Ad Variations Tool and Other Google Ads Insights (Episode 174)

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Show notes:

Wow welcome back to the PSP! This week Chris and Jason talk about some Google Ads things that have been top of mind for them this week. Chris kicks off the show talking about the ad variations tool in Google Ads. Then Jason talks about his Google Ads sweet spot theory and how he dealt with some strong competition lately. The guys discuss the right ways to lower and raise bids based on a couple different goals. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show!

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Transcript

Jason Rothman:
Jimmy.

Jason Rothman:
Yes.

Jason Rothman:
I made you some applesauce for lunch. Would you like some?

Jason Rothman:
Yes, I would. Thank you. Yes.

Jason Rothman:
Welcome back to the Paid Search Podcast. My name is Jason Rothman, and as always I’m joined by the great Chris Schaeffer. Chris, how’s it going to day? We are here for the 174th episode of the Paid Search Podcast.

Chris Schaeffer:
Wow. That is a lot of hours represented. And sometime in the next 174 episodes, I’m going to ask you who Jimmy is and who he’s speaking to. But not today because today we’re going to talk about other things. We’re talking about Google Ads. That’s what we’re here to talk about. Essentially the episode is an entire surprise to both of us. We’ve never done this before. I’m excited. Our listeners are excited. We’re going to just jump in and ask each other some questions and talk about some things. Just so organic. It’s gritty. It’s earthy. It’s… Jason, save me. Where do we go from here?

Jason Rothman:
You were mentioning Jimmy. You can’t wait to meet… You can’t seem him.

Chris Schaeffer:
Uh Uh (negative). I can’t.

Jason Rothman:
Okay. Yeah, Chris, you know we always plan out these shows. We talk about what we’re going to talk about. We break it down to the microscopic level, but you know what happens when we do that, we forget about each other. We forget about each other’s lives. We’re different people. We have different things going on. Business, life, and I want to know what’s going on in your world. What are some new things you’re thinking of, working on, and focusing on in Google Ads primarily. But whatever you want to talk about. And then I’ve got some things to share with you, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Jason Rothman:
But first, I want to talk about Kyle Sulerud’s AdLeg software suite. This software suite, Chris, I just… I’m going to keep it clean. I love it, dude. These are the tools Kyle came up with a group of software tools that are basically made for a Google Ads pro like myself. It’s all the kind of tools that I’ve been saying on the show forever. Like, “Oh, man. I wish someone would make this software. I’m telling the world.” I’ve told the world on this show, “Please make a software for this.” And Kyle has tools that are basically like that, and the software suite comes with the keyword burst, the ad copy generator, negative keyword pro, the amazing keyword generator, and then also, my personal favorite, the vid hoarder. And today, I want to focus on the keyword burst.

Jason Rothman:
The beautiful thing about the keyword burst is it allows you to very quickly create ad groups and keywords with all match types for the deepest level, great keywords we always talk about, the geo keywords. The near me, the city names, and what the tool does is you list out all your geos, the suburbs, the major cities, the near me, the local. Words like that. And then you list out the different keywords or ad groups you want. Like if I’m doing moving, I would have one for movers and moving service. Then I would have one for long distance mover, state to state movers, and I would have one for office movers, office moving companies, commercial movers. And then you click a button, that’s my favorite part. You just click the button, and it spits to a spreadsheet that combines all your geo terms, like Oklahoma City, Edmond, local near me. And then all your service terms, movers, long distance movers, commercial moving companies, office movers. And it puts them in the list that you made them when you entered them in the software, and then you can do all the match types that you want, even broad match modified. And then you have them all there ready to go, and you can dump them into your campaign.

Jason Rothman:
I love it. I used the keyword burst every week, and I want thank Kyle and the AdLeg software suite for sponsoring today’s show. Listeners of the Paid Search Podcast can get a free seven day trial, a free seven day trial at Software.adleg.com/psp.

Chris Schaeffer:
Thanks, Jason. And I want to tell you guys about Opteo.com/psp. This is a special tool designed for getting information, getting it cleanly, and getting inspiration about your campaigns. You’re stuck in a rut, you keep coming back to your campaigns, you’re checking the same stuff. You’re not feeling inspired about what to do. You need some help. You need almost like a consultant looking over your shoulder and pointing to something that’s right in front of your face but you’re not seen. Opteo is a great tool to help you see the unseeable, see the data that you can’t see. It visualizes the data. It gives you recommendations in your inbox to tell you about all the cool things that you can do that you don’t even see. Bid changes, keyword changes, pausing certain keywords, adjusting strategies from the top of Google Ads to the bottom. There’s all kinds of cool things that it can do, and it does it in a very visual, easy to manage way. You get a six week extended trial. Six weeks. This is not something offered to the public. This is offered specifically for people who go to OPTEO.com/psp. Tell the guys in the chat window that you want a special six week extended trial. They’ll give it to you. We want to thank them for their sponsorship of the show.

