target CPA can outperform over a period of time. Give it weeks, months, years. Yes, it might have an advantage and it often does. But head to head starting brand new campaigns. No way. Quality of leads, consistency of leads, consistency of traffic. Manual bids wins every time. All right, so have an email here from uk. Elias writes in and says. This is Elias hailing from London, England. I really enjoy these last few episodes and huge congratulations on getting past 510 episodes. Thank you. I hope everything, I hope everyone is. There we go. I hope everyone is given their five star review. Thank you for that reminder. Yes, if you're listening and enjoying these and you find yourself coming back to these episodes, please leave a review. I don't mention that very often, but just a quick little five star there is helpful. Whatever platform you are listening or watching on is very helpful for me. All right, so the main question is, when should I pause a campaign if I'm not getting conversions? And part two of the question is, what actually happens if I pause a campaign? Okay, so his question continues on, but I'm not going to read all the details. I have read the full question and I have an answer for you. So here's the answer. For anyone who is running a campaign and starts to see a drop off in conversions, starts to see a complete stop in conversions. Pausing that campaign is the last step that you should do. Now, there are other steps, but let me qualify that with this. Sometimes you're just not going to get conversions anymore. You know, maybe you're selling Christmas decorations and now it's January, you're probably not going to sell anymore. And at some point there are some instances when, okay, you just need to pause it. It's over, the season's over. But I'm not referring to seasons. I'm referring to just a drop in conversions. You know, should I just pause it? Should I just end it? Well, my answer is no, you should not pause it until you've done other things. I think there are multiple other things that you can do before you just call it quits on that campaign. Number one, lowering bids. That's probably the first thing that I do, lowering bids. Before I ever lower the budget, I just bring down the bids, you know, that slows everything down. If I bring down the bids 50%, I have now slowed the spend at which I'm going to consistently get those clicks and spend that budget by 50%. So every single click is going to cost me roughly half as much. Now, you know, for those of you running maximize conversions, good luck. You can't do that. So you're out manual. Maximize clicks, target cpa, you can kind of do those things in some. Definitely for manual, but however you accomplish it, slow down the budget. Slow. Sorry. Slow down the bids. Slow down the bids. Bid less. Then you could possibly lower budget if you want. But there's other things that you can try before you outright pause it. If you can't necessarily lower the bids, if that's not something that you have the ability to do because of your bidding strategy or something else, you could just reduce the number of keywords or change the match type of the keywords. Pause some of the broader, wider, more Expensive keywords and go after some really selective exact match keywords perhaps, or change things up and go after some more broader, cheaper terms that are kind of higher funnel, maybe, whether you go high funnel, low funnel, change something, change the flow of the campaign. Don't just keep doing the same thing. Any campaign that's facing failure, the last thing you want to do is just keep doing the same thing or just bid higher or just, you know, just stop it. I think restricting the ad schedule, shrinking the geographic targeting might be an option. You know, of course, lowering bids, changing ad copy. You know, there's other things you can do. But I think first, slowing down the bids, reducing the budget is probably a good place to start. And there's other ways you can compensate to do that. And then last, if nothing's working, then finally pausing the campaign might be something you need to do. If it's the end of a season and you know that, okay, it's over, or perhaps, you know, you've, you've spun up another campaign idea and that one's taking off and this one's no longer working like it used to. Sure, there's always the end of a campaign that can be reached. I do think that those happen. I don't think that a campaign is always an indefinitely running system. There are, there is an evolution to traffic that happens over time. Great, great. But my main point is when something stops working, the last thing you want to do is just kill it. Because let's talk about why that's a bad thing. The reason that's a bad thing is because what comes after, if you just stop the campaign, what are you about to do? What's your next step? Right. To build something new. Right. You're about to start over. I mean, unless your whole business is done right, you're going to start a new campaign. You're going to say, I'm going to pause that one and start a brand new one. Well, maybe three, four weeks later, maybe three, four months later, you realize, well, this one isn't working either. Maybe I'll turn on the old one. Right now you're flip flopping. Maybe it would have worked out if you would have kept the old one running and tested some new stuff while you were doing the old one. Maybe it was just a slow time for the old one. Who knows? But unless you're just stopping Google Ads entirely, don't stop your campaign. Build something new while you're slowing down the other one. I never recommend pausing because you never know what's right around the corner. You never know about one little change, one little adjustment that could spark something new. All right, next question comes from Siri. She says, what are your thoughts on the following? I've been reluctant to switch to AI Max, but with AI Overviews and AI Mode taking up more space in Google, I think ads in AI Overviews will become essential going forward. At the moment I only run search campaigns. No YouTube, no performance max. Because I want to appear in AI Overviews, I'll need to start adding some Broad Match keywords. I still prefer to keep my campaigns as tightly targeted as possible, so I rarely use Broad Match. I'm based in the UK and and from September this year, Broad Match features will only be available in AI Max. Is it time to give in? So I'm going to, I want to point out the special note at the end because there's something that she said here that I want to clarify, but let's get to the first question that she had mentioned. AI Max, AI Overviews, AI Mode. Should you give in? My answer to anyone considering this is no, don't give in, don't give in yet. There may be a time, but primarily do not give in and just add this to your current successful, well built, targeted, controlled campaign. In general, I have found AI Max to be very disappointing. It is not worth the quote, unquote added bonus of getting AI Overview and AI Mode and you know, all these other, you know, additional ways that people interact with Google. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. I have tested it, you know, you know, it's been around. I've now had some time to test it, try it with different clients, clients that get lots of conversions, clients that get a few conversions, clients that get no conversions tested in all these different kind of campaigns. Universally I have been unhappy with it. I thought I was going to like it. But over time the AI Max kind of strays. It really goes far beyond what I'm comfortable with. It becomes a burden to manage. And I'm gonna talk more about AI Max. You know, this has brought something up that I hadn't really thought of before. This will maybe, maybe a topic in the future, maybe next week that I that I talk about AI Max and DSAs and stuff like that. But no, I do not suggest that you allow Broad Match AI Max any of this loose targeting simply for the benefit of utilizing and being a part of these other AI systems in Google. I suggest new campaigns. If you're going to try it, separate it, do not put it within your current campaign because Broad Match AI Max, all these things, they will eat up your tight, targeted, controlled keywords, they will blow the budget out on those and then your other stuff will not be able to show. It will cannibalize it, it will eat the budget much faster. So if you're going to do it, I suggest use an experiment or set up a brand new campaign to test it. However you do it, I advise use it in a very controlled manner. It's not something that I like, it's not something that I recommend. So, and whenever I say I don't recommend it, what I mean is, is I've actually tested it and spent money on it. Other clients money more specifically and seen how it works for them and so you get the benefit of their investment and their tests. It doesn't work. I'm not happy with it. I don't find that it's controllable. In fact, if I had to pick the the better of the two evils, Broad match or AI Max. I like broad match better. I like broad match better. Because broad match at least can be controlled on a keyword by keyword basis. I can control the risk of one broad match keyword by changing how many words are in the broad match, what the bid is of the broad match. You know what you can't do with AI Max? You can't frickin control anything. You just turn it on. It's a switch. It's a toggle button. I frickin hate toggle buttons in Google Ads. You know why? Because toggle buttons are binary. They are on and they are off. If Google thinks that my Google Ads is black and white and then I can just flip a switch and that makes it better, they're fools. That is not how Google Ads works. It never has. There's always gray in success. There is never. Just hit this button and now it's optimized. That is a lie in AI Max is not an optimization magic wand. I may talk about AI Max more maybe next week because you can tell I have a lot on my mind about that. But I hope that's helpful. Don't, don't fall for it. Don't fall for the shiny new stuff that Google throws at us. You know, oh, you need to show up in the AI searches. No you don't. No you don't. A very small, very small number of people use that interface. Regular Google search is by far the most common way that people interface with Google Ads. And it's very likely you're not getting all of them. You're probably missing a lot of them already, so you might as well go after them. Oh, right. Let's go next with Jericho. Yeah, Jericho. Okay, I'm gonna go with that. Jericho. Jericho says good day to you and thank you for always helping us. Oh, thank you. My question is, if you are running a low budget campaign, let's say $20 a day, most campaigns CPCs are $5, some are 10. Obviously this budget will not make up for the 30 conversions a month rule. So there's no way we can scale our campaigns up to maximize and optimize our campaigns. Are you still going for the manual bidding to force or to force or. Okay, let me read that again. Are you going to the manual bidding or force to conversion based bidding? Okay, is the convert. Is the 30 conversion per month going. My goodness, I'm just falling apart here. I apologize. Is the 30 conversions per month going to max conversion outdated? Oh boy. I should have, should have cleaned this email up a bit before I did it. Okay, so I'm gonna stop there. So basically the question here is, is getting 30 conversions a month still the standard in order to utilize Google's conversion based bidding algorithms? And on this very podcast years ago, I am certain I have said many times, you need 30, 20 conversions a month to even consider using maximize conversions target, CPA target going anything towards conversion based bidding, you have to have 20, 30 or more per month. That is no longer true. You do not need 30 conversions to switch over to maximize conversion bidding. In fact, there are many times when maximized conversions is perfectly acceptable to start right out. I was just working with the gentleman that started a brand new campaign that I took over that was running maximize conversions and he started getting conversions right away. He started getting conversions within a few couple days. Why would he call me? Why would he reach out to me if he's getting conversions so quickly on a new campaign? Well, the problem is he was getting conversions, but the conversions were not qualified. He's having issue controlling the quality, the integrity, the quality of the lead itself. He was unable to control his traffic quality. So this is a huge problem because even though he had zero conversions and he went straight into maximized conversions, I mean, where's the ability for him to adjust things and change things? I mean, there really isn't, there isn't a way for him to do that. So what you give up by not doing the four phase Google Ads system that I talk about is you give up your quality control of traffic. You can start with maximized conversions, but you lose your ability to control for quality of traffic. There are countless accounts that start with broad match keywords, maximize conversions and get conversions on day one or within a couple days of launching their campaign. Absolutely. It happens all the time. I will not lie and say that you have to do it this way or it won't work. I'm just saying that those people are making sacrifices in the quality of and the control of their Google Ads campaign. Google's getting them conversions, but in no way is Google really qualifying the integrity or the quality of those conversions. Now of course, I'm talking about lead generation. It is different with an E commerce type of campaign. If you're selling something on your website, the same might be true. Google could be getting you sales, but it might be selling little tiny widgets that are basically no margin for you. I mean, you don't really make any money. You sell, you know, a $2 item and you really can't run ads to be selling a $2 item, you know. But that might be where the conversions are going. You might get a few bigger ones every now and then, but in the end it's not profitable because you're not able to control for the quality, the integrity, the, the actual roas of your return. So the same situation is true whether you're selling something or you're selling a service. The same is true. So you do not have to have 30 conversions. You could start, you could go from manual bidding to maximize conversions after getting just 10 conversions. The switch over. Now, the point to remember now is, is that you now, once you have a control of your quality of traffic and you feel that you've reached a point where, okay, I've set enough negative keywords, I've removed the risky keywords that are gonna drive unqualified traffic. I've set my bids about the right way. Now I'm willing to test an automated bid strategy to take over. For me, there's no minimum. It. It could happen with five conversions, it could happen with 50 conversions. The algorithm is no longer the weak point anymore. The weak point now is when you're willing to hand over control to the algorithm. The algorithm can take over whenever you want it to. And whether it does a good job or not is usually based on how good of a tool you've set it up with, how good of a boundary you've established for that for that algorithm to bid with. Alright, I hope that makes sense. And we have a last question from Daniel. Before I get into Daniel's question, remember my sponsor, opteo.com PSP has an exclusive offer just for you. A 28 day free trial of their tool optio.com PSP Daniel says. Hey Chris, a question for you. I struggle with the balance of expected ctr, which is an element of quality score, and ensuring that quality traffic is funneling through the intended landing pages. I find that Google loves its own automated site links for ctr, but I hate the effect of this that it has on conversions. I found that limiting the total amount of site links and ensuring the existing ones are completely relevant to the ad itself increases my conversion rate but negatively impacts my expected ctr. The trade off now is a battle of quality score that I'm not totally sure that I know how to how to approach. I'll average 10 to 20% CTR and Google says that my expected CTR is now below average. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Daniel, you have hit upon a core topic that is a big pet peeve of mine. I absolutely agree. I rarely give Google what it wants just so that I can have great expected CTR quality score rankings. It's not important to me. I don't care. I have never jumped into a campaign that was hurting with expected. You know, had very low expected ctrs and I was able to fix those and then suddenly the campaign's doing amazing. My expected CTR is not the linchpin of success for me. It's. It's just a thing. It's just a measurement. What really decides success is whether I'm getting good traffic, whether I'm getting the traffic to the right page, whether the page is optimized. I am not willing to give Google control over my site links. Automated site links, I hate them. I delete them. I turn them off. I do not want them creating them because they always create really bland, stupid ones that drive traffic away from the page. I want people to go through. And very often, just like you said, Google automated site links will create a site link that says get pricing and it sends people to a pricing page that has no contact information. It's a really crappy page. Or it sends them to an About Us page and people go to that instead and they don't go to the page I want them to. My conversion rate drops. It turns out, you know, 50, 60% of my clicks are going to that. It's killing my performance. So in the end I'm not willing to do it. I will take the lower expected CTR over allowing Google to do what it wants with my site links. I decide where my traffic goes. I decide the quality of my own expected CTR by actively blocking Google's attempts to take over my account. So you can decide, you can decide where you want to be. You want to, you want to, you want to just deal with a overbearing site link master that just creates lots of stuff, or you want to just kind of eat it and work on grinding through and getting the right traffic that you need in the first place? I go with that. I just eat it, I take it. And I prefer to have control rather than giving it up. All right, so that is the end of the podcast. If you would like to speak with me, if you'd like to argue with me, if you'd like to tell me that I'm wrong. Well first, if you want to tell me I'm wrong, I want to argue in front of everyone. So send me an email, paid search, podcastmail.com. tell me why I'm wrong and I'll read it on the air. If you'd like to speak with me and you're not mad at me, Chris Schaefer.com is the place to go. You can book me for a one on one consultation, you can reach out to me for management of your Google Ads account, or you can just send me a love letter. I don't get many of those, but anyway, I hope you guys have a great week. I'll talk to you next week.