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Show notes:
Yes welcome back to the PSP! This week the guys are talking about a number of Google Ads topics that were top of mind this week, including bidding on competitor names, the problem of small daily budget with a high cost per click, how helpful using experiments has been, and understanding why the new account ramp up exists.
Thanks for listening and enjoy the show!
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:
Jimmy, would you like a meatloaf sandwich today?
Jason Rothman:
I’m busy. I’m busy, okay. I’m not ready for lunch. I’m busy. I’m busy.
Jason Rothman:
Okay, Jimmy. I understand.
Jason Rothman:
Hey, everybody. Yes, welcome back to the Paid Search Podcast. My name’s Jason Rothman. As always, I’m joined by a guy who’s not only great at Google Ads, he’s just a great guy. The great Chris Schaeffer. How you doing, Chris?
Chris Schaeffer:
I’m doing good, and happy to make an announcement that I am joined with now officially crowned the world’s greatest Google Ads manager. I don’t know if you guys know but he’s got the paraphernalia to prove it with his name on it. It’s amazing. So glad to be a part of his show, very honored. But yeah, thanks for joining us. This is The Paid Search Podcast, and we’re going to talk about Google Ads because that’s what we’ve done that 175 times for many hours of our lives for years. That’s what we’re going to do today.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, Jason, you enjoying this wonderful, I call it winter weather, but it’s technically fall weather. Have you gotten use to the dark evenings?
Jason Rothman:
Oh, I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Got to rake up this weekend. All of a sudden we got a bunch of leaves on our lawn, but who cares. Chris, I’m seeing a lot of commentary out there about the show, and people are saying I’m mean to you. People are saying you take it so well. People have conversations like one comment after the other about the way you take it, and does he take it well, does he not. I mean, yes. My thing is number one, yes, I’ve said some things that some people might regret on the show in the past. I did some bad things in the past. I don’t do that anymore, and I feel like lately I’ve been very, “Oh, the great Chris Schaeffer, nice guy.” Yeah, I talked about your shirt last week. But for everyone listening, do you know why I talked about your shirt? Because you talked about my shirt first.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, that’s true.
Jason Rothman:
I want to come on here, and I want you to tell the people am I nice to you. Now tell them the truth.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh. We would still not be doing this episode if I did not enjoy my time. Jason is a incredibly kind person, and I would be bored to death if Jason didn’t make me feel welcome by making fun of me most of the time we’re on the show because that’s…
Jason Rothman:
So you like it, don’t you?
Chris Schaeffer:
I do.
Jason Rothman:
Tell them you like it. Tell them it’s just a joke.
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s just a joke. Jason puts on a wonderful persona. If we were sitting together having some water or whatever Jason drinks nowadays, we would sit and have an intelligent, non-combative conversation. But we’re on the show, and we like to poke fun. Mainly Jason likes to poke fun, and I like to just giggle. I’m the giggler. That’s what I’m here for. When our contracts were signed many years ago, it said on the line, it said, “Jason, powerhouse, energy bringer.” And on my line it said, “Giggler.”
Jason Rothman:
All right. So I’m glad you told them you like it. I’m glad you’ve told them you’re okay. This is not a hostage video. Tell them you would say this no matter what.
Chris Schaeffer:
I do not have a weapon pressed to my head telling me to say this right now.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, also tell them how you got me a gift this week. It came in the mail.
Chris Schaeffer:
I did. Just to tell you guys that there are no hard feelings because we’re entertaining at times. Jason’s mainly entertaining. I just wanted to tell Jason how much I appreciate his entertainment and our friendship and how much he’s taught me over the years. And I sent him-
Jason Rothman:
That’s right, and my Google Ads skills.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yes, and Google Ads skills, specifically in Google Ads. So I sent him a beautiful, which we’ll post this social media and you can see it on video. But a beautiful trophy. Jason, you want to show the people what we have here?
Jason Rothman:
Yeah, you got to be careful with the glare here. But yeah, it’s a nice… You got me a trophy. It says, “World’s Greatest Google Ads Expert.” So it’s accurate. And it’s heavy and it came in the mail. And it’s not a joke for people listening. They’ll see on social media. It’s there. So I appreciate it, and it’s a very wise thing you did, Chris.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Hey, what was so funny is that I got the text. He’s like, “What is this? There was no note. Who sent this to me? Who sends trophies? This isn’t from Google. They don’t send stuff like this.” He was so confused, and then he didn’t believe me until I sent him the receipt of the shipping information to show that I had sent it. It was great.
Jason Rothman:
So for everyone out there, not only does Chris like it, not only is Chris saying he’s okay. He gives me gifts, and he says thank you for it. So Chris, I’m glad we could clear that up with everybody.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yup, all done. Well, let’s talk about a big thank you to our sponsor Opteo. Opteo.com/PSP where you can get a six week trial of a tool designed to make your Google Ads management easier. Email alerts, notifications, graphical interactions where you can see things of CPC and cost and conversions and conversion volumes and conversion rates. You can see all these different metrics in very colorful, interactive graphics that helps inspire you to make changes, to see things you may have never seen in the very boring, repetitive Google Ads interface. You’re in there every day. You’re looking at it sometimes and you just kind of gloss over stuff. See the big picture. See the micro picture. See everything you want to see about the campaign without having to dig in and generate 15 billion reports. O-P-T-E-O.com/PSP.
