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Show Notes:
Welcome back to the PSP! This week we go over a strategy we use when we have trouble finding PPC keywords for our Google Ads search campaigns. This strategy combines broad match keywords with targeted audiences. It’s a very interesting strategy. We hope you enjoy the episode!
Please leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, please share the show with your friends, and join us for the after show every week on Patreon! It’s just $2 or $4 a month and we do an after show every week.
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Transcript:
Jason Rothman:
Hey Jimmy. Hi. Would you like fast food tonight or a frozen dinner because I don’t have time to make you a home-cooked meal because me and your step-father are going to a roller derby tonight? I’m okay. I don’t really want anything. Okay Jimmy, don’t wait up for us.
Jason Rothman:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Paid Search Podcast. My name is Jason Rothman. As always, I’m joined by greatest Google Ads manager on the planet I know, the great Chris Schaeffer. Chris, how’s it going?
Chris Schaeffer:
I am honored to be doing a podcast with the award-winning, award-winning Jason Rothman, actually nominated and won for the world’s greatest Google Ads manager. I claim it. Jason has the trophy for it. So honored to be here. Thank you Jason. Not quite Thanksgiving yet. We’re still cranking out the material. Jason, it’s not time yet to pull out the turkey and all those other things that we eat.
Jason Rothman:
Or the baster.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yes. I don’t make the turkey, so I don’t know what kind of materials go into doing. I just eat it.
Jason Rothman:
I do.
Chris Schaeffer:
And with that, we thank you guys for joining us. We got some cool stuff to talk about today. And I want to mention, as we mentioned something brand new with the show, you can send us things. If you have an extra hundred dollar bill, if you have a set of shoes that are gently worn, you can check our show notes and send them to us. We have a new mailing address, and let us know what you think about us. Write that on the back of a twenty dollar bill if it’s a negative. If it’s positive, a hundred dollar bill is all we accept. And thanks for your support.
Chris Schaeffer:
So today, Jason, we’ve got some cool stuff to talk about. Before we get into that, let’s talk about Opteo. Opteo is a tool that I use, that Jason uses, that we use to get things done faster, to make changes to campaigns instead of trying to rely on the interface of Google Ads, which is great. But sometimes you need more. You need creative ideas. You need email alerts to tell you about things that you may not have seen. Everyone’s busy. You’ve got a lot of accounts to manage. You’ve got a lot of things to do. Maybe you’re a one-man show. You’ve got a lot of hats to wear, and you need to get things done quickly.
Chris Schaeffer:
Opteo is a great optimization tool to help you get things done faster in Google Ads, and it’s mobile-friendly. You can use your phone to get it done. Right? You don’t even have to use a downloaded app. You can just go straight to O-P-T-E-O.com/psp and try it out. Let them know you want the six-week extended trial because that’s the special offer, straight for our listeners, and we want to thank them for their sponsorship.
Jason Rothman:
Thanks Chris. And I want to thank Directive Consulting from directiveconsulting.com. Directive Consulting helps B2B, enterprise, e-commerce, retail, and start-ups with online marketing. They do it all: SEO, pay-per-click, conversion rate optimization, content marketing, social media, digital PR, analytics. They do it all, and they do it for very competitive industries: B2B, enterprise, e-commerce, retail, start-ups.
Jason Rothman:
As we’re going to talk about on today’s podcast, it’s Google Ads. We talk about Google Ads, but depending on what kind of business you’re in, what kind of business you’re advertising for, things can be very different. And we have a very unique example on today’s show, and it just shows how different different industries are when it comes to online marketing. And Directive works with some of the most competitive industries, B2B and enterprise, e-commerce. They do great work. Check out their website. Look into some of the brands they worked with. Look at their case studies, and most importantly, get a free, custom proposal. Directiveconsulting.com.
Chris Schaeffer:
Jason, you ever panic? You ever get panicked with Google Ads. I know you’re a award-winning manager, but do you ever panic with Google Ads?
Jason Rothman:
No, I panic with people, but I don’t panic with Google Ads.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay.
Jason Rothman:
I panic when people get panicked about Google Ads.
Chris Schaeffer:
Ah, good point.
Jason Rothman:
And then they want to know why the last hour’s results are this or why they didn’t see themselves there or things like that. And I blew up this week on someone. I straight up blew up, Chris. And-
Chris Schaeffer:
How’d that go?
Jason Rothman:
I don’t know. What do you mean? How’d it go?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Did you keep the job, or did you hang up on a-
Jason Rothman:
Oh, of course.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, of course you did. Okay.
Jason Rothman:
I’m absolutely indispensable to everyone I work with.
Chris Schaeffer:
Absolutely. Sure.
Jason Rothman:
And I’m just extremely good at what I do, so if they work with [crosstalk 00:05:19], they work with me.
Chris Schaeffer:
So even if you scream and yell at someone on the phone, they will still continue to say, “Oh, you’re still my man, but …”
Jason Rothman:
No, that goes unsaid. Mostly, they just say, “Thank you for setting me straight,” and then we carry on.
