How To Get Good Results In The First Month On Google Ads (Episode 171)

Please support our sponsors, they make the show possible!

Get a custom proposal from Directive Consulting

Show notes:

This week on the Paid Search Podcast we’re talking about how to get good Google Ads results in the first month. Getting good results in the first month is very important. It’s important for advertisers to see that Google Ads is working and on the agency side of things it’s important to show your clients that things are going to work. So getting good results within the first month is important. In this episode we lay out a game plan for getting good results in the first month. We talk campaign structure, ad group structure, ads, and keywords. Enjoy!

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.

YouTube

Transcript

Jason Rothman:
Hello everybody. Welcome back to The Paid Search Podcast, my name is Jason Rothman. As always, I’m joined by my great cohost, the great Chris Schaeffer.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yes.

Jason Rothman:
Hey, Chris, how’s it going today?

Chris Schaeffer:
Jason, I am as well. As you know, I immediately would like to talk about the weather rather than myself, so it’s nice, a little warm. Wish it could be cooler. It’s October, still in the 90s. I’ll let you Canadians look that up to figure out what that means, but it’s a good day. I’ve been busy. I work all day, work hard, work all day. I am just three feet away from my play area which is where I have the things that I enjoy for hobbies. And I’ll just say one thing, we could talk about it in Patreon afterwards, if you’re interested, you’re usually not, which is fine, kind of like my wife, as you’re even backing away now. Gloomhaven, I’ll just say that. Gloomhaven. My time is gone. I have no time. All things Gloomhaven. So anyway, how are you Jason?

Jason Rothman:
How am I? Haven’t checked in and don’t really want to know, because I don’t think it’s good.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s a good answer.

Jason Rothman:
Cynthia, she’s on vacation, and yeah, it’s getting real bachelor up in here.

Chris Schaeffer:
You showered. So you showered, that’s nice of you to do, brushed your hair, look nice, that’s good.

Jason Rothman:
Thank you.

Chris Schaeffer:
Because usually unless there’s someone there to look at me, I’m not going to bother with those things. All right. So let’s get into it. Guys, we’ve got a good show today. We’re going to get into some nitty gritty stuff.

Jason Rothman:
Chris, we’ve got to be honest with them. I mean, what was that? Was that banter? That was garbage. And the truth is we got our banter out before we hit recording, so we’re sorry about that. It was good stuff, you guys should have been there.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s true, yeah.

Jason Rothman:
But we missed it this week. It was real good, it was funny, but the recording wasn’t on.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, there’s some things we just can’t put on air, and you’ll have to be at the live Paid Search podcast meetup which is happening someday, once we meet in person, once we’re getting people that are rooting for us. We’ve gotten emails that say, “We’re rooting for you guys to meet in person.” Me too, me too.

Jason Rothman:
Now, the phrase he used was IRL. Some kind of weird internet phrase.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s true, yeah.

Jason Rothman:
In real life, yeah.

Chris Schaeffer:
Is that what that means?

Jason Rothman:
I hate saying … I don’t know. It means in real life, but I hate saying internet phrases because he used it in his email, but I also have this gut feeling that it’s something weird that I just said, in real life.

Chris Schaeffer:
No, surely not. There’s nothing weird on the internet, Jason.

Jason Rothman:
All right, Chris.

Chris Schaeffer:
Let’s get into it.

Jason Rothman:
Let’s get into it.

Chris Schaeffer:
Let’s start with the number one-

Jason Rothman:
Oh, Chris, by the way, let me just tease them. We’ve got some good stuff today. We’re going to tease next week, we’re going to talk about this week. It’s all coming together here. I’ve got a good feeling about this. Oh, by the way, got a great feeling about last week. We got so many great reviews from last week. So much feedback. It was nice.

Chris Schaeffer:
I mean, dude, you threw the hammer away and just brought the sledgehammer. I mean, just heavy hitting good stuff. Like I said, when there’s pain, you get wisdom. When pain happens, you get knowledge and wisdom and you just shared it with us. So go back and listen to 170 if you guys missed out on that. Great episode. So let’s talk about something real quick that’s very important, it’s a word from our sponsor, Opteo. Opteo is an online tool that you can use to manage and improve and optimize your Google Ads campaigns. This is a tool for somebody who has one account or has 15, 30, 40, 100 accounts. This system is designed to alert you to things that go wrong with your campaign that you are not aware of.

Chris Schaeffer:
Keyword problems, problems with budget, problems with ad copy or things turning off, turning on, errors. Who knows? When you’re sleeping, it’s going to email you an alert. It’s going to alert you. You can check in this beautiful dashboard. And as our friend Sarah in the forums has pointed out, which, I greatly appreciate it, it is mobile friendly. You can use it from your phone. Jason, I mean, how great is that? Driving in the car, working on Google Ads at the same time. I mean, you’re making money before you even start making money. Always safe. I’m sure Opteo does not approve using it in your car while driving and neither do we. So that’s at Opteo.com/psp. Try it out for a six week extended trial.

Jason Rothman:
Thank you, Chris. And I want to thank Directive Consulting for sponsoring today’s episode. Directive Consulting is the go to B2B and enterprise search engine marketing agency. If you have a B2B account you need help with, and enterprise account you need help with, it’s different than the small little campaigns we sometimes talk about. Directive specialized in B2B, they specialize in enterprise. And the way they do it is that they’re able to do all the different channels online. SEO, pay per click, conversion rate optimization, content, social media advertising, digital PR, analytics. They do it all. They found out what’s the best to get leads, and then they help you scale that. So we recommend getting a free custom proposal at Directive Consulting.com, B2B and enterprise search engine marketing agency, Directive Consulting.com. Go there and get a free custom proposal.