Jason Rothman:
Thanks, Chris. I mean, this is what it’s all about. You and I are extremely talented at Google Ads. We’re great at what we do, but we also like help. Help from these tools. These tools make us better at what we do, and what I want to talk about and thank is Kyle Sulerud AdLeg software suite. Kyle’s got a suite of different tools for Google Ads. There’s a lot of them. Find new keywords at Keyword Burst. Generate ad copy IDs, Ad Copy Generator. The two I want to highlight today are the Vid Hoarder and the Negative Keyword Pro, and I want to thank Kyle because this is a… I’ve put the single out there. I was like, “Can someone please make a way to sift through the thousands and millions actually of, probably billions of YouTube videos so I can find the ones that are relevant to my ad campaign. And I can target them specifically with placements inside the Google Ads YouTube campaign.”
Jason Rothman:
Kyle did that with Vid Hoarder. It’s like the coolest thing ever. You put in what your keyword is, what topic you want to find videos for. You hit search, and then you can sort it by relevancy or you can sort it by views. And Kyle produces a list of videos that are related to your topics. So I put in moving company marketing, and low and behold, I get a bunch of movie company marketing videos that I can then put as a placement in my campaign and get in front of movers who are interested in marketing. So that’s how I use it. You highlight the list of videos, and they come out as links that you can add as placements manually through the Google Ads YouTube campaign. So that’s an awesome tool, the Vid Hoarder.
Jason Rothman:
And then also the Negative Keywords Pro. A lot of people start out on Google Ads, and then the first month, they don’t like the results. One reason is because you get a lot of bad search terms. You can get ahead of the game by using the Negative Keyword Pro. You type in your keywords. It uses predictive search technology to where you type in electrician, and it’ll tell you what common searches people are doing with that word. One of them that pops up is salary. You don’t want to show up on that. You can get ahead of the game and get negative keywords ideas to add to your campaign before you even get started using the Negative Keywords Pro. So I want to thank Kyle Sulerud and the AdLeg software suite. You can go to software.adleg.com/PSP and get a special offer. The first seven days are free, try it for free. Software.adleg.com/PSP. And links to both Opteo and AdLeg will be in the show notes.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, how’s it going?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. We’re back. So I want to say one quick thing. I want to say Alicia, you do great at Google Ads. That’s all.
Jason Rothman:
We’re doing shout outs?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, we’re doing shout outs. I’ve now brought this show down to just my personal shout out channel. That’s it. Hi, Alicia. That’s it. We’re good. We can talk about whatever we want now. Go ahead.
Chris Schaeffer:
I know you’re going to win this staring contest.
Jason Rothman:
I can’t believe you just said that.
Chris Schaeffer:
I know.
Jason Rothman:
I can’t believe you just said that.
Chris Schaeffer:
Hey, some people are just fun to say the word Alicia. I’m just saying it.
Jason Rothman:
All right, Chris, let me-
Chris Schaeffer:
Today we’re talking… Oh, okay.
Jason Rothman:
I like to-
Chris Schaeffer:
I have a special one to read.
Jason Rothman:
Oh, you got one. Okay.
Chris Schaeffer:
I have one.
Jason Rothman:
Go ahead. Go ahead.
Chris Schaeffer:
This is from Andy. Sometimes you guys leave us wonderful reviews.
Jason Rothman:
Andy from where? How’d he get a hold of you?
Chris Schaeffer:
Andy from… that place. I didn’t write that down. Andy from the internet. He knows who he is because he just wrote it in this week. And he just joined Patreon, and some people join Patreon, some people leave us positive reviews. Some people share the show. Some people send in emails through PaidSearchPodcast.com, which is what Andy did. I just want to read it. Thought it was a very nice note. He said, “I just want to say that I genuinely appreciate what you guys do. I’ve been listening to you guys for a long time and just signed up for your Patreon. Long overdue. Using your insights, I’ve been able to grow my business into a Google Premier Partner.” Hey, “And we are still growing, keeping clients, and doing our thing. Looking forward to engaging with you guys on Patreon and the forum.” All the ways that you guys can connect to us, Andy just laid it all out. You can leave positive reviews. You can send us emails. You can connect with us on the forum PaidSearchPodcast.com. You can see a link there. And Patreon, $2 is the minimum. I think it’s a great investment. We talk a little bit more about Google Ads on that show, an extra show.
Chris Schaeffer:
Thanks, Andy for the shout out. Appreciate it.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, Jason, unless there’s something else I’m missing, I think I hit it all. Are we ready to go?
Jason Rothman:
Let’s fire away. So a couple weeks ago we looked into each other’s eyes, and we said, “Do we have a topic for this week?” And we said, “No.” And then we said, “But I just want to talk to you as a person, as a fellow Google Ads manager.” And we gaze into each other’s eyes, and the magic happened. The flames sparked up, and we made sweet, passionate podcast sounds. So it worked out. So one of the things Chris and I were thinking is we got so many topics out there like so much stuff comes up week to week with Google Ads, with our management, and we’re in B Counts all day and stuff and all week. So lots of different things come up during the week, why don’t we just kind of talk to each other sometimes about what we’re focusing on, what we kind of learned in the week, what happened to us. And we’re going to do that again, and this is going to kind of be a regular thing on the show because there’s a lot of just insight and magic that happens from it.
