KHML Podcast 3 | 9-16-22
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[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. I'm PIP from Seymour digital media. You're listening to know how marketing lab podcast. This podcast brings together different experts in marketing from our Facebook group, cyber punk geeks marketing mixer. Each week we get on here and we talk [00:00:20] about something. Search marketing, like Google.
Or SEO, social media marketing from Facebook to TikTok or website marketing. If you're a marketer or aspiring marketer, a business owner, or entrepreneur, this podcast for you, we're gonna share the best SEO search, social and website strategies. We share tips and [00:00:40] hacks. Google ads, strategies what's going on in the current market each week, we discuss something exciting and awesome in marketing thrive using Google ads.
And so of course, my name is Phelan. I work at Seymour digital media, where we focus on SEO and Google [00:01:00] ads. And I'm Greg McKinnon. I work with original 72 and we're a full service website, graphic design and digital marketing firm in V. awesome. And yeah, I think that just looking at the notes overall it looks like we've got a couple of areas that we're gonna be covering of this.
Why Google ads matters small businesses [00:01:20] as well as what type of businesses and as well, you know how you can use Google ads to grow your business. And so I guess, where do we wanna start with this part? I think going off of Pip's lovely notes in here I think a big thing that happened recently was COVID and one of the [00:01:40] big things during that was businesses getting online and doing whatever they can to get noticed.
And I guess out of that people realize what businesses can do well, and. Businesses, maybe don't do as well. But that's really where we I think where she thought of this [00:02:00] topic was that, and now that it's so prevalent to be doing Google things including ads is is to talk about which businesses do.
The first thing that she had mentioned in here was hard to find products, which I completely agree. You're obviously gonna search for things that you have a hard [00:02:20] time finding. Yeah. So it would be obvious that the things that that people can't find, if you're advertising for them, the likelihood of that search, resulting in them, coming to your site or buying your product is pretty.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think that also Google ads also helps fill out a [00:02:40] lot of the funnel. So like you could use the ads to just do some very top of funnel stuff like Hey, do you have X problem? Why don't you look at Y solution? And so you, it gives you a good opportunity that people wouldn't know that your service or product offers a solution to their problem at that point So it gives you an opportunity to jump in there. And so while they might have thought oh, obviously. [00:03:00] You know this other service to solve it, but it gives you an opportunity that you're more hard to find one that you could jump in there and be like, Hey, this could be an even better solution for you because of X, Y, and Z of benefits or, reasons.
Yeah. The next one on her list here was sell urgent products or services again. I guess [00:03:20] the theme here is almost. The best performing products might be the ones that are difficult to find or unique services or services that you need, like immediately that people are looking for.
Yeah. Yeah. I've almost put it as like discoverability. It gets solved with Google [00:03:40] ads. So like getting found at that right moment is a lot easier that if I need 24 hour plumbing service like I'm going to be clicking if you're calling for 24 hour plumbing services, like you're, you wanna find that person as quickly as possible that's advertising that.
So I should do Google [00:04:00] ads for my website's BIM hacked. I need help. yeah, exactly. It's not for web design. yeah, exactly. It's it's definitely one of those situations where you could maybe not quite that one. I don't know if you could. Hacked might be one of those weird words that if you put that up, cuz [00:04:20] we I've run into that as an issue as well, because there's all kinds of policy around stuff about hacked.
My website is down. I need help. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That it might be a good avenue. You could test it out. But for me that would be the urgent service would be like, yeah, it's not working. So I need someone. Yeah, [00:04:40] exactly. The other group that's in here that I might have worded this just a little differently is It's PIP lifted as like a low cost per click industry, but I would I'm, which would be like plumbers and mower movers.
I would also define them as well, defined. I'm looking for a plumber the general services that's gonna be offering, that what [00:05:00] they're generally offering. That's a really good one for Google ads and. And is one of the few situations I'd even say that apparently the smart campaigns or the, or now they're moved over to something called performance max.
It's one of the few areas that, that one type is really good because yeah, really the differentiators aren't that many, but so leaving up to Google to [00:05:20] optimize for that. And it's a well known industry. That's a really good opportunity as well for people to test those out. I've.
Professionals PPC advertisers do that as run a, an AB test of their own campaigns versus like a complete like performance campaign or performance max. And apparently they did just slightly [00:05:40] better than the smart campaigns as I call them. They did slightly better. So that's one that be worth testing.
