← 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
Going from Good to GREAT (Episode 435)
00:33:50
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- [00:19]
Chris Shaffer
Hello and welcome to the paid Search Podcast. My name is Chris and today we're going to talk about Google Ads. Specifically, I am going to talk about going from good to great. I'm specifically talking about how to take your campaign from a good campaign to a great campaign. A campaign that is measurably different, that's bringing better results for you, that's getting the right kind of traffic, the majority of time, that wastes less money, that gets better results, more phone calls, more sales. How can you do that? What's. What's the defining difference that I see from a good and a great campaign? Going to talk about that at the end of the episode, but before I do that, I have several questions from listeners around the world who send in questions to my podcast. I do appreciate the questions. You can also send in a question. Paid search, podcastmail.com is the URL to send in. I say URL. I sound like an old man. The URL to send your email to. That's. That's the email to send your email to. Anyway, thanks so much for sending those in. I typically reply and let you know that I'm. That I'm going to be answering your question so you won't miss the episode. Today's episode is amazing. It is the 400th and 435th episode. That is a lot of weeks, that's a lot of Mondays that I've been around. The podcast has gone through a lot of changes and I get, as you'll see in today's questions that I answer. You know, many of you have been listening for a long time. This has been a show that's been going for many, many years. I've had. I've had kids that were little babies and are now turning 13. I have a teenager now. When I started this, I think she was what under? I think she was close to five or six or something like that. It was long time ago. So let's jump into the first question and let's start with Terry. Terry emails and says, hi, Chris, question for you. I'm using Optio. I'm using Target CPA on some campaigns, but I'll get a recommendation for Google Ads. Ad group specific targets for my cpa. Ad group specific CPA targets. Not sure if I should be adjusting my CPA on at the ad group level or only at the campaign level. Terry, great question and thank you for trying Optio. If you don't know what Terry's talking about, this is a software that I have been promoting for a long time. They are My one and only sponsor of the show. They actually are constantly releasing new tools that make this the Google Ads management software for everyone. It does everything and it's an amazing package deal. One of the new things that they do is they have a scorecard system. You ever want anyone to just kind of jump into the account and just say, is there anything I should worry about here? Their scorecard system will give you recommendations and a, hey, pay attention to this or you're missing this, or this is weird that you're doing this. Most accounts don't do that. If you ever want anyone to just look through it and just at the snap of your fingers, Optio can do that. They have a new scorecard system that will tell you and give you a score on your responsive search ads. It'll tell you which ones are some of the worst performing responsive search ads in your account. This is really handy. It also helps you to confirm that your ad copy is appropriate, that you have a good performance rating on everything. It tells you a ton of information. This is literally a scratch, just one scratch on the multiple types of tools, analysis systems, updates that they constantly push out. It's really cool system. And for those of you that are managing accounts for clients of your own, this tool is indispensable. You will love it and you get to try it for free for two months. That's opt e o.com PSP. The link is in the description. Wherever you are listening or watching, you can try it for free. Use the chat box on their website to tell them. Chris told me about your special offer. Could I, could I get that? And they'll say, oh, you know the secret password, we'll let you in. That's how you get it. Everybody else gets just one month. You get two when you use my special link and tell them about hearing about it on the paid search podcast. So now on to Terry's question. Terry, the answer is that you should definitely consider using ad group specific CPA targeting. Now, let's say, let's just throw some numbers out. Let's say you have a $100 target CPA for your entire campaign and you sell a service, you sell one service to residential and you sell another service to commercial, and you have both of those in the same campaign. You have two ad groups. Now, residential, we know, gets a ton more traffic. Residential always has a lot of traffic. You know, typically 2 to 1, 3 to 1, 4 to 1 kind of traffic volume. For residential, there's always a lot less commercial traffic. All right, so if there's Less commercial traffic. That means there's, you know, less opportunity for you to get those clicks. But the thing about commercial traffic is it's usually more valuable. If you're going to get