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Chris
Hello and welcome to the Fate Search podcast. My name is Chris and today I am taking my direction from my listeners. I am answering five questions from listeners all around the world who have sent in questions to me about Google Ads covering budgets and bidding and keywords. And we have a special guest right in the middle of everything. I'm going to have Joey give you guys a great tip about seasonality adjustment for the upcoming Black Friday Christmas. You know, all the holiday stuff that happens this time of year. A really good tip about how to avoid that pre post sale slump that happens with, you know, that Black Friday seasonality Christmas type of sales. So stay tuned for all of that. I have all of that coming up on the show. Going to be some really, honestly some pretty tough questions, some pretty difficult questions that I've picked here, which is odd. Why would I pick such difficult questions for myself? Well, because I like to help people understand Google Ads. My name is Chris and that's what I do. I've been doing this for a long time. This is episode 436 of my Google Ads podcast here. I've been doing this for years and I'll continue doing it as long as Google Ads continues to be relevant and useful to advertisers to get their business and products. And it is, I honestly believe it is the best way to get the best traffic, the most reliable way to put money towards the most valuable traffic out there. I would put that against any other type of advertising out there, period. I think it is very powerful and extremely sophisticated. And so people have questions. So what those people did is they emailed me on my website. They can email me straight through my email at paid search podcastmail.com that's paid search podcastmail.com you can send in a question, be sure and tell me where you're from and keep your question as clear and concise as you can. That does help, but that's where I get all my questions from. If you'd like to send one in. So I am going to start with a question from Lamb from the Netherlands. Great question. And before I jump into that, I want to remind you about my sponsor who is changing everything in Google Ads. Okay. When you manage your Google Ads account, you have questions, you have issues, you have critical ups and downs and it can be very confusing. It'd be very overwhelming. Well, Optio has the solution. This is a management software that uses powerful algorithms to help you see your data. It doesn't manage the account for you, it doesn't take over the account, it doesn't Propose to just take your hands off and let us drive for you? No, I would never recommend a software like that. This is a software that provides you with data, provides you with information. It's an analytical tool to help you get more done in Google Ads by providing you critical information about what's happening with your clicks and bids. And most recently I've been talking about one of the new features they're coming out with. There are these scorecards that they provide and one of the sections of these new scorecards helps you to understand your responsive search ads. How are they performing? Are the assets unique? Do they have the proper words in them in relation to the search terms that are coming through? What's the rating? The use of different variations in your ads and which ones are performing the worst that you need to take action on? These are the types of things that you can expect when you use Optio. It is a wonderful tool and you can get a 28 day free trial now. If anyone's been listening for a while, you notice I didn't say 60 day. That opportunity has changed. It is now a 28 day free trial. When you use opteo.com PSP you can use the chat box on their website to say hey, I heard about your special offer. I'm getting it while I can still get it right. I told you things could be changing and they have. There is a new offer available now. Get in while you can get that 28 day free trial. That's twice the time of what you would get if you just signed up normally and try this amazing tool for free. That's opt e o.com PSP. Alright, so lam from the Netherlands says hello Chris, I've been following your podcast shows for a while. Very helpful and educational. I'm running Google Ads shopping with manual bidding so I have maximum control. I'm just like you since I've been using Google Ads since 2008 and I don't believe in automated bids. Great. Glad to have you have like minded listeners. I would expect many listeners follow the same kind of belief pattern and management process that I do. All right, so here's the question. Is there a way to minimize crap search terms that don't have anything to do with the products you're selling. I already manage my negative keywords every three days. Then Google avoids those searches. But after three to four days it goes wild again on more search terms. It's like it looks like it grabs all the synonyms of the words that you have in your description in the in the headlines of your products. And this costs you a lot of time to maintain a healthy campaign. Well, lam, you are absolutely right. There is a tendency for shopping campaigns and search campaigns, any kind of Google campaign, to act like a toddler with no parent around. It tends to go crazy if you don't keep an eye on your search terms, on what's happening with your account. Google absolutely tends to