← 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
Google’s Goals Are NOT Your Goals (Episode 454)
00:29:00
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A
Foreign hello and welcome to the paid search podcast. My name is Chris and I have a limited time to tell you a lot of really important things, so let's just jump in. Every week I talk about Google Ads. This week is no different except I'm going to pack a ton of information in in just 30, 35 minutes. Hopefully we'll see how long this goes. All right, before I do, I have to tell you about optio.com PSP. This is an exclusive offer that you will only here on this podcast. My favorite online optimization software. As I talked about last week, I told you guys about the groundbreaking study that Optio did about Performance Max campaigns. The amount of information that you can pull from your campaigns. That was one example of what Opteo can do using their Ingram function finder tool which identifies wasteful, wasteful ad search in your campaign so that you can add negative keywords. And it does this for Performance Max shopping search. If you want this powerful tool that does in gram finding as well as a ton of other things from reporting to budget management, you need to try this tool. That's optio.com PSP to get the 28 day free trial. That's a special page just for listeners of this podcast. You can try it for free for 28 days. Just use the chat box in the bottom right corner and tell them, hey, can I have this special offer? And they will do so. Thank you so much for their sponsorship. It's an important part of this show and without further ado, let's jump in. I have a special guest. We have Joey Bidner, who is going to jump in a little bit later in the show. Before I do that, I have. I may have overdone it. I have two questions to answer from listeners, so let's jump in. First question is from Christina who wrote in and said, hi, Chris, I recently launched a new campaign and paused the previous one. I set it up based on the recommendations that you provided. It's been a few days and while I'm seeing good impressions and clicks at a reasonable cost, I haven't had any conversions yet. Even though Google continues spending the daily budget. Did I miss something? Is there anything I should adjust to improve conversions? I'd appreciate any insights you have to share. Okay, so Christina, I know you wrote in a separate question. I did see that one. I never got to that. So sounds like you made a decision to go ahead and create a new campaign. So I wanted to answer this question rather than the other one because I feel like this one is a very common situation. People are in, they always are expecting the best of their new campaigns. And I think those expectations are often misplaced. When you watch, when you launch a new campaign, although your expectations are to hope for conversions, sales, right? That's what you should expect, right? I think those expectations are misplaced because the first thing you should expect is good traffic, and that's not guaranteed. Conversions are certainly not guaranteed ever. Okay? Get that expectation off the table completely. There is no guarantee of conversions, but you should certainly expect qualified traffic, good traffic, right? So that should be your first goal. There's nothing that you've done wrong in your campaign. If you're not getting conversions from day one week, one month, one, what you should be focused on is just getting the right kind of traffic. That is, as I've discussed in my principles of Google Ads, I talk about the 10 principles and part of that discussion is about the phases of Google Ads. Phase one is just getting the right traffic. Okay? Getting the right traffic in Google Ads is the first part. That's what you have to focus on first. If you jump to phase three, phase four, you will completely turn over the campaign. You'll overspend, you'll get things completely wrong. So no, you probably haven't done anything wrong. You just need to prioritize what is first and that is getting qualified traffic. And then the qualified traffic should take care of getting you conversions. You take care of your traffic, the traffic will take care of your conversions. Okay? So as long as your search terms are clean, as long as you're not overpaying, as long as you're bidding appropriately for the quality of traffic that you're getting, bidding appropriately for the volume of budget that you have, you should be able to move forward and eventually get into phase two, Phase three, phase four. I do have entire episodes devoted to the phases of Google Ads. So be sure if you are unsure what I'm talking about. The phases of Google Ads. It's a very critical point that I use all the time. Be sure and listen to that episode again so that you can understand how to pace your decisions in Google Ads. All right, Dan writes in and says, hi, Chris, When I'm looking at the search terms report for a particular campaign over a four day period, Google is only showing me search terms for two out of the 16 clicks that this campaign received. I know you've talked about Google not disclosing all search terms, but my numbers above seem extreme. Yeah, I agree. That is extreme, Dan. It looks like the campaign's bringing in the right traffic, but only based on the data I'm being shown, the two clicks and the other 14 clicks could possibly be irrelevant traffic. Yeah, I agree. Am I correct in assuming that and is there a way for, for me to see more or all of the search terms? So, Dan, there is not really a way. There is no secret. You know, I've heard of people using analytics and, you know, different things like that. I'm, I'm not going to get into stuff like that on this podcast. You know, I talk strictly about Google Ads. If there are other ways, you know, you can try and find those. But the truth is, no, those were hidden from us about five years ago and there's probably no coming back from that. Google could change their mind. It would be wonderful. But the fact is, is that data is hidden and most accounts suffer from about 40% to 50% of