commercial service of some kind, you usually end up paying more because it's more thorough. Usually people just charge more for commercial services rather than residential H vac. Lawn care, plumbing always tends to cost more on commercial. So an example of why you might want to consider your ad group Target CPA is because you might want to set your commercial at, let's say a $50 target CPA because you want Google to bid a little bit less. Maybe it's not worth as much when you get a job, a residential job may not be worth as much. So you might want Google to bid a little less aggressively. So you might set it to a fifty dollar Target cba because there's a lot out there. You get calls, they're not always great. Sometimes they're really small jobs. You're not really happy with them sometimes, but it's a bulk of your business and you want to be a little more restrictive with it. With commercial, your commercial business, you might bid a hundred dollar CPA because you're willing to bid higher. So a higher target CPA would allow Google to bid at a higher rank. The bidding would be more aggressive. It would have a higher capacity to reach leads with a more lenient cap on that target CPA number. So that's why you might want to consider it. Because if you don't have a difference in your ad groups, if every service is basically of equal value, every product is of equal value, then in that case there's probably not a reason to bid differently. Unless you see a drastic difference in performance. That might be a reason, but that's a different conversation. But Terry, that's one example of why you absolutely should consider bidding at the ad group level for your target cpa. Not all leads are equal, not all clicks are equal. And you as the business owner, the manager, you need to decide where should my priorities lie? I need to prioritize some clicks over other clicks, some ad groups over other ad groups. So there you go. Thank you for the question. We move now to Paul, who says, I've been a long time and consistent listener to your podcast all the way back from the days of Jimmy, if you recall those strange times. I do indeed, Paul. And I remember, I believe you sent in lot of questions back in the day, back in the Jimmy days. So it's good to hear back from you. I greatly appreciate all the Help and advice you've given me over the years that have helped me grow into the capable ads manager I've become. Awesome. Well, I know Paul's from down under so he's not going to hear this till Tuesday. I think it'll be Tuesday when you listen to it. It's going to be in the future. So thank you Paul from the past telling you thank you from the future. I'm not sure how that works. Time is confusing for down under people. So here's this question. Almost all of the campaigns I set up and manage are search, usually complemented with a remarketing display campaign. Dabbling with a few performance max, which sometimes help, sometimes don't. However, I've never used a demand gen campaign type or a video campaign type. Have you? If so, what particular set of circumstances led you to choose those campaigns over the alternatives? Well, Paul, this is a question I know you sent in a while ago. I'm just now getting it, getting to this question because I had to think about my answer here and every time I brought the question back up, I was, I wasn't ready to conquer it. And so I want to be, I want to be clear with you. I do not run demand gen campaigns. It is not something that I'm interested in. And it's the same reason that I don't really dabble with performance max. Most of the time I don't do performance max and I don't really do demand gen and I rarely do video campaigns. The reason is this. Most of the time when I'm presented with the challenge of getting conversions, leads, sales for my clients, I need to be accountable for the money that I spend on the account, right? I'm spending their money and they expect a return from that. So in order to be a good steward of their money, I need to make sure that the money is accounted for. And what I don't like about demand gen, what I don't like about performance max is that it targets the type of person, okay? It targets a personality, an audience, an avatar, a style, a category. I don't like categorical marketing. It's not really for me. It's not something I can find that I can justify for my clients. Now sometimes it works. I'm not saying it doesn't work, you understand? I'm not saying that it's wrong for everyone. I'm not saying that it's a bad marketing style. I'm saying it's not for me. Well, why is it not for me? The reason it's not for me is because it really boils down, if I had to put my finger on one thing, it boils down to search terms. These demand gen campaigns, these performance max campaigns show on a variety of platforms outside of Google search and the lack of accountability for search terms where these ads are showing, how the ads look, who sees it, where they see it, what interest level they might have or don't have about the product or the service I'm advertising is the disqualifier for me. I cannot run ads which I cannot be accountable for. Why a person saw it. For example, let's say