Jason Rothman:
So I wrote down a couple things. Chris wrote down a couple things. We’re going to get to what we can get to. Anything we can’t we may follow up on in Patreon. And I’ve also got a little piece of business advice on Patreon on going to share, an insight that I came upon.
Jason Rothman:
So, Chris, why don’t you kick us off here? What’s been going on with you besides… Yeah, what’s been going on with you?
Chris Schaeffer:
Besides the massive amount of pushups.
Jason Rothman:
You got to be nice today.
Chris Schaeffer:
Pull ups and pushups and squats and sit ups. Other than that, I’ve been busy. So one thing, and I want your advice on this. I want your feedback because I feel like this topic could be a mini great debate. This could probably do its own entire episode, but I think we could condense it and just piggyback on this what’s on your mind episode. And had a client bring this up… Honestly, I’ve had clients bring this up for the past 10 years. I mean, this is something everyone tells me. And I always address it in the same way because it’s just the way I believe about how Google Ads works, and I think the best investment of money. And, Jason, you can contradict me, argue with me if you want. I’m still right. But here we go. The thing that people always say is or ask, they ask, what do you think about bidding against, directly bidding against our competitors. All the time. I mean, I hear that question all the time.
Chris Schaeffer:
And the usual answer that I give is it’s typically not a great idea. A very small percentage of success is what I’ve seen over my many years of Google Ads management. I don’t typically see that it works, and I have specifically three reasons why I don’t like it. But I feel like there’s probably one thing that I could lay out that may not be obvious to people explaining what this is exactly, what it looks like to bid against competitors. And essentially what this is, let’s say you are XYZ widget company, and there’s another ABC widget company out there. And you literally take their company name, put it in quotes for a phrase match, put it in exact match, make sure that only that is going to show. And someone types ABC widget company, you will show an ad for your company, and the ad copy is maybe just your company name or maybe says something about get a real widget. Don’t settle for anything less than our widgets. Our widgets are the best there is.
Chris Schaeffer:
That’s what he/she/they have been talking about for years. I mean, everyone mentions it, and I have my opinion. Jason, I’m interested what you have to say. I’ll kind of provide some thoughts about what I have a negative spin on. And i’ curious what you think when someone asks you, “Jason, we have some more money we’d like to spend. We want to get things ramped up. It’s a little slow. My idea is, what about these three competitors? Can you get me clicks when people search their name?” Go.
Jason Rothman:
So by bidding directly against competitors, as you say, isn’t that the way you phrased it?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jason Rothman:
Okay. You have a very interesting, unique use of the English language, and I appreciate you for it. Some of people would call that bidding on competitors brand names because technically we’re always bidding against competitors directly when we bid on keywords.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. All right.
Jason Rothman:
But I just wanted to clarify, counselor, is that correct?
Chris Schaeffer:
It is. But I still stick to my original comment because you’re bidding directly against. There is no middle man. You’re not bidding on a idea and bidding against them.
Jason Rothman:
You know, you might be right because bidding against a keyword that’s such an old school usage of search advertising. That’s how I think of the word bidding against, so you’re right.
Chris Schaeffer:
There we go.
Jason Rothman:
I withdraw my statement from the record, counselor. Is that correct?
Chris Schaeffer:
Struck. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Or whatever they say on TV.
Jason Rothman:
Yes. Just keeping that stenographer busy out there. Chris, so it’s not a black and white issue I would say. It’s a pretty gray issue, wouldn’t you say?
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh yeah.
Jason Rothman:
I would say there’s no right or wrong answer.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, boy.
Jason Rothman:
So number one, I don’t really… They don’t seem to ask that. It seems like 90% of people don’t want it, and then 10% of people do want it. And the ones do want it, don’t ask about it. They just want it. So that’s my experience with it, and I can’t really… It is a gray issue so it’s like I guess if someone did ask, my first comment would be number one, it is clearly allowed. It’s allowed. Let’s just be clear about that. You can target keywords that are other people’s names. Keywords. The thing that’s not allowed that I have seen some people do, and then they get in trouble for it because it’s so dumb to do is use other people’s names in the ad. That’s just like totally out of balance, and that is against the rules.
Chris Schaeffer:
Or even to put an even finer point on it, those same dumb people don’t remember that they have DKI in their ad copy. They don’t remember that they have dynamic keyword insertion in their ad copy, and they inadvertently put the keyword in their ad copy. And now they’ve got a new lawsuit for their company. Way to go.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah, way to go. So you definitely are only allowed to keep it to the keywords you target. And my approach is to me, it is for the most part kind of nonsense. In my experience, it does not work most of the time. You just end up getting a lot of bounces because people are like, “I didn’t mean to go to that site.” So that’s the first issue. Number two is if someone does contact you, you get a lot of, “Oh, I thought I was contacting the other person.” And there’s a whole lot of trying to get them to go, “No, you contacted us.” I’ve seen it work in the moving space a couple times, but the times I’ve seen it work were in small markets where people just need it. Like they really needed a mover, so I think the conversion rates were going to be high anyway. And then the other thing is the advertiser was really lasered in on this strategy, and he wanted to do it. So I would say if someone asked straight up, I would probably advise not doing it because we can better use the budget to me on regular keywords.