Chris Schaeffer:
Jason, tell me good things about myself. We have a review. Tell me good things. I like compliments. Is it compliment time?

Jason Rothman:
Have you seen this week’s review?

Chris Schaeffer:
No, I never look ahead, because I don’t like spoilers.

Jason Rothman:
Okay. Because it’s pretty funny you said that. So reviews, we appreciate your guys’ reviews, and ratings on Apple Podcast. Ratings and/or reviews. We’re at 206 now in America, internationally keep growing those on your own Apple Podcast app. But keep helping us get those reviews. I will stop talking about Apple ratings and reviews when we get to 250. We’re at 206, we’ve just got to get to 250, get us up there.

Chris Schaeffer:
And we’re done.

Jason Rothman:
We’re now in the top 25 marketing podcasts in the United States, and I want to get to number one. Because why shouldn’t the number one marketing podcast be only about one platform, Google Ads?

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s an excellent point. What does anything else matter but Google Ads? Yeah, we should be there.

Jason Rothman:
So keep leaving us those ratings and reviews, we appreciate it. This week’s Apple Podcast of the week comes from [Dan Cohn 00:07:00] in the United Arab Emirates.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, wow, never been there.

Jason Rothman:
And he leaves five stars, “Amazing podcast. Thank you guys. You are doing such great work. PS, I wouldn’t listen if there was no Jason, no offense, Chris.” And then he did a crying emoji.

Chris Schaeffer:
Absolutely.

Jason Rothman:
No offense, Chris.

Chris Schaeffer:
I wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t a Jason. You would never even hear … So absolutely, I totally agree. So thankful for Jason.

Jason Rothman:
Don’t take that one too harsh, Chris, because there’s some other review coming up here in a coming week where they basically say the opposite. Oh, you know what they say? They’re like … No, someone wrote in a question, and maybe you put it down for our Q and A. But they were like, “I love your guys’ show, you both are so awesome. Jason, no offense, but this one’s for Chris.”

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, that’s right.

Jason Rothman:
“This question’s for Chris because he’s a Google partner.” And then it was some basic question about bidding and stuff. And I was on two accounts, like the Google partner thing, okay, we don’t have to get into it, but I think things are a little different than he thinks. And then asking a bidding question.

Chris Schaeffer:
Because of my sign.

Jason Rothman:
When we get stuff like that, I don’t know if it’s … Yeah, it’s because of your sign.

Chris Schaeffer:
He mentioned my sign in the back, and he’s like, “Well, hang on. I noticed Chris has a sign, I want to ask a question.” And today I’m wearing my Google shirt.

Jason Rothman:
I don’t know if people take shots, like if he’s being genuine or if he’s just being sarcastic. But I don’t know. So yeah, we’re even on that. But, Chris, we’re doing no edits here. We do no edits.

Chris Schaeffer:
No edits. No edit podcast.

Jason Rothman:
So if Rachel thinks it’s good to cut this out of audio, feel free, but we’re not cutting it out of the video. But I have a genuine question for you, Chris, about your studio set up.

Chris Schaeffer:
Uh-oh. What?

Jason Rothman:
It’s not happening. Oh, it just happened, and I could expose you right now, but I don’t think I’m going to. I am seeing some light, some strobe light, like bouncing light, and it’s very hard to look at. And the reason it’s bouncing is because, it’s not right now, but I think when you hit your computer some light in your room is bouncing. And I’m not going to say what kind of light that is because I don’t want to expose you, but is it that? Or do you have a window open or something?

Chris Schaeffer:
No, no. It’s because I have a huge monitor. I mean, nobody’s seen bigger.

Jason Rothman:
Nothing on the monitor?

Chris Schaeffer:
And when i hit my desk, the monitor will shake, and so will the camera, which is attached to it. So the whole thing will kind of … And so it makes it looks like the light’s flashing. But no. It’s not my beauty light, Jason, if that’s what you’re alluding to. I’m not embarrassed. I need something to make me look a little better online, because as the eye candy of the group, I can’t let age-

Jason Rothman:
Well, it’s just week that this week it’s doing it and it hasn’t before.

Chris Schaeffer:
I’m sorry it’s bothering you.

Jason Rothman:
And it’s not stopping. Apparently, it’s not stopping. So I’m going to be the bigger cohost here. I’m going to be the professional, and I’m going to power through.

Chris Schaeffer:
Thank you for being so strong, Jason.

Jason Rothman:
Even though it’s hurting my eyes.

Chris Schaeffer:
So strong. Sorry, I will not touch my desk at all to make you more comfortable.

Jason Rothman:
No, no, it doesn’t matter. Because you’re not touching your desk and it’s still going. So it’s okay. You know what? We’ll roll with it, and I’ll get my anger out somewhere else. So everybody, we’ve got the forum. Forum.PaidSearchPodcast.com. We’re up to 100 users on there now. I think when we get to 1000, that’s when we kind of get to that power number where it’s going to really take off.

Chris Schaeffer:
We have a pizza party.

Jason Rothman:
So a little way to go.

Chris Schaeffer:
I think we’re doing a pizza party.

Jason Rothman:
Yeah, we’ll have a pizza party. Take a picture of your pizza slice, half eaten, three days old, whatever you want, weird stuff in the background, and post it in the thread. So that’s what the forum is about.

Chris Schaeffer:
Pizza party.