you're my client and you say Kris, the leads have been great but they're just not qualified. They're just not quite right. They're interested in B, but I really want to offer them a right. I need to get back, you know, we kind of strayed off of that and how do I get back to A? They're all looking for this kind of thing. But I need to shift the tone. Okay, how as a Google Ads manager do I shift my tone for something in which I have no direct control of? How can I analyze something and make detailed reports or give answers to any kind of depth beyond just sure, I'll try it Paul, I'll try this. You know, do I just lie? Do I just pretend like I as though I have my hands on the steering wheel and though I can, I can make a minute adjustment? Sure. I mean, because I can, I could lie and say sure, I'm going to do that. And what I do is I go in and maybe I take off one line of income bracket, maybe I eliminate the unknown income bracket, I eliminate the 50% and under income bracket. Does that change or improve the client's chances of getting a qualified lead? If I don't have details about leads and qualified leads and really qualified leads, there's no way that I can tell that information. Most clients don't have that kind of reporting and there's no way that I can tell which of these leads are unqualified. There's no way I can dig into the reason for the lead. And that's what, that's what brings me to a point of being unhappy with these non reporting, non transparent campaign types. Performance max demand gen, all of these kind of things. It's not something I'm interested in. It's a lack of control, it's a lack of transparency, it's a lack of targeting. That, that Google Ads is all about accountability and that's the main thing that Google ran on, you know, for years and years, whenever Google Ads just started, their big advantage is you get real time data, you get, you get answers. Nothing else is as transparent and data metrics driven as pay per click advertising. Because back then they were competing against TV commercials, billboards, radio ads, print. These things are, there's no way to truly gauge the impact. And then fast forward 20 years and where are we at? We're at the point whenever performance max demand gen feels more like a print ad. They're just saying, no, no, no, put your money into the slot, we'll show your ad to who we think is right and hopefully it'll work for you. Now I realize that's a massive simplification of it, but that's kind of. Am I, am I, am I off here? Am I completely off in how I feel like things have shifted from a data driven, metric driven, decision driven type of system to performance max and all these other kind of things that don't give me the intimate details about who, why, when, where. That's where I'm at. That's where I'm at. So one more question and I have done it again. I didn't put their name down. Hang on a second, let me look it up. And through the power of editing, I have now gone back and found that Ben. Ben has written in a question and thank you so much Ben for your question. The third question for today is. Hi Chris, I've been a fan of your podcast for years. While managing my own ads, I started recently started my own freelance and ad management service. And your content has been incredibly helpful. Thank you. As I bring on new clients, I'm often asked about the minimum ad spend they should budget. I've been recommending at least 20 per day, but that amount can sometimes scare off potential clients. My question is, is there such a thing as too small a budget? For example, we have set a budget of $10 per day and the average CPC is a dollar and that's 10 clicks per day. Does that mean it takes longer to gather the necessary data for optimization or is Google less effective with such a low volume of daily clicks? Thanks again for your valuable insights that you share. Ben, Great question and I am not surprised at all if you started a Google Ads management freelancing service. This is going to be a question you get every time. Because I mean, of course they're going to want to know. They're not going to say. Most of the time clients won't say I have exactly this amount to spend. I only find that my most organized planned clients have answers like that. Because they have already calculated the risk and value and how much they want to put into it. So most people don't think like that. So I want to answer your question. Your question was, is there such a thing as too small a budget? And the answer is no, there is not such a thing as too small a budget. There is only such a thing as too small a budget and too short of time. Any budget can work when multiplied by time. There is only a budget that is too small in the time frame in which it must spend and show results. Too short. So if you are spending $10 a day and your client says let's analyze it in 30 days to see if we should continue, that's probably too small. I mean, I probably, because I haven't analyzed, I don't know what industry it is, I don't know what the CPC would be in this imaginary scenario I've come up with. But it's probably too small. Very small budgets need longer timeframes in order to assess success. If