Jason Rothman:
The second issue is you’re kind of being a little antagonistic with the competitor, and I’m just not about that life. So I don’t know. You’re definitely getting on someone’s radar, and you’re not making a friend to put it lightly. So there’s that going on. Another issue is when I go up against you on a keyword like moving companies near me, we’re starting from a place of equality in terms of quality score. We both can make relevant landing pages and websites. We both can make relevant ads, and we both get whatever the keyword click through rate score is, whatever, that factor of quality score. And we’re coming from a place of equality and we can compete. But if I go up against someone else’s brand name and then they start advertising on their own brand name, brand names inside of accounts usually get quality scores of eight, nines, or tens. So if you’re not that company, Google knows that and you’re going to get quality scores of like three, four, or five. And so the quality score is going to be so different that the person that you’re competing against is going to get a low cost per click to be number one and show up high, and you’re going to be fighting such an uphill battle with quality score, that makes it tough.
Jason Rothman:
But then to switch it around, sometimes, Chris, especially with softwares, people search so and so alternatives, so and so competitors, and people are looking for the alternatives. But they’re using that person’s brand name in alternative search. And in that case, that does seem to work well because it’s back to the search users intent. They are actually telling you they’re looking for an alternative. So if someone wants to do it, we can do it. I don’t really go out of my way to do it. It’s an uphill battle. I have seen it work, that said, and sometimes it actually does make sense when the search users telling you they want an alternative. That’s my whole kind of take on it.
Jason Rothman:
How does that leave you, Chris? Did you think I was going to say what I was going to say? Were you a little annoyed how unclear I was, how back and forth I was, or are you going to accept that it’s a back and forth issue?
Chris Schaeffer:
I was worried that you had somehow had somehow had success where I had had failure. That I’m somehow in a silo on this. Oh, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Jason Rothman:
I’ve seen it work well. I’ve seen it work with a mover. I mean, I’ve seen it work before.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I’ve seen it. I have. That’s true. To be clear, 90% of the time it doesn’t work. 10% of the time, it does. It’s just like, I think you said it very well. Most of the time when someone just asks and it’s some kind of obscure, like, “Hey, what about this?” Some idea they just toss out. I’m just going to bat it down. No. We’re already limited by budget already. Why do this? And I think there’s only one other thing that you mentioned that I particularly have a problem with is that the fact is the quality of the leads that you get, like you said, is usually very poor. Phones calls are just a bunch of, “Who is this?” No, hang up. Or the second one is that you pay so much more. That may not have been quite as clear because you were talking about quality score. To take it a step further, what Jason was saying by the huge quality score issue is that you will be paying a lot for this. Depending on who you’re going up against, it could be incredibly expensive. It could be crazy. Like who wants to pay $10 for someone to search some other companies name, and if you have really low bids, you’re not going to end up showing up at all. So what good are you doing?
Chris Schaeffer:
Just one last point, I’ll say I have recently been doing the idea that you talked about. If I have a competitor or a software or some type of company that sells a widget, you have the widget name plus the word price or widget alternative or widget plus-
Jason Rothman:
Competitors or-
Chris Schaeffer:
Competitors, yeah. Pricing or discount or coupon. These terms imply that the person has yet to make a commitment to that widget or to that service or software or whatever. So now you can possibly piggyback on the fact that hey, they’re considering the competitor, but they’re still waffling on price and trying to look up coupons or competitors or alternatives.
Jason Rothman:
Possibly reviews.
Chris Schaeffer:
Reviews. There you go. I like that. That seems like a good alternative than just advertising directly.
Jason Rothman:
If you try to get into the search users head, I can think back to times when I’ve used products or softwares or whatever, and I have looked for alternatives. I have done alternative searches myself. And sometimes it’s not even softwares I’ve used. Sometimes it’s you know a big name in whatever industry you’re in, and you’re like, “Hmm, I know I’m not going to use them,” or whatever. But what else is out there compared to them? So I have seen it. I’ve done it myself just in every day life.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, this show is about what happened this week. So as much as you can get into it, what happened? Did you have to answer this question? Did people take your advice? Are you trying this strategy out because they want to keep doing it anyway? What’s going on? As much as you can get into it.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. They basically said, “Okay. I trust that you probably have a whole lot more experience than this.” And they just said, “Okay, we won’t do it. If you don’t think it’ll work, then we just scrap the idea.”
Jason Rothman:
Question for you, if people out there want to try this or if the client was demanding to try it, would you house competitor keywords in their own ad group or would you put them in a totally separate campaign?
Chris Schaeffer:
New campaign. New campaign because I know it’s going to jack up my quality scores. I know it’s going to jack up my cost per click, my click through rate. That’s going to jack up my search impression share. All those things are going to be crap. Unless the client’s willing to spend a ton of money and the CPC isn’t crazy high, most of it’s going to be very different from my non-brand, non-competitor type of stuff. So yeah, I’m going to put it in a different campaign because it’s going to make my metrics look bad.
Jason Rothman:
Bro, you know what’s interesting is sometimes when I run a pure broad campaigns, and for everyone out there, if you’re thinking about pure broad, definitely check out our episode on that, how to run pure broad keywords like a pro. Very proud of that.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, that’s a great one.
