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Show notes:
Welcome back to the Paid Search Podcast, the weekly podcast about Google Ads and search engine marketing! This week Chris and Jason answer a ton of Google Ads questions from AdWords beginners, AdWords regular users, and also other AdWords professionals and experts. There’s a ton of great questions, including:
When to use automated bidding?
How to know when to run only on mobile or desktop?
How do you manage the budget throughout the month?
What should my ad copy be like when I bid on competitor keywords?
How we organize ad groups and keywords depending on their place in the sales funnel?
How we use estimated first page bid amount?
Should I only run English as the language or should I include more languages?
How do I target multiple locations in their own campaigns that are very close to each other?
Is it okay to run some loose, generic kind of keywords if I’m having trouble finding keywords for my client?
How do I prove that I’m getting good PPC results to my client?
Links:
Supercharge Your Podcast Growth by Using Google AdWords – Buzzsprout
YouTube
Transcript
Chris Schaeffer:
Hey. Over here. Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Oh, yeah! Right here! Right now!
Chris Schaeffer:
Gosh.
Jason Rothman:
Hey, everybody. Yes, welcome to the Paid Search Podcast. Welcome back if you’re coming back. Welcome for the first time if you’re new. My name is Jason Rothman. As always, I’m joined by my co-host, the great Chris Schaeffer. Chris, how’s it going?
Chris Schaeffer:
Um.
Jason Rothman:
Wait. I don’t get it.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Okay. I want to read this week’s five star review. Unbelievable access to free advice on PPC, five stars, from Mr. Ugly Man.
Chris Schaeffer:
Ooh. Humble.
Jason Rothman:
In the United Stated of American.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
I’ve come across a bunch of junk online from amateurs pretending to be pros.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, yeah.
Jason Rothman:
But these guys are the real deal.
Chris Schaeffer:
Real deal.
Jason Rothman:
“These guys aren’t focused on selling to their audience; but rather, they actually teach and provide a fly-on-the-wall experience for anyone wanting to sit in on a PPC campaign strategy session, which is something you’ll never find for free elsewhere.”
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, man.
Jason Rothman:
Hey, thanks for that review. That’s a great review.
Chris Schaeffer:
I love what he says there, “Fly on the wall.” You remember years ago when we started this, that’s what our goal was, to create a podcast where you and I talk about real stuff, and people just get to listen to two pros talk. I am so glad to hear that review because that’s literally what we wanted to do because we didn’t think that existed, and people wouldn’t give it straight up; they would just bs around different topics. So, that’s awesome. Thanks for that review. All right.
Jason Rothman:
This is like a webinar ad where the webinar actually starts, when you click play.
Chris Schaeffer:
Right.
Jason Rothman:
And it’s actually real and live.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. This is a webinar where you actually get something good instead of the webinar to tell you about that thing that you have to pay for to get something good. So, yeah, real deal.
Chris Schaeffer:
Let me tell you about another real deal: Opteo.com/psp to get a six week extended trial to my favorite, Jason’s favorite, online tool to get recommendations in your inbox for your Google Ads campaigns. Get things like alerts about spending over your budget, spending under your budget. Have you hit a new conversion record that you didn’t realize? Do you have some type of issue that’s causing a significant spike in the cost? Do you have huge increases in impressions because, oops, you accidentally forget to set that ad group up on display with keyword targeting and you just left it wide open, and now you’ve got 10 million impressions? You could fix that because it will email you right away… within 24 hours, I think, is usually when I get it… to tell you that you screwed up. Great tool. I highly recommend you go check them out. We appreciate them for sponsoring us. Opteo.com/psp.
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. They offer more communication, more accountability, and more ROI than just traffic. It’s not just about traffic. It’s about getting leads, it’s about getting quality leads, and then it’s about scaling to get as many quality leads as possible from all the different kinds of search engine marketing related platforms, strategies, things online: pay-per-click, SEO, conversion rate optimization, content, social media, digital PR, analytics. Directive does it all. Get a free custom proposal at DirectiveConsulting.com. We’ll link to it in the show notes: DirectiveConsulting.com.
Chris Schaeffer:
Today’s an exciting day because you guys are the stars of the show; that’s new because we don’t do that every time; we don’t do it every month. We do it when we feel like it because we’re the boss, but this is it. This is the PSP questions and answers show where we answer the questions that you sent in. Some of you have sent them in a while ago and we appreciate your patience. Some of them you sent in years ago and we deleted them and we’re sorry, because we didn’t want to answer them.
Jason Rothman:
Tell them why, Chris. We’re not just jerks.
Chris Schaeffer:
That’s true.
Jason Rothman:
Tell them what you were telling me earlier.
Chris Schaeffer:
The reason we don’t always answer your questions is because sometimes some questions are going to go beyond just AdWords management and they’re going to go into questions about client management, about the business of Google Ads; and if you’re interested in that, we do have a solution for you. Our Patreon show, which we’re going to be doing the same thing and answering some specific questions about the business of Google Ads; we’re going to be going into that after we finish recording here and we answer those questions. So, if you’re interested, check out Patreon. Just go to PaySearchPodcast.com, click on the Patreon link, and you can get there, $2 a month. You heard me: $2 a month. That’s not like, “Thanks, and you can get a sticker.” You literally get the content for $2 a month, so I don’t know why you’re still here. Well, I do, because you want to listen to the show, but please open up a new tab.
Chris Schaeffer:
All right. Let’s do this. Jason, are you ready to go? I think the first one is mine, and it is our favorite. It’s a voicemail, we always like to lead with those, and today’s question is from Hal.
Hal:
Hey. This is Hal. I’ve been listening to your show for many months, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about using an automated bid strategy and just using max cost-per-click in place of doing your whole manual thing. So, I’d love to hear you talk more about the difference between the two.