Jason Rothman:
And then PaidSearchPodcast.archive … Or, excuse me, PaidSearchPodcast.com/archive is where you can get the first 100 episodes. So Chris, news, can you make the sound? Someone has already signed a contract with another city. They’re totally out of this city’s market. They just haven’t put in their two weeks yet, because that was a horrible sound. You don’t care about your news job anymore.

Chris Schaeffer:
No, no, no. I’m now a Google Ads manager, no longer a news caster.

Jason Rothman:
Chris, you got a new career you’d like to tell us about. Please, tell us about that morning local news.

Chris Schaeffer:
No.

Jason Rothman:
So the news is that, we’ve known about this for awhile, but it finally happened today and it feels a little different. Average position column is gone.

Chris Schaeffer:
Gone.

Jason Rothman:
That’s a Justin Timberlake throw back.

Chris Schaeffer:
We’re going to talk about that in the after show, Patreon. So be sure to join there, two bucks a month if you want to join and listen in. We always talk about stuff a little more in depth about the business of Google Ads.

Jason Rothman:
And we’re thinking about next week doing a whole episode on how to manage your campaigns now that average position is gone.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, we are thinking about that.

Jason Rothman:
I’ve got some thoughts on that, yeah. We might do the whole episode. So if you guys want to hear that, if that’s a problem you have, let us know during the week, Facebook, Twitter, write in on the-

Chris Schaeffer:
Do I get a vote?

Jason Rothman:
You don’t want to do it, because you never want to do an episode, so your vote is overruled. Because, Chris, you may as well roll down or curl up or wear a helmet or something, because the bus is rolling over you today.

Chris Schaeffer:
You’re right, yeah. It’s a rough day. But that’s every day. That’s every Thursday on The Paid Search Podcast, which is when we record.

Jason Rothman:
Oh, Chris, tears.

Chris Schaeffer:
Let me take it from here. I feel like we’re 15 minutes in and we’ve done nothing but spin our bus tires. So let’s take it to the meat. Let’s go past the bread into the meat. So today what we’re talking about is getting results in a month. I mean, this, honestly, I think is a bar which, I think for many campaigns, is not something that you can accomplish reasonably. But for many of our listeners and people who are working in house, they have a boss or they have a client looking over their shoulder, and they’re saying, “Okay, here’s 1000 bucks, here’s 500 bucks. I’m going to talk to you again in 30 days, let me know how this thing goes.” You have a month to prove that you’ve done something. And what can we do? How can we make it work? How can we show that we’ve gotten some kind of results? And we’re going to go into three areas of how you can make this happen. We’re going to talk about structure, how you structure your campaign and your ad groups. We’re going to talk about bidding, and we’re going to talk about the optimization within those 30 days. And then in the end we’re going to lay it all out and it’s going to be great. You’re going to love it, you’ve never seen a better podcast in your life.

Jason Rothman:
Chris, that pressure you mentioned cannot be better verbalized than Sarah in our forum who inspired this episode in the episode ideas thread where people can leave ideas for episodes. Sarah said, “I’d also like to hear more about getting results quicker on young campaigns. The end of month anxiety on new campaigns inevitably rears its ugly head even though I know the stuff takes time.” So I mean, if there’s a better way to explain the pressure, the frustration of getting results in the first month, I don’t know what it would be, because that’s a perfect way to put it. New campaigns, anxiety, end of month. You know it’s going to take longer, but you still have to show results during the first month. Boom. So first, Chris, why this matters. Clients expect results. They put 1000, they put 5000 dollars in, it’s the first month, they want results.

Jason Rothman:
Well, you and I both know these results take time to get. So the whole point is, how do we get them happy, show them Google Ads works within that first 30 days, and make them want to continue both for, you want clients to continue running so you have a job, but also for their business to make sure they’re not missing out on Google Ads for years to come and don’t give up too early. How do you fill that bucket, but also fill the bucket of, “Hey, it does take time. We may not get results in the first month.”? In Patreon, we’re going to talk more about the business side of things. And then is this episode in The Paid Search Podcast we’re going to about the actual AdWords strategy side of things. So Chris, starting off with structure, you say that small campaign sizes in your first month are a way to get results in the first month. So what do you mean by small campaign sizes?

Chris Schaeffer:
I think this is important, and I’m going to start this with the number one most difficult and I would sat dumb question of Google Ads, is, “How much should I spend?” I’m going to say that’s probably the worst-

Jason Rothman:
How much could.

Chris Schaeffer:
“How much should I spend?” probably is the worst question when it comes to Google Ads, and the reason for that is because no one knows, because no one knows the future. So matter what the answer to that question is-

Jason Rothman:
I know a lot of agencies who know, who produce nice PDFs.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s true. “Oh, I’ve got a good answer, sir. Here’s my price points. Let me point you towards the highest one.” The answer is no one knows how much you should spend. And it doesn’t matter if the answer is 500 or 5000, this first structure point, it does matter how much you spend. No matter how much you spend, I want you to go with this idea. Small campaign sizes, simplicity, because, and I’ve said this many times, there’s two points in a Google Ads campaign. There’s the build, and then there’s the optimization.

Chris Schaeffer:
When you’re in the build, when you’re starting something new, you don’t have data to back up complexity, you don’t have reason to build 1500 ad groups. And I say 1500 because I’m working on a campaign right now that I got from somebody else, or a client that hired me this week, and he came from an agency who built one campaign with 1500 ad groups, Jason. I mean, it’s unbelievable. All but 10% don’t have impressions. So the complexity of this build is completely pointless until you have data to prove that there’s something behind those keywords. So start simple, and the reason for this is you’re going to be able to make better decisions at a faster pace. And I speak from personal experience. Jason, I know you would say the same thing as well. When you jump into a campaign, day two, day three, day four, and you see something like 1500 campaigns, try and wrap your brain around … I mean, it’s extremely overwhelming.