Chris Schaeffer:
And usually I hand it off to Jason from here. Hear that, that’s my hands rubbing… I’m so excited. We have an audible review. Usually we get to hear it in Jason’s lovely deep voice, but today, we have an audible. I have to say. If more people call in and leave these reviews, I can’t promise we’ll always play them. But we love our international listeners, and here in Texas, I just don’t hear such cool voices like we have today. So I just wanted to play it and share it with you guys. Here we go.

Lily:
Hi, guys. This is Lily. I’m calling from Sweden. I wanted to leave a voice review. I’ve been listening to your podcast for quite some while now, and I think it’s very nice to learn so much about Google Ads, how to manage an account, business strategy, and so much more. But also to do it while listening to very entertaining people. And I’ve often have burst out laughing while I’m on my commute because you guys really are great at combining expert advice with a very good sense of humor. So thank you so much for that, and I’m looking forward to every episode. So keep up the good work. Bye.

Chris Schaeffer:
Thank you, Lily. That is very nice of you. Jason-

Jason Rothman:
I love that. Thank you.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Burst out laughing. I mean, it’s not a comedy show that you hear every day that gives you information along with entertainment.

Jason Rothman:
We’re going to give you some actionable insights today, and we thank you so much for listening. If you want to check out the show notes, they’re at this link on our website. Today, we have a guy we’ve never talked to before, but his people reached out to us and said he does podcast interviews. And we said, “Oh, we have a podcast, and we don’t know what to talk about. So we do interviews with people we don’t know.” And he’s going to tell you some actionable insights today. Hit that subscribe button. Leave us that five star rating. Thanks so much for listening to these actionable insights.

Jason Rothman:
So if you guys want that show, just let us know. We can do it.

Chris Schaeffer:
Every other Google Ads podcast out there is exactly what you described. Wen you approached me about doing a podcast, I was like, “Oh, so we’re just going to talk to strangers and then act like we’re best friends with them for an hour every other week or something?” I love it. No, thanks for the review, Lily.

Jason Rothman:
Isn’t that what we do already?

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s true. That’s true. Yeah. I’ve never met you, so technically you’re a stranger. I’ve only seen your face on a digital screen. Jason, let’s jump in. We’ve got fun stuff. I’m looking at an entirely blank spreadsheet with no ideas on the page because today we’re going to-

Jason Rothman:
Screw the sheet. Don’t look at the sheet, look at the bullet points you wrote down. I’ll look at mine. You show me yours. I’ll show you mine. We’ll go one by one, and again, Chris, I had plenty to talk about. I had a whole show written up. But you know what, I crinkled it up in a piece of paper. I threw it over my shoulder, and I was like, no, I want to know about Chris. I’ve got some things that are just on my mind that I’ve been percolating on, thinking about, and the extremely great show notes I came up with. I just didn’t want to do them because they’re not what I’m feeling right now. I just have things all week long that I’m just focusing on that are making me a lot of money and getting me great results. And I want to know what you’re doing too. So let’s go. What do you got, Chris?

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. Jason, number one. I’m going to hit heavy because I’m not sure everybody’s going to tune in for the whole episode. So I’m going throw my best up top. If you guys don’t like my best one, just leave at this point because it gets worse for me. But-

Jason Rothman:
Chris, you are the best podcast salesman I’ve ever met in my life. Kicks off the show, “Guys, my video sucks, but definitely listen to the audio. That’s good too.”

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay.

Jason Rothman:
Then a few minutes later, “Guys, this is my best shot. It’s probably not going to be very good, and if you don’t like it, just leave.” Keep telling them to leave, Chris. That really helps the show. Thank you.

Chris Schaeffer:
Clients tell me all the time… I just got an email today. “We love your honesty, Chris.” That’s my best asset, Jason, is brutal honesty. Here we go. So what I’ve been doing lately, I did it today, and I really like it. It was so easy. So I had a client, and I know you’ve gotten these emails before. A client that says, “Hey, we were bored last night, and we brainstormed and came up with this brand new landing page. Even though you’re getting amazing success with our current landing page, we have this whole new one that we’re going to throw at you.” Jason, before I would say, “Oh, okay.” So I’d write a couple new ads. I’d throw those in and maybe pause some other ones, even though those had good click through rates and I’m going to have to reset all the metrics. Kind of throw a monkey wrench into a campaign that’s already working really well. And maybe the click through rate could drop. Maybe by resetting some of these ads, the click through rate could drop. It could mess things up.

Chris Schaeffer:
Another option is I start an entire new campaign draft and do an experiment. I set up a draft, I launch an experiment, and I run them 50/50.

Jason Rothman:
That’s where I thought you were going.

Chris Schaeffer:
Even better, this is something I think is even better. I use an ad variation, which is under the drafts and experiments tab. You can go the ad variation and set up a variation to replace certain features of an ad. So you can say replace the headline, replace the description, replace whatever. Find this and replace it, or you can say replace the final URL. When this is on the final URL, replace it with this new landing page. Then set up an experiment within that ad variation. Give it a 30% spend, a 50% spend, 10% spend, whatever you want to do, and then let the original get 90% or 80% or whatever, and once it’s all set up, the cool thing is it happens immediately. Unlike experiments where you have to wait til the next day for it to kind of start working and start getting some stuff and it takes a little while.