Hal:
Also, I signed up for your Patreon maybe two months ago, never thought I’d listen, but I’ve been listening to every episode, and very valuable. So, thank you for convincing me to join. Bye-bye.
Chris Schaeffer:
There you go. So, Hal had a question about our whole manual thing versus automated.
Jason Rothman:
Our whole manual thing. Our whole manual thing. I guess that’s the way I just have my whole $21 million a month of revenue thing. I guess that’s how I became the best Google Ads manager on the planet thing. Okay, Hal. Chris, automated versus manual, Hal’s never heard us talk about it. Does Hal have too much earwax in his ears? We talk about this quite a bit.
Chris Schaeffer:
Let’s assume he’s a new subscriber. Okay? New subscriber.
Jason Rothman:
Okay. So, here’s our thing: we’re the manual guys. We like to be in control. It’s just how we came up. We managed bids manually. We look at what’s working, what keywords are working, what position are they. We’re going to have to figure that out soon.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
What’s their impression share. I guess, if this is the future, what’s their top-of-page impression share? What’s their absolute top position impression share? And if it’s not near 100% and we’re getting a great cost-per-conversion, you know what we can do? We can manually make a decision with our brain and raise the bids, and get more conversions at a great cost-per-conversion, and make a great profit on the campaign. If keywords aren’t working out completely, we can pause them; if they’re working out to some extent and they’re getting some conversions, but not an ideal cost-per-conversation because it’s way too high, we can use our brain again… we have the brain up there; we can use it… and we can manually lower the bids until that cost-per-conversion for that keyword gets in line with where we want it. I think, in a nutshell, that’s why Chris and I like manual, is because we can control where the traffic is going, how aggressive we are on different keywords, and we can try to get the cost-per-conversion we want from a ton of different keywords.
Jason Rothman:
That’s leaves the question: why would we ever use automated? Well, Chris and I, even though we’re known for manual bids, we also use automated sometimes. I’d love to hear from Chris a little bit; but for myself when I use automated, it’s in two circumstances: one is when, for whatever reason, manual just doesn’t seem to be getting the job done. I’m just struggling to get the cost-per-conversion I want, and I’ll go, “You know what? This doesn’t seem to be working in this case. All my keywords are great; they’re locked down. I’m going to try maximize-clicks bidding,” or “We’re getting a ton of conversion data, but I can’t pull that cost-per-conversion from $30 down to $15, I just can’t do it over six months,” I’ll go, “You know what? We’re getting tons of conversions. Why don’t I try max CPA bidding and put the max CPA at $15 to $20 and see if Google’s automated system is able to do that?” So, that’s when I’m not able to crack the code and I let automate take over.
Jason Rothman:
The other time is when we just need to try something new, freshen up the campaign, try something out of the box. If a client says, “Hey, great cost-per-conversion, but I want three times the traffic,” I go, “Hey, your impression share is 99%. I don’t know if we can get more traffic,” and they go, “You know what? Maybe let’s try something new. Okay, we try max clicks and see how it does for a month,” with an experiment, so we don’t mess up our campaign.
Jason Rothman:
The final thing I’ll say is whenever you do automated bidding, it’s good to put some kind of cap in place, if possible; otherwise, things can just get… they can go in a direction you don’t want if you don’t have a cap in place.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, does that sum up your manual versus automated world?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I think my favorite tidbit there is basically if you have a solid grip on your traffic and you’ve reached the max potential that you know what to do with it, right? Your knowledge level is at a peak and you’re like, “Should this go up? Should it go down? I’m not sure what to do,” and you can look at your search terms report, you can look at your conversions. You like what’s happening, and you’re at a plateau, you don’t know where to go… I know I’ve said it. Go back, Hal, and search on a YouTube channel or via our pack of old episodes and look for the stuff where we talk about automated. We definitely talk about automated a lot and it’s not that we’re against it, it’s just that Jason and I agree that most people tend to overuse it. It’s a simple solution and sometimes the simple solution can get people in trouble, is pretty much what it comes down to.
Jason Rothman:
Let me just give a tip. There’s a lot of people who are new to Google Ads. A lot of people don’t want to do manual. They don’t have the time; they don’t have the expertise; they don’t know where to set their bids. You’re brand-new to Google Ads, I think the best automated strategy: maximize clicks.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
With a bid limit in place-
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, a cap.
Jason Rothman:
… that you would feel comfortable with your cost-per-click coming in at. So, if you’re running a new campaign and you’re like, “Okay, I’m just trying to figure out what’s working. I will be very sad if the cost-per-click is over $20, though. I want it to be more like $10, but I’ll be very sad if it’s over $20,” maximize clicks, put a cap in place of $20, give it a couple days to learn the system; sometimes automated takes a few days to figure itself out and impressions are very low for a couple days. It’ll figure it out, you’ll start getting some clicks if you’re targeting keywords that give volume, and you’ll be able to see where the cost-per-click comes in compared to your top-of-the-page impression share, and starting off automated max clicks with a cap in place will make Google Ads very easy to start in terms of where to bid. I think that’s a good beginner’s strategy.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. All right. You’ve got the next one from James in the Philippines, but originally from the UK. There you go.
Jason Rothman:
I guess a lot of Americans are, too.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Originally from the UK, in some sense of the word.
Chris Schaeffer:
Originally, I’m from somewhere else. That’s true.
Jason Rothman:
And then we fled. We were like, “We’ve got to get out of here,” and then we had Thanksgiving.
Jason Rothman:
Okay, Chris, you highlight these things yellow, but I like hearing from people.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay.