Jason Rothman:
1500 ad groups.

Chris Schaeffer:
Sorry, yeah. 1500 ad groups. Thank you. It’s overwhelming.

Jason Rothman:
So by small campaigns, do you mean number if campaigns? Obviously you’re saying number of ad groups, so if it’s not 1500 on the high end and it’s not zero on the low end, because you need at least one ad group, how many ad groups are we talking? And then I also want to know, small campaigns, you obviously mean number of ad groups, so you’re going to give us that number. And then what about the number of campaigns themselves? Can you answer that question? Or is that more of a, you need more information?

Chris Schaeffer:
I’m going to be cocky enough to answer both of those questions and be so confident that everyone’s going to believe me. Okay? I’m going to make such a poignant point. They’re just going to be like, “Oh, that’s obviously true. That’s so true. He said it so confidently and he’s on the internet.” So here’s the thing, when you want to know how many campaigns, the answer is, how many different geographic locations make a difference in your bottom line? If Texas, for example, is something that you’re targeting, and you’re also targeting Oklahoma, but Texas provides 80% of your revenue, but you also have 20% that’s represented by Oklahoma, don’t split the two into one campaign if it makes a drastic difference. Most of the time people aren’t going to be able to say Oklahoma is only 20% and Texas is 80. Most of the time it’s just, there’s not a clear distinction. So I would say for most campaigns you would just do both of them. But if you have a very clear distinction between things like that, either a type of product or location of the search, where it’s showing. If you have some clear distinction which is happening at the campaign level, which is geographic location, time of day, day of the week, stuff like that, then okay. It might be worth it. But for the majority of accounts, one campaign’s going to be enough.

Chris Schaeffer:
So on to the next question. The next question is, how many ad groups should I have? Again, super confident. I am Mr. Confident Man, I am going to give you a solid answer, you’re going to say, “Absolutely that’s correct.” The answer is, how many different pages do you have for products and services? Or let’s say if you do plumbing, do you have a sink and a toilet and then a general plumbing emergency page? Three ad groups, maybe four. Maybe take that and add one or two to that, because you might have a general, you might have a sink, you might have a toilet, you have an emergency. That’s four, done. You don’t need to immediately start building out campaigns for geographic areas. You don’t need all 20 cities, and you need 20 different ad groups for each of the cities. No. Right now you just need to know-

Jason Rothman:
Whoa, whoa.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I mean, simple.

Jason Rothman:
So Dallas-Fort Worth … Let’s say Houston. So Houston, no, no, no, no. Let’s do Los Angeles. Los Angeles. No, no, no. Let’s do-

Chris Schaeffer:
No, no, no.

Jason Rothman:
I’m trying to give a good example here. Okay. Let’s do Chicago. Okay?

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay, a real city.

Jason Rothman:
You’ve got Chicago. You’ve got Chicago, right? It’s called Chicago. And then around Chicago you’ve got Schaumburg, you’ve got whatever else is around Chicago. You know what I’m saying?

Chris Schaeffer:
You just named one, okay?

Jason Rothman:
I’m not going to pull up Google Maps on the sneak while I’m doing a podcast. I don’t care. You guys know the suburbs of Chicago. But let’s say there’s like, you know, you’ve seen Chicago, Chris, doing campaigns.

Chris Schaeffer:
Been there.

Jason Rothman:
There’s a handful of “suburbs” or whatever that are within the Chicago metro, but people call them their own … Like, if someone is one a business trip and they’re in Los Angeles, they’re from Chicago, they go, “Where do you live?” They go, “Oh, I’m from Chicago.” But if they’re from Chicago they go, “Where do you live?” They go, “Oh, I’m from Schaumburg,” or whatever.

Chris Schaeffer:
Right, exactly.

Jason Rothman:
The little town. So you’re seeing you’re a plumber, you don’t need an ad group for each of those five suburbs, you could do the whole metro. You’re saying just start with one?

Chris Schaeffer:
And there’s a clear reason. People are going to say, “That’s crazy. I need to be able to show specific ads to people that are searching for certain areas.” The two reasons why you shouldn’t: number one is because you don’t have pages for those specific locations. Why in the world are you going to write ads to say, “Here’s an ad for this location,” and send them to your general page.

Jason Rothman:
Oh, good question, yeah.

Chris Schaeffer:
Because if you would have answered the first question right where you had 16 different location pages, okay. But you don’t. You have three pages for three different services, you use those three. The number two reason why you should do it this way is because we’re focused on getting results quickly, seeing how the campaign can be improved and what the momentum behind the campaign is at the beginning. Assume you’re going to do this for one month and you’re going to shut it off. Don’t spend 16 hours working on a campaign build and then get fired, or your boss say, “No, that’s it. 500 bucks, and it’s over,” and it’s wasted effort.

Jason Rothman:
All right. So I’m very conflicted here because before this episode, I kind of told you I agree with these things.

Chris Schaeffer:
I like it.

Jason Rothman:
But you’re taking me into uncharted waters I’m not comfortable with, but I want to be comfortable with. So Chris, in all seriousness, I feel like I’m dating the older guy in high school right now and you’re doing things to my emotions-

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, I see.