Chris Schaeffer:
I started this today, and I’m seeing a beautiful screen on my ad variations that shows impressions up or down, click through rate up or down, conversions, cost per click, all these metrics are shown. How are the visitors reacting to this new landing page, and I’ll be able to see it live as it’s happening. There’s an apply button and there’s a pause button. I can pause it, and it stops running that new URL. Or I can apply it, and it immediately adds it to the original. And you’re good to go.

Chris Schaeffer:
This is something-

Jason Rothman:
Okay. Daddy, slow down. Slow down, dad. Okay. I really love this advice. I deal with this myself. I am very good at what I do, but what I do is in a silo sometimes. I’m just very focused on certain parts of Google Ads and had not seen the ad variations yet. Now first, I want to ask you some questions. How did you find out about this first? Were you going to make an experiment, and then you were like, “What’s that tab?”

Chris Schaeffer:
Yes, exactly. I was going to do my normal thing. I was going to create a campaign and I saw it and said, “What is this? I’ve never used it.”

Jason Rothman:
So everyone can see it because I just did it in their head and on their screens, you go to drafts and experiments in that tab column. We call it the middle gray bar. That’s what I call it. You got campaigns, head groups at the top. Blah, blah, blah. Very bottom, drafts and experiments. So that’s where you’re going. And then when you’re in the drafts and experiments, who knows if it’s at the top of the screen, who knows if it’s a drop down right below it because it looks different for different people these days. But within the drafts and experiments area, you’re looking for ad variations. And then it makes you go to all campaigns, and then you select a campaign that you want. And then you create a variation, find and replace this in that. Meaning this URL and the final URL or this word in headline one. And then you replace it. Then you hit continue. And then you do 50% or an end date or whatever percent you want. Then you hit create variation.

Jason Rothman:
Let me ask you, once you do that, where are you checking the data once this is live? Are you checking it in drafts and experiments and then ad variations? Or are you checking it at the ad level inside the campaign? Where do you see if it’s working?

Chris Schaeffer:
I’m actually checking it in the ad variations page. Once you launch one, it will have a row that shows you your current variation, whether it’s active. It shows you what it’s changing, and then it gives you the effected ads. I can see that there’s 22 effected ads that it’s doing this on, and I can see the metrics, impressions are up or down, click through rate, all that kind of stuff. And it gives you metrics on it. I mean, it’s beautiful. The landing page is a much more aggressive change, but imagine if you wanted to change something from free, get a free consultation, and it changes everything from get a free consultation to get an expert consultation.

Jason Rothman:
Instant expert [crosstalk 00:15:12]

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Change it from free, you can set this up. You don’t have to write all these new ads or polish your old ones. You can just do a quick variation, change it all, boom. I love it. It’s a whole new world for me.

Jason Rothman:
Don’t bait me. I know what you’re doing.

Chris Schaeffer:
I knew it. I knew you would do it. You’re a millennial.

Jason Rothman:
Chris, I’m not going to disrespect this segment by singing on top of it right now because this is extremely powerful. This is a game changer, and I appreciate you sharing this with me and our audience because this is why we started off today’s little segment talking to each other before we started recording. You were pretty upset with me for different reasons. But then I came up with this idea at the last second, and I think it’s paid off in spades. At least for me because this is an unbelievable tip. This is an unbelievable thing to know about. And let’s be honest, Chris, why is this so powerful? If you’re good at what you do, if you’re good at Google Ads like we are, why would you ever do an experiment for anything other than ad copy? That’s the only reason I found myself doing experiments over the years now is ad copy and final URLs. Because everything else, I already know if I’m going to do manual bids or automated bids. I already know if I’m going to target certain keywords or not. I already know schedule, all that kind of stuff. The only reason I’ve been going to experiments and needing them, and I like them, is because ad copy and final URLs.

Jason Rothman:
I’ll give you an example. I have a client, nice website, and we’re targeting various topics that are on that website with different service pages. Your best Google AdWords manager you’ve ever known, me, has a hunch that even though those service pages are more relevant because they have the keywords and all that. The quality score and all that other people talk about. I have a hunch that the homepage is another customer experience for a new user, and it’s going to lead to a higher conversion rate. I can’t go to my client and verbalize that right now because it would be offensive to the work they’ve done with their website. And so I just don’t want to go down that road. And then at the same time, I don’t want to pause the campaign and start a new one. I really haven’t been motivated enough to do a whole experiment and check if it’s running and only change… All that. All I want is to only change the ads, and now I have a way to do it. So this is a beautiful tool, and I’m going to use this all the freaking time.

Chris Schaeffer:
I know. I know. The funny this is that you mentioned let’s talk about what we’re doing today in Google Ads or lately in Google Ads, and I was like, “This is perfect because I just blew my own mind when I saw this.” It’s been here forever, but I’ve never heard anyone hype this up about how powerful it can be for the daily grind of, “Gosh, I really need to test some ads.” And it’s so difficult.

Jason Rothman:
Chris, you know why we like it? Create the little verbiage inside the account, what it says from Google, create a simple ad variation to see how it affects performance across one or more campaigns. Well, what are we? We’re the simple Google Ads guys. We keep everything simple because that’s what works. And this is an amazing tool.