Chris Schaeffer:
Ah. Amazing. Amazing.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, I was going to read a Review of the Week. And I see all these great reviews, but none of them grabbed me enough in terms of being flattering enough, in terms of complementing the show enough, in terms of really conveying the value we provide, not only for Google Ads, but for life and the afterlife and the entire universe and all universes that have ever been made.
Chris Schaeffer:
Wow.
Jason Rothman:
And they were also kind of short. I saw some that were four sentences, five sentences. I want 25 sentences. I want an ode to how great this show is, so I’ll check back next week.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay.
Jason Rothman:
And we’ll see what’s there, and we’ll see if we have a review of the week but not this week. Sorry.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh. Well, that’s sad. All right. Well, I don’t have any loving emails that were sent this week through our site, so I don’t have anything to read either. So I guess we’re just going to have to get into the show, which-
Jason Rothman:
Jump into the content. Are you serious? Hold on. Hold on.
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s only like eight minutes in right now. I don’t know. Do we-
Jason Rothman:
Chris, the people are clamoring for us talk about something except for Google Ads.
Chris Schaeffer:
Else.
Jason Rothman:
They don’t know what to do if we talk about Google Ads within the first 17 and a half minutes of the show.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Don’t do it to them, Chris.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. Well, I guess we could talk about the weather. Lots of things to discuss, or we could just talk about what they actually subscribe for. I guess we could do that. All right, well …
Jason Rothman:
All right. Let me start it off, Chris.
Chris Schaeffer:
Go ahead. Do it.
Jason Rothman:
As I was talking about earlier, it’s called Google Ads. And we get on this show, and we make it sound so easy. And in a lot of industries, for a lot of different advertisers out there, things work great. It really is easy sometimes. Someone is an office mover. That’s what they do. They move people’s offices, commercial, all that kind of stuff. And then someone needs an office mover, so they go to Google, and then they type in office mover. And then they see the ad. They click. They call. They fill out a lead form. They become new business, and it works so easy. And if you listen to the Paid Search Podcast, you know all your settings, all that kind of stuff. Anybody can do it.
Jason Rothman:
But then there’s sometimes, Chris, when you get into a Google Ads campaign, you start running one. And things don’t work so easy, and there’s a ton of different examples of when things are not easy. And we’re going to cover one, specifically, today. So I want you to describe that situation, and I also want to know why this is on your mind. I always like to know that, why things cross your mind.
Chris Schaeffer:
Well, Jason, as you know, I do hourly consulting. I always like to drop that in because it’s very important that I continue to feed my family. And a lot of things I hear is, “How many cups do you have? You have so many drinks, so it’s amazing. I watch every time. You drink one liquid and follow it with a chaser of something else. One of them is dark. One of them I can’t tell what it is.”
Jason Rothman:
Honestly, I don’t have enough drinks. I’m panicking over here. I know you see multiple cups. You’re like, “Oh, he’s got enough.” I’m straight up panicking because I’m parched, and I need some more liquid.
Chris Schaeffer:
Are you calling to get help with that? Is that what that ring is? Let’s hear it. Let’s wait. Let’s see if they pick up. Going to get some SOS hydration. Oh, no. Oh, no.
Jason Rothman:
I guess she’s out with her boyfriend or something.
Chris Schaeffer:
She just didn’t answer. We’re going to have to continue. We’ll have to continue.
Jason Rothman:
I’m sorry.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay, I’m sorry. So let’s go back. He’s so thirsty.
Jason Rothman:
I don’t have enough drinks.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay, I’ll tell you what-
Jason Rothman:
I’m panicking. You want to talk about panic. I’m going to get some [crosstalk 00:09:20], and you tell people [crosstalk 00:09:20].
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. I’m going to lay it out. I’m going to lay all this out. When you come back, I’ll have laid it all out, and it will be your turn. All right?
Jason Rothman:
Okay. Sounds good.
Chris Schaeffer:
Here we go. Okay. There he goes. So you’re panicked. You have a campaign that is running along fairly well. Okay? And maybe there’s a one product or one service or maybe the entire campaign is not working as you would expect it. You’re not getting impressions at all, or impressions have stopped. And it’s nothing that you’ve done wrong. It’s the keywords are just not performing. New competitors have come in. Something has changed beyond what you’ve done and made this a significantly more difficult scenario for you.
Chris Schaeffer:
So you have to decide, okay, I’m going to have do something new here. I’m going to have to try an entire new strategy. And the thing is if you’ve been running a bunch of keywords, if you’ve been doing a bunch of new keywords, you’ve been trying new things, you might not have an ability to go beyond what you’ve already been trying. You say, “Well, I already have 320 keywords. How am I supposed to come up with another 45 or 100 more? I don’t really have another angle to do this with.” So this is a situation I see people a lot in because they say, “This isn’t profitable for me. I’m not getting what I want, and I don’t really know how to add.” They think that the keyword “planner” is going to give them what they need. They think that there’s going to be some new match type that they can try. Maybe if they try a bunch of modified broad with some other stuff thrown in will start working, but in the end, it just doesn’t work out the way they want.
Chris Schaeffer:
So that’s the situation. And the solution that we’re going to talk about today is really unique because you’re forming a targeting method that does not base its entire strategy on keywords. You do have to use some keywords, but the keywords are not really there for the precision of the targeting. Instead, we’re going to talk about audiences, specifically targeted audiences. And this is something we’ve danced around before, but this is a specific strategy that we’re going to lay out that could be maybe revolutionary to maybe give you an extra bump or maybe get something rolling again where you’re just kind of on a dry patch. You don’t really know what to do.
Jason Rothman:
So Chris, what’s happening? What sparked this? How often do you run into this? And we don’t have to get into the industry, but is it an industry thing? Is it a location thing? What’s happening here?
Chris Schaeffer:
That’s a good question. So what sparks this, and what you might want to apply this to is often things that don’t fit into the normal advertising box. And you think, “Well, what’s a normal advertising box?” Well, if your suggested keywords never really look like what you want, if you’re advertising some in-depth B2B industrial type of service, something that’s kind of between two major services, but it’s its own separate service, it’s not one thing. It’s not another thing, but it’s right in between those two things, and Google never formally recognizes those with the right kind of keywords or the right kind of quality scores. This could be the thing for you because you need to figure out how you can get some traffic and think outside of those typical boxes.
Jason Rothman:
From search.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, I mean, that’s where it comes from. It’s frustration with not being able to formalize the right kind of keyword because I don’t know how people are looking for this.
Jason Rothman:
So it’s either an industry that people aren’t searching yet, or it’s a product that people use or service they use, but they don’t really search for it exactly. It’s maybe a little adjacent to the main searches.
Chris Schaeffer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jason Rothman:
Just to tell you my perspective here, when it comes to search, my biggest thing with if I can work with someone, if I want to work with someone, one of my biggest turnoffs is if someone’s not searching, if their keywords are not searched for. Because my whole thing with search advertising it’s like, okay, line them up, very straightforward campaigns that I know are going to work because I like when things work. Office mover, boom. Someone searching for office mover. Divorce lawyer in Memphis, boom, I know it’s going to work because people are searching for that exactly.
Jason Rothman:
So when someone comes to me with a product or service that’s either new or adjacent, and people aren’t searching for it totally spot on, I’ve been very, very hesitant to take on that work at all. I don’t panic like we talked about at the top of the show, but I don’t do it. I don’t really do that with search. But you, like you said, you’re seeing a lot more campaigns. Question for you: I know we can’t say this strategy we’re going to talk about today is guaranteed to work because that’s a stupid thing to say because sometimes things just don’t work. But do you see this work sometimes? Jump to the end before we talk about this strategy. What happens? Do you find keywords? Do you find that adjacent searches do convert? What happens here, and does this ever work?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. So it’s a good question. So the end-solution that this whole process could eventually lead to is essentially finding some searches or some niches that you hadn’t thought of before. Like, oh wow, I never really thought that people that want this also would be interested in that. So there’s an ability to connect some lines, and that’s typically going to be done with the search terms. Right? I mean, it always narrows down to the same thing. If you’re really going to get some solid data, and you can’t rely on the Keyword Planner because it’s just not really working for you, and you need to generate some traffic, this is the kind of situation that usually arises is you do this, what we’re going to talk about. And you find some search terms that work well for you. Or even better scenario is you actually find a way to slowly tweak the system so that the system itself could be profitable for you, at least on a qualified traffic. Maybe it’s not conversions, but you’re at least able to get people to come to the site and engage at a certain bounce rate or to-
Jason Rothman:
Get on a remarketing list, something like that.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, stuff like that. And introduce them to a product.
Jason Rothman:
Just a few more steps to educate them.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. And we’ll talk about …
Jason Rothman:
Interest.
Chris Schaeffer:
… how to reduce that risk in our process here but yeah-
Jason Rothman:
Okay. So final intro question here. You do use it to find search terms that are spot on once you find them. That happens sometimes you said. But then does it sometimes happen where you end up getting search terms that are not what you think would work because they’re not spot on, but they actually do convert, and you keep targeting them?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yes and no. I don’t really know if they’re going to work or not. Well, I feel like to answer that question, we need to get into exactly how this works because now I’m answering questions and being rather obscure with it. So let’s get into what it is. Let’s talk about what it is, and I think by that, I’ll answer your question a little better.
Chris Schaeffer:
So this whole thing that we’re eluding to is nothing new, but it’s just a strategy that we’re going to lay out here. It’s using broad keywords. And when I say broad, I don’t mean modified broad. I mean pure, broad keywords, which we have talked about many times before. Using broad keywords and targeted audiences, and this is something that’s, let’s say, relatively new. Google Ads is pretty old now, been around for a while, so it’s relatively new. It’s only the past couple years that we can add audiences to keywords in the search campaign.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, title of today’s episode: Pure, Broad Keywords Plus Targeted Audiences. Leave it at that little mystery.
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s a little on the nose. I was going to think a more of an emotional pull of The Answer to Your Panicked Boss. I don’t know. The Answer to All Your Google Ads Concerns.
Jason Rothman:
Can’t find keywords? Don’t panic. Here’s a strategy.
Chris Schaeffer:
There, boom. See?
Jason Rothman:
Boom.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, boom. This is a boom show. So-
Jason Rothman:
Hey, that’s how the magic happens.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, it is. You guys just saw it. That’s so organic. It’s just amazing. Okay, so here’s how it works. And I’m going to step you through step-by-step on how this is going to look. So first, I’m going to suggest you start a brand new campaign. Okay? Don’t do this in your current campaign because you’re going to need to use certain bidding strategies, and you’re going to need to use certain targets that could mess up what you have in your other campaigns. So I’m going to suggest start a brand new campaign.
Chris Schaeffer:
All right. You with me? Set up a new campaign. Make it a search campaign and don’t use any goals. Set for no goals, custom. And now, turn off your search partners and display targeting. Okay? You with me there? You’ve turned those two off. Now, we’re going to scroll down, and we’re going to get to an area that you probably scroll over all the time. It’s the Audience Bar. Right? And it’s not even expanded. They expect, usually, that people aren’t going to use it because it’s not very typical that people use it. So it’s not expanded. You’re going to expand it. Okay, and this is where there’s a couple different strategies.
Chris Schaeffer:
And we’re going to go with strategy number one on this first one. So for the first one, what you’re going to do is you’re going to chose a couple … No. Let’s say you’re going to chose one audience. Okay? And I’m not going to get into the difference between in-market and Affinity and all that kind of stuff. We’ve been there way too many times.
Jason Rothman:
I’ll do it.
Chris Schaeffer:
No. You do it?
Jason Rothman:
Just kidding.
Chris Schaeffer:
No, please.
Jason Rothman:
The thing with Google Ads, Chris, and training people, there really is a lot of avenues to go down at every turn. You know?
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, yeah. That’s why we’re so freaking successful is because we know those back roads.
Jason Rothman:
Okay, but for the sake of the show, let’s pick out our first kind of audience since we’re layering here.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay.
Jason Rothman:
Or combining is the word.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. So for this first audience, let’s say that we are a widget company that wants to sell to parents. And what this little widget that we sell is some type of special spoon that is not as messy when you feed a baby, an infant, a toddler, something like that. Okay? So we’re selling it, and people don’t really search for that, but a lot of people would be interested in it because it would be a great tool to have. But it’s not the kind of thing you sit down and say, “I need to buy a new no-mess spoon for my toddler.” Okay? So that’s who we’re selling to.
Chris Schaeffer:
What we do is we target an audience. And make sure you choose “target” in your settings, not “observation.” Make sure you use “target” and choose inside of … there’s a in-market audience called Infant and Toddler Feeding.
Jason Rothman:
Is there really?
Chris Schaeffer:
There is. There is an audience called that.
Jason Rothman:
Okay. So we’re going to target people who are parents. That’s the first audience.
Chris Schaeffer:
Well, not necessarily. That-
Jason Rothman:
Oh, so this in-market toddler feeding, that’s the first audience?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, that’s the one and only audience for this.
Jason Rothman:
Okay.
Chris Schaeffer:
For situation number one, the one and only audience is infant and toddler feeding. That’s it.
Jason Rothman:
Oh. Excuse me. I was jumping ahead. I did my homework. I’m sorry. I was just jumping ahead too far.
Chris Schaeffer:
I know what you’re getting to.
Jason Rothman:
Okay. Okay, but just targeting observation, we don’t have to go down a road here. But observation means it’s not going to lock it down to just people in that audience. It’s just going to observe the data with those people in the audience versus when they’re not in the audience. Targeting means your ads will only show to people in that audience. Correct?
Chris Schaeffer:
Exactly. That’s it.
Jason Rothman:
Okay. So we’re going to target that audience.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yep.
Jason Rothman:
Targeted.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. So-
Jason Rothman:
In-market toddler feeding?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. In-market Infant and Toddler Feeding, that’s an actual audience. It’s an in-market. What in-market means is someone that is actively searching within a certain time period, and we don’t have the data on why they’re in there. Google has just put them in there based on their recent search. It’s history and viewing history.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. From that point, we’re going to go into the normal stuff that you’re all used to, write some ads, blah, blah, blah, and then the keywords. Now, it’s important. I didn’t say this, but go back in time. And you need to make sure you use manual bidding because you don’t want to do this with … certainly don’t want to do this with maximized conversions. You don’t want to do it with CPA targeting or anything. I’m going to suggest manual bidding, and you’re going to pick broad keywords. The keywords that you might choose might look something like “infant feeding tips,” “how to feed baby,” “toddler feeding spoon,” “baby feeding help,” “clean toddler feeding.”
Jason Rothman:
So you really do since people aren’t probably aren’t searching for this exact product directly, you’re actually trying to show up on informational high in the funnel searches.
Chris Schaeffer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right.
Jason Rothman:
People looking for blog articles or help articles, basically.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. To try and sell them something. And the idea is that … And you said it, top of the funnel. So we’re going for more of a billboard type of approach. It’s going to be a lot of traffic, and the great thing about this is that we’ve qualified the traffic twice. We’ve qualified it with some very broad keywords, and we’ve qualified it with the fact that they have recently been doing some searches in this arena. Okay?
Jason Rothman:
Or on pages about this kind of stuff.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, exactly. Been looking at parent stuff, toddler information, things like that. And Google has placed them into this audience, which by the way, when I was doing this, when I was testing this, when I chose this audience, I got one billion to 10 billion people who fit in this. Right? I mean, so we’re not talking about you taking an audience and scrubbing it down to just only the parents in your area. I mean, this is a worldwide thing. So it’s still going to be a very large audience, but the great thing is you go from millions and millions of impressions, and you’ve whittled it down to just a few thousands of impressions that can be showing up. So now you’ve-
Jason Rothman:
I have to be in the market for infant and toddler feeding. They’re in whatever location you want to sell stuff in. And then, in terms of their keywords, you’re going whatever keywords you want to go in, stuff that’s related. You’re saying broad because you want to show up on a bunch of stuff, and you don’t really know what the keywords are yet. So you’re going to use broad to kind of see the search terms and see what you show up on. Speaking of broad, should I put in the word baby, one word? Give people some kind of clarification on pure broad. We don’t have to do our pure broad like a pro-episode, but there’s got to be some qualifier. Are you saying it’s got to be three words, or is there some way to think about it?
Chris Schaeffer:
I mean, people always want us to come up with-
Jason Rothman:
Or would you do baby with a five cent bid? I mean, you tell me.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. That’s what I would say. I would say people always want us to come up with definite rules, and the fact is everyone’s experience will be different. We can’t ever tell you what the right formula is because we’re in the same boat as you. We’re testing this as well, so I don’t know. But to give you an idea, I would suggest something with two to four words. And as Jason said, if you want to try “baby” or “toddler” or “baby eating”, something like that that’s really high-funnel, really obscure. I think Jason had it right right there. Throw a five cent bid on it. Put something really small on it. And that’s the last point. The last point on this is that you can do this and get traffic because you’ve qualified it in two different ways. Now, throw some low bids on there, and the amount of risk that you have here is very minimal. You’re not going to be getting clicks for a dollar.
Jason Rothman:
What risk is your daily budget. Just so everyone knows the overall risk. You got to protect yourself, so make sure your daily budget is something you’re okay to lose.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
And then, of course, daily budget these days there’s something like they’re allowed to over spend your budget by up to 200% or something like that, at any given day. So if you put in 10, it might be 20 or $30 dollars spend you could get. But like you’re saying, Chris, you protect-
Chris Schaeffer:
But that won’t continue. That won’t continue, just to be sure.
Jason Rothman:
No. Over the course of the month, it will even out to $10, whatever you set it as.
Chris Schaeffer:
Right, right.
Jason Rothman:
You’ll be limited by budget and all that. You protect yourself with some kind of broad keywords, maybe something in your area, something in your topic. You protect yourself by controlling your bids, going super low-bid because it’s so broad. And you control yourself with that targeted audience. One thing I want to say, Chris, is just like you’re saying. Some people might use broad keyword to see what happens with low bids. Some people might use five-word broad keywords or four-word broad keywords with maybe a little higher bids.
Jason Rothman:
But, of course, the nice thing about manual bids, the nice thing about Google Ads everything is changeable any time. You can modify keywords. You can make them longer. You can pause them. You can increase your bids, decrease your bids. So it’s not so much that we’re saying this, this, and that. It’s saying, no, this is the strategy. You’ve got a lot of tools within it. But so far, just to recap, your first option is a targeted audience combined with broad keywords. Is that a good way to break it down?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly right. And the thing is you say, “Well, Chris, why don’t I just throw some modified broad in there, stuff like that?” The thing is you have to understand the way that broad keywords-
Jason Rothman:
Because we’re going to die one day, honestly, because we’re going to die one day. Okay?
Chris Schaeffer:
There we go.
Jason Rothman:
I’m so sick of things being so slow with Google Ads. They don’t have to be slow with Google Ads. You can start. I mean, you know what I’m saying, Chris?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Oh, sure.
Jason Rothman:
We’re not doing modified because we’re not deep in the funnel here. This is a totally different scenario where we don’t know our keywords, and we’re trying stuff out. So if you’re going to try stuff out, let’s get naked and know modifiers and try stuff out.
Chris Schaeffer:
Boom.
Jason Rothman:
Get freaky.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Boom.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, perfect. Exactly right because-
Jason Rothman:
Now, Chris, what I need from you is I need some life-skill training in terms of how do I convey that 100% accurate answer when I’m talking to a stupid person without blowing up on them. I don’t know how to do that, Chris.
Chris Schaeffer:
That’s in the Patreon.
Jason Rothman:
I’m trying to learn, but I haven’t-
Chris Schaeffer:
We’re going to talk about that in the Patreon. Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Teach me in the Patreon because it just angers me. You brought up modifiers because people will bring up modifiers, but it’s all about modifiers.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. We say this some times. It’s not always that we say this-
Jason Rothman:
You are such a cool cucumber. I mean, maybe it’s the crossfit.
Chris Schaeffer:
It is. It is.
Jason Rothman:
Maybe it’s the-
Chris Schaeffer:
Every bit of aggression I’ve left-
Jason Rothman:
I don’t know what you do, but-
Chris Schaeffer:
… I’ve left on the crossfit floor today. I was wiped, but yeah, that’s what it is. I’ll say this just as a quick note before we move into tactic number two, which won’t take very long. The idea here is that broad keywords don’t match word-to-word. They don’t match the way that you put a plus, and it has to be baby-to-baby. Right? If you put a plus on baby, it’s going to have to match to baby-to-baby in the search. The search term has to have “baby” in it because you put a plus there. If you don’t put any plus, I would qualify a broad match keyword as something that is topic-to-topic, theme-to-theme, idea-to-idea. And this is what we’re looking for. We don’t want a word-to-word match. We want a topic-to-topic match, an idea-to-idea because we’re trying to be very creative. We’re trying to try new things, new things.
Jason Rothman:
It’s just like a hose. It’s just like a hose when you have a hose, and then you put that little gun on top of it. And then you have your different settings. So you can do the setting where it’s just a little pointed, little spray direct. Then you can do you a little shower drizzle that’s maybe modified. Then you can do a steam or a mist. That’s what broad is.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, wow. I’ve never had one of those. Those must be for rich people. I usually just use my thumb, which is the level that I’m at for my hose efficiency-
Jason Rothman:
One hand in his pants or has a beer in one hand, and the other hand just half way on the hose just … That’s good.
Chris Schaeffer:
I got it.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah, I can see that. I can see that.
Chris Schaeffer:
All right. So tactic two, you guys are going to like this. We’ve waited to share this one until 90% of the audiences dropped out. Now, it’s just you guys.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, what are you talking about. We have the number one … God. Chris wants someone to just pull out a whip and punish him because he likes the pain.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
He always is putting our show down. I don’t understand why.
Chris Schaeffer:
It cracks me up.
Jason Rothman:
I do not understand why.
Chris Schaeffer:
It cracks me up.
Jason Rothman:
Why would you say that right now?
Chris Schaeffer:
Because I think I’m a very proficient kind of guy.
Jason Rothman:
Do you want to beat? Do you want to be spanked? What is with you? Why would you say that?
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s funny because if it wasn’t for you, I would say everything important in the first five minutes, and the whole show would be 10 minutes long. So I’m glad you’re here because if it was just me, I would put all this in a video that was made for YouTube, and it would be seven minutes long, and it would be over. So yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Right. And it would suck because there’s things called context and scenarios and flavor and color. And you’re trying to give people a full picture of what’s going on.
Chris Schaeffer:
I’m a colorless, flavorless, boring AdWords manager, so I am so glad that I have the award-winning Google Rothman … what is your name? Jason Rothman. All right.
Jason Rothman:
You are loopy today, man. What is with you?
Chris Schaeffer:
You crack me up.
Jason Rothman:
You’re being silly. You’re being silly, Chris.
Chris Schaeffer:
All right. Option number two, this is a whole new thing because you can take two audiences and tell Google, “I want you to combine these audiences and find the people that are in both.” And you say, “I can hear them. I hear Josh out there.” Josh is saying in his car, “Why don’t you just do it in your first scenario? Put both audiences in your first one, and that’s the same thing. You just add two. You add toddler feeding, and you add parents. And now, that’s it.” And I say, “Oh, Josh, first watch out. There’s someone braking in front of you. While you’re freaking out to a stupid thought, you’re going to have a rear-end, and it’s going to be horrible. Second, number two, you’re wrong. You’re wrong because the way that the audiences work is that when you add two audiences to one ad group or even to one campaign, it treats it as a or-situation. They’re either going to be in parents or they’re going to be infant, toddler feeding in-market audience.”
Chris Schaeffer:
You don’t lessen your targeting by adding more audiences just in the same way that you don’t lessen your targeting if you add more keywords. If I add 50 keywords, that’s no more precise than if I add five. The idea is that this is an or-situation. So thank you Josh. Please unsubscribe, and don’t yell at us anymore. That’s very offensive. I, instead, want to combine these. So-
Jason Rothman:
Please don’t do that.
Chris Schaeffer:
So here’s what I want you to do-
Jason Rothman:
But thank you.
Chris Schaeffer:
All right. So for the rest of you, here’s what I want you to do. When you set up your campaign, when you set up a new ad group, let’s say let’s do it in a new ad group. You look for this other option in your Audience Tab. And I don’t have it in front of me, so Jason, you can tell me if I get the words wrong. You look for the combined audiences, which is going to be in the Browse section at the very bottom.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah, in Browse. Yeah.
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s going to be combined audiences. This pops up a whole new window that you’ve never worked in, and it has an and/or situation where you can choose one audience and then click “Narrow your audience” to then combine and create a custom, new combined audience. It’s a whole new tactic, and now you’ve taken something that might be 10 billion people and reduced it to five million because now it is both demographic, having to deal with they are likely parents, and they are looking stuff up about toddler, baby feeding information. You’ve combined those into your own, unique in-market audience. And you’re targeting just that. And everything else is just the same. Add the keywords in. Everything can be just the same, but now you’ve created this custom, combined audience.
Jason Rothman:
And Chris, another thing you can do is when you’re inside of an active campaign, and you go to audiences, and then you hit “Add audiences” and then you go to Browse, you’ll also get that combined option. And like an example you had written out, pest control but pest control but also homeowners. You can tell the system, “Hey, whatever keywords I’m targeting, only show them targeting to people combined who are in the market for pest control services and also a homeowner in the homeowner audience.”
Jason Rothman:
I mean, we were talking. There’s just a lot of possibilities, man, because we were talking about things people don’t search for. You’re not sure of the keywords. Say you are sure of the keywords, just to throw a sidebar in. You’re confident in pest control, but it’s expensive. It’s competitive. What if you loosen that up and throw broad on there, but then make it only to show to people who are in the market for pest control services and homeowners? There’s a lot you can do with combined audiences for targeting. And also, Chris, it’s not just one and one combined. You can do three combined audiences, like three individual ones. You can do two combined audiences and an audience on top of that. They have to be in two audiences. Oh, excuse me. You’re right, any of these audiences. So basically, you can just do more than two is my point.
Chris Schaeffer:
You could set up an and-situation where you have something that is pest control and homeowner. That could be an and-situation. Then you could set up another or-situation that combines the two different ones. There’s a lot. I think it’s too much to go into, but play around with it. There’s a lot of possibilities that-
Jason Rothman:
Oh, by the way Chris, and you can exclude people-
Chris Schaeffer:
Yes. Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
… on top of that. Beautiful.
Chris Schaeffer:
You just ruined next week’s episode. That was the entire episode. That was it. That was the highlight. I was going to share it at minute 42.
Jason Rothman:
Someone send this man to podcast [inaudible 00:36:34]. I didn’t ruin it. I teased it.
Chris Schaeffer:
No, I knew it was there.
Jason Rothman:
The worst podcaster with a successful podcast, I think that’s what I’m looking at right-
Chris Schaeffer:
The worst podcaster with the best partner, that’s what it is. I found a good partner who can make my show-
Jason Rothman:
Something like that, something like that.
Chris Schaeffer:
… interesting.
Jason Rothman:
So Chris, still broad keywords, but now you’re combining two audiences. I like that. Now, what if I want to try all this out? What if I have an idea in option one where I have an audience and broad keywords, and then I want to do option two, and I have multiple audiences and broad keywords? Is it okay to put these in different ad groups and do ad group audiences, audiences at the ad group level and then name your ad groups that way?
Chris Schaeffer:
My suggestion is to not do this at the campaign-level targeting, instead, to do this at ad group targeting. In my example at beginning, I discussed adding it at the campaign level. But if you really want to get detailed, you want to try different things, set up an ad group that has one type of targeting. Maybe it’s just a single audience. Maybe it’s just one in-market audience, and it’s targeted with the keywords. Then take the exact same keywords and try that with a combined audience. So there’s a lot to play with. And one last thing I’ll say; here’s where the creativity can begin. Try opening up your geographic targeting. Try playing with your ad scheduling. Try playing with some different keywords. Throw some really broad keywords in. Remove-
Jason Rothman:
With low bids, with low bids.
Chris Schaeffer:
Right. Oh, yeah. Thank you. All of this. Do not throw two, three, four dollars-
Jason Rothman:
Keep the safety on. You know what I’m saying?
Chris Schaeffer:
Leave the safety on, yeah. Exactly right. Try it with limiting everything to just a certain age group every time you do this because you’re using broad keywords.
Jason Rothman:
And income demographics.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, income. Yeah. It’s a lot of things you can do.
Jason Rothman:
Who’s looking for all these specialty spoons? Top 20% of income.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Stuff like that. So I mean, there’s a lot you can play with. And the difference is you say, “Well, Chris, I can do all that with my original campaign.” You’re right, but you’re using restrictive keywords. You’re using modified broad. You’re using phrase. You’re using exact. This allows you to have a very wide keyword base, but then-
Jason Rothman:
Well, your original campaign with the keywords straightforward with keywords it’s already working, so you don’t need a … I mean, you can do all this stuff to make it even better, but it’s working because people are searching for what you offer. And you’re getting leads, and it’s good. This is like when, oh man, we’re not getting any. We don’t even know what keywords to target. What keywords could you target? It doesn’t seem like people search for it.
Jason Rothman:
Let me ask you this; I think the beautiful thing about both of these options, audiences plus broad keywords basically, is that you go from a situation where you’re getting 13 impressions a day because you don’t know what keywords to target. The keywords you thought to target no one’s searching for. And the beautiful thing about this because I’m thinking it would go this way. I want you to confirm or deny. Have you ever run into a situation where you didn’t at least get volume, and there was something to judge? The beautiful thing here is that looks to me like there’s always going to be action, and you’ll get some results. And maybe you won’t go way up the hill, but you’ll at least start making progress moving up that hill. Have you ever run into a situation where this doesn’t work at all and give you anything to go on, or does it always kind of give you some clues to at least try something else?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. No. It will give you nothing to go on if you put bids that are just absolutely too low, and you don’t open up your keywords enough. If you don’t go through this the right way-
Jason Rothman:
Okay. So it’s not magic.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
You got to do it the right way.
Chris Schaeffer:
You’re going to have to do it the right way.
Jason Rothman:
Okay.
Chris Schaeffer:
And it will eventually deliver clicks. There are billions of clicks out there that you can get.
Jason Rothman:
[crosstalk 00:40:33].
Chris Schaeffer:
The reason you would not be getting it is because you’re too restrictive on one of these aspects, bids. It may not work with a two-mile radius. It’s too small. So yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Let me just ask you personally. Oh, no, no. You know what? We’re going to save it for Patreon. What I want to ask you in Patreon because it’s kind of a business thing; do you like doing this? How do you communicate when you do this?
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh.
Jason Rothman:
Are clients open to it?
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh.
Jason Rothman:
Do they look at their search terms and call you up and say, “You’re the worst person ever” because they don’t like their search terms, and they didn’t understand the strategy? Or do they go, “Chris, everyone else has failed, and this strategy finally started working. And you’re the best person ever”? I mean, which one is it? I want to know these things.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, I mean, you see this scar?
Jason Rothman:
And how long do you give it?
Chris Schaeffer:
You see this scar here? That’s when I got in a fist fight with a client about this strategy. Right there. Yeah. All right. With that said, I want to tell you guys about Opteo. Opteo.com/psp. You can try the tool for six weeks. I don’t know why you’re still here. I mean, I told you you can do it for free. It’s a great tool. You want to know? Okay, I’ll tell you why.
Chris Schaeffer:
I’ll tell you why because you can get things done faster. You can get inspiration to get things done faster. You can get email alerts. You can get graphical interfaces. You can get bright colors and up and down arrows to tell you, “Hey, this is happening. This is happening with your conversions. Did you notice this? Did you see this paused keyword that should be turned back on? Did you know that there’s certain brand keywords that are triggering things that shouldn’t be triggered. There’s a problem with this ad copy,” all kinds of stuff that you may never have thought of. Opteo.com/psp. Get a six-week extended trial, offered exclusively to our listeners.
Jason Rothman:
Thanks Chris. And I want to thank Directive Consulting. Directiveconsulting.com. As you guys can see from this episode, there is a lot that can go into Google Ads and online marketing strategy. It depends on the industry and if you do B2B or enterprise or start-up or e-commerce or retail, we recommend heading over to Directive Consulting. Those are the verticals they specialize in. SEO, pay-per-click, landing pages, content, conversion rate optimization, social media, everything online marketing, Directive Consulting does it. They help you get quality leads and scale those leads for your B2B and enterprise campaigns. We recommend getting a free, custom proposal at directiveconsulting.com. And links to both Opteo and Directive Consulting will be in the show notes.
Jason Rothman:
So Chris, as we jump over to Patreon, there’s going to be two things I’m going to ask you; number one, the client reaction when you tell people about this strategy, I want to know if they’re odd, if they’re scared, how that goes. And number two, I want to know how long do you run these tests, and what happens? Do you just kind of run these tests forever, and they work good enough to keep going, or do you run them until you find a normal, target the straightforward keywords campaign once you find those keywords?
Jason Rothman:
I want to know what the end-result is here, so we’ll talk about that in Patreon. If you’re interested in Patreon, and we hope you are, head over to paidsearchpodcast.com. On the homepage, we have a link to the Patreon Show. It is $2 a month. No, you didn’t hear that wrong. I’m just a really bad business man sometimes, and I priced it too low initially. And now we’re locked in. Don’t get me wrong. I would charge these people a lot more if I could, but the way the Patreon system works, you can’t raise the price on a tier. Chris knows the word tier, unless you change the whole tier. If I change the tier, people are going to drop off the tier. And it is a risk that way, so I’m locked in at $2. It’s a joke but enjoy. Everyone enjoy my mistakes, $2 a month, and we do an after show every single week. So we hope to see you over there. And beyond that Chris, I don’t know. I want my time on this microphone to continue.
Chris Schaeffer:
I can tell.
Jason Rothman:
I’ve got a lot of things to get off my chest.
Chris Schaeffer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jason Rothman:
But we’ll just wrap up the Paid Search Podcast here, and thanks for listening.