Jason Rothman:
Whenever I do pure broad, I often do inadvertently without targeting their names, in my search terms, I show up on competitor searches. And I think again there’s a lot of stuff with Google Ads on the backend we don’t know how it works. But I think they scrap people’s websites, just like they do for SEO for the title of the website, the content on the page, all that kind of stuff because why else would you show up on someone else’s name when you target a keyword like moving companies pure broad match. I think it’s because… Say if I do moving companies in Anchorage, pure broad like a pro, maybe moving companies in Anchorage, movers in Anchorage, Alaska. I’ve seen you show up on competitors, and I think it’s because other competitors and their titles on their website and their content have Anchorage movers, Alaska movers. So I think that’s what’s going on.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Oh, I think… Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah, that’s true because otherwise the relevancy isn’t there, but some of those key terms are still there. Yeah, that makes sense.
Jason Rothman:
So if you want to dip your toe into it and you happen to be thinking about broad match anyway, that’s one of the things you’ll get from broad match is you’ll kind of see some data on some competitor searches.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. All right. What’s been going on with you?
Jason Rothman:
Well, Chris, besides receiving awards in the mail. I appreciate that. I’ve run into an issue multiple times. I have never seen any documentation on it. So I’m just going to tell people how I approach this issue now. My experience with it, and I want to know if you’ve had this experience as well. And maybe people can learn from this, and it’ll help them too. Because again, there’s no other piece of content or help or whatever on the internet ever that deals with this that I’ve ever seen. But it’s something I run into all the time.
Chris Schaeffer:
This is deep. This is scary. The buildup.
Jason Rothman:
Small budget, high cost per click relative to the budget screwing things up. So we’ve been running some commercial cleaning campaigns lately.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh no.
Jason Rothman:
In multiple cities. We just happened to get-
Chris Schaeffer:
That’s a bad one.
Jason Rothman:
We happened to get a couple commercial cleaning clients, janitor, commercial cleaners near me, office cleaners near me. Got a couple of them at the same time, different cities. Both of them are like $20-$30 a day budget, something like that, and because we only had a small daily budget, I think one’s $30, one’s $20, especially the $20 one. Because we have small daily budgets, we put our bids somewhere pretty small, like at $7, $8. So we can at least maybe a couple clicks a day. But I think what was happening is the cost per click is more like $12 to $20. So we weren’t getting any volume at all hardly. We increased our bids. We started getting more volume. We run into a limited by budget. So there’s that issue where you set your bids too small. But I’ve also have felt like there’s an issue where maybe the daily budget’s $20, now we know we need to bid a little more. So we are bidding $20, but the cost per click bid is so high relative to the daily budget, I don’t know this for a fact. I don’t have any documentation on it. But it seems like that throws off Google Ads. It throws off the system. When the cost per click bid gets too high relevant to the daily budget, it seems like it throws it off.
Jason Rothman:
What do you mean by throw it off? I mean, ads don’t run the way they should run. It feels like we’re in that ramp up period, which I’ve talked about before. It just seems like things are off. So my question to you, Chris, is have you run into small daily budgets relative to the cost per click, has it caused issues for you, and what do you do about it? I’m done.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. That’s a terrifying situation. I definitely have been there before, and I think you said it. You said it in your question there, is the problem is the specificity of the industry. It’s not just that it’s cleaning, which by the way cleaning in a metro area is going to cost you. Cleaning keywords are going to be like $6, $7, $8 anyway, which is really expensive. And now when you’re specifying commercial and office and stuff like that, now that’s going to skyrocket your CPC. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be an industry that’s expensive or there’s a ton of competition just by specifying a specific industry or a type of customer that you want. That changes everything. So yeah, I-
Jason Rothman:
Have your unto that issue where it’s like you have a small daily budget to work with, the cost per click starts creeping up high, close to that daily budget. Or sometimes the cost per click needs to be more than the daily budget. I’ve run into that issue. And does it cause problems for you and problems in the sense of there’s no status you get or anything like that. But, oh, by the way, I take that back. I have found something interesting lately, and I’ll tell you about that in a second. But have you run into any issues?
Chris Schaeffer:
Well, I don’t know what issues I would describe. I mean, this maybe is what you’re getting to. But the issue I describe is basically that your puttering along at a snail’s pace, and it’s impossible to see things on a daily, certainly not a daily, maybe even a weekly basis.
Jason Rothman:
That’s what I’ve experienced too, and to me that’s an issue that’s a problem. The system’s not working. But I think you’re interpreting it as, well, the system’s working as good as it can, but I expect that to happen anyway. You spend $16 one day, then the system thinks, “Oh you’re on pace to go over your budget because you spent that in the first three hours of the day.” And it throws stuff off.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh.
Jason Rothman:
I’m saying it causes problems. You’re saying you basically expect those problems.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I expect those problems because it’s like firing a black powder rifle. It’s just like high intensity, hang on. I got to reload. I got to go 24, 36 hours before I can get another one, and now here’s another shot. And you hope those are accurate. Just one thing, just to say how I usually handle it for me is if I have a client-
Jason Rothman:
Yeah, let’s get into how we handle it.