Chris Schaeffer:
Simple. It’s like change one thing. The thing I think people can do is instead of writing whole new ads and changing the tone of the entire ad, now you can change one word. You can change one landing page. You can change one description and do a test and immediately jump and say, “Okay. That failed.” And then immediately pause it, cancel it, and it goes right back to the way it was. So it’s beautiful.

Chris Schaeffer:
All right, Jason. I’ve set the standard. Please don’t disappoint.

Jason Rothman:
Okay.

Chris Schaeffer:
He’s looking way down his list.

Jason Rothman:
I mean, mine are not as impressive as that. And to be honest, neither are the rest of yours.

Chris Schaeffer:
No, they’re not. I’ve already spilled the beans.

Jason Rothman:
By the way, when we cut this up on YouTube, that’s so unlike you. When I could imagine you doing, and by the way the way… For people listening on audio who don’t see the YouTube right now, you’re missing out on this straw matching his t-shirt color.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, dang it. Yeah, it does match, doesn’t it?

Jason Rothman:
Matching his beautiful eyes. I just… I just can’t even focus.

Chris Schaeffer:
I’m going to put that out of the screen. I didn’t realize it was on camera.

Jason Rothman:
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I couldn’t even focus there. Wow. Okay. So yeah, so we’re going to devolve the show now into different smaller topics, and we will revisit ad variations at another time because that’s an awesome tip, dude.

Chris Schaeffer:
Should we name this whole episode just amazing ad variations?

Jason Rothman:
No, don’t worry about it.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s not my job. I got you.

Jason Rothman:
Amazing ad variation. Yeah, don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of it, Chris. Great. We’ll take that under consideration. Great idea. Honestly what we’re going to do, Chris, is we’re going to name this something like catching up with what we’re thinking or whatever, what we’re working on now. Something like that. Amazing insights, something like that in parentheses. But on YouTube, we’re going to put the full episode out there, and then we’ll also cut it up into different segments. Kind of like we do with the Q&A because that deserves its own thing. That’s cool.

Jason Rothman:
Okay. So let me take it from the technical stuff inside the account to just a gamesmanship, capitalism kind of thing I’m dealing with. I’ve got an article out there called like Does The Sweet Spot In Google Ads Exist, and I want to throw this out to you. Position number one, someone’s bidding a crazy high amount. Position number three, is just not even a big player, and they’re not bidding much at all. Position number two, does that become the sweet spot because what you’re getting in position number two is you’re getting visibility. No, you’re not going to get clicked on all things equal as much as number one because they show up higher, higher click through rate. But you’re still showing up number two. That’s still a decent amount of traffic you can get from number two. Penny saver program, whatever. You’re paying a penny more than it costs to show up in the third position. And I guess the guy in the first position is paying a penny more than it costs for you. So let’s just keep all things equal here. Use big numbers for hypotheticals. Say position three is bidding $10, say position one is bidding $200, and you in position two are bidding $100. So you’re bidding $100. You’re going to force position one to pay $100.01. And because position three’s spending $10, you’re going to pay $10.01.

Jason Rothman:
So my whole theory was this is a sweet spot because I can punish the guy above me in position one. Absolutely punish them, and if position three is doing what I hope they’re doing, which is bidding a lot lower than the top two people, I can get away with bidding super high because position three bidding super low is going to allow me to get a low actual cost per click even though I’m bidding high. So that’s the theory I have. Obviously you can’t… I mean, read my articles, Chris. I got good stuff out there. The sweet spot. Am I blowing your mind? You like that? Did I bring it?

Chris Schaeffer:
I never thought about how much position three, two, and one pay in respective to-

Jason Rothman:
Interplay off each other.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I don’t know. Is that the way it works?

Jason Rothman:
I don’t know if it’s true either. I have no idea. How would we know?

Chris Schaeffer:
We wouldn’t.

Jason Rothman:
We sit in our offices and make a bunch of money and do good jobs and focus on search terms and get people new business and all that kind of stuff.

Chris Schaeffer:
But we don’t get to see the numbers.

Jason Rothman:
We don’t have the black box inside the algorithm and all that.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.

Jason Rothman:
You don’t get to see what your competitors are bidding. You don’t get to see what other people are paying, and crucially, we don’t see the black box. We don’t know really how things work. People are going to be like, “How can you say that on your podcast?” Well, we know how things are described to work, but actually all the factors and all that. We don’t have the black box. Nobody does, and it’s their business. It’s not ours. So we just going off the results we see. However, if you talk about that old penny saver thing, if you talk about the way the auction works, the way it’s described.

Chris Schaeffer:
The way it used to be described. I don’t know if the penny saver thing is still even a-

Jason Rothman:
Things are… You want to talk about what we’ve been talking about lately. I’m training someone right now in Google Ads and I’m going through my big speil, not just like ad variation, super expert tips that we get like that. But like basic what’s Google Ads, how does it work. I’m just going through the quality score thing and ad rank the other day, Chris, and you remember when we came onto that huge thing we kind of discovered with the click through rate portion of quality score. And it’s expected click through rate based on your account-

Chris Schaeffer:
And others.