Jason Rothman:
I want to know the real dig when it’s less than five paragraphs, “Hi, guys. I just want to say I love your podcast and it inspires me.” I love that. “I have used a lot of your ideas with great effect on my campaigns and I feel like I should be paying you.” Ha-ha. Sometimes I feel that way, too, James. Okay, “My question is about device bidding. My current campaign includes targeting all devices with an automated strategy, target CPA. I looked at my conversions in the past 30 days and I got 91 conversions from desktop and 18 from mobile. My daily ads budget is $70 a day. Roughly half my traffic comes from mobile, half from desktop. If this was your campaign, would you turn off mobile bidding so that all traffic would come from desktop and maybe ads would show for longer in the day? I’d be grateful for your suggestion. Thank you so much, Jason and Chris.”
Chris Schaeffer:
All right. So, James, originally from the UK: unfortunately, with the information that you’ve given, I actually cannot answer your question because by making the decision to cut off one device… I might be in favor of you cutting off desktop because the information you gave does not give enough information for me to know what’s the cost-per-conversion. What’s the conversation rate? Even the cost-per-click, and how many clicks, and how many conversions on each one of those, would have been what I needed to know because the most important information is… let’s say mobile converts at a 21% conversion rate, and desktop converts at a 35% conversion rate, right? Yeah, it would seem like it might make sense, but then you need one other piece of the puzzle: what’s the cost-per-click? So, in the end you could ignore all of that and just say-
Jason Rothman:
Cost-per-conversion.
Chris Schaeffer:
Sorry. Yeah, thank you. We’ll know cost-per-conversion, and then you would be able to say, “Well, if one of them is more than the other… ” but skip all that. The easy answer is: look at your cost-per-conversion. If the cost-per-conversion is better on mobile… you get a $2 cost-per-conversion on mobile, but you get less conversions; and desktop you get a $15 cost-per-conversion, but you get more… what I would do is potentially create two different campaigns. I think that’s a little bit bold of a move. I don’t necessarily think that’s the first thing you should do. The first step would instead be to play with your bids, and I would say don’t bid up; start by bidding down. If your cost-per-acquisition for desktop or mobile is higher, pull down on those bids and see what happens. Are you able to get a better cost-per-conversion? If the case is that there’s more search impression share that you could make up with desktop, maybe the next step is then to create a second campaign and push harder on those, and try to get a super great search impression share on desktop. So, there you go.
Jason Rothman:
Now, Chris, you’re throwing that out very cavalierly, “Oh, just check your search impression share on desktop versus mobile.” People listen to the show-
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s like you must have hit the pipe early today because you’re not listening. There is no way for you to check impression share on mobile and desktop.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, I’m going to ask you to apologize ahead of time and take back that rude comment because if you don’t people will go, “Oh, the great Chris Schaeffer because Jason says he’s great. Oh, blah-blah-blah.” No. You know who’s great? I’m great. Okay? And you’re about to step in quicksand right now if you don’t correct yourself. So, we can go about this two different ways, okay? It’s up to you.
Chris Schaeffer:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Jason Rothman:
If you want to go through this gangster style and me just run through you, just keep talking. But if you want to apologize and I can do this nice, I want to hear the words, “I’m sorry, Jason. You are great.”
Chris Schaeffer:
I’m sorry, Jason, that you have such thin skin.
Jason Rothman:
No, Chris.
Chris Schaeffer:
That was an apology.
Jason Rothman:
I’m be benevolent ruler. I’m going to give you one more chance to protect yourself here. I’m begging you to protect yourself. I don’t want to do what I’m about to do to you.
Chris Schaeffer:
You’re right. I absolutely am sorry that your feelings are so sensitive.
Jason Rothman:
Okay, Chris. I’m just going to do it to you, and I hope you’re not mad.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay.
Jason Rothman:
So, you were about to say that there’s absolutely no way to check search impression share mobile versus desktop, and that’s why you need two campaigns.
Chris Schaeffer:
No. I feel like we’re getting lost in the fog.
Jason Rothman:
No, we’re not. You’re trying to back out of this.
Chris Schaeffer:
I said there’s no way to do it. I said there’s no way to do it, yes.
Jason Rothman:
Okay. Well, you’re wrong, dude. You’re straight up wrong, okay? That’s why people listen to the show.
Chris Schaeffer:
Is it the segment?
Jason Rothman:
Because they want advanced tips that years in the game, best AdWords manager on the planet, $21 million a month of revenue. Just bought a yacht.
Chris Schaeffer:
Just bought a yacht.
Jason Rothman:
And it doesn’t stay in the United States. It’s overseas.
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s overseas.
Jason Rothman:
I’ve never seen it. They have my money. They’re not showing me pictures anymore, they’re not answering my calls, but I think I have invested in a yacht, okay?
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. So, is it the segment? Is that what I missed?
Jason Rothman:
Yes, it is, Chris.
Chris Schaeffer:
You’re right.
Jason Rothman:
Yes, it is. So, if you go to devices and you try to add the search impression share column and you go, “What’s my impression share on mobile? Mobile is doing way better. Should I run a full campaign on just mobile? Because could I spend more budget on it?” you’re not going to get that answer because you can’t add search impression share columns to the device area; but if you go to Search Campaigns and then you go to Campaign, or All Campaigns, whatever, and you have your columns in there of search impression shares, search impression share lost to the rank and budget, and then you segment. You click the Segment button and you go to Device: you will get your impression share data on computers, mobiles and tablets.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay.
Jason Rothman:
And that feels very good to tell you. I’m glad I had the opportunity to teach you about that, young Chris Schaeffer, young grasshopper.
Chris Schaeffer:
You are absolutely right. That is a good point because that’s what I should have pointed out first, and I have one more comment before I read the next question. I want to say, at the current rate, we are one question per 10 minutes, which is a horrible rate. I would like to pick that up a bit because I have a family and they want to see me tonight.