And just to, if you are getting that value of course. Definitely still want to have like your conversions and everything set up properly and make sure you're tracking things properly. That's gonna be super important because anything involving smart campaigns is a black box where Google just wants you to put in their credit, your credit [00:06:00] card details and your website, and then just let us do all the work.
And they're trying to make it a black box. And I think the danger with that is people actually do think Google is quite smart and they're like, whoa, what could go wrong? Like Google. Probably knows everything about me and will do the be better job [00:06:20] than I can at targeting my customers or, that kind of a thing that, that people feel comfortable doing those things, but they're so horrible.
For the most part. Oh yeah. Yeah. For like in a vast majority of cases, I, my, my first go to is not to do that for Google ads. I would say that tried that as an experiment [00:06:40] to run alongside of it and see if one's doing a little bit better. But definitely, yeah, don't no blind faith, it's how I was not, I was very much in the same camp too, where I'm like, You want to set up a tra you're tracking.
Like you wanna make sure that you're not just like blindly handing over your credit card details. Cuz Google, if you let them also, your incentives are not aligned with their incentives because they get [00:07:00] paid for the click. They don't get they don't get paid for the conversion. So they don't really care about driving traffic to a page.
If it converts or not, cuz they're like, Hey, we brought you all this traffic and it's just yeah, but. That's not, it's not like target, it's not quality traffic. It's on people that are gonna convert. Cuz you'd rather have 10 people [00:07:20] and three of them convert than a thousand people. And none of them convert if you're like offering like a high value, like you're a plumber, right?
That doesn't make much sense. Yeah. Along those lines conversion one of the other big ones is obviously anyone with an e-commerce store selling Products. What's your thought on the the [00:07:40] Google product listings stuff and selling through that? Are you a fan or it is age is getting set up with Google merchant center, which is if you have e-commerce, it goes to this one hub called merchant center.
And then that connects out to Google ads and free listings are now even or you Google my. [00:08:00] So you can do real time inventory updates. And so people know before they even go to your store oh, we don't have this product. So there's cool stuff like that. That's out there. There's also, I've seen out in the wild now YouTube shorts that are promoting products.
I know this's just a little far feel from the specifically the advertising, but I think that the cool part about this is Google is thinking about this. [00:08:20] Integrating it more fully through their system and whether you are promoting it like on a YouTube video, cuz they're even doing it now for YouTube lives.
I've seen was one I saw that Shopify is working with, so you can do a live stream where you're talking about your new product and then people can go to a checkout right there. And the video will also run through the checkout process as [00:08:40] well. It looks pretty cool. But I think. Those opportunities are gonna get better for small businesses or people that are looking to promote.
So you all I'm envisioning now is late night TV, they have those like half hour. Yeah. They info live like order now, or three easy payments of yeah. Or we'll give you. Two for the price [00:09:00] of one and like it's a half hour infomercial where you call in, is it, is this what it's moving to?
I think it's more entertaining than that part of it where it's like a hard pitch. I think that there's. I don't think it's gonna be strictly people selling, cuz like that's just not how that turns people off. But I think that it's gonna be, think people don't wanna just watch a video of someone [00:09:20] trying to sell you a product.
Yeah. The, like maybe if it's like the launch of it and then yet it's part of the launch day. It's Hey, we've got this it's brand new and you might do an unboxing video and then that's gonna be part of it. I don't think. Yeah. I think the days of A hard infomercial cell the whole time is just, I don't think that's gonna happen the same way anymore.
That's just the first thing you reminded me of. Yeah, we [00:09:40] got no a hundred percent. I definitely had the. The thin line that someone will walk between those two is it's much smaller than I think people are thinking that line is. But yeah, I'd say, but going back to the, like the ads themselves and how they integrate, I think that the really, there's a really good opportunities in there.
These shopping ads are really good. And if you're you [00:10:00] get the, and if you properly get through and you're all set up. Everything for merchant center, then you also have a really cool opportunity with dynamic dynamic display ads. So basically if I went to a certain product on that website, then that product will be the one that gets promoted in additional display campaigns.
So like you'll do [00:10:20] retargeting using that specific one. So there's lots of like cool opportunities there that I think that people can look at of. Just ways to the other thing that when I was thinking, looking over the notes that it reminded me of that going off, this is retargeting is a big one that you could do now with Google ads, because, you'll spend a lot of effort to get people there, but maybe [00:10:40] they leave, maybe they don't convert.