Jason Rothman:
But also every advertiser ever, whatever.

Chris Schaeffer:
Right.

Jason Rothman:
That messaging changed in the new interface, in the new help. Now it says the history of your account or something like that. And it says your account, and it doesn’t mention everybody’s.

Chris Schaeffer:
Really?

Jason Rothman:
So did they change it or did they just change the verbiage? I don’t know. But anyway, I don’t know what got me on that. But [crosstalk 00:24:32]

Chris Schaeffer:
You were talking about how things evolve, and there’s no giant post on Blogspot about… Well, that’s where they used to post. I don’t think they post on Blogspot anymore. But the Google blog, they don’t do a press release that, “Hey, we changed our CTR, our expected CTR quality score metic.” 99% of the people in the world wouldn’t even understand what that’s referring to. But they’re not going to post about it because they don’t want to bring attention to it.

Jason Rothman:
Yeah. This is just a theory, this whole does the sweet spot exist, and if it does, if that’s actually a thing, if it actually does work like that, number three is crucial. Because if the person in number three, again going back to number one bidding $200, number two bidding $100. If number three’s bidding $99 and not $10, the whole sweet spot doesn’t exist because then you’re paying a big amount in this example. But it’s just something I had.

Jason Rothman:
So anyway, Chris, that has influenced my thinking in terms of how to compete with people who come into the market and ruin the cost structure for you. Because you probably seen this where you’re running for months, you’re running for years, you’re used to a cost per click. You’re used to a cost per conversion, used to a position. And then all of a sudden, a new player or players enter the market, and maybe they used to advertise on Google Ads, maybe they’re back. Maybe it’s their first time. Maybe they are doing it themselves. Maybe they’re talking to a super aggressive agency that’s sold them on all this stuff. And then they come in and they totally blow up the cost. It’s like everybody’s cost go higher. You were bidding a bunch, but only paying a little because no one else was bidding that or near that or position three wasn’t or whatever. Or if you’re in position three, position four wasn’t bidding anywhere near your bidding. So all of a sudden, your cost per click goes up, and you’re like, “What is going on?”

Jason Rothman:
And anyway, what’s been on my mind is over the last few months, that happened to me. Multiple players came into a space, and they were driving up the cost per click. They were driving up the cost per conversion, and I communicated that to my client. And I was like, “Hey, what they’re doing is crazy. I don’t think it’s sustainable knowing everything I know about your industry. And I think they’re going to go away. So I want I advise you is let’s continue to do what we’re doing. If our cost per click, if our cost per conversion go up for a couple months, give me some slack. Don’t fire me. Don’t say we have to change everything. Understand I’m telling you it’s going to go up for a couple months, and I’ll do my best to keep it reasonable. If I keep it reasonable, that means volume might go down a little because we got some crazy people in our market now. And low and behold, a couple months later, these idiots, these extremely dumb people, they either went away and stopped advertising, or they dropped their bids themselves. And everything is more at a same level now.

Jason Rothman:
So just in terms of what I’m dealing with, I had a hunch because of my sweet spot exist and the way things, competitors play off of each other. I had a hunch that what I was seeing could not last, and because I had that hunch and communicated to my client, I felt comfortable getting bad results for a couple months. Whether it be bad results because the cost goes up too much or bad results because we had to keep things reasonable and volume goes down. And then low and behold, a couple months later, these fools dropped off, and it just wasn’t sustainable how high they were bidding. So I guess my points is, Chris, you and I, people like us, we got to use our instincts. We got to use all this accumulated knowledge, and we can’t hit the panic button just because something changes and change everything. How many idiots do you know that would’ve gone, “Oh my gosh, everything’s changed. I’m going to do this new kind of bidding now,” and totally throw off all the manual bids I had expertly managed for years. But no, I kept it cool. I said it’s going to get rocky, but it’s not sustainable what they’re doing. Low and behold, things are better now and these people cooled off. So that was kind of an experience that I went through.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I like it. I think that’s excellent advice. I know a lot of times that’s something I’ve dealt with before is jumping into panic mode. Seeing things drop and change, and then suddenly just throwing all my strategy-

Jason Rothman:
You and I never jump into panic mode. It’s clients and people we work for and just advertisers in general in Google Ads panicking, and then putting pressure. And sometimes it’s just hard to stand up to the pressure.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. That’s true. That’s true. I’m not panicking, but I get emails where the client is panicky and forcing saying, “If you don’t do something, I’m going to just cancel this whole thing.” So moving too fast with too few information. Considering the time-

Jason Rothman:
Let’s each do one more.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I have one more I’m going to mention. So the question to revisit the topic is what’s been going on lately in Google Ads for you? What are some things you’re doing recently? What I’m doing recently is part of my regular check is to go in and see if there’s any loss due to budget. And if there’s any loss due to budget, anything significant, let’s say over 15%. 10% can jump up and down.

Jason Rothman:
Search impression share, loss due to budget.