Jason Rothman:
James in the Philippines disagrees. He disagrees. He doesn’t want the baby answer. He wants a deep answer, the true answer. Segment out your impression shares at the device level… excuse me, segment out device, and then you’ll be able to see, “Hey, what’s my cost-per-conversion on mobile? Is it great? Could I spend more or not?” You know what I’m saying, Chris?
Chris Schaeffer:
Bart from…
Jason Rothman:
You took a shot, Chris. You took a shot.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
And we’re not wearing body armor today. I wasn’t prepared for it. You took a shot at me. I came back at you 10 times harder. People are going to feel sorry for you, number one, because of that shirt; number two, because I came back 10 times harder.
Chris Schaeffer:
My shirt.
Jason Rothman:
And number three, because I just went after your shirt. But I want everyone to know who’s just tuning in now.
Chris Schaeffer:
What?
Jason Rothman:
Chris, you took a shot at me. You said I wasn’t listening.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. I still don’t think you were entirely because you changed… it doesn’t matter.
Chris Schaeffer:
Bart from [Flesch 00:18:41] in the Netherlands. Another international question. I love it. “Hey, guys. Love the show. Keep that husband and wife flow going.” I tell you what: it feels absolutely like Bart is right about that one at this moment because I feel like the wife is just yappin’. All right, “I have two questions for you guys.”
Jason Rothman:
Who’s talking right now? Who was talking right now when they said that?
Chris Schaeffer:
He has two questions. Number one question… pay attention, Jason. “My boss wants me to run ads on two accounts. What do you guys think about that?” Number two, “I recently saw the option to set a budget per month instead of per day. I can’t find anything about this setting. Is it new or experimental by Google? What do you guys think about the budget per month?” So, first one and second one. I know you definitely have an answer on the first one. The second one, we’ll see.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, two different accounts for the same business?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
He said in his opinion that’s a bad idea. In my opinion, that’s a bad idea because of something called “double serving.”
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
I think that’s against the rules.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, yes.
Jason Rothman:
You’re not supposed to run…
Chris Schaeffer:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Jason Rothman:
But then people would say, “What about franchises that run in different cities?”
Chris Schaeffer:
That’s different.
Jason Rothman:
I guess there’s work around those. They’re technically different actual businesses, even though they’re franchises. It’s the same name, but it’s different businesses.
Chris Schaeffer:
The only way this would work is if he is wanting to put one on one credit card and another, and it has different geographic targeting or different keywords, something separated between these two for some reason. But if it’s two accounts pointing to the same thing, this is one of the rare instances when people say, “Aren’t you competing against each other if you have multiple keywords?” This is an instance where you literally would pay more per click because you are truly competing against each other here, if you have two different accounts. If you have the same keywords in the same account: no, you’re not paying more per click. You’re not competing against yourself; but this situation with two accounts, you truly are, and you’re actually paying more per click. One campaign is going to suffer.
Chris Schaeffer:
Jason, what do you think?
Jason Rothman:
Maybe he’s cheating because he uses the words “to cover the top of Google.” I mean that’s why people cheat, double serving.
Chris Schaeffer:
Right. Yeah. He wants to be in first place either with one or the other, which is… it’s tacky. I don’t think it’s appropriate, and you could get in trouble. You could essentially lose both accounts.
Jason Rothman:
You can lose both accounts.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Policy issue.
Jason Rothman:
So, it’s stupid. Don’t spend your day trying to game the system because you’re never going to be able to game it. They’re bigger than you. They’re better than you. You’ll never outsmart them in the long run, so put that little brain focus somewhere else and add on a different strategy on top of that.
Jason Rothman:
Number two, budget per month instead of budget per day. I’ve heard about this in Bing, Chris. I’m going to plead the fifth. I’ve never heard about budget per month in Google Ads.
Chris Schaeffer:
Well, I’ve only seen it in a couple campaigns. I think you would agree, if you ever played with it, that it’s not a game changer. It’s essentially the same thing as what they’re doing now because ask me three years ago what I was doing with my daily budgets: I would change them all the time. I would change them on a weekly basis up and down, up and down, to try to keep the momentum slowing, momentum speeding up… slowing, speeding up… and I would change it $5, $10 back and forth. Nowadays, I set it and don’t touch it again, which is essentially the same as setting a monthly budget per month. Back in the old days, I know it might have mattered, but now I don’t have a preference. Either one. If it gives you an option to set it per month, use it. I don’t see any negative aspect to it, at this point.
Jason Rothman:
When I set my daily budget, I just assume that’s a monthly budget.
Chris Schaeffer:
Right. Multiple.
Jason Rothman:
Like that one day times an average of 30 days a month. That’s what I’m calling my monthly budget.
Chris Schaeffer:
Right. Multiplied by 30.4 or whatever the number is. Yeah, it’s not a huge thing.
Chris Schaeffer:
All right. I forget to label who’s supposed to read this next one, so I’m going to read it. It will be a new question for you. Hope you’re ready.