Jason Rothman:
… and I don’t want to do … I just feel like I’m being toyed with here, but I like being toyed with because I told you I liked starting small, I agree with all this. And then you’ve gone full blown radical on me. Let’s get real. I’ve never built a campaign where it’s just like one or two ad groups and I don’t do the geos. I’m just trained like a monkey, “Do the geos,” so I do the geos. But now that I’m hearing you say it, it kind of sounds crazy. But I’m like, “No, it’s not, because I did build out the geos for this account the other week, and it was dumb, because it took so much time.”

Chris Schaeffer:
There you go.

Jason Rothman:
“And now I want to do all these things now that I’m getting data, but i can’t do them because I’ve got all these ad groups.” And by all these ad groups, I mean 12, but it’s still hard to maneuver from there and grow from there. So let me ask you a question here. You are selling me, dude, because number one, when the other people are having their meeting about the structure of the campaign and laying out the 15 ad groups or the 1500-

Chris Schaeffer:
You’re done.

Jason Rothman:
… and then they break for lunch, and then they take a photo and #agencylife on Instagram. And then, you know what? They play a game of ping pong and, “Oh, let’s call it a day.” And then they come back tomorrow to start the build. You’ve already turned the build on hours ago, or turned the campaign on. You’ve got your one or two ad groups going. You’re getting data that day, and the data is good because you know how to control your keywords. So I am sold on this. The next time I do a build, I don’t think I’m going to do my geos. I think I am going to literally base it on the services they offer, and we’ll talk about how you can grow from there.

Jason Rothman:
But first, let me ask you, is it fair to say you don’t have to do this every time? What if I’m working with a client where I know they’re going to give me more rope than 30 days, so we’re going to have more room to prove ourselves. I know because I’ve worked in this industry before, we are going to need these geos and these different ad groups and all that, and I know what the keywords are for them. So in that case, I can do my normal 10 all the way up to maybe 15 ad groups, whatever, and plan for long term. But if I’m under pressure and it’s a new person at Google Ads and they want results that month, they’re not going to be asking me why we don’t have 10 ad groups, blah, blah, blah. They just want results. Then I can use the super start small approach. Is it fair to have both tools in my toolbox?

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. You laid out the point that breaks the whole system. I am sticking religiously to the core question about, what do I do with this first month sweat? I’m trying to break down and trying to get something moving the first month, assuming that I may not have a second month. And if you know that you’re going to have much longer, somebody’s like, “I’m in it for six months, I’m in it for a year.”

Jason Rothman:
And you already know the industry.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Then you already have some experience, you know where things are probably going to go. Okay. Don’t start with one or two. Don’t start with three. You can probably be a little more complicated with it. But in the end, I enjoy simplicity because I don’t want to- [crosstalk 00:26:10]

Jason Rothman:
I am so blown away. I am so blown away, because you’ve put a new tool in my toolbox here. I did not have this radical, “Yeah, literally just start with one ad group.” I thought I was the radical by saying we’re only going to build out 10 ad groups when we start. But I love that you’ve enlightened me, and I have this, “No, when the time calls for it, we can start a campaign with one ad group, or one or two ad groups, or however many services they have.” So within those ad groups, tell me about the ads. How many ads? How many keywords? What kind of keywords?

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. So limited number of ad groups, and then use three or more word modified broad keywords. Let me break that down. So when you have, we always talk about plumbing-

Jason Rothman:
Chris, you have planned this out. I didn’t even see that note there. You’re even getting down to, “Don’t mess with exact phrase. Broad match modify, you’ll get the benefits of high volume, but you’ll get the benefits of quality because you’re locking it down with three or more modified …” You’re fricking good, dude.

Chris Schaeffer:
How many pins do you have there? Okay. So if you pick your keywords, they need to have three words.

Jason Rothman:
I’ve got backups.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, that’s good. Open up new ones, that’s good, you keep breaking them. So when you pick keywords, they need to have three words. Not just, “Plumbing company.” That’s going to be too broad. You’re going to spend all your money on stuff like that. Try and be precise with some of these. They need to have three words in them, and they need to- [crosstalk 00:27:39]

Jason Rothman:
Can a plumbing company go on Shark Tank? You want to spend your money on that? That’s what two word broad match modify would be.

Chris Schaeffer:
Exactly. “Funny plumbing video 2017.” You’re going to get a bunch of dumb stuff. So pick more specific terms, modified broad is fine. I wouldn’t even mess with exact match unless you just really have to, but keep it limited. Then, in each of the ad groups-

Jason Rothman:
And modifiers on all the words.

Chris Schaeffer:
Modifiers on all the words-

Jason Rothman:
On all the words.

Chris Schaeffer:
A plus in front of every word, exactly.

Jason Rothman:
And at least three words long.

Chris Schaeffer:
And three words long. And then-

Jason Rothman:
At least three words, it can be more.

Chris Schaeffer:
Well, if you get more, if you get to four or five words and they all have pluses, you’re going to get a bunch of low search volume.

Jason Rothman:
Wow, okay.

Chris Schaeffer:
So I wouldn’t go too crazy.

Jason Rothman:
So if it’s Chicago, you’re doing plumbers in Chicago, all modified. Plumbing company Chicago, all modified. Plumbing company Schaumburg, all modified.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.

Jason Rothman:
Wow.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, some rather big terms, yeah.

Jason Rothman:
Freaking simple.

Chris Schaeffer:
Three words, and then three ads in each ad group. Okay?

Jason Rothman:
Three ads? Okay.