their search terms being hidden. Lesser degrees, maybe 30%. I have absolutely seen accounts that suffer from about 90% of their search terms being hidden. So it sounds like you're closer to that 90 percentile range. Most of the time it has to do with the industry or the type of searches that you are focusing on. So that could make a big difference for you. If you're in some industries, there's nothing that you can do to not make yourself in that industry. You know, you can try different keywords, different things, but it's not going to change the amount of hidden search terms unless you completely change tactics entirely and go after, you know, very different stuff. But that probably won't work because unless you're changing industries, you're still going to go after that same kind of clientele, the same kind of traffic, and Google will hide more sensitive searches and show you more of the less sensitive stuff. So it is awful. And you absolutely have reason to be concerned about those other 14 clicks. But I don't think that you should assume that those other 14 clicks are junk and the only two that you see are good. You do get to see zero click impressions, so you can see those. So my answer is this. Pay attention to the traffic that you're getting that's no clicks, but has one or two impressions. Try and gauge what is the theme of this traffic. What does this traffic look like? Use your negative keywords there. Hopefully you're getting some of the just zero click one or two impression search terms. Use that. And the fact is, unfortunately, you're going to have to make search term qualification decisions on a slower pace. If you're only getting a few clicks of search term data every few days, then it's just going to take you longer to be able to gather enough to make some solid decisions about negative keywords and if the traffic quality is worth it. I mean, just like we were talking about in the previous question with Christina, she might be getting 80% of her search terms, 70% of your search terms, and you're only getting, you know, 20%, 30%. So the fact is, is you'll just have to slow down your pacing on those decisions. So good question. If anyone else listening to the podcast would like to ask a question, you can do so by emailing me paid search podcastmail.com and reach out there. So I have my big topic that I want to talk about today, but I do want to pack in one more really great tip from my friend Joey Bidner, who is going to pop in and share a great suggestion about hopefully making the Performance Max campaign a little less mysterious for those conversions that it's getting. So, Joey, take it away.
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Hey, what's up, Chris? So today I want to talk about a little bit of a trap door in Google Ads, and in particular one that relates to Performance Max and video campaigns. So we talk a lot about how Performance Max likes to look good, but might not always be necessarily focused on growing your business. Right? So what does that look like? How can we tell if Performance Max is over inflating its efforts? And there are a few ways to do that, but there's one particular metric that's kind of buried that really gives you insight into what's going on, and that is engaged views. So an engaged view is anybody who saw up to 10 seconds of a video, okay. And Google will attribute conversions to engaged views. So this means if someone saw 10 seconds of a video and then converted elsewhere, organic, Facebook, whatever, Google can attribute a conversion to engaged views. Now you might be asking, whoa, how can they do that? You know, there was that Pixel wasn't fired. My thank you page wasn't triggered from an ad. Click what's going on? And this goes back to what Chris spoke about in a couple episodes. Quite accurately, he spoke about enhanced conversions. And enhanced conversions uses user data, right? Being emails, it's no longer click id, it's the email. So Google captures somebody's email or they know somebody's email when they view a YouTube video, because you're logged into through YouTube and then they'll correlate that to a sale in the back end of your website that maybe came organically. And Google will go, that's us. So the way that you see engage views is you go to your Campaign view and you hit the segment button, scroll down to conversions and hit add event type and you will see a segment for clicks and engaged views and then go over to your conversions column. And when I see a performance max campaign that has a lot of engaged views, this is when, you know, it brings me to think. You know, this campaign isn't actually generating awareness, it's just capturing the demand that, that you already have. So. Or it's just capturing what you already have from a user perspective and claiming the credit, but it's not actually driving new demand and awareness for your brand. So engaged views is something I always like to monitor. You know, it's not to say that it's always a bad thing too. It can also kind of be a little bit of a check, like, oh, am I showing to the right audience? Right? With, with YouTube, we don't get a lot of click conversion data. So engaged views can kind of help to be like, am I steering the right direction? But the thing you don't know is how much of this is just retargeting or cold traffic. Right? So that's what we don't know. So really what I want to come out of this conversation saying is before you aggressively scale a performance max campaign that looks really good, check your ratio of engaged view conversions to click conversions, because that might give you a better picture of what's actually going on. If you were to just to dump more money into a campaign that's getting a lot of engage views instead of click click conversions. Engage view conversions versus click conversions, you're just potentially pouring more money into remarketing and, and, and not an, you know, a campaign that's chasing acquisition and, and generating new users and traffic for yourself. Right? So, yeah, I hope that helps. And I'll pass back to you, Chris.