Chris Schaeffer:
[Rocca 00:22:38] from Bali, India. Rocca, I know that you had several other points in here, but we summarized it a bit because it has a point at the end. “Let’s say someone has spent 60% of their budget in the middle of the month, and after doing some math we find that they will be over their budget by the end of the month. Is it considered best practice to change, adjust the budget, while the campaign is still running?” So, this is essentially an add-on to the same question that we got previously from Bart. So, he’s asking, “What do you think about changing budgets in the middle of the month? Is it an issue? Is that best practice? Do you do that all the time?” I think it’s a pretty straightforward question.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah. The reason why you’re 60% of your budget in the middle of the month, the reason why you could be I guess 80% of your budget at only the middle of the month, is because Google reserves the right to go up to 200% over your daily budget on any given day, I think.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
If you set your budget at $10 a day, they reserve the right to spend up to $30 a day, 200%, on any given day. They might do that a few days in the first half of the month, overspend you; and then I believe what they tell you is, “Over the course of a month, we will meter you back down at some point. So, if we go over by 200% one day, later in the month on a random day we might go under,” by whatever they need to go under to stay within that monthly budget for the month. So, if you’re 60% into your budget halfway through the month, and you really do have your daily budget set correct to where you’re going to get what you expect over the course of 30 days, that 60% will meter itself back to the trendline, and by the end of the month you’ll spend what your designed monthly budget is. It might be off by 5-10%, given if you’re going for 30 days on average, but there’s 31 days that month or whatever, but it should sort itself out if you set that daily budget correct.
Jason Rothman:
But then again, is there anything wrong with changing or adjusting your budget while the campaign is running? That does not affect performance negatively at all. Chris, later in the month, say they’re halfway through the month, or 60% over budget, and they go, “Dang. You know what? We want to pull back a little,” yeah, they’re going to get less clicks, less conversions; but in terms of quality score and all that kind of stuff, you have the right to change your budget, change what your monthly budget will be, anytime you want throughout the month by changing your daily budget.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
I wouldn’t worry about changing that if you want to make a budget decision.
Chris Schaeffer:
I think the case you’re making for a rational person is entirely correct. I think if someone sees that, “We’re a little bit over. Let’s pull it back by 10%,” okay. But often what I see is I see people freak out and they say, “My budget just spent twice as much in the past two days,” so they think this is what it’s going to spend every day, so they’ll calculate how much they have left and they’ll pull it way back, they’ll pull it back 80%; and then it’ll stop running, basically, and they’ll have to adjust it again. If you get to this point, panicky, where you’re about to have a car wreck and you’re jerking the wheel all the way to left and then all the way to the right, that’s absolutely going to be a negative effect. So, that’s the only thing I would say: don’t overreact. The system with the budget is way better than it used to be years ago. This is actually part of the automation that I really like. I like the way that the budget evens out so much more over a month than it used to years ago.
Jason Rothman:
I’m just a little confused by these budget questions because, like you said earlier, just like you I don’t touch the daily budget unless there’s a budget decision and someone wants to spend more or less than we thought they wanted to; but if the plan is to spend $1000 for the month.
Chris Schaeffer:
33.
Jason Rothman:
Well, 30-whatever, 30.4 or whatever. But if you’re running business days, we just do an average of 20.
Chris Schaeffer:
Right.
Jason Rothman:
So, it depends on your schedule.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
But if we go, “Okay, on average we’re going to run 20 days,” 1000 divided by 20, $50 a day, we just leave it at $50; and if it spends $100 one day, and then the next day spends $20, we don’t react to that.
Chris Schaeffer:
No.
Jason Rothman:
Because we know over the course of a month it will spend what it’s supposed to spend, given all the other factors, like if there’s enough volume, and all that kind of stuff.
Jason Rothman:
Greg from Michigan. Short and sweet, “When you bid on a competitor’s brand terms, do you do anything to try to play on their name in your ad copy?
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, gosh. What a great question because I can’t think of a single instance when I would change my mind on this: the answer is no, do not, and I’ll briefly say the couple reasons why. Number one, lawsuits. Number two, lawsuits. Number three, misrepresentation lawsuit. Number four, angry phone call from business owner with lots of curse words. Don’t do it. Because I’ve had people call me that said, “Chris, we’re showing up; and because you used a DKI, dynamic keyword insertion, in your ad copy, it puts the competitor name in there, and we’re showing up,” and the guy called me and cursed me out because I’m blah-blah-blah, “because of your ad.” I’m like, “Oh, my gosh. You’re right. I’m sorry.” That was the one time I learned that lesson and I’ve never had to be taught that lesson again. So, short and sweet: absolutely do not. Thanks, Greg.
Chris Schaeffer:
Jason, do you disagree? Surely you don’t disagree with that?
Jason Rothman:
No. It’s just you’re so… I would never do that. I’d like to see someone throw some cash your way, Chris, and see. Maybe I’ll get one of those calls, “Hey, Jason. I’m considering this.” No, no. I’m just kidding, Chris. I believe you. I agree with you. Here’s my thing: you’re not allowed to use other people’s trademarks in the ad copy.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Google does not allow that, so they’ll block it if they catch it. Then, of course, if you do it you leave yourself… someone could go after you, a competitor for… you’re not supposed to use people’s trademarks. So, don’t touch the ad copy and don’t play games with it in terms of if someone has a catch phrase, don’t change that catch phrase around in the ad copy when you target their competitor keyword. Here’s the thing: you can target trademarks with keywords; that’s allowed. So, Nike can buy ads on Reebok searches; Reebok can buy ads on Nike searches. Let’s leave it at that, people. Do we really need to get more greedy than that? You’re allowed to target any keywords you want. Why would you want to make an enemy of someone and play games like this?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, that’s an excellent point. They can always do the same thing back to you, and what would you feel if they started adding ads that said, “We’re better than X,” in their ads, or something like that? I mean you would be upset if you did it to you, so I think that’s a great point. It can always be returned.
Jason Rothman:
Golden rule.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. All right. Next, we have an interesting question from Katie in Louisville, Kentucky, all the way from the United States.
Jason Rothman:
From where?
Chris Schaeffer:
Kentucky? You ever heard…
Jason Rothman:
What city?
Chris Schaeffer:
Louisville. Did I say it wrong? Did I say it like someone who’s never been to Louisville?
Jason Rothman:
I don’t know.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. Louisville.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah.