This is a good way for, pennies on the dollar because retargeting is much more cost effective. and to do it that way. And it gives you an opportunity to build up lists of people. And also if you've got a very sophisticated system oh, people who didn't like my emotional pitch, maybe they want the hard, okay.
[00:11:00] Read the five benefits of doing X. And so they might want that as like the beneficial one, rather than them make the feel good side of it. And so you could do different pitches based on which ad they did see, or which page they did land on. If it's a blog post talking about. Susie felt really good after she got her, all of her drains cleared out.
And then that didn't work. So you [00:11:20] do the five benefits of cleaning out your drains during the summer. And like you could retarget people with different pitches. So like it gives you more opportunities there as well. I think that, yeah, I think that's gonna be a really big one as well in the future.
As people get a little more sophisticated in their messaging and how you're presenting. [00:11:40] to people. If they've gone to the website and then didn't complete whatever the action. Yeah. And the other thing about retargeting is that the person's already shown interest. There, there is some type of interest in your business there that they've shown at some point in the past.
So yeah, the conversion should be slightly [00:12:00] easier to those markets. And you can make it much more targeted because these people. I've already seen you. So you can get more straight to the point with your ads, with that demographic as well. Probably. Yeah, I, it definitely.
And it's also, especially with, if you're doing with the new GE four, that making [00:12:20] an audience of people that like spent more than 30 seconds on the website and you're only getting a segment. So those people are even more like targeted, that they didn't just bounce out right away. They spent a little bit of time, they went around your website and then they're like, oh, and then they left for whatever reason, like you said that those are people that might have.
Needed an additional part of the pitch. And so [00:12:40] that gives you a really good opportunity to jump in there and go, Hey, you were looking at this, what if I give you a discount code, something like that. There's other ways that you can incentivize people to come back.
And like you said, they're already showing interest. They've already SP if you like do a time, a time elapsed, generally, if someone's on a website, if they didn't like it, they bounce out right away. And so they. And then you [00:13:00] can don't even target those people. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely some really good opportunities as well.
So there's ones of high ticket items. Google ads are really good for. Just like we've been talking about retargeting, maybe it takes multiple touch points. It's a high value ticket item and they might need, a variety of different sort of ads [00:13:20] that go across different platforms that Google has out there.
It also gives you opportunities as well that we're getting into, of reusing any content you are making. So maybe you make a 62nd. Clip. Now that can become a YouTube be. And so you can make that as part of the pitch and they're all kind of touch points along the journey that you're wanting, because people are busy and people leave [00:13:40] frenetic lives and you don't wanna be pushy, but you do wanna remind people what you offer and how you can help them.
So who do you feel has the best success with Google ads? Would it be more like medium to large. Establish businesses or do small businesses succeed [00:14:00] quite a bit as well. Yeah. I think it's not necessarily about the size of the company per se. I don't think that's always the metric I always think of.
I think it's more about is Google, like the way Google ads works and again, going, cuz we've already talked about different types, right? So it's about like how aware are people in that. Cuz people, if they're already familiar with a [00:14:20] plumber, like most people know what a plumber does.
That then that's gonna be a really good business for doing Google ads. Because all you're trying to do is have the right messaging at that right moment. When they're like Googling, exploded toilet or whatever it is that they're, something like that. Emergency re plumbing, repair, something like that where you wanna jump in right at that moment.
And then that's gonna. A really good business for that. [00:14:40] Keep in mind a lot of those businesses, because how easy it is. There's a lot of competition, so you're gonna need to be strategic in your ti like thinking about how much you wanna spend and when you're spending it and keep an eye out for it because yeah, Costco go up significantly and you're gonna fight with some businesses.
The biggest issue, I would say of like small business to big business [00:15:00] is driving up CPCs, like the cost per. We work with the tree service company that has emergency tree service something, some variation of that is something like right now it's a hundred and some odd dollars for one click. Wow. A hundred dollars for one click.
Yeah. Wow. And it's, that's because of the [00:15:20] competition. Yeah. They're willing to bid up that much in order to get it because they know that if they get in that one, that they're most likely gonna get a repeat call. If there's another issue later on, or if there maybe it's just oh, we just want to get these trees pruned before fall.
And the problem is those companies have, they're usually bigger companies or franchises something of that [00:15:40] model. So they've got fairly deep pockets so they can shell out. They can wait you out for all intents and purposes and yeah. It's very annoying. I will say almost like a loss leader type of a scenario where you're willing to lose on the first one, just to get them in the door sort of thing.