you are managing ads for people and you are presented with a $10 a day budget, the only way to really get any value from it is they need to basically run it for maybe a year. Okay. And that's not, that's probably not something the client's going to be interested in doing because they're taking your fee and adding it plus the money they're spending. So your fee might be another 300amonth, another 500amonth. You know, I don't know. But that's going to make that a really inefficient way for them to see if Google Ads is successful or not. To have you manage it at a monthly rate. It's pretty, pretty inefficient. So it's not often that clients will want to spend a very little bit, very little, small amount of money and have someone manage it, because that's very cost inefficient. So most of the time people opt to spend higher amounts for shorter time. Right. Instead of $10 a day, $300 a month, they might decide on $900 a month and let's do it for three months instead. That might be something they're willing to do. Let's get some movement, let's get some stuff going. We'll still analyze after 30 days and see how it's going. But you know, it needs to be a larger amount for a shorter amount of time. So the answer is time in relation to budget. It is a sliding scale back and forth. If you have a very short amount of Time, you need a larger budget to be able to get metrics, numbers, things to move. If you have a longer amount of time, you can, you can work with a smaller budget. And honestly, me, I prefer longer spans of time. I don't, I don't really like fast, get this performing in a month kind of thing. The one month thing is something I don't enjoy because it's going to limit the amount of testing and invariance that I can bring into the account during the time. So short time spans with high spend is more difficult. I would say definitely more difficult. Okay, so thank you for your questions. Great questions as always. I'm going to go into the main topic of the show, going from good to great in Google Ads. What's the difference? Before I do, please check out optio optio.com PSP. That is the URL to try out optio for free for two months. Thank you for checking out my sponsor. It helps me, so I appreciate it. All right. Going from good to great. So I'm going to lay out this theory for you. Okay, this is my theory on what makes Google Ads move from good to great. So everybody knows keywords are the major factor in determining your traffic that determines what traffic comes to your website. We're talking about search campaigns, right? So keywords are the determining factor. What makes a Google Ads campaign good to great is bidding. Bidding correctly. Bidding appropriately is the real key to success. I can have a campaign that has great keywords but really bad bidding and it will be okay. It'll be good, but it won't be great. I could have a campaign with all right, keywords. You know, the keywords are okay, but with really good bidding. And I think the chances of being great is much higher. Okay, that is not always true, but I really think bidding is a much stronger component to success than keywords. Okay, So I want to paint this picture out for you. Let's say Google search is represented by a lake, a large body of water, okay. And your keywords that you have funnel out some of that water. They run out, right? So there's different creeks that flow out from this lake. Let's say the lake is on the top of a mountain. So it's. There's different areas that this water is draining out of this lake and the lake is always refilling. Right. There's a glacier above it or something. I learned, I learned over the summer I went to Colorado and learned all this gorgeous, pure cold water that's coming down the mountains is coming from Snowmelt. I Realize many of you are like, duh. Of course it does, Chris. Okay. I'm in the middle of East Texas. I don't know these things. This was surprising to me. I thought there were springs here in East Texas. We're surrounded by springs that just come out of the ground. You know, like fresh water just comes out of the ground. I have a couple on my property that just flow. And there's. There's a little creek right here. I thought that's what happened. Old mountains. So that was. That's kind of cool. Something I learned this summer. So let's say you have a gorgeous snowmelt lake, and the creeks coming out are your keywords. You have one keyword that's pulling water traffic clicks from this. From this lake of traffic. And there's also maybe one huge river. The main way that this is flowing down, right? There's. There's a. We call it a river. You know, maybe it's just a large creek, you know, basically, but there's also a very big thoroughfare of traffic. Okay, now, one of these creeks flows directly into your backyard, and that's a very important one for you, right? This is the creek that flows directly into your house. It is. It's. It's the lifeblood of your home, your family. And this is very important that this creek stays flowing. Okay, hopefully you can see where my analogy is going here, because one keyword could be allowing a huge amount of water to run through it. And that creek should. Could be