Chris Schaeffer:
And then for the last thing here is, you wonder, “What level of the funnel?” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go back and listen to 160 episodes that we have on the other shows. But the level of the funnel, you’re going to focus I’m going to say 80% on low funnel, and 20% on high. So what I mean by that is toilet repair plumber might be a low funnel, and plumbing companies Chicago might be high funnel. That’s kind of the idea that I’m talking about. So grab a majority of more precise stuff, and then a few, maybe 20% high funnel that are more general that could basically capture anything.

Jason Rothman:
Okay. And plumbers is a hard one just off of the top of the head to get 80% non-plumbing company Chicago, like deeper than that. The service industries are kind of hard in that regard.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, I mean, like emergency plumber.

Jason Rothman:
It’s mostly low funnel.

Chris Schaeffer:
Emergency plumber is a little better than just plumber. So basically, if it has that description, that modifier in there that has something to do with toilet, emergency, weekend, sink, something like that, that makes it lower funnel than just the word plumbers, Chicago, today, something like that. That’s it. That’s it for structure. That’s it.

Jason Rothman:
Now, why three ads? Why not one, if we’re going full radical, small here?

Chris Schaeffer:
Well, because the thing is-

Jason Rothman:
Because you’re trained and brainwashed to do more than one ad and you can’t give it up. Well, everything else you’ve just stripped away and given up, so why not give up that one.

Chris Schaeffer:
I don’t really have a reason.

Jason Rothman:
I don’t know. It’s a question.

Chris Schaeffer:
It’s a good question.

Jason Rothman:
I don’t really know, because I’ve bene pressured-

Chris Schaeffer:
To do three.

Jason Rothman:
… by certain people to add more than three ads in an ad group.

Chris Schaeffer:
More than, yeah, that’s true.

Jason Rothman:
Like four to seven at least. And things are intimated to me like, “Oh, quality score will go up.” And I don’t know the answer to those questions. So I don’t know how many ads you need. I know it doesn’t seem like a good practice to have less than three, for sure, but if it’s just about starting small, can you throw one in there, maybe two, switch out the headline on the second one? Will you still show? I think you will. I don’t know if I feel comfortable about recommending it, but I think you’ll still show.

Chris Schaeffer:
I mean, yeah, that’s true. Three is probably a bit aggressive. Two is minimum. But I would say my main thing is at least you can make some decisions on ad copy by month two. You’ll have some good data assuming you get a couple hundred clicks.

Jason Rothman:
Can I caveat this way? Forget whatever you’re doing with your ad descriptions. They’re so long. You don’t need to redo those on each of the three ad groups.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s a great point.

Jason Rothman:
Get your descriptions you like, description one, description two, whatever, or however many there are now. Leave them in there, they’re great. And then when you make your three ads, the thing you’re doing different is just the headlines in the three. Does that keep it simple?

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, I like that. Super quick, yeah. Just create a template, boom, boom, boom, you’ve got three and you just changed the headlines around call to action, stuff like that.

Jason Rothman:
Bidding.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, we get into bidding. This is the stuff that everybody gets so uptight about when I do consulting, training with listeners of the show and my clients. This is what people always get intimidated about. It’s the big two words, “Manual bidding.” I mean, that’s the number one suggestion. And the reason for this is because it all compounds on each other. If you have less keywords, it’s less intimidating on trying to decide which keyword should have which bid. Imagine having 300 keywords and trying to do manual bidding and deciding, “Oh, should I bid this one up or down?” Versus 20 keywords, it’s a lot less intimidating. And that’s the big thing here. You need to be able to work with something. Something needs to happen, and you need to have something that you can manage. So manual bidding’s going to be important. I’m not going to go into how to make decisions, because listen to the other 100.

Jason Rothman:
Well, no, Chris, people are going to … The number one thing they’re going to say if we don’t address it is, “How do I know what to set my bids at if it’s so easy, so quick?”

Chris Schaeffer:
I don’t think I have a solid answer for just anyone on that. It feels like a little more complex topic.

Jason Rothman:
Well, then people are going to do automated bids if they don’t know what to set them at. I’m just saying, if we’re trying to give people the super starter easy start thing, you’ve got to have something about bidding in there.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s true.

Jason Rothman:
So trying to think about it, if you don’t know the industry, “Hey numb nuts, everybody listening, it’s not that hard. Let’s just solve it once and for all.” How about you find, you great nice listeners and audience out there, and I’m not talking to our audience, I’m talking to the world in general-

Chris Schaeffer:
Right, not you guys.

Jason Rothman:
We’re past that.

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay, let’s get into manual bidding-

Jason Rothman:
No, no. Chris, manual bidding, here’s my point. How about just we have a universal rule. Say your bid’s at $5.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, I was going to say three, five.

Jason Rothman:
Does that apply to every industry whether it’s mesothelioma or selling white socks? Set it at $5. If you’re selling socks, you might be able to spend your full budget, you might see your cost per click come in at $2. I’ve never sold socks online. So you won’t get in trouble. If you do mesothelioma you won’t get any impressions, because you have to bid hundreds of dollars, and you’ll go, “Huh, $5 didn’t work. Let me look in the keyword planner. It says that they’re starting at 80.” Probably more like 500, whatever. But, “$5 didn’t work, let me go to $10. Oh, I didn’t get any impressions over this hour. I’m not seeing myself in the preview tool.” How about that for a check?

Chris Schaeffer:
I like that.

Jason Rothman:
“Oh, 10’s not getting me done there. Let me do 20.” I mean, just start at a couple dollars, see what happens. And also, use the keyword planner, and then also use the keyword tool and see how high you need to go. It’s manual.