Yeah, again, it all depends. Like you've gotta be [00:16:00] strategic and now you're doing your marketing on the back end. It may be worth it. I've heard of even small businesses that like when they actually had two or three years worth of data and they did their really hard to calculate, but your LTVs and your CAC.
So your li lifetime value of a client and your cost per acquisition. Some people, like I had heard of like a soap company that they [00:16:20] were spending on their Google ads and Facebook ads. Their first sale was a loss leader. They would just take the hit on it because they did the calculations and saw that over the course of the two years, they made double that if they could just get that one sale, they made a double or triple what they were putting in for the ad spent.
Want to know more about [00:16:40] SEO. We've got a class for that. Our mission is to educate students about the right tools, techniques, and strategies to grow their businesses. Using the most up to date search engine marketing optimization, techniques and tools. Find out more@knowhowmarketinglab.com.
Yeah. [00:17:00] Obviously businesses like that can make those decisions and say let's do this kind of thing to, to get people in the door because the service we provide or the products we provide are things that will continue to be sold over time. So that's an easy strategy for those types of businesses.
For sure. Yeah, then it also gives [00:17:20] you a good in with a situation where you do the loss leader and then you get them on an email list. And because they've already purchased, even if you're doing something like a tree service company and you say, like I said earlier, Hey, it falls coming. Get those trees trimmed before it's too late.
Book a call now. And then it's got the call to action. You're only getting 2% people to actually [00:17:40] click through, but if you've got a couple hundred people on that email list, that's a lot of work for the guys coming up to the, or the crews to keep them busy. And it costs you very little to send that email and those people already trust you.
So like it's on multiple fronts that just getting them into your orbit for lack of a better word can definitely help you with just getting the ad spent [00:18:00] to get them in the door. And then you just. Do the, these kind of free, for all I intents and purposes, email, marketing's like pretty free as far as everything's concerned.
And then you get them on that and then you can just email them every, quarter and then just keep that alive, keep them going. And then you're making [00:18:20] money that way, moving on from that, getting the customer that's. That was all good. We have some notes about helping grow a business.
I guess that's once maybe not so much once you've converted someone and growing but using it specifically, if you are a smaller business to boost your [00:18:40] sales and get more people, is I'm assuming probably what she was meaning with these notes. Yeah. Cuz like Google ads is definitely, it's a very scalable ads platform.
As we've been talking about, you've got retargeting options, you've got different types. There's like the display, there's the YouTube there's shopping. There's a variety of [00:19:00] different ad types that are out there that can help you with, we've talked about oh, you've got the loss leader. Okay.
That's good. Like we get people in the door, we know that will work. Okay. So what's some other ways that we could. To people, you can do ones like there's the even Gmail ads. If you do a really good Gmail ad campaign, which I don't like, there's definitely ways to do that as well [00:19:20] of like we were saying, Hey for read on four reasons why you should get your tree branches trimmed before winter.
That'll direct them to a blog post where it's got the call to action and those costs per click are gonna be lower. So there's different ways that you can use this to start. Okay. Now that we've got like a pretty straightforward machine running with this basic search ads. Okay. What could [00:19:40] we do to we'll compliment this or fill in some of the gaps that, where we're losing people in the process.
And so this will be ways that we can, or even maybe you're getting people with SEO, right? Like you're getting people in the door and you're getting two. That are converting, you could probably get in squeeze another 1%. Maybe retargeting ads will be a good [00:20:00] situation there. And so you can look at ones where you're putting in all this effort to get organic traffic.
And then all you're doing is trying to recapture some of that as well. By driving it back with another great use along the same lines would be for me. If you are introducing a new product or service that you [00:20:20] aren't necessarily known for yet. And you've already been advertising is to use that advertising to really push that brand new product or service out to new people.
And even retargeted to the people that know you already, who might also want that new service for you could be really [00:20:40] be. . Yeah, I think that's a really good one where, like you said it's something that they're aware of you for X, but you're gonna start moving into Y. And so you're like, Hey, you can advertise that part as well.
The, yeah, like I said, like you said, that's a really good one. Just building off that, cuz you're reminding me of it. Once you start running ads and you go to the search [00:21:00] term report, now Google is, has anonymized it significantly. So they've given us six times more in the last year. That can be a really good because what do people do they go to Google to ask questions?