Chris Schaeffer:
Right. Exactly. Thank you. Search impression share, loss due to budget. Effectively it’s that giant red text on there that says limited due to budget. So if there’s a limit due to budget, I have been trying to systematically rewire my brain to realize it’s not limited my budget. I feel like the warning on that page should be, “You’re missing out on clicks.” There’s a potential to get more clicks and still spend the same amount. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been going in, and I either adjust bids at the keyword level. If there’s some campaigns that are high keyword spends for just a few keywords, or I just bids at the ad group level if everything’s pretty much on the same bid. It’s a very even spend across all the ad groups. And then number three is if I don’t really like any one of those, I’ll just go to the devices and pull one device down. Typically it’s going to be mobile because that’s probably where most of the traffic’s come in. Because usually computer performance a little bit better. I don’t really want to bid that down, but I will bid down mobile. And I’ll pull that down 10%, 15%, 20%.

Chris Schaeffer:
And the reason for all of this and the reason I mention search impression loss due to budget is because if you’re running out of money, that means there’s more supply than you’re able to get. So if you lower your bids, you can now get more clicks without increasing your budget. And this is great because let’s assume your click through rate drops a little bit, and let’s assume maybe you maintain the same conversion rate. Assuming those things happen, you will get more conversions. If your conversion rate stays the same, you get a little less click through rate. That means you’ll get more conversions because your total… If you decrease bids by 10-20%, you’ll get that much more traffic, and now you get more conversions. It’s like magic. And sometimes this is very basic.

Chris Schaeffer:
You originally introduced me to this idea that I just had a block in my head, like, “Bid more. Bid more. Bid more.” And this is such a basic thing, and I think it’s great. And it’s something I try and do on a regular basis as part of my checklist that I have is going in saying, “Okay. Can this campaign do better with less bids?”

Jason Rothman:
Chris, that’s music to my ears, and that is something I’ve been harping on for years now. I’m not good at advanced math. I’ve always been bad at it. But one thing I’m great at is simple algebra. And when it comes to your bid, your cost per click, your cost, your number of clicks, your cost per conversion, all that stuff is simple algebra. There’s only a few factors, and it’s like if you pull down one lever, how does that affect the other lever and that kind of thing. So that’s something I’ve been doing forever, and it sounds so simple but it definitely is a very independent minded and unique thing I’ve thought to do because for whatever reason everybody else and all the messaging and all that kind of stuff… No one’s telling you to lower the bids. Everyone’s focused on more, more, more, more budget, more aggression, more click through rate, more impression share, whatever. But to me it’s always been very simple, and part of it’s my algebra, part of it’s my accounting background.

Jason Rothman:
If you have a fixed budget because say we’re not going to change our budget and we have a fixed cost per click, say the budget’s $100. Say the cost per click is 10, that’s 10 clicks a day at $100 a day. If you lower the cost per click to five and you’re still able to show up and still able to get clicks, five into 100 is 20 clicks. So you get double the clicks, and like you’re saying, same conversion rate. Why would the conversion rate change? It shouldn’t. Double the conversions.

Chris Schaeffer:
Same quality of traffic.

Jason Rothman:
For the same budget, lower cost per conversion, and you’re right. So to me it’s a very simple game. It’s how low. It’s like a… What do they call that game where people take off their shirt and then they lower their back and they try to go under that bar?

Chris Schaeffer:
Limbo, but it’s not naked. But naked limbo I guess?

Jason Rothman:
Oh.

Chris Schaeffer:
Right.

Jason Rothman:
It’s a game like that. How low can you go? You know what I’m saying?

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, I do. Yeah.

Jason Rothman:
It’s just a game of how low you can go. So say it’s $100 a day budget, say your bids are 10, cost per click is 10. Well, you can go to five maybe, and then you get double the clicks. Maybe you can. It depends on your situation. But what if you go to $1, and then you show up at an average position of eight if that’s even a thing. I don’t even know if that’s a thing. But you never show up on the first page. You don’t get any clicks at all. And then you don’t get any conversions at all. So it’s just a game of how low can you go. So the question is, go a little lower. How we do this week with the budget. Oh, we didn’t spend the full budget. Let’s raise it back up just a little. We found our level. I think that’s a great mindset.

Chris Schaeffer:
I’ll say one quick thing, and then I’ll let you jump in with your last item. One quick thing about this is I do a lot of training and consulting with people live. Go to my website ChrisSchaeffer.com. And you can completely ignore that bright red warning on your keywords that says below first page bid. A lot of people freak out, and they think, “Oh. I’m below. I’m not showing anything.” But yet they’re still getting impressions and clicks. So you have to fight against the urge to just start bidding more to make that little red text go away. You can still get clicks and traffic. That word there is based on the fact of your most expensive example. New York City at noon, you’re not going to get on the first page. But in 90% of the other ones, you could still get impressions and clicks.

Jason Rothman:
Well, I’ll tell you how it could happen just to think things through theoretically. You have a keyword, New York City movers phrase match. Say you’re going to bid $12, and say you get the status warning there. This is below your first page bid. New York City movers phrase match, $12, this is below your first page bid. You’re like, “Oh my gosh.” Like you’re saying, “Is it below the bid? Am I going to show?” And then you take Chris’s advice and you just leave it there for a little bit and see if you start getting impressions. How would you get impressions?