Chris Schaeffer:
When we say manual keyword bidding, we don’t mean you change every single keyword and pick $3, $2, $4, $6 for individual keywords. Like Jason talked about last episode, bid at the ad group level. Okay? Don’t get overheated on trying to pick individual. That comes into later. We’ll talk about that in a second. Just bid everything at $3 all the way down. I love that. $3, $5, whatever you want to do, all the way down. Done. Leave it, right?

Jason Rothman:
Whatever you want to do, open up the preview tool, see if you’re showing. If it says your ad rank’s not high enough or whatever, then you can increase your bids because it’s manual, because it’s just a five second change.

Chris Schaeffer:
Five, six, yeah.

Jason Rothman:
And then you can look again in the preview tool and see if you’re there. Use the keyword planner, see what it says for suggested bid, add those suggested bid columns, whatever they’re called, can you can probably figure it out. Get on the forum, ask people.

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay, so here’s where it gets a little more complicated. And if you are not comfortable with this, I would say this is an optional step. But remember, I mentioned low funnel keywords up in step number one for structure. Grab the ones that are 20% high funnel, the stuff that’s very wide reaching, basically to use the example plumbers in Chicago, those three words together all modified broad, that’s a pretty high funnel. Pull the bids down a little bit. Pull them down a little bit lower than the others. Allow the low funnel keywords to get more volume if they can, and then let the high funnel get less with lower bids. If you want to do a percentage, say one of them, the low funnel is 5, the low funnel’s 2.50, start with that.

Jason Rothman:
Thank you for that suggestion. I will not be doing that.

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. Well, you got a reason?

Jason Rothman:
I just feel like if you’re going to start bidding at the keyword level, things can get a little more-

Chris Schaeffer:
20%.

Jason Rothman:
… complex.

Chris Schaeffer:
20% of the keywords.

Jason Rothman:
I really have-

Chris Schaeffer:
So if you have 10 keywords, that means you change two of them, that’s it. Just two.

Jason Rothman:
I see your logic there, I see your logic.

Chris Schaeffer:
Not a big deal.

Jason Rothman:
Chris, you’ve got to understand, it’s very hard for a non-radical to see things the way they look when you become a radical and only have 10 keywords, you know what I’m saying? Because I’m picturing like 50 keywords or something, and then you’ve got to figure out which ones are bid that way.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, okay. It gets intimidating there. But if you have 20 keywords-

Jason Rothman:
Okay, I get what you’re saying. Yeah, I get what you’re saying. I get what you’re saying.

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. Last thing, this gets a little bit into the optimization, which is our third step, but I’ll say this. Unless you are able to maintain a search impression share above 80%, do not let the ads maintain more than 50% absolutely top position. We’re throwing in some numbers, but let me do some math examples for you. Joe has a 30% search impression share. Very poor. Very low. It’s not very good. And he has an 80% absolutely top position. Joe is bidding too high. He’s doing it wrong. And Sally, Sally has an 80% search impression share and she has an 80% absolutely top position. Sally is doing a good job. Sally is doing it right because she’s bidding aggressively, but she can afford to bid aggressively. So this all has to do with percentage difference in ratios. And it’s just a rule of thumb. Some people, we’re going to get angry emails. I’m going to get a FedEx of somebody who just poops in a box and be like, “That’s the dumbest …” Okay, I know, you’re going to be mad. It’s in general. I’m trying to lay it out for everyone. That’s it. Send your poop- [crosstalk 00:38:16]

Jason Rothman:
I do think, and this is kind of previewing next week’s episode, but now that average position is gone, if it’s about getting results in month one and getting solid results and the most you can for the budget, I think definitely paying attention to that absolutely top position metric is important. Because if that’s 100%, that means you’re showing up number one all the time, what we would call in the old days average position 1.0. And they would say, “Well, 1.0 didn’t mean it was above the ads, it could have been below organic. And that’s why we put in these new metrics.” You know what I say to that? I say-

Chris Schaeffer:
No way?

Jason Rothman:
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Chris Schaeffer:
No edits.

Jason Rothman:
Yeah. I still associate 1.0 with showing up at the top of the page, call me crazy, above the organic results. So if you’re doing that, that means you probably can lower your bids and get away with showing up less in the absolutely top position but still high enough to get clicks and spend your budget. So that’s getting you good manual bid results in the first month. So you’re focusing on that absolute top impression share and making sure it’s not too high. Okay.

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. And then last, this is the fun part, you’ve moved past the set up, the bidding, this is the fun part. You’re moving into optimization. This is the part when you actually have data, and then by the final two weeks of the month you should lower bids or pause some of the keywords based on the quality of traffic, and/or the conversion metrics. So at least, you’ve gone two, three weeks through this thing. You should be able to identify a couple keywords or at least some negative keywords to add, or some bids to adjust that are like, “This is spending a lot of money, it’s getting nothing. I don’t like the search terms.” You should be able to identify within three weeks, definitely by four weeks. And then at this point, if you find some of those, you can replace those really high spending modified broad keywords with more specific phrase and exact match. So plumbers in Chicago might be a super high spending keyword, it’s not really working for you. And you would replace it with plumbers near X city that can fix a sink. Who knows? That’s a little too specific.

Jason Rothman:
Whatever comes in the search terms report. You just add it.

Chris Schaeffer:
Exactly, the stuff you like.

Jason Rothman:
Add it as phrase or exact.