Chris Schaeffer:
How I usually handle it is I will say, “Okay. Great. You want to do less than $1000 when CPCs are $15 or more, fine. I’m not going to say you can’t. But what I’m going to do is I’m not going to make you raise your budget. I’m going to say you don’t advertise but 25% of the week. I’m only going to advertise you on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, that’s it. That’s all you get. I’m not doing weekends. I’m not… So I’m going to isolate my traffic, and I’m going to take what used to be $20 a day and make that into $60 a day, something like that, just for three days. That’s how I usually handle it.
Jason Rothman:
That’s one of the things I do, and you’re right. So the budget, it’s always set up by daily budget. So how do you get your daily budget bigger without increasing your monthly budget? You just run fewer days. You shrink the schedule. So that’s one strategy I use as well. To me, there’s only two answers. That’s one. The other answer is to man up or woman up and raise your budget. And the way I get clients to think about raising their budget is we talk about the value of what Google Ads can do when it works for their business.
Jason Rothman:
So if you’re a mover and you only want to with $500 a month, I’m not in the mood to do math. So you want to start with $500 a month, and we have a little problem with our daily budget. Then I tell them, “Okay. Well, we could just run these few days a week, or you can man up or woman up and increase your budget to $800 or $1000.” And they go, “Oh, that’s so much.” And then I go, “Wait, but what’s one average move to you in terms of value?” And they’re like, “Well, $1100 and then our profit’s 50%.” I’m like, “So what does it mean if we run all month long at $500, and we just get one move? Just one. Then it’s profitable.” And they’re like, “Yeah, it is.” So I go, “Well, let’s just double the budget, and it’s…”
Jason Rothman:
I show them how much value they can get for the small amount of money that is $1000 or $1500.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. There you go. Yup. Absolutely. That’s one thing-
Jason Rothman:
Oh, by the way, Chris, in terms of something I saw. The number one thing we’re seeing in the forum is, “I was running automated bids, and now it’s not working. What do I do?” And then we’re like… And I just get on there. I go, “Well, I happen to prefer manual bids.” And then someone posts again, “Well, I was running automated bids, and it’s not working. What do I do?” Just little note, “Oh, I prefer manual.” So one thing with automated I saw recently, max bids. Max bids are turned on in a campaign, right?
Chris Schaeffer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jason Rothman:
Small daily budget and horrible results. It’s like hardly any impressions in a day, hardly any. And it’s in major metro, normal kind of topic. And I’m like, “Oh, we should be getting clicks and impressions for our budget, like a lot.” So to spend a full budget, easy, easy, easy on some of these campaigns. And it’s in max clicks. And it was like hardly any impressions, no clicks. So I hoover… I forget where I was, but I think I hoovered over the status maybe where it says eligible or limited by budget. It had some term there that said limited or something like that. And I hoovered over it, and it said something to the effect of, “Your budget and the automate bid.” I don’t know if it said automated bids, but it said, “Your budget and the bids. Your budget is not the right size for either the minimum or the maximum bid level is causing issues.” It said something like that. It said something like, “The minimum or maximum bid level is causing issues.”
Jason Rothman:
So even when you’re running max clicks, if the budget… This is the way I interpret it. If the budget was too small compared to what Google thought they needed to set the bids at with max clicks, they felt like they weren’t getting enough budget to use in terms of where they need to set their bids to get you the max clicks for that budget. So the small budget was causing issues. So I jus saw that for the first time recently.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. It’s a data problem. You have to think about it like a computer. The system’s saying, “You’re not inputting enough data. We don’t have enough statistics to determine how this formula’s supposed to work.” So it’s kind of just stalled out. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah. So anyway-
Chris Schaeffer:
So this next one’s just a quick note because the last time we talked about this, we talked about ad variation, which I’ve been using off and on. And I think it’s saved me so much hassle lately. It’s just been wonderful, especially this holiday season, Black Friday, Christmas specials, promos, things like that. It’s been wonderful to use ad variation.
Jason Rothman:
So question, let me read your mind a little bit. If someone tells you, “Hey, Chris. For the next two months during the holiday season, we want to run this special. What you’re going, you’re going into that ad variation until you’re updating the ads with that, and you’re setting it at 90%. Is that what you’re doing?
Chris Schaeffer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yup.
Jason Rothman:
So that way you don the have to screw up the whole campaign. You just go, extremely, most of the time, this is the ad copy that’s going to run temporarily. And then you can even set an end date in there, and you don’t even have to go back-
Chris Schaeffer:
You don’t even have to think about it. Yeah, it just runs. So that way-
Jason Rothman:
Great minds think alike.
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s wonderful. If I know it’s a temporary change or something that’s going to happen over a few weeks or maybe a month, yeah. Ad variation all the way. It’s beautiful. It’s wonderful. So in that same vein, I have some clients that spend a lot of money, not Jason Rothman level money, but a lot of money. And I get money that say things like, “Hey, I want to spend more. We want to spend more, but, hey, you still need to hit our KPIs.” I’m saying don’t just up the budget. I want you to spend more, but I also want you to stay with our KPIs, which basically they’re saying, “Hey, Chris. Do the hardest possible thing in Google Ads,” is what they’re telling me. And do it more.
Jason Rothman:
Increase my volume, but still get me the low cost per conversion.