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s probably wrong. You’re just not going to tell me, and then you’ll tell me afterwards, but that’s fine.
Jason Rothman:
No, no. I mean you’re saying it with such confidence. Maybe it’s a city I haven’t heard of.
Chris Schaeffer:
Louisville. Okay. Now, I’m self-conscious and I hate you. “Hi, guys. I would love to get your thoughts on structuring ad groups within a campaign by top, middle, and bottle… top, middle… now I’m flustered. Top, middle and bottom of funnel feeds, and that’s a breakdown.
Chris Schaeffer:
You guys can’t see the question, but she very thoughtfully laid out top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, so I’m going to read each one of these. Top of funnel: keywords that would be triggered by informational searches, ad copy that is more general information, educational/informational landing page; that’s top of funnel. So, that’s people that are typically going to be less valuable to you as a business. Middle of funnel: keywords that go into a bit more product or service depth/specifics; ad copy that highlight specific features, price, quality, details, or competitive advantages; and a landing page with product or service information and conversion option. Then, bottom of funnel: keywords that would be triggered by high purchase intent; ad copies containing conversion CTAs, call to action; and then landing page with product or service conversion option. So, very well thought of, very well-written. Appreciate the question, Katie.
Chris Schaeffer:
Jason, your thoughts?
Jason Rothman:
Katie from Louisville, Kentucky, that’s a great question.
Chris Schaeffer:
Ah, I knew it! Continue.
Jason Rothman:
That’s a great question. So, Chris, I’m just going to briefly give my thoughts, and then I want to turn back the question to you because I have some questions for you about this. Katie, you have a great strategy; you’ve thought things out. Who am I to sit up here and say that it’s a bad idea? I’m not going to say that. I’m going to say it’s not something I would normally do for a few reasons. Number one, I would be worried about, “Okay, top of funnel, heating and air.” Maybe you target a keyword like, “My aid conditioner is out. How do you know if your air conditioner is out?” but then bottom of funnel, “Air conditioning services, Memphis.” What I would be worried about is those keywords. We could go on and one with examples, but my point is I’d be worried about keywords conflicting, and getting bottom of funnel traffic that actually comes from the top of funnel, and middle that came through the bottom. The keywords are just going to be so close because everything is about the same topic. Unless you’re doing real exact match, I’d be worried about that.
Jason Rothman:
The other reason I wouldn’t be a huge fan of this at the campaign level is the great Chris Schaeffer mindset of, “Don’t make things more complex than they have to be.” So, now you’re doing three campaigns instead of one, now you’ve got to do ad extensions for all three campaigns. Now, you’ve got to do negative keywords. Now, you’ve got to worry about the settings, and all that kind of stuff.
Chris Schaeffer:
She actually says, “Structuring ad groups within a campaign.” So, she’s actually suggesting all within one single campaign for this.
Jason Rothman:
Okay. Got you. I saw the words “campaign structure,” so that’s where I was going. If I was to go down this road, I would try it with ad groups, and maybe you can name your ad groups in a certain way where you could filter and get the data. If an ad group is HVAC Memphis, start the ad group name with “top of funnel,” if it’s a top of funnel word, or “bottom of funnel” if it’s a bottom of funnel ad group. But that said, Chris, the reason I’m not into this is because I do manual bids, and with manual bids I can control everything anyway. So, if we have an ad group like, “Air conditioning companies in Memphis,” and the ad group is, “Memphis air conditioning,” and all the air conditioning Memphis related keywords go in there: if I want to try top-of-funnel keywords, middle-of-funnel keywords, I’ll try them, and I’ll just lower the bids on them initially because I think they’re going to be less valuable, and I’ll review the data as it comes in and I’ll manage the bids manually.
Jason Rothman:
That’s where I’m at, so it’s not a good fit for me. But that said, Chris, she’s very thought out. It sounds like it can be a good strategy if you want to organize your own account this way. That’s the beautiful thing about Google Ads; different things work for different people. So, number one, do you agree with that, that it is something someone could try? Number two, can I just get your thoughts on top of funnel, middle of funnel, on search? Does that work?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Katie, that’s a good question. I feel like we could probably talk a whole episode about this kind of strategy.
Jason Rothman:
That’s what I’m thinking, dude.
Chris Schaeffer:
Because there’s so many things.
Jason Rothman:
The funnels. We could talk about the funnels, parts of the funnel, what to do.
Chris Schaeffer:
The main thing is we’re going to pick apart the negative stuff because there’s lots of good things that could happen, but nobody’s here to talk about all the amazing things that could happen because it may not happen to you. Let’s talk about the bad things that could happen.
Jason Rothman:
Next week. Katie, we’re going to do an episode on this next week. Coming up next week, we’re going to talk about funnels.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay, done. Jason, I think you’re completely right. The fact that some searches will be caught be each of these top of funnel, middle of funnel, top of funnel, you will not have a clean system. If you were to look through all of your top-of-funnel stuff, you will still get some stuff that should be middle of funnel. I’d say middle of funnel is very difficult to define because top of funnel is obvious. Middle of funnel and bottom of funnel is usually hard to define, and it’s hard to know, “Is this appropriate?” So, I’d say a lot of the time it’s going to be really difficult. So, the permeation between the searches from top, middle, to bottom is going to just be all over the place; and in order to do that you would have to, what Jason says, use exact match, and that brings me to my third point: if you do this with exact match and you start having tons of keywords and all kinds of stuff like this, this better be a campaign that’s worth your time and investment to do something like this.
Jason Rothman:
In-house employee.