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All right, thank you, Joey. Great stuff. Now, I am so excited to share this. I've actually been thinking about this a lot. You know, sometimes I just have topics that I kind of have to pull and stretch and like, how do I talk about this? But this is something that I've been chewing on for a long time, and I'm finally going to just say it, and I want to be as precise as I can. You can tell by the topic of this episode, Google's goals are not your goals. And I have a very specific topic to share with you guys about that because this should help you pull back the curtain on what you're trying to do and what Google is trying to do. So Google's goals are not your goals. Let's talk about what your goals are, all right? As a Google Ads manager, whether you're doing it yourself or someone's hiring you to do it for them, you all have the same goals. That is to generate value through Google Ads. Sales, phone calls, web forms, store visits. Whatever it is, it is some kind of value that will be attributed to those actions taken in Google Ads. And that value is different for everyone. And the amount of value is different for everyone. But regardless, nobody just spends money without some kind of protocol of value associated with it. So let's talk about what is Google's goal? And here's the problem. Google's goal is not the same as your goal. Google's goal is to get you clicks. Google wants you to get more clicks. And I will explain why this is their goal. It'll make a lot of sense, even if you don't believe that. We can look at their actions and look at the decisions that they've made and the options they push on us, and we can derive that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Google, it definitely wants me to get more clicks. You'll start to see it. And before I get into this discussion, here's why I want to get in this discussion. You say, well, Chris, I don't need more negative comments about Google. I don't need to hear all this negative stuff. I, you know, I, I already have negative thoughts about, you know, Google, and they're taking this away, taking that away. I know I don't want to dwell on the negative aspect, but I do want to pull back the curtain so that you can more easily see, oh, this is a Google goal. If I take this recommendation, if I look at this suggestion, if I click on this and apply it, that's a Google improvement, not a me improvement. Okay? So I want you to, by the end of this, I want you to better be able to distinguish what is a Google goal and what is a you goal. Right? And when I say you, I mean sales, conversions, store visits, phone calls. Right? That value that you hope to derive from running these ads, the value from the money that you are spending on Google Ads. Okay? So here we go. Google wants clicks, and you need conversions. Okay? If you don't recognize this Google strategy will hurt you. It will actually pull away from your ability to derive conversions in sales. Google loves clicks. You need sales. All right, so let's understand why. Okay, so the easiest one, we could. We, I mean, we could say very easily. I mean, obviously Google wants clicks because that generates value and money for them, right? But I'm not going to get into that. Like I said, let's look at their actions. Let's look at their actions and figure out what their intent is based on. Not what they say, but what they do. Right. Couple episodes back, I talked about a new change that Google is bringing to Google Ads, and that is the fact that Google is now going to use your headlines as sitelink links. So, and now that I'm thinking about it, did I bring this up? This is, this sucks when I don't have a, a co host with me live because I don't remember if I brought this up or not, but in case I didn't, there's news that came out in case maybe, maybe it's new for some of you that didn't listen to that episode. So there's news that's come out that if not now, in, in the near future, I think next month Google will start taking one of your headlines or multiple of them and moving those and changing one of your site links to use that headline dynamically. So instead of the site link that you've written, it'll use one of your headlines as a site, as a site link title and that link will then go to your site link and not your website. Right. So it's, it's confusing. But regardless of whether you understand what's happening here, the point is this. Why would they do that? Well, because they know when we write our headlines, we write them in the most clickable language possible. We really want people to click. So we'll use very engaging things. And very often you write site links in, in a way that's not quite so engaging about us and contact us and you know, get a quote, you know, stuff like that, not great. But the headlines, boy, those are very actionable. Call now for a, you know, to talk to an expert, you know, stuff like that. That is very clickable material. So Google wants to use that. So what is the purpose of that? To drive more clicks. Google wants you to get more clicks and Google wants you to be more visible. Right. They, every decision that they're making, you, your goal should not be, your goal should not to be getting more clicks. Right? This, these changes that Google's making, that is not your goal. Your goal is to get