Tony: All right, welcome everyone to another episode of the ‘For Good Podcast’, I've got David with me again, I wrangled him in here so you couldn't escape it. And we're gonna keep this one, I think relatively top level, generic.
David: Yeah.
Tony: Like, we do a lot of Google ads and I guess I wanted us to chat about like, like, why do it? How do you start? And I guess kind of the ideas of it and just, I guess, the hoops you’ve got to jump through when you're first going through this thing that we call PPC advertising and pay per click.
David: Yeah. So I think yeah why, why start with Google ads? So personally, I come from an SEO background and a bit of affiliate marketing.
Tony: We let him in.
(laughter)
David: So yeah. But then, you know, the transition for me to pay was obviously a little bit easier because-
Tony: Yeah, welcome to the bright side.
David: Yeah and um, yeah, but that's a different story.
Tony:(laughs)
David: So what I'm going to say is, because some hear a lot of terms within the digital marketing space and say - “Oh SEO yeah that's what I would like to do because it's obviously “free traffic”, in quotes.
Tony: Yeah.
David: And then well, with Google ads, you know I want to run ads and I want to be on top of every single page where there are all of these keywords.
Tony:Everything.
David: Yeah. So depending on the mindset and the knowledge you have of search in general, how search engines work and how they are divided by the different, I guess, search features they give you, if it's like directional, navigational.
Tony: Mhm.
David: So if you look for a direction to a shop you can run ads for that one, as well as if you're looking for a specific product, or you want to go shopping, shopping shoes, you can run specific product ads for those as well.
Tony: Yep.
David: So you know, if you want to get started with Google ads, the first question is, I guess
why? Right. So why would you do ads over SEO?
Tony: Or social.
David: Or social. So I guess from my opinion the first thing I would look at is, before I spent my money on Google ads, the audience I'm trying to reach.
Tony: Yeah.
David: Are they actively looking for what I'm offering?
Tony: Yes.
David: Do they have the problem right now?
Tony: That's it. Is it a searchable service or product?
David: Yeah. So yeah, I mean at the end Google will tell you if it can help you or not, but imagine this - Let's say we take an example of, I'm locked out of my house. So what would I type in? A 24/7 or, let's say, Emergency Locksmith near me.
Tony: Or a hardware store for a hammer. (laughs)
David: Yeah well, you know if you're locked out usually you don't have access to your car.
Tony: And then you search for a Glazier closely after. But yeah, you'd look for a locksmith.
David: Yeah. You’d look for a locksmith y’know if it's at night, emergency, it’s the same with dental.
Tony: Emergency, near me, that type of stuff.
David: Correct. So, you have a need right now. So you have a problem and you're looking for very fast solution.
Tony: And the commercial intent of that search is very high.
David: So, yeah. And I mean, to just dumb it down, I have a user which is, y’know, has a problem, I can help them, I have the solution and they are there to spend the money with me. So they are not like staying there for, y’know, three days in front of the house looking for the right key locksmith, for opening their door.
Tony: Yeah.
David: Whereas, y’know, search is perfect for that. Whereas in social you can't, it's hard to kind of tell someone - ‘Hey if you're in an emergency, either way while you're scrolling through cats and dogs videos, remember us.’
Tony: Yeah.
David: It's good for branding.
Tony: Yeah, but once again, especially a very transactional service like that, I really couldn't care less about what a locksmith is doing on their weekend.
David: You can run the ads, that's not a problem, but you won't see any wins out of it. You won’t see a return for the spenditure.
Tony: The chances of you putting that in front of someone that needs a locksmith is tough.
David: It’s tough. So, you probably understand what audience you want to target to. So if they use search to find you or your competitors, or the solution they're looking for, then Google ads, SEO, fantastic channels to get into. So why would you start - If you know that it's Google ads, why would pick it over organic? And I guess the answer there lies in how many or how visible are you currently in search if someone's looking for you, your brand, you might be very visible.
David: But if it comes to non branded search, as in, you know, I'm just looking for the particular service without mentioning your brand name or your company name. Where are you sitting in all that?
Tony: And the example of the locksmith is perfect cause like, I'm not gonna be very brand driven for a locksmith.