Chris Schaeffer:
In-house employee. They’re spending $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 a month. There’s going to be some value in doing this because you’re going to have the data to see it. But you know what you’re going to get? You’re going to get a lot of low-search volume terms. You’re going to get a lot of keywords that get one click a week. Then, what are you doing? Because then at that point it’s like, “Is it worth all the effort here?” So, I’d say I like it, and I think we’re going to talk more about it, but in the end-
Jason Rothman:
I like the way she’s thinking.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, I do. I like it. As Jason said, I think we’re going to bring it up for a whole new topic. So, thanks for writing our content for us.
Jason Rothman:
Derek from Spokane, Washington. Anytime we talk about Washington State, we’ve got to talk about my best friend growing up, Yannick. Those people in Washington where he went to college, they stole him from me. Now, he’s all about that life up there, and I miss him so much. I miss him. We still text each other happy birthday.
Chris Schaeffer:
Really? Wow.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah.
Chris Schaeffer:
I remember that.
Jason Rothman:
I miss him, man.
Chris Schaeffer:
That’s a story from years ago. Still hurts, I can tell.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah. But anyway, Derek if from that area, from Spokane. So, “Trying a campaign using manual testing, some of the things I’m learning from your YouTube videos.” Thank you, Derek. “My question is: while editing the max cost-per-click for single keyword that is modified broad match,” whereas everyone else on the planet calls it broad-match modify.
Chris Schaeffer:
That was a low blow.
Jason Rothman:
Salty. Salty today. Sorry, Derek. “The on-the-first-page of search results amount is $1.79; however, the average CPC is $11.68. Please explain why this is, and what would be the best actions to take for making those adjustments. This campaign recently went to manual.” So, Chris, first explain to everyone what he’s talking about because it’s in our head, but I don’t think a lot of people know, and then explain how to handle this discrepancy.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. What poor Derek is referring to, and he’s at a loss about the discrepancy between these two numbers, is he’s looking at the estimated on-first-page bid number that Google gives. There’s some columns on there, there’s some other ways to get this estimate; but you can see, if you put a keyword in and give it a 1 cent bid, so that Google has… it’s basically got to go up from there, it’ll tell you, “Estimated first page bid is X,” and what he’s seen is he’s seen $1.79, and then his average CPC is $11.68. So, it’s going from $2 all the way up to $12, so a huge discrepancy. So, that’s why he’s asking a question like, “What does this mean? Why is that?” So, let me explain where each of these numbers come from.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, on the first page bid search result number, essentially is an estimate of what your lowest hanging fruit in order to show up on the first page; let me define what that means. You’re showing up on a search that qualifies as the best quality score that you can possibly get; it’s in a geographic area that works well for your page; you have a good landing page score for this person that’s loading the page fast. Everything falls into place and you show up in sixth position because you’re still on the first page, you have a 10/10 quality score for that one search, and all the stars align and it’s beautiful. Look at that, you got onto that position for $1.79. Okay? Congrats. That registers for about 1% of your searches. The other 99% are going to be higher because that’s the lowest hanging fruit; from there, it goes up.
Chris Schaeffer:
Now, we talk about a situation that you’re usually going to get. There’s going to be a lot of other competitors. You’re not going to have a 10/10 quality score, so you’re going to have to make up for it with bids, and now you’re paying $6, $12 for this, and you’re showing up in second position, maybe still sixth position. The thing is these numbers are dynamic; they change all the time; they are never standard. Your quality score changes, the number of competitors, changes. One person does a search in a certain area, another person does a search, and you can get different bid numbers because each search qualification, the quality score for that, is different.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, that’s the answer. It’s not that you need to take action on it. You’re asking, “What do I need to do to make adjustments?” Don’t make adjustments based on that number. You’re not doing it wrong. That estimated number is like basically saying, “How do I get my society into a beautiful unification where everyone just shares and eats flowers all day?” That’s not the standard. The standard is what your CPC is; that’s real world. There you go. That’s it. I’m done.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, I’m going to say I’m sorry. I’m going to apologize.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh.
Jason Rothman:
Don’t worry. What happened earlier in the show, I’m going to edit out completely. I’m going to have Rachel edit it out. We’re going to edit it out of the video.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, no.
Jason Rothman:
I’m sorry I yelled. I’m sorry I got angry. I do somewhat think I was justified, but at the same time I took it too far, and it’s just tough. I was up all night. Everyone on Paid Search knows I bought a yacht, but I bought a fraction of it. I bought a fraction of a yacht in France. I bough partial ownership. I wired the money and they’re not picking up my calls.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, my gosh.
Jason Rothman:
So, I was up all night dealing with that. There’s no excuses for what I said and did, but there’s a reason. So, I’m going to let you know we’re going to edit it out, and I apologize to you, man to man, husband to wife.
Chris Schaeffer:
Thank you for being the stronger woman in the relationship.
Jason Rothman:
The husband. Whatever. Someone called us husband and wife before.
Chris Schaeffer:
Jason, let’s take a break and let’s just bask in our God-like situation because Brian from… Jason, say that city name for me. I know you can see it. It’s right there. Say it out loud.
Jason Rothman:
Okay. It’s ironic. Louisville. This one actually is Louisville. Of course it’s not because Louisville doesn’t exist.
Chris Schaeffer:
It doesn’t exist. You know which one it is.
Jason Rothman:
Do you accept my apology?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. It’s great. I don’t hold grudges, so I don’t care. I didn’t even need it. I’ve already forgotten it.
Jason Rothman:
Wow. What a man. You’re a great guy. I just look up to you, Chris.
Jason Rothman:
All right. Temecula, the home of Dan Henderson.
Chris Schaeffer:
How do you know this? How do you know these things? I guess I don’t travel.
Jason Rothman:
Because he’s a legend. Do you know who he is, Dan Henderson?
Chris Schaeffer:
No, I have no idea who he is.