Chris Schaeffer:
Which is like, “Oh, okay. I’m a magician.” But anyway, besides the crazy request that you get, what I’ve been loving is that I have found a way to make that request less of a magic thing and a much more process. And it’s in experiments. It’s been so nice to just go in, take a campaign, and say, “What if I literally just wipe this campaign from all the broad keywords, all the stuff that’s just kind of borderline performing but it’s eating up a lot of budget. What if I just change that to a phrase match or I pause it completely? And literally all the other hundreds of keywords that get only a fraction of a percent of spend over a month, I let those get all the spend. What would happen there? And that’s something I would be terrified to do with a campaign that’s really focused on performance and stuff like that. Every day needs to be hitting a certain kind of performance. Experiments is wonderful because I can do a 20%, 30%, 40%, and I can do a 50%, 70% on that experiment.
Jason Rothman:
In terms of how often the experiment runs.
Chris Schaeffer:
And how much it runs, how much of the budget it spends. And, Jason, if it doesn’t work, paused. I just turn it off. And I don’t have to go back in and go, “Oh my gosh, what did I change?” This is failing like socialism. It’s horrible. It’s just crashing, and then we get… How do I bring it back up? And then I just turn off the experiment. It’s over.
Jason Rothman:
So word to the wise out there, to all the… We don’t cuss on this show, but all the people out there who want to make things complex with their accounts and want to run 50 different campaigns. Well, you’re little, “Oh, experiments help me so much,” little thing you just said there, Chris. It all sounds so great on paper, but if you’re a person out there running 50 campaigns, Chris’s little experiment thing doesn’t mean anything because you can’t… It’s still hard to run 50 experiments. You know what I’m saying? So I think are testimony about how impactful experiments are for you lately and trying out different ideas with them and how much effect you can have with them, that all goes out the window if you have a super complex account.
Chris Schaeffer:
That’s a great point. That’s a great point. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you do an experiment of a campaign that spends one eighth of the budget, you’re not really making a whole lot of impact. That’s a good point. Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Or one fiftieth of the budget.
Chris Schaeffer:
A fiftieth, yeah. We’re talking complex. Yeah, that’s a good point because you can’t do an experiment-
Jason Rothman:
We’re talking complex. So you’re spending a fiftieth of the budget, and then oh, say you are only spending a fiftieth of the budget and it works awesome. Or say you do it on the biggest campaign of the account that spends 15% of the budget or 20%, and it works awesome. Now you got to go apply it to 50 accounts and maybe it wasn’t work-
Chris Schaeffer:
Which sounds like a disaster. I mean, go apply that to the other 50 campaigns that you have, which are all in two different geographic areas and have different settings and things like that. And watch it just crash. It’s not going to work because there was something subtle about that.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah. Say it worked in your experiment, and then it starts to not get off to the best start with your applying it to all 50 campaigns. My only point is, man, when you talk about what makes me great, what gets me trophies like that in the mail, what gets me 15,000 square feet to fart wherever I want all day, it’s two things. It’s search terms, and it’s keeping things as simple as possible.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yup. That’s a really good point because we’re basically speaking Greek to someone who has 50 campaigns, and they broken it up by county because they’re advertising it-
Jason Rothman:
Or 20 campaigns, or 15, or-
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, and they’re breaking it up by topics. Well, I really like to split everything out by different topic and have all of that and be able to control the budget. You’re right. Experiments are really weak.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, everything making things complex in terms of selling Google Ads, you and I both know that. And then when people come up with ideas as the advertiser, everything sounds so great when you get complex.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. It does.
Jason Rothman:
But it’s like Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” So it’s just such a great quote. Maybe in the mouth is what he said. But everybody has a plan when it comes to complexity, and it all sounds so awesome. But then get in there in the trenches trying to manage that account, and not just manage it, but like you’re saying, Chris, lot of money on the line. A lot of people’s jobs on the line, a lot of success for everybody involved on the line. And it’s not just, “Oh, man,” to the account. It’s, “No, get us tons of volume, and get a great cost per conversion. And keep doing it.” When other people come in and you got to compete, it’s hard.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Your cost per acquisition’s going down, and you’re getting better and better at it. But they’re saying, “Well, that’s great, but now can you get us twice as much of that?” Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Or you have new competitors in the market doing things, and you’re like, “Ah, man. How are we going to adjust for this? How are we going to figure out what to do now?” When things change and they get more… Or Google does something with a product and they change a product or whatever or they get rid of average position, and you have to adjust to everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. You have to adjust to them taking average position away. It’s so much harder to continue to get things going good if they’re complex. But I like what you’re saying about experiments. They definitely, even though I’m using them more and more, it is definitely the thing I’m underusing the most because they’re just so effective. So thanks for that update, Chris.
Jason Rothman:
My final thing is new launch ramp up, ad words ramp up is real. We’ve talked about this in the past. Why does it seem that the first couple weeks are so much harder to get things to go right? So we’ve already talked about how that’s a thing, in my opinion. A very real thing. But I finally figured out why it’s a thing and why you can screw yourself up. It’s got to do with quality score, Chris, and having no quality score history on the account, on the keywords, whatever. And so that’s an obvious thing. There’s no quality score. Why does that matter? It’s because what we talked about, ad rank. Ad rank is quality score times bid. Well, if there’s no quality score history or you’re not getting any credit at all for quality score, it’s only about bid. So that’s why you bid what you think you need to bid, what you see you’re bidding in other accounts in the same industry, and nothing happens for two weeks and it’s super slow. Because you’re normal bid isn’t getting any kind of multiplier effect at all with the quality score.