kind of just go out of bounds. It never seems to stay right where you want it. And the answer, unfortunately, is you're going to just have to keep up that pattern of every three to four days, check on things once a week. You know something, keep up that pattern. Whatever pattern you're doing, keep it up. Because at some point you will capture enough of those negative keywords to stop it. Now, it's important that when you add negative keywords, you don't just add the exact match negative keywords. You need to also add terms that are broad, match negative. So if there's one broad term that you never want to show up for, part of that crap search term that you don't want to show up for, be sure and add the broad match of that. And I'm particularly a fan of adding just one word, broad match terms. You know, if the word shoe is never going to be relevant, you don't sell shoes. You know, maybe you need to block that because you keep seeing it come up for some reason. I'm not suggesting you just start grabbing negative keywords because you don't sell this, you don't sell this. I mean, grab terms that are actually showing up in their search terms and add those as negatives. So time, unfortunately, it just takes time. All right, now one thing that could help you to minimize the effort that's required for you to go through this process every single week, constantly, just blocking and blocking. Part of the thing that you can do is you can use a filter for your search terms. Okay? So if you're running on search terms, you know, from your shopping campaign, your search campaign, what you can do is let's say you're selling window cleaning products, okay? So what you might do is you might tell Google, show me every term that does not have the word window in it. Show me every term that does not have the word glass in it. Show me every term that does not have the word, you know, something, something like that window in glass. Let's say that. So immediately you've reduced all the traffic. That is immediately suspicious, right? Why would you be getting something that doesn't have window or glass in it? If you, if you sell window glass cleaning products. Okay. And then you can also do an exclusion. So you tell Google, don't show me anything that's added to my Google account or anything that's blocked on my Google account. So there's the excluded exact match terms. You can actually tell Google not to show those to you. So now you're limited to just the terms that need action, that are suspicious. That's a faster way to immediately see the things that matter because you can immediately tell, oh, this doesn't have, you know, I have, I have H Vac companies, AC companies, plumbing companies, and I immediately filter, show me anything that doesn't have the word plumber in it. H Vac in it, AC in it. You know, those immediately are suspicious to me because most of the time they're going to have a competitor word in it or you know, be searching for a DIY kind of term. I mean, that's a very fast way to save yourself time. But that's your effort, your day to day effort when it comes to it. You're still going to have to grind through. And I can tell you there is a point that even very broad, wide reaching campaigns will eventually reign themselves in and become more qualified, more likely to drive quality traffic rather than crap traffic. It does happen and I can tell you it depends on the account, depends on the spend. But I have accounts that took me about a year to finally get to that point. But once it's done, that toddler seems to follow the rules a lot better. Dee in Houston, Texas has another question about the giant toddler known as Google and how to keep it reined in. Keep going. Good morning, Chris. I understand the following and correct me if I'm wrong. Okay, so what D is about to do is list out three statements and we're going to go through them. Statement number one, cost per click is less for broad match versus phrase match and phrase match versus broad match or sorry. And phrase match versus exact match. So statement true or false? Cost per click is less for broad match, which compared to phrase and phrase is cheaper than exact. And the answer to that is true. Yes, in general that is true. And I have explained in the past, I've used this analogy before. I will use it again. I have an entire topic of the week that I went through several months ago. I think it was earlier this year where I described why broad match is cheaper. So I'll give you the very shortened version of that. Broad match is cheaper than phrase in the way that if I yell the word I want a hamburger out Loud and there's a hundred people in front of me. I can receive a hamburger that might cost $3. Some other hamburgers might cost $25, some cost $13. There's a, when I say hamburger, that's not specific enough that I couldn't get something really cheap, right? But if I say I want a double patty cheese bacon hamburger, bacon cheeseburger with non gluten bread and raw cheese and grass fed beef, I start being very specific with the hamburger that I'm asking for. Now, immediately, the number of restaurants in front of the number of people in front of me that can hand me that burger become less and less. And guess what? The price of that burger that they're going to hand me now becomes more expensive because I have excluded many, many opportunities to receive a cheaper burger. So that's a very simplified version, but