David: No.
Tony: If I'm locked out of my house and I can see my dog through the window and it's like, ‘feed me!’ I want the person that can get to me quickest.
David: Yeah, and also you need to remember with SEO, you obviously give Google pages and information to index in the long term, to change the information on those pages and update the search results based on that takes time.
Tony: Yeah.
David: Whereas in Google ads if you say, from 8pm tonight onwards on a Friday to Sunday, say this. 24/7, we do weekends, we come out to a 50 kilometer radius, y’know. You can mention certain aspects of, y’know, we don't charge a fee over $99. If it's a tire repair, or y’know, you can put in triggers and keywords to match what the person is looking for.
Tony: It's a very quick response, very dynamic. Which, in today's climate of like, Coronavirus situations, that ability to, I guess, quickly flip between home delivered meals or restaurants, like that type of thing. You know, like that's very important to have and that's why you would even, I guess, target branded searches, you know, someone was searching - If you’re a restaurant for example.
David: Yeah.
Tony: And I'm looking up you, the ability to change that message instantly when I look up that restaurant - ‘We’re still open and we deliver meals to your home.’ Whereas the organic ones just wouldn't change at midnight because Mr. Local Dude told us to do it.
David: Yeah. Yeah and I guess also you can say, look, this Friday, we want to have a themed event.
Tony: Yeah.
David: People saying, look, we’ve got some fresh fish or, you know, seafood.
Tony: Yeah, seafood night.
David: And we probably haven't done this before. Our current clientele probably doesn't know about it, we want to test it out and just say, we're out in our local area, we’re running ads for a couple of days, it's highly targeted, saying we have fresh seafood and you know, we have buffet whatsoever. And just test something out and for testing, for driving quick messages and offers, promotions, it's a fantastic tool.
Tony: I've seen - I mean I don’t want to sidetrack you, but this is my job here on the podcast is to get into random crap.
David: Alright, I’ll just have a sip.
Tony: Yeah, please Remedy feel free to sponsor our podcast or be a client, we love your stuff.
Tony: But I knew of a situation of an ice cream shop that happened to have a coffee machine too. When the weather was like under a certain temperature they wrote a script that would look at the weather, pull that and then change the ads from being ice cream to coffee. Just because, you know, no one's looking for ice cream on a 10 degree day they're looking for coffee.
David: Yeah it happens in retail, especially for big fashion retailers, where they say if the temperature drops - And again, we are now going into Autumn.
Tony: Yeah.
David: And they say look, instead of showing polo shirts to you on a sunny weekend, the weather has changed all of a sudden, I'm actually showing you rain coats and puffer jackets.
Tony: Yeah, every business should be considering this in some degree.
David: And this can be automated.
Tony: It can be automated if you’ve got a lot, but if you’re not just think about it, y’know.
David: So, but also y’know, you want to have your ad - Google Ads specialist or an SEO specialist.
Tony: So you can be specific with it, you can be dynamic, you can change quickly. Why else would you go into it?
David: Yeah. So look, I think the ‘why’ is well covered.
Tony: Well what else? (laughs)
David: What we want to understand here is, if you consider - If you consider to go into it, you said yes alright, I want to get into it. I guess the next two crucial things are the website you have or the website you want to drive traffic to.
Tony: Yep.
David: Ideally, you own that asset.
Tony: Have a website.
David: You have a website.
Tony: I don't care, I'm very - I'll outrightly say because I've seen it, don't run ads to your Google My Business page or to your Facebook page. It's just not good enough.
David: If you've never done anything before and y’know if you look, start with it - But at the same time, you need to keep in mind that you're renting both, you're renting the Google My Business from Google, you don't own it.
Tony: Yes, they can do whatever they want. It's hard enough controlling any of these big tech products, y’know. But you're right like those things are like their little playpens like they will do big changes instantly.
David: Yeah. And I guess while we say, on the website and the asset you drive the traffic to, own the bloody Google Ads account.
Tony: Yeah. Oh my god, I could do a huge list of things. Okay, yeah - Own your Google Ads account.
David: Yeah. Don't get - Even if you get a cousin or brother-in-law setting it up for you, make sure you have ownership of it.