going off randomly in the wrong direction away from where you need it to go. And you would have no idea which of those creeks. Let's say you aren't sure which of those creeks are providing you the water source that you need. You know, it's not the river. You see the river way far away. You know, that's not coming by you. But there's this one creek. You don't know where it's coming from, but, you know, you keep seeing it come through. It's very valuable. Bidding is the difference between this important creek drying up and completely stopping or letting it flow and turning that small one little creek into a river of its own. If you have one keyword that could be allowing a huge amount of water, a huge amount of traffic, a huge amount of clicks to run through it like used trucks for sale. This could be representing the river that's outflowing from your campaign, the river of the flood of traffic that's outflowing from your campaign. It represents. Sure, it represents some leads for you, but mostly it's very diluted. And there's a ton of movement, there's a ton of spend coming out of this keyword. And more important keywords like used Ford F250XLT get just a trickle of water, just a trickle of traffic, nothing compared to what this river gets. This rushing river of used trucks for sale near me, stuff like that gets a ton of traffic. And these smaller, more important ones that really move the needle for your, for your business are just getting a trickle. And yet that's the most important creek, that's what actually keeps you going, that's what keeps your business alive, is that single creek. So the difference, so hopefully you could see what I'm saying here is you need to understand where the important stuff is. And when you bid on these important keywords, whenever you constrict bids on keywords that just spend but don't perform, and when you open up, when you bid more aggressively on keywords, areas that provide more performance, that provide more value, more leads, more sales for your business, it turns that creek into a river, and it turns the river into a creek, right? You want to shrink the waste and grow the success. Using bids, you can encourage Google to push more water, more clicks, more traffic, more value to the proper keyword, and that will lead to more success. This analogy ends here. So let's get practical. What are you talking about? Enough with the creeks and the water in the snow melt. Oh, my goodness. Is this Google Ads or nature story? Okay, I'm sorry, I'm done. All right, so let's get practical. What does this mean? Well, you know, I'm gonna start with manual bids. All right? Manual bids are not for everybody, but for me, it means that I bid at the ad group level. Sometimes I bid at the keyword level because that one keyword, that one source, is so valuable. I need to maximize the utmost amount of traffic I can get from that keyword. So I max out the clicks, I max out the cpc, you know, I try and get as much as I can from it, right? And then I constrict areas, I lower the bids on other areas that might have a ton of traffic, but very little potential, very little value for me. Now an example of target cpa. If my target CPA is set so that high volume keywords, high volume ad groups, high volume campaigns, whatever, have much more constricted bids. They have a, let's say, $10 target CPA, very constricted, very limiting, but on my very valuable terms. As I discussed earlier in the show, the commercial versus residential I might have a hundred dollar target CPA on that one. So a 10 times difference between the two so that it tells Google. That forces Google to work a lot harder to get any kind of traffic through this small little window of my $10 CPA and allows a much bigger window on my $100 CPA. And then last max clicks. You say, how could I do that with max clicks? You talked about target CPA manual bids. I'm running max clicks. Is there any hope for me? Yes, you can use device bids. You can use device bids to bid up and bid down the valuable ad groups and the not so valuable ad groups and everyone manual target CPA max clicks, Everyone can utilize ad schedule location targeting, I mean negative keywords. You can use all these things to try and stop up the holes that are draining your lake too fast. Right? There's only so much that you can bring in per day. Everyone's limited by budget pretty much. There's always more volume than we can take. So we're limited by how much potential we can bring through each day. So there's other tools. Add schedule limitations and turning off certain device bids entirely, limiting your geographic targeting to a smaller area. These are all options to make your rivers into creeks and your creek into a river. And with that, I thank you guys for listening to the podcast. If you would like to speak with me directly about your Google Ads account, you can reach me@chris shaffer.com I do Google Ads management for clients and if you're just interested in more personalized coaching, teaching, training about your Google Ads account specifically, you can sign up for a session on my website, Chris Shaffer.com Otherwise, thank you guys for being here. I will catch you next week.