essentially that's the idea. When you eliminate options, when you eliminate the range and opportunity of what you can receive, the cost per click tends to go up. Okay, so first statement, true check. Second statement. There are some that recommend using broad search keywords coupled with aggressive negative keyword lists to keep out the riff raff. Okay, it's not. So, yes, I. That statement doesn't really need a true or false, but yes, that's a valid strategy. I actually just described that same kind of strategy in my previous question. So yes, that is absolutely a strategy that can work aggressive, negative, and you know, doing that. I think, I think I have done that for many accounts when warranted Statement number three, there are some that recommend adding phrase match plus the exact match of the same keyword to your list that I disagree with. So false, let's say. I do not think that that is a good strategy because when I see that strategy, it's done in mass, it's done in bulk, people will have every keyword duplicated. They'll have, they'll take hundreds of keywords and multiply them by having, you know, multiple iterations of the same keyword in the exact match and the phrase match, I think that is absolutely ridiculous. These people are gaming the system as though there's some kind of hack. Like there's a shortcut to Google Ads. I got you. If you're listening to this podcast because you think you're going to learn one little secret that's going to make your campaign just blow up and do really well, you're not going to hear it. I do not believe in shortcuts in Google Ads because if you follow a precise process in Google Ads, you can eventually get the traffic that you're looking for and reach success to somehow think that if you just duplicate phrase and exact that's going to somehow trick the system and it's going to work because you now you have cheaper keywords with exact match keywords and you're going to get cheap traffic plus really good traffic. It's silly. It's ridiculous. Okay, so absolutely not. So D continues here and says you recommend starting, I think. Okay, sorry, I'll try that again. You recommend starting with phrase match and then moving to exact match later. At what point do you add or switch from phrase match to exact match and wouldn't that increase the cost per click? Great question. So I've shown you my true and false thing. So what I recommend. So obviously D listens to the podcast and you know, understands my theory here. So let me explain my theory about why the reason I recommend switching from phrase to exact at some point is when you achieve precision and when you start to see conversions happening at high volume on particular terms and you're able to get conversion rates at much higher rates, cost per conversion rates at much higher rates for very specific search terms. Right? Then that's when the light should turn on for you and realize I need to occupy more of this search term search volume. I need to make sure my ads show up specifically for this. I'm not going to just leave it up to Google with my broad match or my phrase match to hopefully show up for that. I'm going to target that specifically, possibly with a very custom ad, possibly with a custom landing page designed specifically for this search term, which continues to churn out good traffic and good conversions for me. That is when I would switch. Now let me define the word switch. Switch does not mean I just changed everything to exact match. I very precisely decide, oh, this is a really good search term. I'm going to try and command 90% search impressions search impression share on this particular exact match keyword because it's very precise to what I'm selling and I want to try and beat the competitors on this. I want to try and outbid them. You know, there's some reason why I might do that. That's my purpose behind switching. I don't switch everything. I switch on a very tactical, very specific analytical reason for doing that. Again, I'm against short. There is no shortcut. You don't just say, ah, perfect, now's the time to switch everything to exact match. It will fall apart. And the reason D goes on to ask doesn't adding the exact match to your campaign actually increase the cost per click? Yes, it will. It will increase the cost per click. But when you can afford a higher cost per click because the conversion rate is higher, it's worth it. That's why you don't change everything to exact match. You change certain ones to exact match because you want to command more control of that search. Because, okay, Maybe I'm paying $5 a click for, you know, all my other keywords, but I realize this one, this one search term is very important. I'm going to try and exact match that and pay eight or nine dollars per click for that. But I have such a good conversion rate. It's such better quality for me. The leads, the, the ROAS is better. I'm willing to pay a higher rate because I get a better return. Okay. So I hope that is helpful. Great question, great question. Obviously someone who listens and, you know, wants to get the details on that, but hopefully that is helpful. So now we're going to change gears a little bit. I have Joey Bidner popping in and Joey is going, as I said, just talk about seasonality adjustment to help you avoid the pre and post sale slumps with the upcoming Black Friday Christmas sales, all of that kind of stuff. So, Joey, take it away.
Joey
Hey Chris, thanks for having me back today. I want to talk about Black Friday and a little tool that Google has that allows us to warn the algorithm that this sale is coming and tells the algorithm there's going to be a shift in data. So it doesn't have the hangover effect that it normally would during and after a sale. So typically, if you don't tell the algorithm that anything is going to happen, what happens is during the first few days of the sale, you know, the algorithm, especially if you're using automated bidding, by the way, the algorithm is kind of in shock. The first couple days, you know, your conversion rate really spikes up and then it's got a little bit of a delayed reaction to say, oh, you know, we're doing really well right now, let's spend a little bit more right now. Because remember, Google can increase your spend throughout the month and then it makes up for it later. So you might see after a couple days of your sale, your spend will kind of ramp up a little bit. Then once the fall off happens from the end of the sale, what will happen is Google will react a little bit late as well. Right. Like it will see, oh, you know, the conversion rate has fallen off now, but it could take a couple days where that spend is still really high or it's still serving those products that were selling really well but aren't anymore. And then it'll take a couple days to ramp back down and then you'll get the correction. But with something called the seasonality adjustment, you can tell the algorithm this is going to happen. So you can say, oh, between this date and this date my conversion rate is going to double and Google will know it's coming, so it can essentially perform accordingly. And what I like to do is not just tell it it's going to increase during the sale, but I also like to say it's going to, the conversion rate is going to decrease before and after the sale. Right? Because a predictable sale like Black Friday, or I should say a recurring sale like Black Friday has three phases, right? The first few days before the sale hits, like the three, I would say the three days before the sale, your conversion rates are going to drop, right? Because everybody's waiting for the sale. Everybody knows Black Friday is coming. So you're going to have a big drop in your conversion rate. So and then during the sale, you know, you're going to see a huge spike. And then after the sale you're going to do a, you're going to have a big drop. So what I like to do is look at last year's data and record the data I'll write down. Okay, like the three days before the sale. Yeah, my conversion rate dropped 40%. Then during the sale conversion rate went up 150%. And then after the sale conversion rate dropped back down 170%. And then you go to the seasonality adjustments. So you can find the seasonality adjustments in the tools section under budgets and bidding. And in that drop down you'll see adjustments. Okay. And then that adjustments you'll see two options, seasonal and exclusions. So you're going to use the seasonal one and I, you'll see two options, budget and conversion rate. I like to select conversion rate. You give it a name, you give it a start time and end time. So first I would set my pre sale adjustment so I would select those few days. You can select the campaigns you want if you like. I typically just do account wide. And then you say the conversion rates are going to decrease by whatever you saw last year. Then you make another one for the days of the sale. Conversion rates are going to increase by whatever you saw last year. And then the last one, the hangover, the conversion rates dropping after the sale. And you'll just see, I just, you know, you don't have to wait for the algorithm to, you know, you don't see that delayed reaction. It's just going to know when to hit the gas, know when to pull back. So I really like this for. I do this for a lot of sales. I do it for Easter, for Independence Day. You know, I really like this one, especially for the really big, predictable sales. So I hope that was helpful. And back to you.
Chris
All right, thank you, Joey. And if you'd like to talk with Joey more, you can find his website, joeybidner.com that's Joey Bidner. B I D N E R Bidner. All right, so now moving on to the next question. Liam. Liam says hello. This could be a confusing question, so I hope I explain it. Well, we've noticed in our accounts we were getting more expensive cost per click when we're targeting a larger area. We are also getting a much cheaper CPC using phrase match keywords instead of exact. Is there a reason they would be competing at a higher rate? And if so, is there a way to see that? Okay, so, Liam, unfortunately this isn't a live show, so I can't ask you this question and get an answer, but I'm going to make an assumption. I think what you're experiencing is algorithm fluctuations. There is no logical reason why you would get a more expensive cost per click when you target a larger area. In fact, most of the time you would experience either a static CPC or possibly a drop. Okay, so the reason you might be getting a higher CPC is because this larger geographic area might have been so significantly larger that it caused a fluctuation in the algorithm. I see this happen a lot where you will have a target ROAS or target cpa. And if you make internal adjustments, it may not react in the way that you would expect. You might actually see a spike in the cost or a spike in the cost per click or a drop in the conversions or a drop in the impressions. There's a lot that goes on in the engine of these automated bid campaigns that can be very unintuitive to what I talk about on the podcast. So don't infer just because you made this change, you're now seeing a higher CPC because of X reason. Right? You said because you think they're competing at a higher rate. No, there's no reason to think that if you do this, it causes this, especially with automated bids. So I'm going to assume that you're using automated bids. Okay. And to answer the second part of your question, so you're also seeing much cheaper CPC using phrase match instead of exact. Yes, I answered this question earlier in the show and absolutely now this is also not going to always be the case, especially with automated bids. But generally, as soon as you open up any aspect of your campaign geographically, if you open up your keywords, if you removed all of your negative keywords, if you started advertising 24, 7 rather than just eight hours a day, immediately you're going to open up your campaign to more opportunities to get traffic. And so therefore typically you're going to see cheaper cost per click. So going from exact to phrase would be an example of expanding your campaign. Opening your campaign. So that's a great way to lower your cpc. So it's also a great way to get a bunch of crap traffic like we talked about earlier, right? I'm not advocating that exact match is the only way to do it, but I don't ever want anyone to listen to this and think, well, the best way to get results is to use the widest settings in Google Ads. That might get you a lot of cheap traffic. But you should know cheap traffic does not equal success, does not equal quality. Nobody pays money on Google Ads simply just to get clicks. There's always a reason, there's always a purpose behind the clicks. I want people to sign up for a newsletter. I need to launch a new product. I need eyeballs on this product. There's always a display, at least a bottom line awareness value to this, okay? So don't try and beat the system by going for cheaper and cheaper CPCs. It sounds like you might be focusing, Liam. It sounds like you might be focusing too much on cheap CPCs. Instead, note how it affects the quality of your traffic. How does it affect your conversions? How does it affect the quality of your traffic? You know the other metrics. CPC can go up and down, especially if you're using automated bids. It will be very unpredictable for you. All right, I got two more questions here. One from Matthew in Florida and Catherine in Indiana. But quickly I want to remind you About Optio 28 day free trial of their amazing tool that will take your campaign further because it will alert you and show you things that you never would have seen before. It's an analytical system that connects directly to your Google Ads account and helps you churn through those tough to see details. Highly recommend it. That's optio.com PSP Alright, Matthew from Florida says hi Chris, do you provide a preliminary recommended AdWords budget to a prospective client? If so, how do you do this? Is there a way to do this without actually creating an account or is it just through experience and your gut intuition. Do you ever use Google's budget recommendation or their budget simulator? And he goes on to give his opinion on these thoughts. So I'll read Matthew's thoughts further on the first question. I feel I've been vastly underestimating what clients can expect to spend on a monthly budget. And as for a sim second question, I'm finding that Google almost always gives a much more rosier projection than what actually happens. So Matthew, I'm 100%. Google always gives more rosy predictions about what to expect. Certainly if you look at their projections on conversion rates and return and things like that. I mean there's no way that, that Google can possibly know every account's expected roas or cost per conversion or successful client signups or something like that. I mean that's, that's silly. And it tends to be very positive, which you would expect. It's obviously in favor of itself. It has a lot of faith in its own product. So not, not unbelievable