Tony: Yeah, they should be linked as a Manager, Managers can be kicked out by the Owner whenever, okay, we always go in via a Manager. Do not want to have someone else because they guarantee - And there's agencies that won't even let you do that even if you're starting up with them, so that's an easy answer. Don't use them. There's no reason for that.
David: Yeah. I mean, if you hear someone setting it up for you and they don't give you access to it, then you should run away.
Tony: Yeah.
David: Run, run away.
Tony: Yeah run fast, don’t look back.
David: The reason why is, yes you can create accounts straight away, new ones and set up your new billing system.
Tony: You lose all that data.
David: You lose all the data. You lose all the-
Tony: You’ve got to learn again, the new agencies got to learn, or you’ve got to learn, it’s just not worth it.
David: Yeah. The negative keywords, the search terms, past search terms, that's all data which Google doesn’t give you until you spend the money on it. But to come back to kind of like the website. So, make sure you're on the website.
Tony: Yep. Hosting domain. (laughs)
David: Hosting domain, correct.
Tony: Get admin to that as well. Yep, go on.
David: And I guess the next big topic everyone tries to dodge around is the budget.
Tony: Budget. Have a budget.
David: Have a budget. So what does that even mean because, y’know, every time we talk to potential customers coming to us and saying - ‘I don't know where to start, I know that you guys know how to do it, but I don’t know how much it costs.’
Tony: There’s different ways to tackle it, though. Because once it's mature, we can actually guide the budget, because once again we've got the data. So if you've got an account already that was going well and got tracking, we can look at it and go - ‘Hey, we saw your bleeding money over there, but we're going to get rid of that and now we can shuffle your budget to what was working and Google shows us we can spend up to this.’ So Google is good at telling you how much you can spend once you get that going. The issue is, is when you've never done it before and I guess that's where you have to be a bit strategic in it. But also you need to have a, like every industry is gonna be different, but you need to have a realistic budget for your industry and the competitiveness.
David: Yep.
Tony: Because you can't dip your toe in.
David: No, that gets hard, that's true. But let's say I put myself in someone's shoes who has just a very fundamental understanding of how Google Ads works and has no idea how an actual agency works. And why would you spend money on an agency, plus additional Google ads spend budget. So what you need to understand is that obviously, you're engaging with someone, it can be a contractor, a freelancer, agency, who is going to set it all up for you and manage onwards for you. So you have to pay that person.
Tony: Mhm.
David: Obviously that is dictated by, y’know, the senior level and if they maybe work within your industry quite successfully, it might be that you got them referred, that's a good place to start with. And then secondly, always when it comes down to is, how much money do you have to start with Google Ads? And again, as you mentioned, it comes down to the industry - Some budgets in certain industries, if you put them on a table they are just too low.
Tony: Yeah and you just - Cause like, not many industries will someone convert straight away, right? And they may need multiple touchpoints.
David: Yep.
Tony: So if you don't have enough to be there, you spend for the first three touchpoints, but most people might convert on the fifth.
David: Yeah and I guess what I've seen a lot in COVID was the case that, for certain areas the traffic has died off completely, let's say traveling, tourism.
Tony: Yes, of course.
David: But also in B2B sectors. I have seen that it has come to only a handful of inquiries a day available on search across Australia, or even in Victoria, which means the search volume has died down a lot. But there are still companies out there trying to get those inquiries. So what happens is, less clicks, higher cost per conversion or per inquiry. So even if you say I’ve always had the same budget, I'm not getting anything anymore. Well, guess what? The demand has changed.
Tony: Yeah.
David: So it has tripled down from y’know, a hundred inquiries a day available across Victoria to only let's say 10. But you still have your competitors and they need, they have staff to pay, y’know.
Tony: I’ve also seen the opposite where, because of COVID, people pulled out of advertising, so that you could now get a crapload more traffic for less and you're still converting the same percent. So like, yeah.
(laughter)
David: Look, it's an awesome feeling for the client to see that they can say - ‘Look, I actually reduced my budget right now because I'm getting my door kicked in and I really, I'm struggling to serve my customers.’
Tony: That's actually something that grinds my gears when clients do that.