Jason Rothman:
Well, what if that phrase match keyword allows you to show on New York City movers open on Saturdays, and what if a handful of other advertisers have Saturdays as a negative keyword or they have the phrase match open on because they don’t want those kind of searches for whatever reasons. There’s less advertisers in the auction, and now all of a sudden maybe not for New York City movers, that exact search, but for a phrase you picked up about Saturdays, you were able to show. So I think that’s how it works. I think that’s what’s going on, or maybe it’s just not accurate. But assuming it’s 100% accurate, that’s how you could still show up.

Jason Rothman:
All right, Chris, last one to stay with the theme here of bids. I’ll spin you right round, baby, right round like the record player.

Chris Schaeffer:
Right round. Okay.

Jason Rothman:
You remember those days, Chris. Chris, did you ever club in the ’80s?

Chris Schaeffer:
Jason, I was 10 years old in the ’80s, starting at zero to 10. So no. I was a little young. I’m not that old. Thanks.

Jason Rothman:
Do you like George Strait?

Chris Schaeffer:
No. But if-

Jason Rothman:
Oh, you don’t?

Chris Schaeffer:
If somebody who’s thinking about hiring me likes George Strait, absolutely. I like George Strait.

Jason Rothman:
I just thought of clubbing in the ’80s, and I was like, “Chris wasn’t clubbing. He’s going to country line dances.” And then I thought about older country music, and I thought about George Strait.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I mean, of course. I listened to George Strait. When you’re zero to 10, your music choice is based on what your parents are playing on the radio or on the cassette back in my days. So yeah, I mean-

Jason Rothman:
How many days a week do you wear denim on average?

Chris Schaeffer:
Two I guess because Fridays-

Jason Rothman:
Two, really?

Chris Schaeffer:
Going out on Friday night and Saturday night for dinner with the family, I usually-

Jason Rothman:
Going out. Going out.

Chris Schaeffer:
My jeans and my boots usually. Maybe three days. To church. I wear it to… I wear my jeans and my boots to church. So yeah.

Chris Schaeffer:
Can we move on?

Jason Rothman:
What are you wearing right now? I only see your shirt. What bottoms are you wearing?

Chris Schaeffer:
I wear shorts when I’m working. I don’t wear… I mean, who wears jeans.

Jason Rothman:
What kind of shorts? Basketball shorts?

Chris Schaeffer:
No. No.

Jason Rothman:
Are you wearing loose shorts? Are you wearing jean shorts?

Chris Schaeffer:
No. They’re like khaki shorts. They’re my junk work shorts. I mean, no practical person-

Jason Rothman:
Khaki or cargo?

Chris Schaeffer:
Khaki. No cargo. Cargo is too bulky.

Jason Rothman:
So if you’re wearing khaki shorts with no cargoes, does that mean you’re wearing loafers with no socks?

Chris Schaeffer:
We’ve been through this. Anyone listening knows I don’t wear shoes. I’ve discussed that. So I’m not wearing shoes. Remember, I don’t wear shoes. So no.

Jason Rothman:
When you do the podcast, okay.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Barefoot.

Jason Rothman:
And last time we talked about it, I asked for a toe shot. Can we get one, just on one foot?

Chris Schaeffer:
Yup. Yup.

Jason Rothman:
Just raise it up. Five seconds.

Chris Schaeffer:
There you go. Isn’t it beautiful?

Jason Rothman:
All right. You’re playing games with me, Chris. Okay. So sticking on the topic here, sticking on the theme of-

Chris Schaeffer:
Now you’re going to say sticking to… You literally got through talking about my toes, and you’re like sticking to the theme. Go ahead.

Jason Rothman:
Now we were just talking about lowering the bids to spend more of the budget, right? It’s a problem with our show. It’s like Lily’s on your commute to work. She knows people in the Google Ad space. She wants to recommend our show to them. She’s like, “Hey, these guys have great content, great tips about Google Ads.” People would share our show more if we didn’t embarrass them. Because what if she shares the show to a colleague, a respected colleague, and then they’re like, “They just talked about their toes for 15 minutes.”

Chris Schaeffer:
Guy keeps asking what the other guy’s wearing. I don’t know what his fascination… This is the second week in a row that he’s talked about his clothes. Yeah. Maybe we should have a second show, the Professional Paid Search Podcast, the PPSP. That’s the one she can recommend. Lily can tell her colleagues about that.

Jason Rothman:
Yeah. Oh, man. I don’t know. Are we missing out on recommendations because people don’t want to recommend shows where people… Yeah, but anyway, we’re doing what we’re doing.

Jason Rothman:
So we’re talking about lowering the bids to get more clicks for the same budget. Now like I told you, that’s something I do all the time, but I’ve also added a new tool to my repertoire, to my toolbox here, raising the bids. How about that, Chris? How simple does that sound, raise the bid? So here’s a situation, run into it quite a bit lately. We’re running. We have good keywords. Everything’s good. But we’re not spending the full budget, and in the past with myself and some people, it’s like, raise the bids. Raise the bids, and then it’s just everyone’s inclination is to go, “We raised them.” And then I go, “Okay. But we’re not spending the full budget still. So I thought we raised them?” And they go, “Yeah, we raised them 5% last week.”