at all. So let's get back to the original question. Do you provide a preliminary recommended Google Ads budget to a prospective client of mine? And the answer is yes I do. If they, if they have no idea. My answer is always small, start small. And I have a couple examples about why and how this works, but this gets a little bit into the weeds. But basically, you know, I always suggest the client keep the risk as minimal as possible because growing from success is a lot better than shrinking from failure. Okay, so if a campaign is successful, like for example, I have a client that launched a new campaign about two weeks ago. I had told them 5,000 would be good to start with. Seemed, I mean, I kind of guessed. There's a lot of traffic. They have other campaigns that are very successful. I kind of guessed 5k would be good. I launched the campaign and I was immediately within a couple days hitting 50% below their expected cost per acquisition. So they were hoping for forty dollar cost per acquisition. I was hitting about twenty three dollar cost requisition. So I emailed them and said, hey, how do the numbers look on your end? I'm, I'm thinking we double the budget here. And they said yeah, it looks really good, let's do it. They moved from 5k to 10k. Great. Client is very happy. Now let's reverse that and say they started out with $10,000 and were very unhappy with the results. And you know, I'm struggling to try and hit the numbers. I'm not really going to email them and say hey, we should Drop the budget, you know, because I'm still working with what I have. Until I hear from them, I'm not necessarily going to drop the budget because I want to work with the expectation that I can get it to where it needs to be. Let's say at the end of the month, they spent 10k and they had very poor results. That situation is a lot worse than someone that spent 5k and got bad results. Right. Most of the time it's better to grow with success than to shrink with failure. So that's how I tend to make my judgment. I like to start small because. And this is. This is something I very strongly believe. I do not believe that small campaigns are less successful. They're just slower. If I had $500 with a campaign that received a 2x return and then I had another campaign that had $5,000 that received a 2x return, they both are achieving success, but it's just at a slower rate. One is getting a 2x from its investment of 500 per month and the other is getting a 2x from its 5000 per month. It's not like the 5000 is doing any more. It's just a bigger investment in a faster return. They're both 2x returns. They're still going to get twice of what they're putting into it. So both of them, I would encourage to grow their budgets. And in the same way, if someone spent $500 and received nothing, they're in a lot better position than if they spent $5,000 and received nothing. Okay. I am always more cautious because I see too much failure in Google Ads. The rate of failure in Google Ads is a lot higher than a lot of people would have you believe. There's a lot of accounts that I look at that I do audits on accounts. Very often people will reach out to me, ask to do an audit on the account, or they'll hire me for my coaching services or maybe my management services. And I do an initial audit of the account. And I cannot tell you. Most of the time, I am pleasantly surprised when a client is not just burning money. Right. They don't contact me because things are good. They usually contact me when things are bad. So I understand. Most of the accounts I look at are going to be in a bad situation. But I'm always pleasantly. I'm happy when I think this account looks great. I'm thrilled. I'm so happy to see something good. Because most of the time I look at an account and it is highly unsuccessful and the client has no idea how much waste and useless stuff is in the account. Alright, so last one, jumping up to Indiana. Catherine from Indiana says thanks for dropping the knowledge each week on your podcast. My question is, do you use scripts to manage your manual bidding or are you truly making manual updates? The answer, Katherine, is I do not use scripts. I have played around with scripts a little bit in the past. I do not like them. They do not fit with my management style. I do not see that scripts are something I actually that's something I have had very bad experiences with. I will take over accounts where other agencies will have some ridiculous script in their account that will automatically increase the manual bids in their account if they're below the recommended first page bid. Right. If below first page bid increase 10%. That is awful. The kind of scripts that I see are usually bidding. They're pausing most of the time they're bidding scripts. And I absolutely do not make, do not use bidding scripts. I see absolutely no reason to use them because the decisions that I make are decisions that I make based on analytics, not just pattern. I don't just jump in and just increase bids because there's a warning on my account saying I'm below first page bid. I'm not going to increase bids simply because my conversions were less the day before. I make analytical decisions. And the follow up question to Catherine's question is if you're making manual updates, how frequently do you make bid adjustments? Well, the answer is I make bid adjustments more frequently whenever the campaign is redlining. And that's a good and bad thing. So if a campaign is redlining for bad reasons. Right. You can imagine it's failing. Right. You know, there's a red line at the top and a red line at the bottom and green is right there in the middle. And if it's redlining at the bottom, it's failing. I'm going to make very frequent adjustments, typically daily, at least, you know, five days a week, I'm going to go in and make adjustments. If an account is doing phenomenally well, I will also possibly make daily adjustments. You know, if I'm seeing just, you know, for example, there's it's a very hot season for a certain product, a certain industry or something like that, I might make daily adjustments. I might make, you know, until I start to see a leveling off of those metrics, if I continue to see positive response from the adjustments that I'm making and I like the direction it's going, I'm going to continue to make adjustments for what I think is working well, and the same thing is true with negative. If I continue to make adjustments and I continue to see the campaign crash, I'm going to keep making adjustments to try and to curb that failure. Now, as soon as I start to see it flattening off and it starts to move back in the other direction, I slow down my adjustments. So it always has to do with the need, with the. With the severity of the problem. Whenever I make adjustments in the account, I do not use automated. Automated scripts, anything like that. Do not like them. The only thing that I do use that's somewhat automated is the rules system. I will have the rules sometimes decrease my budget or pause ads or pause a campaign at certain times. So I won't forget. Let's say the client says, only run this from November 1, November 24 or something. Then I'll set up a rule that will pause it for me so I won't forget. But definitely not scripts, Definitely not a fan of it. I think the overcomplication, I think the hacking, I think the shortcut of Google Ads leads people to think that scripts and, you know, complication of bidding algorithms can somehow help them beat the system. I do not think it's true. I do not like it and I do not use it. And with that, that is the end of the podcast. Thank you guys so much for being here. If you'd like to speak with me specifically about Google Ads management, you can reach out to me, chrissafer.com I manage accounts that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I have plenty of accounts that spend, you know, a few thousand dollars a month. So I'm happy to help you with that. I manage the accounts myself. I do not outsource any of my work, and all of my clients get to speak to me directly. I am personally responsible for your account. That's the way that I do all of my management. So if you're interested in that, reach out to me. Otherwise, stay tuned here because I do share just about everything I know in Google Ads and I'll do that same thing next week.
The Paid Search Podcast | Episode 436 Summary: Q&A - Answering Questions from Listeners
Release Date: October 28, 2024
Host: Chris Schaeffer, Certified Google Ads Specialist
Special Guest: Joey Bidner
In Episode 436 of The Paid Search Podcast, host Chris Schaeffer engages directly with his audience by addressing five insightful questions submitted by listeners worldwide. The episode delves deep into various aspects of Google Ads, including budgeting, bidding strategies, keyword management, and seasonal adjustments. Additionally, special guest Joey Bidner joins the conversation to share expert tips on navigating the complexities of seasonal advertising peaks like Black Friday and Christmas.
Questioner: Lamb from the Netherlands
Timestamp: [00:00:19]
Lamb, a seasoned Google Ads user since 2008, inquires about strategies to reduce irrelevant search terms in his Google Shopping campaigns. Despite managing negative keywords diligently every few days, Lamb observes a resurgence of unwanted search terms, consuming valuable time and budget.
Chris's Response:
Chris acknowledges the frustration, likening Google’s behavior to "a toddler with no parent around," prone to erratic actions without constant oversight. He emphasizes the necessity of regularly updating negative keywords, not just in exact matches but also employing broad matches to capture synonyms and related terms. For example, if selling window cleaning products, adding broad negative keywords like "shoe" can prevent unrelated searches from draining the budget.
"Google absolutely tends to kind of just go out of bounds. It never seems to stay right where you want it." ([00:05:30])
To streamline this process, Chris suggests using filters to isolate and address only the suspicious search terms, thus reducing the time spent on maintenance. Over time, consistently applying these strategies will lead to more qualified traffic and reduced waste.
Questioner: Dee from Houston, Texas
Timestamp: [00:20:00]
Dee presents a three-part statement regarding CPC variances across broad, phrase, and exact match keywords, seeking validation and further clarification.
Chris's Analysis:
CPC Hierarchy:
True – Broad match keywords typically have lower CPCs compared to phrase and exact matches. Chris uses a hamburger analogy to illustrate how specificity increases CPC due to reduced competition for highly targeted searches.
"When you eliminate options, the cost per click tends to go up." ([00:12:45])
Broad Keywords with Aggressive Negative Lists:
Duplication of Phrase and Exact Matches:
Regarding budget adjustments from phrase to exact match, Chris advises switching based on performance metrics, such as high conversion rates, rather than a blanket approach. While exact matches may increase CPC, the improved conversion rates justify the higher investment for specific, valuable search terms.