Chris Schaeffer:
You start getting some calls, or you start getting some search terms that you like. Use those to replace those high spending modified broad. And here’s what you get, you get a campaign that slowly starts to be more and more complex with some targeted-

Jason Rothman:
Slowly.

Chris Schaeffer:
Slowly. That’s right, we’re talking two or three weeks in here. Not in the first two days.

Jason Rothman:
Two months.

Chris Schaeffer:
Well, we’re talking about month one. This is a month one discussion.

Jason Rothman:
I know. Well, Chris, talking about optimizing, again, I’ve never done this because I’ve never been this radical. But let me ask you a question, because I want to know what happens after you get past month one. Does this campaign turn into 10, 15 ad groups with geo ad groups and ads that match the ad group and all that kind of stuff as time goes on? So if I’m looking at my search terms report for month one and I’m in the Chicago metro and I see a bunch of searches for Schaumburg coming in, and then I go, “Okay, that’s something that’s going to get volume,” and then I just go to editor, copy and paste the ad group so I have the ads, edit the ads to say Schaumburg. Edit the name of the new ad group to say Schaumburg, and then go into that ad group and only leave in the Schaumburg key words and pause everything else and add in more Schaumburg keywords. And that’s kind of like my optimization for that afternoon. And then maybe a week later I get in there and I go, “Oh, this other suburb is getting tons, or the word emergency is getting tons.” So then I just slowly start building ad groups with ads that match the ad group.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s it.

Jason Rothman:
So if I see one of your radical two to three ad group campaigns starting on day one, to get results in month one, if I see them a year later, do they look radically different in terms of more ad groups, way more keywords?

Chris Schaeffer:
They should, yeah.

Jason Rothman:
So you can build, that’s the goal.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yes, absolutely.

Jason Rothman:
You can build.

Chris Schaeffer:
Now, sometimes you might not be able to play ball and have individual landing pages for each of those, and sometimes it may not be worth doing it because you’re still sending them to a crappy service page that doesn’t really address specific aspects of your service. So yes, but if that gets more complex, it depends on how it easy for you to build new pages on your website for that kind of topic. But in general, yes.

Jason Rothman:
But this thing can start small, and you can use the editor, copy and pasting, all that, to grow and grow and grow.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, that’s it. And that’s the pitch. That’s the whole pitch of this process. The pitch is it starts simple, it establishes a trend that will grow into a tight, focused account that continues to improve, improve, improve and get really qualified traffic.

Jason Rothman:
So next time an advertiser comes to me and they want to start advertising, I should, with them for 15 minutes, build out a campaign on the phone and turn it on-

Chris Schaeffer:
You could.

Jason Rothman:
… and call that the build. I mean, let’s get radical here, you know?

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s [crosstalk 00:43:29].

Jason Rothman:
You just, you start it. You get your settings right, you get an ad group in there, you throw in one keyword, plumbers in Chicago, broad match modified, and then you just turn it on. You start adding keywords, you start adding search terms that you see come from as exact in phrase, and you just, you start adding ad groups as needed. I think this is revolutionary.

Chris Schaeffer:
Thank you. That’s two in a row. You delivered and I delivered.

Jason Rothman:
Do you know how much stress and time in the last five years I’ve spent on builds?

Chris Schaeffer:
Yes, I do. You were the build master.

Jason Rothman:
And I used to be a [scagger 00:44:05], yeah, I was the kind of scag. But I was all scagged out, I had scag all over me, blah, blah, blah. But in the recent years I’ve totally changed from that. And now I’m doing 10 ad groups, 12 ad groups. But Chris, 10 ad groups, 12 ad groups, I’m telling you, that’s still a lot of stress and time. It’s not easy, it’s not quick. And the thing is, like you’re saying, when you turn it on and then half of them don’t get any impressions at all, I’m going through that right now with one of my campaigns, three ad groups out of like 15 are getting impressions. So shouldn’t have I just started day one in the first hour with those three ad groups instead of building out 15 that took a whole day? And then monitoring them, and then tweaking them. I think you’ve really radicalized me.

Chris Schaeffer:
I love it.

Jason Rothman:
I think I am going to “build” this way going forward. And this is going to change everything I think. And I’m not kidding. I’ve had it up to here with builds and architecture plans and blueprints of campaigns and all this kind of nonsense. I’m going back to simplicity, and I’m going to rule the world and do it better than anybody else because I think this really works as just a place to get started. I think it works.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s it. Okay. Well, I have one last tip. One last tip is once you’re optimizing, once you’re moving through the process, try out one of our sponsors, Opteo. Opteo.com/psp. Great tool to help you continue to optimize and improve. You get a six week trial. Not four weeks like those scrubs out there who don’t know to go to Opteo.com/psp. This is a six week trial, all for free. Try it out. You’re going to like it.

Jason Rothman:
Just try it out. And I want to thank Directive Consulting, the go to B2B and enterprise search engine marketing agency. You deserve more. They will figure out how to get you quality leads, and then they will figure out how to scale that for your B2B and enterprise campaign. They do it all, SEO, pay per click, conversion rate optimization, content, social media advertising, digital PR, analytics. Check out their website, check out some of the brands they’ve worked with. Very impressive. Check out their case studies and get a free custom proposal at Directive Consulting.com.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s it. We’re going to go on to the Patreon where we’re going to talk a bit more about this. If you want to join us, go to our website, Paid Search Podcast. Be sure to check out all of our old episodes that are on the archive. And if not, we’ll catch you next Monday. Have a good one.

Please support our sponsors, they make the show possible!

Show notes:

YouTube

Transcript

Similar Episodes: