← 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 PPC Questions from Subscribers (Episode 489)
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Foreign. Hello and welcome to the Paid Search Podcast. My name is Chris and today I'm going to answer questions from you guys. I'm answering questions from subscribers, listeners all over the Internet who are running campaigns on Google Ads, who have questions about bidding, keyword structure, all kinds of things. We're going to get into a lot of topics. I have several questions. If you'd like to join in on the next Q and A podcast episode, you can email me paid searchpodcastmail.com Send your questions there and I'll read through it and add it to the list the next time we go through it. So these are always really popular episodes. I'm happy to answer the wide variety of questions that come from Google Ads. I've been doing Google Ads for over 20 years now. It is the only thing I do and I've become really good at it. And my experience has left me with a lot of advice that I can disperse. So that's what I'm going to do today. All of this is 100% free podcast for you to listen to. Thanks to my friends at Opteo. Now, if you haven't heard of Opteo, they're my sponsor and they're a wonderful software that you should check out. It is a software designed for people just like you. Agency, freelancer, someone struggling to get their own business, their own business, some leads, sales, fun phone calls through Google Ads. No matter the level that you're working in Google Ads, this tool is designed to help you achieve more get more traffic, get more leads, get more calls, get more conversions through this tool. So it's not magical, it's not mysterious, it's really quite practical. That's what we're here about on this podcast, is a practical solution. And that's what Opteo is. It helps you to find new areas that can be improved in your Google Ads account. Shopping, search, performance, max. It even works with Microsoft Ads. So wherever you're spending your money, do you have the right bidding capacity for the bidding strategy for your Google Ads account? Do you have the right negative keywords? Are all your settings set the right way? And believe me, there's always changes. And so it continues to update you and keep you updated on the front of the optimization process. You can try it for free at optio.com PSP that's O-P-T-E-O.com PSP that is a 28 day free trial exclusively at that link. You don't get that anywhere else. That's optio.com PSP so let's jump in. Let's talk about the questions that you guys have, starting with Beth. Beth writes in and says, hi, Chris, longtime listener, first time sending in a question when you are in stage three and four for a long time, and then all of a sudden, performance drops with volume dropping off a cliff and the costs continue to rise and your client freaks out and is dropping their budget, even though a majority of their leads come from paid search. What do you do now? I'm back on stage two of Google Ads Management, and I can't seem to find what went wrong other than AI and various shifts that Google's always making these days. We did try performance max and brought only junk leads. Obviously, that increased volume, but not worth it with the spam leads. I wonder if Google punishes accounts who try something like that and then pause performance max, but maybe I'm giving them too much credit. Okay, so that's Beth's question. Does a little bit of speculation about, you know, what, what Google might do to punish accounts. Beth, let me say I don't think Google actively punishes. I just think they. They have their preferences about what they want you to do, and they will reward those that do those things. But sometimes the rewards aren't the things that you want. Right? You know, your reward for mowing the lawn might be to eat a massive hamburger, and it was great while it lasted, but the results of what you got from it may not be what you wanted to get out of that. You know, sometimes the rewards are, you know, not something that you want after all. So I don't think Google punishes campaigns for not doing what they say, but I do think that there are rewards when it. When it does happen, but sometimes those rewards are not things we want. So let's get back to your main question. You're in stage three and four, which means you're in the latter stages of success in Google Ads. So I believe there's four stages in Google Ads. Stage 1, 2, 3, 4, 3 and 4 mean that you're achieving success, and then 4, 4 means that you're scaling and growing that success and spending more money at that success level. So if you're dropping back down into phase two, that means you're no longer achieving that successful metric. So how can you come back from that? What. What do you do at this point? All right, so I have a list of suggestions on how I approach disaster in Google Ads, which is what I would call this maybe a little strong, but I think this is, you know, like the worst possible thing. Success that stops being success and leads to just money being spent and no longer being spent effectively. That's disaster in my book. That's the exact opposite of what I want to happen. So let's go through a few things. Number one, one of my favorite things to do and I often find some really interesting stuff here is I check the changes in the keywords and the search terms season to season. So I use the word season to season because I don't want to say month to month and I don't want to say week to week. What I want you to look at is basically when things were good. Look at several of the months when things were good. You know, put all those months together, maybe break them up into different months. Look, look at what the top keywords were. Note the cost per click of those keywords, the click through, rate conversions, positions. Note kind of what's happening. Get a feel for what that looked like. Then do a comparison to what's happening when things fell apart, when they started to fall apart. And when they're completely falling apart. What's different? Are some of those keywords completely gone off the list? Are some of those keywords no longer even spending money and it's replaced with other keywords? Okay, something might be happening there. I call it keyword creep. Essentially, the keywords start to shift in the kind of traffic they get and the search terms no longer resemble what they did before. So now isolate some of those top keywords. Look at the search terms. Have the search terms changed? You used to be getting one type of search search term from this one keyword and now you're getting something completely different. Keywords have a tendency sometimes to kind of creep out of compliance with the quality of traffic that you're looking for. This can often happen when you're running automated bidding and there's no cap on the cpc. You know, CPC start to go up, up, up, up. And Those higher ranking CPCs can cause the keywords to reach beyond the capacity of what they used to be able to do. And now you're getting traffic that is not relevant anymore. It's, it's way out of scope from what you're looking for. So do that, you know, and pay attention to other things. If the keywords and the traffic is not it, have your positions gotten lower? Right, you're showing lower in the search results. Is there a new competitor that has come in and pushed your ads? Maybe they have a better price. Their ad copy is better and more appealing. It has price in the ad copy and they're clicking on Theirs because they're offering it for $100 and yours is 250. You know, I mean, there's all kinds of things with competitors that can cause problems. And you know, that is likely going to bring more questions. You're going to find, oh, this is interesting. And then start digging. I've used this term all the time and it's still a very relevant term. You have to become a red flag hunter. You have to hunt for red flags in your Google Ads campaign. And this is a great practice to do. Whenever you're seeing a failing campaign, go back and check, how have things changed? Look at the keywords, look at the search terms, see how they've changed, and then dig from there. Find those red flags, find those failures and ask yourself, why? What's different? You know, what's changed? And go from there. All right, next question comes from. Andrew says, hey, Chris, I'm getting started as a freelance PPC manager and was hoping you might offer some guidance in the sales side. Well, glad to have you in, in the trenches with me, Andrew. That's, that's what I do. I've been doing it for a long time. So specifically, Andrew's trying to find out the best way to structure initial calls with potential clients and what information to gather to provide real value. Early in the process of that conversation, he says he's torn between creating a slide deck to walk them through or keeping things more conversational and focused and asking the right questions about their business goals, past performance, and when starting out, what is the most important thing with those first calls? What do they really want to hear and understand? And what questions do you recommend focusing on? All right, Andrew, as you mentioned in your message, I definitely have a lot of experience in this area. I have worked with hundreds and hundreds. I mean, it might be in the thousands at this point. Different clients. I've had conversations about Google Ads with many, many people and, and many people I have pitched services to beyond my ability to even count. So here is advice based on what I like to do and what I think the client would appreciate. Really, I'm. You don't listen to this podcast because you hear some kind of self affirmation, you can do it, you know, kind of bull crap stuff. I don't, I don't do that. You know, I'm not going to say if you really will it, it will become true and it's a bunch of baloney bull crap. I'm going to tell you based on what works for me and will make other people happy and like you. Because this is what I would want to be approached with if I was in their shoes. All right, so number one, no presentation. I don't use slides. I don't think I have ever used slides or any kind of presentation ever. Whenever I've tried to pitch or sell my services or explain my services, in fact, what I do is I explain and talk through my services. What you want to focus on is talk about what you will do for them and the rest of the conversation will flow easily. Okay, so if there's any initial questions, the only thing I'm really interested in at the beginning is, is this a new campaign that you're starting, never done Google Ads before and it's a brand new campaign or do you have something that's running now? Those are completely different paths and different conversations, at least from the beginning. Okay, so if it's a new campaign, your job is to set their expectations and low. I would suggest set expectations low because your job is to get them traffic. That's not what they called you for though, right? Whenever you go to a hairdresser, you want to look more beautiful, more handsome, but in fact the hairdresser can only cut your hair. They cannot make you more beautiful. And they're not going to tell you that because they want you to have them cut your hair. But you know, we're talking about trying to be honest and having clarity in the conversation. So I suggest having upfront conversation about, here's what you will get from Google Ads and it's traffic. I can't guarantee leads. Sales and leads are not guaranteed. So setting expectations low and putting them in the right place at the beginning for somebody who's starting Google Ads for the first time, I think is very important. You're not making promises. Okay? You are adding clarity. So if you bring clarity to the project and not promises immediately, you're on the right foot. Okay? So the other path is someone who already has been doing Google Ads. So they're obviously calling you because they're not happy or they need something. So your job is to find out have they been getting no leads at all, no sales, you know, utter failure with a Google Ads account. So they're looking to hire someone to help. Maybe they have some bad managers that they're wanting to get rid of, or maybe things are going well, they just need, they need to pass this responsibility, rebuild responsibility off to someone else. No matter what. You need to find out what is the problem. Why are you contacting, contacting me about your activecampaign? What can I do to help. Okay. And here's another point when you're having these conversations. I freely give a lot of information. I share as much as I can to a degree about what I do and what my process is and how it all works. And I don't try and hide behind a mysterious, you know, mysterious Google Ads. I can't tell you my special formula. Give me a freaking break. I tell thousands, tens of thousands of people all the time what my special formula is, and I still have a job. Anyone who says that Google Ads, you know, we do something so sacred, so special that we can't share it with anyone. We can't even let you see your Google Ads account because it's so special. Those people are liars. They are con artists. They're not telling the truth. No one's doing something so special that it's not been done before. That's ridiculous. Google Ads is the same process. Now, what might be different is perhaps the after the click, right? What happens after the click? But not the Google Ads. It's. Everyone has. This is coming in the door with the same situation. So I share a lot of information. I try and demystify it, because otherwise, how would they know I'm not a liar? Right? They come to me for Google Ads advice, and if I give zero indication that I know what I'm talking about, they think I'm just like everyone else. Okay? So be upfront, be honest, share some stuff, and be clear and honest about what they can expect. I've told many people not to run ads at all. I've turned them down for other reasons. I've told them, listen, I've done this before. I don't think you should do Google Ads. I've said that many times. Or listen, I looked your. I looked at your Google Ads account. Whoever was managing it did a decent job. I don't think I can bring a level of success much higher than what was already there. I've said that many times. And then I've had people hire me because I said that. Even though I said I don't think I can do better, They've said, I have never had someone tell me that before. I'm going to hire you because you said that. So again, I think use the time that you have with them to bring clarity to the project about what you're going to do. Not promises. Clarity, not promises. All right, so moving on now to Alex. Alex says, hi, Chris. How are you doing? I've been a listener of the show for the last two years, and I really appreciate the work you do. Thanks a lot. Alex then sends a lengthy email, which I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I'm going to summarize it this, this way. Alex had a policy issue that ruined his campaign and he had to start all over. Okay. Alex wanted to do manual bidding. I talk about it a lot on this show and it's, it's great. It works for many, many situations. So he wanted to try it. The problem is he got no impressions for a solid week. Then Alex tried max clicks and got impressions. So Alex is frustrated. He wants to do manual, but it did not work. So he wants to know, you know, what do I do? What's the solution here? You know, where did I go wrong? So Alex, despite your explanation about what you talked about and the frustrations that you had with lack of impressions, I think it is still a bidding issue with manual. Even though you put your bids high enough that they are above your average cpc, I think it is still a bidding issue if manual does not give you impressions and clicks and then other bidding methods do give you impressions and clicks for that exact same keyword everything else, then your manual bids were too low. All right, that's it. There's only one reason why manual bidding would not serve and other bidding strategies like max clicks, max conversions, whatever, and they do get impressions, it's because your bids are too low. So I'm going to run through a process here, real simple process of what I do every single time I launch a new campaign. Every time I launch a new campaign, it is going to be manual bidding. Whether it's a new account or an old account that I'm launching a new campaign with, it's always manual bidding. Because I have to start at phase one every time. Phase one is just getting traffic. So I'm going to manage my bids to get the traffic that I want until I move to the later phases. Alright, so here's the process. I launch a campaign and I let it run for one day and then I come back 24 hours later and I check yesterday's numbers and I check the search lost is rank percentage, I then raise or lower the bids according to the results of those percentages. So if I'm. If I see that the search lost is rank number is really, really low. I know that I've overbid and I'm pushing ads too aggressively. So if it's at 15%, I'm going to lower bids and then I'm going to let the campaign run for two days. So I'm going To make an adjustment, let it run for 48 hours and come back. Then I'm going to check that search lost is rank number again for those two days that it was running. And I'm going to raise or lower the bids again. Let's say it goes from 15% to 25%. That's still too aggressive. I'm not really happy with that. I think that's, you know, I don't have enough budget to support those high of bids. So I lower the bids again and I repeat that until I'm happy with the ranking, with the position, with the bids of my keywords. So listen to what I said here. If you think about what I did, I started my bids way higher than I really needed to, but I got clicks on day one. So it is often much easier to just pull back bids really quick after you overbid for something rather than playing with this whole, like, I'm going to give it another 2 cents, I'm going to need another 5. I'm going to take it from $1 to $1.05 and see if that makes a difference. No, I suggest when it comes to manual bidding, over bid significantly and then pull it back using that search lost is rank number. And if you can bring it to about a 50% search lost is rank. That's a good place to stay during phase one of Google Ads. That's decent and, you know, let it run there. That's enough to get you in first position a decent amount of time. But it's also not so aggressive that you're blowing the budget so fast. So 50% loss due to rank. Cool. That, that should be an okay number to begin with. Okay, so we're moving on now to another question. I have two more questions, this one coming from Troy. Troy says, hi, Chris. I've been listening to your podcast for a couple years now. You provided so much great information in your podcasts. Is first on my list every week to listen to. Thank you for all the time you devote to your listeners. Thank you, Troy. Glad to hear it's first on your list. That's. That should be a new requirement. I should tell everyone first on your list. Listen to me first. All right. Troy says I run a local dog poop scooping business. It's a large and competitive industry in most major cities, but my area just hasn't caught on yet. I'm still the first local company to even come up when searching for any of my main keywords. My entire challenge is getting people to realize that the industry even exists. I've been running search ads for three years and my best keywords are averaging only about 10 searches a month and many searches are dropping to zero. Troy then goes on and asks another question and says, I'm wondering if I should focus my small budget on cheap display or should I just abandon Google Ads altogether? And then there's a third question. Is it better to put a ton of budget on a super small area to dominate it, or should I spread the budget out to a little wider area across the whole service area and just go with initial kind of basic exposure? Okay, Troy, I actually have a great solution for you here. And number one, it is not starting a display campaign. I do not recommend running a display campaign. I'm not going to go into it. I could tell you all the reasons, but if you're going to do it, you're going to do it. But I'll tell you, my advice is no display campaign, no performance max campaign. No, don't recommend it. Not even a video campaign. I don't suggest it. I do recommend a wider area. So you'd mentioned, you know, your budget. Should you spread your budget across a wider area or real small? I suggest targeting a little bit wider area than you think you might need. Okay. If you've seen the data that I've seen and many people have tested and told me about this before, you know, when I talk with other people, they share a lot of their learnings about Google Ads over the years. And one of the things that been shared with me a lot is how inaccurate Google's geographic targeting is where Google will think this person's here. But in fact, with their IP address and all the kind of backend stuff they're doing, they, they can tell that people could be hundreds of miles away from where Google actually thinks they are. So because of that, I typically suggest being more generous with your geographic targeting more so than you think you need to be. Because there, even though it's a highly technical world, we live in ISPs and GPS and you know, search engine reconnaissance, Google's ability to recognize where you are located is, is still quite poor, I would say. All right, but before you try widening your geographic area, I want you. And you may have already done this because you said you're. You listen to my podcast every week. I want you to go back and listen to episode 488. That's. That was just the previous episode from this episode. That was last week's episod. Listen to that again. And I want you to focus on my discussion, particularly at the end of the show, whenever I talk about the awareness curve, I talk about a ski slope and I talk about, you know, there's the real steep part of that ski slope. And I want you to use that discussion to fuel ideas to get more traffic. People in your area may not be aware of your service, but they still have the same problem. America has innumerable pets and dogs and they're going to have poop problems. There are still plenty of people that are searching for things like get rid of dog poop, how to remove dog poop, backyard smells from dog poop. These are problems, symptoms, issues that are represented in that steep part of this search curve that I was describing in episode 488. Use that to find the traffic that's you're