"You don't just say, ah, perfect, now's the time to switch everything to exact match. It will fall apart." ([00:19:50])
Special Guest: Joey Bidner
Timestamp: [20:00]
Joey Bidner provides a comprehensive strategy for leveraging Google Ads' seasonality adjustments to mitigate the typical "hangover" effects surrounding major sales events like Black Friday and Christmas.
Key Strategies:
Seasonality Adjustment Tool:
Utilize Google’s seasonality adjustments to preemptively inform the algorithm of expected changes in conversion rates. This ensures that budgeting and bidding adapt smoothly to the fluctuating demand.
Three-Phase Approach:
"With seasonality adjustments, you can tell the algorithm this is going to happen, so it can essentially perform accordingly." ([20:15])
By analyzing past performance data, Joey advises setting precise adjustments for each phase, ensuring that the algorithm remains responsive and effective throughout the sales period.
Questioners: Matthew from Florida and Catherine from Indiana
Timestamp: [24:09]
Matthew's Inquiry:
Matthew seeks guidance on providing preliminary Google Ads budgets to prospective clients, questioning whether this should be based on experience, intuition, or Google's recommendations.
Chris's Guidance:
Chris advocates for starting clients with modest budgets, emphasizing risk management and scalability based on performance. He shares an anecdote where starting with a $5,000 budget led to impressive results, allowing for strategic budget increases. Conversely, a $10,000 initial budget with poor results poses greater risks and challenges.
"I always suggest the client keep the risk as minimal as possible because growing from success is a lot better than shrinking from failure." ([24:30])
Chris also critiques Google's budget simulators for often presenting overly optimistic projections, advising reliance on empirical data and cautious scaling instead.
Catherine's Inquiry:
Catherine questions whether Chris uses scripts for managing manual bidding or relies solely on manual adjustments.
Chris's Response:
Chris firmly states that he does not use scripts, citing negative experiences and a preference for analytical, data-driven decisions over automated patterns. He criticizes the common practice among some agencies of embedding aggressive bidding scripts that can destabilize campaigns.
"I make analytical decisions. I don't just jump in and just increase bids because there's a warning on my account." ([24:50])
When dealing with bid adjustments, Chris performs them manually and regularly, especially when a campaign is underperforming ("redlining") or excelling, ensuring that each change is grounded in thoughtful analysis rather than automated triggers.
Episode 436 of The Paid Search Podcast offers valuable insights into effective Google Ads management through listener-driven questions and expert commentary. Chris Schaeffer's pragmatic approach emphasizes the importance of continuous monitoring, strategic use of negative keywords, and tailored budget recommendations. Joey Bidner's session on seasonal adjustments further equips advertisers to navigate the ebbs and flows of major sales periods without falling prey to common pitfalls.
For listeners seeking personalized Google Ads management, Chris invites them to connect directly via chrissafer.com, reinforcing his commitment to hands-on, meticulous account handling. The episode underscores that success in Google Ads is achieved through consistent, informed strategies rather than shortcuts or automated scripts.
Notable Quotes:
Chris Schaeffer:
"Google absolutely tends to kind of just go out of bounds. It never seems to stay right where you want it." ([00:05:30])
Chris Schaeffer:
"When you eliminate options, the cost per click tends to go up." ([00:12:45])
Chris Schaeffer:
"You don't just say, ah, perfect, now's the time to switch everything to exact match. It will fall apart." ([00:19:50])
Joey Bidner:
"With seasonality adjustments, you can tell the algorithm this is going to happen, so it can essentially perform accordingly." ([20:15])
Chris Schaeffer:
"I always suggest the client keep the risk as minimal as possible because growing from success is a lot better than shrinking from failure." ([24:30])
Chris Schaeffer:
"I make analytical decisions. I don't just jump in and just increase bids because there's a warning on my account." ([24:50])
For more detailed discussions and expert tips on optimizing your Google Ads campaigns, stay tuned to The Paid Search Podcast every Monday. Submit your questions or engage with Chris Schaeffer at www.paidsearchpodcast.com.