David: Yeah, I mean, again-
Tony: You guys are doing too good of a job, stop it, it’s like, no. Figure out how to do more. (laughs)
David: Yeah. So, we see it in our field, if we are growing at the moment, we are looking for specialists, and then what happens is, y’know, you can't get that specialist coming within-
Tony: Yeah, overnight.
David: Overnight, and it can't get used to your culture. Anyhow, so budgets - When I would start with a very new account, what you’d probably want to figure out yourself is how much is a, or how much are you willing to spend for an inquiry?
Tony: Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
David: What's the max you can spend to sell this product you have on your shelf right now.
Tony: So if you convert five out of ten people, what's your average then value of a client?
David: Yep.
Tony: And then you divide that down, and then we know how much we can pay and then we’ve got to figure out how many clicks would it take to get that inquiry.
David: Yeah. I mean if we reverse engineer, sometimes we have to have a hard chat with our clients saying, y’know, why is your competitor always above you and they always outspend you? And then, y’know, maybe it is because they are running their business more efficiently. They get - They have less costs.
Tony: This is why we track and listen to phone calls.
David: Yeah, we do.
Tony: The amount of times we've heard the way some people answer their phones.
(laughter)
David: Yeah, we have, we have an example, where - We have multiple examples but without going into too much detail, what Tony just mentioned with the phone tracking is that we, what we do is when we try to get inquiries we want to not only know who's sending you an email and inquiry form for your website or web chats you, but also who calls you. And we can record a call 24/7. So we know on what day, with what keyword, for what campaign the caller came through.
Tony: Yep.
David: And what I usually do is, because I manage the account, I'm in charge of its success. I want to know in advance if I brought the right lead before the client tells me by listening in. So I understand, how long did it take for the phone recipient to answer the call, and then actually weren't able to, y’know, help the caller in some cases, like, either you got the wrong type of call for the inquiry, but at the same time, I can just see that the team on our clients end wasn't performing well. And then I don't need to change the campaign keywords.
Tony: Yeah, exactly.
David: I did the right things, Google did - the setting, everything did the right thing.
Tony: You’re not filling in the - You're shooting in the dark otherwise.
David: And now we're coming to a very hot topic which is, if you are with a consultant, or freelancer or an agency who doesn't have time to look into things like that.
Tony: Yeah. Or doing it with an internal person.
David: Well, yeah.
Tony: I feel for a lot of Marketing Managers and CMOS who are friends and I've seen that they literally get dumped with everything sometimes.
David: And I hate to say it, and I'm using swear words here, but I don't like it half assed. I don't like when a company comes and says, alright here's money, here's the budget, make it happen. There's a lot of work on the clients end, on the companies end.
Tony: I'm still waiting for you to swear. (laughs)
David: Yeah, half assed.
(laughter)
David: So look, y’know - And that's where we get a little bit passionate, because it's not like, we can't, we are not task monkeys where we just execute.
Tony: It's one of those things where it's like, it's the same as agencies that do a little bit of everything. Y’know, it's like a Marketing Manager that's forced to do everything because his boss thinks that they should.
David: Yeah.
Tony: That's just not, it's not right. Because then you're literally, you're not a master of anything.
David: No, but also you don't give it a good crack. I mean, yeah look, it's digital, it's non physical y’know it feels a bit weird, but there are so many ways to optimize a way of how to get an inquiry these days and it doesn't have to be linear like it has been a while ago, things are so complex. And I mean, that's why we exist and that's why we kind of like, record these sessions to just shed a light on the day to day questions a business owner would have saying, gee, I know a competitor has a lot of successful Google Ads, but how do I get started? And I think to just land this topic here, as we said is, you need to understand if your audience is actually on Google, within search, then you need to understand if your website or asset is ranking for those queries you wanted to target organically.
David: Even if it does really well, guess what? You might do actually quite well in business. We hope so, that you have a little bit of budget to play with Google Ads and try it out.
Tony: Yeah.
David: And now, website come to budgets. What I haven't mentioned yet is, if you can use a budget comfortably in the first month and you don't see any return out of it, that is the
best budget you can start with.
Tony: Yeah.
David: Because don't expect to go in, especially if it's competitive to expect an immediate return.