Jason Rothman:
And then you know what I do to this pen, Chris?

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, boy.

Jason Rothman:
I throw it across the room and I ask them, “Are you stupid or are you just bad at what you do? Because why would you raise the bid 5%, and then sit around two weeks and see what happens.” So my whole new outlook on raising the bids to raise position to the point where you can get clicks and try to spend the full budget. If I’m talking about raising the bids, I raise the bids.

Chris Schaeffer:
To see what happens.

Jason Rothman:
So if a bid is $10, I’ll go to $30. If the bid is $25, I’ll go to $75.

Chris Schaeffer:
Dang. What?

Jason Rothman:
What do I care? What do I care? See, you’re having the same reaction everybody else has. Why don’t you slow down? Why don’t you think for a second? What’s the magic of Google Ads that old school, radio TV advertisers don’t understand? They don’t understand that there’s no middle man. There’s no guy sending out direct mailers telling you if you want to change your direct mailer, it’s going to be a turn around time of two months and it’s going to be $2000 just for that phone call. There’s no middle main. Everything’s changeable on a dime. You don’t have to redo the billboard. You don’t have to re-shoot the commercial. So if I put a bid from $25 to $75, I can find out very quickly the next two days whether that’s going to be enough. If I overshot it and I went too high and the cost go up too high and I am spending the full budget, you know what I can do, Chris? I can lower the bid back down. I can press two budgets and lower it in the time we’re talking here.

Jason Rothman:
So now don’t you see how having a reaction like, “Oh, man. You went from $25 to $75.” It’s just not the way it should be. It should be like, “Okay. Yeah. You mean business. That’s a serious raise, and I’m going to be on my toes now because I’m going to be watching for costs to come in too high because I don’t want that to go wrong. But if I watch it today, tomorrow, I’ll be able to catch it. And then I can lower from there, and we can find that sweet spot that we were talking about earlier.”

Jason Rothman:
So my thing I’ve been working on is if we need to raise the bids, I’m raising them extremely aggressively. I’m making a decision. I’m figuring something out. And then I can very quickly lower them down and try to find that sweet spot and not pay too much of a price. Because I’d rather overpay for one or two days if the daily budget’s like $50 or $100, than sit around and not spend the budget for two to three weeks while we see if our 5% change is going to work. So that’s my outlook on trying to find that sweet spot.

Chris Schaeffer:
I like it. Yeah. You’re absolutely right. That’s a good point. Make some changes because that’s the advantage Google Ads has over literally every other type of advertising is you have data. You have the information about the change did for your campaign.

Chris Schaeffer:
Well, with that, I’m going to say remind you guys to go check out Opteo.com/psp. Great online tool. Get things done faster. Get things done better, more efficiently. Get alerts in your inbox about your Google Ads campaigns with this great too. You can try it out for free. For free for six weeks. That’s enough time for you to take the campaign and try it for an entire reporting cycle that’s past the four week time. That’s into half through the next month. You can try it and see what it does. You can measure the effects of the tool on your campaigns. OPTEO.com/psp. Try it out. You’ll like it.

Jason Rothman:
Thanks, Chris. And I want to thank Kyle Sulerud and recommend that everyone go get their special offer, their free seven day trial of Kyle Sulerud’s AdLeg software suite. The kind of tools we promote on this show, the beautiful thing about them, the one that thing ties everything together I think is we promote tools that are very clear. They’re made by someone who is inside of Google Ads campaigns and knows the problems that we all face and knows how to speed up our work and make us more efficient. Kyle does that with the AdLeg software suite. He’s got multiple tools and ad copy generator, negative keyword pro, the keyword generator, amazing keyword generator, the vid hoarder to find YouTube videos to target as placements.

Jason Rothman:
And then today we’re focusing on the keyword bursts. The keyword burst will save you a ton of time. You combine your geo terms, the city names, local, near me, all that kind of stuff with all the different kind of service terms like movers, moving companies. If you’re a divorce lawyer, divorce lawyer, family lawyer, custody lawyer, all those service terms that you want in different ad groups. It combines those service terms with the local geo terms, and then it spits them out into a spreadsheet, all the different kind of match types, including broad match modified. And then you can just dump those into your Google Ads account. I use it. It saves a ton of time. Get your free seven day trial of the AdLeg software suite. Kyle Sulerud’s AdLeg software suite at software.adleg.com/psp.

Jason Rothman:
So, Chris, I think what we’re going to do, we’re going to jump this thing over to Patreon. I’ve got one very special Patreon thing to talk about that I would only talk about on Patreon in terms of what I’m working on. And then we can also, as time permits, we can go through some of the other things we wrote down. And just have a good time. So we recommend everyone go to Patreon.com/paidsearchpodcast, sign up. It is a whopping $2 a month. We do a show, an after show every week we do this show. And you get a second podcast, all for $2 a month. It helps the show. We appreciate your support. And we’ll see you over there.

Chris Schaeffer:
All right. Thanks for listening. Peace.

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