Jason Rothman:
So what do you do? The client goes, “Oh, no. I need results now. We turned it on. Why isn’t this working? I thought you were the best. Why isn’t this working?” Well, we’re not getting any closer. So what do you do if they’re putting pressure on you? You do the only thing you can do. You raise the bids, and then things come in way too expensive because you’re bidding way more than is profitable for that industry because you’re not getting any quality score in. And then two weeks later they’re going, “Why does my cost per conversion suck? The cost per click is crazy high. The last agency I used was able to do this at half the cost per click, half the cost per conversion.” All those issues that you’ve heard, I’ve heard, Chris, when it comes to new accounts and not getting the time it needs to let them ramp up properly, it all goes back to the quality score. It all goes back to the ad rank. If there’s no quality score help, it’s all based on bid. If it’s all based on bid, it’s going to either be not that much going on early on til you get some quality score help. Or if you want to force it and get things to go on, it’s going to take a lot of cost because you’re not getting any quality score help.
Jason Rothman:
So something finally clicked for me. I’ll tell you what happened, Chris. I’ll tell you what happened. I had a new client recently. Very potentially profitable client. We ran for a couple months, and we screwed it up. We were too aggressive early on. We were too aggressive. We didn’t take our time and wait, and we didn’t let the quality score ramp up to where it needs to be, and we got too aggressive to try to get results early on. The cost per conversion was too high. Oh, what happens? The client leaves. And we don’t make money for the next hopefully decade. You know what I mean?
Jason Rothman:
So we got another new client. I get a client. I’m like, okay, same industry. I’m not going to screw it up this time. I’m going to stick to my guns. No matter what, I’m not going to let the client pressure me to get results early on, make me lost this account. So if they want to fire me because the volume isn’t high enough early on, fire me. I don’t care. But if you give me my 30-45 days I need to let that quality score ramp up, I’ll change your life. And that’s happening with this new client. They’re giving me space, they’re giving me time. We’re taking it so easy, Chris. We’re taking it so easy. I could ramp things up so much harder right now and try to get more volume. I’m not. Taking it so easy, the volume’s lower than everybody wants. But we’re getting a nice cost per conversion because we’re just letting the ramp up do it’s thing. And in a couple months when we’re getting the same quality scores that everybody else is getting, we’re going to be on fire because our head rank is going to be so much higher naturally.
Jason Rothman:
And that’s kind of my experience with the wrong way to do ramp up and the right way. And the thing that really clicked it into gear for me this weak is I got a little antsy on this new account. I turned up the bids. I got more aggressive. And oh, the volume was there. We spent a bunch of money that day quick. We didn’t get any results, and I was like, “Don’t make the same mistake. Let the system do it’s thing. Don’t force it.” And I pulled back, and today we’re getting great results because I pulled back. So that’s my experience with ramp up. That’s a real world experience how you can lose a client and how you can keep a client if you know how to ramp up the right way. And I think knowing how to ramp up is an extremely important skill set. It’s not anything that’s going to be in documentation. There’s no talk of ramp up anywhere. But understanding quality score, understanding the ad rank formula, understanding the lack of quality score history until you get some, it has made me into an even better Google Ads manager, understanding that in the last month.
Jason Rothman:
So what do you think about that, Chris?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. That’s an excellent point, and I want to talk about O-P-T-E-O.com/PSP. Opteo is a wonderful tool that I’ve used for a while. They’ve been a great friend of the show, and we encourage you to go check them out for a six week trial. This is an extended trial. An additional two weeks that you can use it. This is over a month. Try it out because it’s very a visual guide, an alert system, a recommendation system that goes beyond the recommends you get from Google. Great tool to provide what you need when you need it. O-P-T-E-O.com/PSP.
Jason Rothman:
Thanks, Chris. And I want to thank Kyle Sulerud and his AdLeg software suite. Take your Google Ads management to the next level. You’re getting some clients. You’re managing more accounts. Your clients are happy, your boss is happy. But there’s a lot of pressure. You get more and more work. You don’t know how to handle it. What you have to do is you got to take your management to the next level. You got to get tools that help you become more efficient. Kyle Sulerud’s AdLeg software suite does that. Negative Keyword Pro, get your negative keywords before you even start running. Vid Hoarder, find the videos that are super relevant to your, whatever your advertising your company, your client. Get in front of the right videos, find them extremely quickly with the Vid Hoarder.
Jason Rothman:
Listeners of The Paid Search Podcast get a free seven day trial, software.adleg.com/psp. Get your free seven day trial.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, you didn’t have any comments to my great commentary, and the reason why is because you did a little thing like, “Oh, I’m not going to say anything. It’s going to be funny and all that.” But the truth is you had nothing to say because I said it so great.
Chris Schaeffer:
You did.
Jason Rothman:
There was just nothing else to say, but it’s so true what I said.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh yeah. Just to be clear, it’s not that I don’t agree. It’s because you were impeccable in your delivery. So let’s continue to be impeccable right on into Patreon where we’re going to talk about some more stuff, deeper stuff.
Jason Rothman:
I got to go sign autographs.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. Yup. That’s it, guys. You just saw the famous Jason Rothman.
Jason Rothman:
I got a girlfriend, I’m sorry. I got a girlfriend.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. We’ll catch you guys next week.