And so that gives you a great opportunity for blog content, answering people's questions in the ads. It's Hey, worried. X [00:21:20] tried this to solve it with Y. And so it gives you a really good opportunity to target people that might be typing in those type of keywords or even writing blog posts that answer those questions.
And so that gives you a wellspring of just information. People are typing into Google and that we're showing up with your ads. It also gives you a good opportunity to also remove something. So [00:21:40] you may see something that's oh, I don't want to be the cheapest tree service company. So you can just not bid on that and you can exclude it.
So it gives you opportunities as well to narrow things and really hone the messaging based on what people are typing in, what your copy is. And so you can make sure that it matches exactly here's one that [00:22:00] we didn't discuss, but I just thought of it as something that I would find interesting.
If you know of. Any businesses or products or services that it's really not worthwhile doing ads. Cause I'm sure there's a couple of things that are just like [00:22:20] worthless to advertise for. Have you come across anything that really just doesn't work on Google ads for the most part? Yes. It's not one I've worked on, but it's one that I am aware of, which is generally like startup SaaS products.
Almost nine times outta 10. It is not worth it [00:22:40] because you're probably copying someone else and that, or, and you're like, you do have a differentiator, but until you reach a certain level that you've got like your messaging and everything's figured out and you have money, it's a waste. That's a big one that I've seen again, it goes back to discoverability.
If you people are. Looking for email marketing for dog [00:23:00] trainers, it might, you might get lucky, but to the costs, you're just gonna get swallowed up by the bigger players. That'll start targeting that. And so generally it's just not worth it. And we're getting close to wrap up time. But one of the final things, is Google ads really worth it?
I would say it's definitely, it [00:23:20] is worth it in the sense of you should try it for your business. Oh, that's good question. That's come from our YouTube crazy. And so king Elliot is asking what is the best source for paid traffic? At the end of the day, I would say, it's going to be, it depends on how you're your, how your messaging works.
It's basically, that's the mode that I think of [00:23:40] is are you looking to that people don't even know that they want your service or product, then I would go Facebook. But if people have some vague notion of, I know the problem I'm looking for, I know that there's a general solution out there, cuz those people are putting their hand up and saying, I'm interested in looking for a plumber.
That's a really good time for finding them with [00:24:00] Google ads. So that's the mode that I think of cuz you gotta remember Facebook and Instagram ads are all about disrupting you from your flow to be like, Hey, I bet you wanna know about this. And Google ads is more, I've put up my hand looking for answers about this, and you're just paying to be at the very top.
It's a little bit of a different question to answer, [00:24:20] because it also depends on the type of business where your demographic is likely to be and things like that. So it's hard to say definitively one way is the. One to get your online traffic from, so really you have to [00:24:40] potentially experiment with each of them and see which one gives you the best return and continue with the one that works and drop the ones that are really not working for you.
yeah. Very much so though, I would say apparently one of the worst paid traffic is Spotify. Yeah. [00:25:00] Apparently it is just not apparently it's just not worth it. The targeting's off, like everything about it is just on it's not very good. The ROI is just. Not worth it at all. So that was an interesting one.
I'd heard from a gentleman who used every single paid platform. And that was his report was basically he can make any of them work except Spotify. He tried everything in his, under the [00:25:20] sun and couldn't get it to work for conversions or because I could see Spotify maybe being one that. Would be fine for brand recognition because people are listening to Spotify and that type of thing.
And if you continually see or hear something about a business, it potentially could have that brand [00:25:40] recognition down the road, but as far as converting for sales and leads and things like that, I could see it. Definitely not being a great source for. Yeah, though. I had heard one that was really good.
And it was in relation to direct mail, which is using the Google home or [00:26:00] Alexa, because they're so common now that you say Hey just say to your Amazon or your Alexa, and then it has a key phrase and then that key phrase will trigger the conversion. So you'd know that person got that mailer, but I could see that also working with Spotify as well.
Say Hey, thanks. Yeah. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but that one was [00:26:20] definitely one that was out there for next week. What do we have Greg? Oh, next week. It's. possibly with Rena and you I know there was some scheduling changes, but the topic I believe will be cross channel blog, distribution, the missing steps that you need to know for [00:26:40] that.
Yeah. I think that is what we are doing. I believe so as well. And yeah, it just falls to us to say my name's Phen as summar digital media and I'm Greg with original 72. And buy for now.
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