Tony: Also reflect on your buying cycle of your client. You know, do they make a decision instantly? Do they need no earlier touchpoints? Like y’know, like that locksmith, like Emergency Locksmith versus other industries, like maybe yeah, you could get a result in week one. You know what I mean?
David: But then yeah, we need to be very specific because I think the locksmith doesn't have the budget to cover every single suburb in Melbourne.
Tony: No exactly, so that's what I'm saying like he should be a, y’know if he’s targeting Frankston Emergency Locksmiths, then you will convert any traffic you get there, where if you’re right, if you're going broad you’re going to get so much wasted stuff that you won't see a conversion in the first four weeks you go, this doesn't work.
David: You can't bid high enough.
Tony: Google's not making sixty billion dollars profit from ads not working.
(laughter)
David: No, no and they work hard to make the product and delivery of ads better.
Tony: They've been around a long time and there's a reason they're still relevant and we put up with their crap is because it unfortunately, slash fortunately, works. (laughs)
David: And last thing I want to mention here too to wrap this up is if everything is set up in your ads account, and let's say you have a specialist or you trust the the goal you have set it in, in those campaigns you're running, have patience and trust in what you do because if you make a change - Let's say if you set everything up, and you let it run and you change it two days later, trust me, you won’t gain traction and you will not be able to compare that over a longer period of time.
Tony: It's literally, it's like anything. I go trout fishing, like if you move spots every twenty minutes because you didn't get a bite you’re just gonna spend all day walking in the prickles and slipping down a hill. Where like, if you know that there's fish there, which you can - Because you’ve got tips and stuff like that, you're seeing ripples or whatever it's like just stay there.
David: If your bait is correct, if you’re in the right position.
Tony: Exactly, you're in the right spot, you're using the right bait.
David: You’re not yelling.
Tony: Stay put, yeah.
David: Exactly.
Tony: Versus plodding around, you just yeah, you're gonna make changes and ___ Because, and then you're relying on chance, literally, if you keep making changes you're actually relying on chance for the hit early, where if you just stay put, I would say a general rule of thumb is six to eight weeks before we feel confident, but it’s industry specific, y’know. But that's why I always say like, when someone like - And that's of not messing with it, you know.
David: But look, if we're talking from an agency, talked from Spicy Web and onboarding a new client who hasn't done ad words before, I’d even need a week to understand your business, your goals, to write everything down.
Tony: Yes.
David: Right? To just actually, y’know, get you onboarded. And I know that there are agencies out there who would like to do it within the same day and have your campaign up by the end of the night, but guess what, they haven't really probably had much time talking to you, understanding your business, understanding your customer’s pain points.
Tony: I mean when we're selling Spicy Web we’ll use the stories of someone that’s been running ads for two years. Like, y’know, they've been running it two years with all the tracking and it wasn't actually managed well, because then we can literally spend a week, make changes and it’ll get ____ straightaway.
David: Yeah.
Tony: But if it’s your first time, you’ve really got to be patient.
David: Patient and trust, trust. If you don't trust someone in the beginning, don't-
Tony: Trust the platform, trust your partner, whoever it is, whether it's a freelancer or internal, just have some trust and know that people aren't usually trying to rip you off they're actually trying to do a good job and you're learning along the way. And usually, if you start off with a good budget, you're happy to like put that in learning.
David: Yeah
Tony: Then if you keep at that, you will get that success to the point that you will just be printing your own money by the time you get it right.
David: Plus, y’know, let's say we come back to we as the agency, if we help you win, we win. Because you'll stay with us and y’know, you’ll make sure that we grow our partnership from there.
Tony: Yeah, exactly. We don't benefit unless you do.
David: Plus we’ll become better in understanding your business and how we can help.
Tony: Yeah, well, we'll call that time. Thank you again for tuning in. Comments, feedback, hatred, put it all in the comments below.
David: Thanks Kombucha.
(laughter)
Tony: And we're also looking for a sponsor, any Kombucha company.
David: We do look for a sponsor.
Tony: So this is the ‘For Good Podcast’ by Spicy Web, thank you. Cheers, David.
David: Cheers! Thank you.