better qualified impressions. Those impressions then lead to good clicks and those good clicks lead to sales leads. Okay? So this is a massive difference and I have plenty of examples. And like I said, the goal, the end result of after you listen to this is not, oh, I really hate Google. It's, ah, now I see this Suggestion, this recommendation, this change for what it is. So let's go through a few more examples. The recommendation screen. Big, big, massive push for you to get more clicks. Not more value, but more clicks. Google sees that it's failing if you don't get your ad clicked on. Okay, so what are some typical recommendations that we see? Well, Google wants us to add site links, right? More real estate, more opportunity for Google to expand your clickable area and the things that people can click on. Google wants us add dynamic site links. Now, you didn't write those site links. Google creates those site links for you. Right. Google asks us in the recommendations to add more keywords. And boy, is it absolutely focused on broad. They want you to add broad keywords. Right. And what do broad keywords do they reach much further? They are an extremely generous reaching type of keyword that will get you traffic far beyond the scope of what you think the keyword actually means. All right. Another very common suggestion, add Google part. Add the search partners to your campaign. Search partners is not something I recommend. We'll leave it at that. Not something. And it will absolutely drive a ton of clicks. Display network is another suggestion. Right. What does that do? Massive clicks. Even more than the search partners, the display network is something they want you to add. And, and then there's even suggestions to add automatic assets so that Google can create all the other clickable aspects in your Google Ads. Ads. Right. Every single thing that I've listed here all drive more traffic, more clicks, more engagement. They want you to have as much engagement as possible. Right. There's also something to be said about dynamic bidding. Dynamic, I call it dynamic automated bidding. Automated bidding pulls away from you, making the quote unquote mistake of bidding to restrictively. So being too restrictive on your bids would cause you to get less traffic. Let's say, let's say we go back 15, 20 years and the only option we have is manual bids. You put your bid in and you get clicks if your bids are high enough. Okay. Back in those days, someone that's very stingy with their bids may not get any clicks. Google sees that as a failure. No, no, no. We want that person to get clicks. So let's take away their ability to make independent decisions of, you know, how much their bids are, and let's, let's have them focus on the end result of just traffic. Let's get. You need more. You're missing traffic. Look, you're missing traffic. You're missing traffic. Right. And what's a giant warning that's on everybody's screen when they look at their Google Ads account, that giant limited by budget, that giant red limited by budget section. If you're limited by budget by 1 or 2%, boom, it's gonna pop up there just like that. I mean, it's very obvious. It's very scary. It's in red. It's extremely noticeable. It's the only thing in red at the campaign level that's going to show limited by budget. That means that you could be getting more clicks. And you know what that doesn't mean? If you increase budget and let's say you have 15 different keywords and only one keyword is actually driving conversions, the other 14 are completely wasting your money. By adding more budget, you're not necessarily improving your chances of getting more conversions. That keyword may not get any more clicks. All of the budget may go to the keywords that are not driving conversions for you, but instead they're just driving clicks. So this is, this is critically important that you understand the distinction between Google's goals and your goals. Now, am I faulting them for their goals? No. I mean that's, you have to understand that's their business. That is what they have to accomplish. They're in the business of selling you clicks, so they want you to have as much opportunity to get more of those clicks. You have to distinguish when it is in your best interest to ignore that recommendation and instead focus on qualified traffic, removing the excess in order to get to the value that lies beneath. And if you'd really like to dig into the value beneath, I highly recommend optio.com PSP to try their tool for free for 28 days. That's opteo.com PSP and with that, I thank you guys for being a part of this podcast. It is an important message that I share today. I, I hope that you guys are able to take that and make better decisions about your Google Ads accounts. Knowing that there are competing points of view in your Google Ads account between you and between Google. If you'd like to reach out to me, you can find me in the link. Whether you're listening or watching, you can Find the link chrishaeffer.com and my friend Joey Bidner's link is there as well. We both offer management services. Thank you so much for listening and being part of this long experiment of how long can Chris talk about Google Ads and it still be valuable? I don't know. We'll keep going another seven or eight years and we'll see how it lasts. See you next week.