that you're not finding with these more specific service poop scooping business terms. Okay. And also consider widening your geographic targeting because I think that will be efficient and effective for you as well. So there you go. Appreciate the question, Troy. And last question comes from Jar Jar. I'm gonna say I believe from Sweden. So I'm gonna read Jar's question here in a moment. First, I wanna remind you, my sponsor, optio.com PSP I greatly appreciate when you give them a chance because it's they keep me motivated to create these episodes. They do take time. I had to read all these questions, write all of these answers. It does take a lot of time and it helps to keep me focused and putting my time into this podcast, which I enjoy doing. I've always said that this podcast is focused on improving the integrity of this industry and that's what I hope I've done over all these many, many years. And Optio helps to fuel that vision. So optio.com PSP tell them thanks for sponsoring Chris and try out their tool for 28 days and you'll end up liking it as well. But I'll let you discover that. All right. Jar says hi Chris found your podcast in 2022 and I started hands on with Google Ads from having more strategic, having a more strategic role. We've had several agencies over the years and mixed experience and we decided to take over the account ourselves. This has been a fantastic journey for me and my company or and the company. And a good slice of the cake I'll give to you and your podcast. That is a great compliment. Thank you. All right, so onto the question he says should I put different themes in ad groups into one brand campaign, one non brand campaign or does Google Ads understand the different themes better? When I split the different themes into separate campaigns. Okay, so let me, let me, let me translate this a bit. What he's asking is I have multiple sets of keywords. You know, keyword set A, B, C, and D. These different ad groups, should they all go into one campaign together or should they be split into separate campaigns? Because Google can then better understand the themes? The answer is no, I don't think you should put them in different campaigns. I will explain why. And I also read the rest of your email. I understand, you know, the issue that you had. Had, you know, things were going well, and now they're not going well. But regardless, even though, you know, it's tempting to go back to what you were doing, and if. And if that's what you need to do to try and replicate success, then I say do it. Do what you need to do. But rule of thumb is this. In fact, there's two thumbs. I have two thumbs. So there's two rules. Rule number one is I build my campaigns based on strategic relevance, which is principle number one. You can learn more of that in episode 385. Several years back, it might have been two or three years now. So strategic relevance is principle number one in my 10 principles of Google Ads. Okay, so episode 385. Listen to that. You. You'll learn more about strategic relevance and what that means. That is one core principle of how I build my campaigns. Number two is simplicity. Unless there's a specific reason for me to add complexity to my accounts, I don't. And I just build everything in one campaign. That's. I mean, that's a really simple rule of thumb there. Strategic relevance and then simplicity. And here's the truth. Changes to campaign structure, I find is more of a gimmick. That might work, it might not work. But if it does work, you'll have no idea why it worked. The fact that it did work could just be a fluke and you could do the same thing again, and it might not work the second time. I find that these gimmicks. You know, I was just doing an audit on a Google Ads campaign earlier this week, and I saw a company that, you know, had split phrase match keywords into one ad group and. Or one campaign, another exact match keywords into another campaign. This is absolutely ridiculous. This is. This is like a decade old on strategies here. I don't know why anyone would do that nowadays. It's really horrible. And the only reason I ever think someone does something like this is because they don't adhere to the street strategic Relevance and simplicity rule. And also because it's very gimmicky, it looks complicated. It adds complexity when complexity is not needed. And the only reason you add complexity to something is because you want to sound smart. You want to sound superior to everyone when it's not needed. If you do a good job, you're going to keep your. Your job. If you do good work for a company, you'll keep your job. Not because you sound. Oh, you know, you ever hear someone who goes to college, gets a master's degree, a doctorate, and then literally, it's impossible for you to even have a conversation with them because they can't seem to get around even saying things that are just practical or even, you know, understandable at a basic level. They can't even seem to get a thought out. That even closes the loop of something that makes sense. That's the way. That's the way I see complex builds. It's. You're just doing that just to add complexity when simplicity often works better. So stick to strategic relevance and stick to simplicity. And I think that is always the best method forward until. Until you find a specific reason to try otherwise. All right, that is it for the show. It is Thanksgiving week, so those of you. Thanks. Those in the US that are celebrating Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving to you. I am currently probably eating lots of turkey and food and then trying to exercise it off unsuccessfully for the rest of the week. I'll catch you guys next week.