Jason Rothman:
He won the Pride, and then he came over to the UFC and did great. Then, they fought [inaudible 00:42:52] UFC ’82. It’s a great fight, but then he got chocked-out on the second round.
Chris Schaeffer:
You’re referring to sports and things. Okay.
Jason Rothman:
Dan Henderson puts Temecula, California, on the map. That’s where he was always from and fighting out of Temecula.
Chris Schaeffer:
Byron, from Temecula, California.
Jason Rothman:
[inaudible 00:43:07], Temecula.
Chris Schaeffer:
I’m just going read this, and then we’re going to move on, and you can ask your next-
Jason Rothman:
Byron.
Chris Schaeffer:
Byron. “No question. Just wanted to give you guys a huge thumbs up. I generally don’t listen to podcasts, especially not SEM/PPC podcasts because I find them boring in clinging to methods that are suspect at best,” he says. “You guys, however, are great to listen to. I was Google trained and have worked agency side, company side, as a freelancer, and on every size and type of vertical you can imagine for the past seven years. It’s awesome to hear two successful guys say the same things I’ve been saying forever. The truth about Scaggs episode was particularly heartwarming.” Heartwarming. I love that. Heartwarming. “I’ve dismissed Scaggs as garbage from day one and passed on clients and even job opportunities because they were adamant about using them. Anyway, I digress. Just wanted to give you guys a nod of respect for being QAF, quality as freak. Thanks, Byron.” Byron. I don’t know how to say it.
Jason Rothman:
Byron.
Chris Schaeffer:
My Texas tongue cannot say that name. Thank you, Mr. B. So, next.
Jason Rothman:
Mr. B, thanks for that comment. Thanks for taking the time.
Chris Schaeffer:
I love that. Jason and I saw that come in and we’ve been sitting on that question for a while. You obviously didn’t ask a question, but we just loved it, and we thought that was just a great compliment, especially from someone who’s obviously been in the industry for a while. It’s just nice to hear it. Because we do get some hate. We could show you some interesting YouTube comments.
Chris Schaeffer:
All right, Jason. Go ahead.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah. It’s not so much hate as much as sometimes we get some weird, I’ll just say, sexual comments that we don’t know how to respond to.
Chris Schaeffer:
We don’t respond to it.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah. We don’t respond to those.
Jason Rothman:
[Dare 00:45:05] from Galway, Ireland, “Love the podcast. Just wondering, what do you guys recommend for language settings on search campaigns as the best to go with? I feel like I could be missing out on a considerable percentage of searches. I’m concerned that our ads could show up for non-English language searches through close variants. Is this possible?” He, of course, is targeting some Mainland Europe with his campaign, so he’s wondering if he should just target English if the business speaks only English, or should you target other searches? Very, very interested in our answer here, Chris, because I have a very honest answer and I don’t know if it’s right, but I do it. So, I’d love to know what you think.
Chris Schaeffer:
This is a tough one because it’s one of those settings you don’t get metrics on, right? There’s not many settings in Google Ads that you essentially just blindly-
Jason Rothman:
Hold on, Chris. I’ll tell you what’s right. No, actually we don’t get it on this one. We should get it; it would be great.
Chris Schaeffer:
The thing is this is such a huge high-level setting change that I’m not even sure experiments would answer for you. Because if you’re changing something… which for those who don’t know, when you change the language setting it’s not what they search; it’s not because they searched in English. Google doesn’t care how you search.
Jason Rothman:
That’s a keyword.
Chris Schaeffer:
Right. That’s keyword stuff. This is stuff where your browser setting… when you installed your browser and you hit English, and you hit “accept user agreement,” that’s what it’s looking at. Your initial English, French, Spanish language setting. Even if you’re searching in English, you could still not see an ad that’s only targeting English speakers, if your browser is set to French as the default language. In the end, I often change to All Languages if I have a campaign that has plenty of budget. But if I have a campaign that I’m really restricted, I’m having an issue with budget or I really need to pull back on some things, I’ll change it to English. I approach it very broadly. I honestly have no data one way or another. I know people outside of the podcast that we talk to do the same thing where they just, “I use it as a… if I need more, I change it. If I don’t want more, I change it the other way.”
Chris Schaeffer:
So, what do you think?
Jason Rothman:
Chris, this is… we’re two eggs from the same carton.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. Peas in a pod is usually what people say, but okay.
Jason Rothman:
“Louisville” is usually what people say. Don’t play that game with me.
Chris Schaeffer:
Nice.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, it’s very interesting because we have some differences in different areas; but when it comes to Google Ads, we do a lot of things similar, even if we never talk about it before, so I’m the exact same way. If we’re running $1000 a month campaign, we set that sucker as English and we don’t even think about it because we’re limited in budget and we’re not trying to spend more and more and grow the campaign; but if it’s a large campaign and there wants to be continual growth, just like you I open it up for all languages because, just like you, I’ve read that it’s based on browser settings, not the searches.
Jason Rothman:
So, if someone has their browser setting in a city like San Antonio, a very Hispanic city, a lot of people speaking Spanish primarily in the home and stuff, maybe they set their browser to Spanish because they want to read things in Spanish and all that; but then when they’re looking for a moving company or whatever, they know that when they interact with businesses in San Antonio most of the time they speak English, so maybe they’re using their Spanish browser setting, and then type in a word like “movers in San Antonio,” and then when they call that business they speak in English: I don’t want to miss that search. But again, just like you, it’s not really a big thing I focus on unless the goal is to spend more and more, and grow the campaign as big as possible, or if it’s just a large campaign in general. I don’t know if we feel comfortable recommending it, but we’re both saying, “Hey, we just set it to all languages, look at the search terms that come in, and judge the quality based on that and based on the cost-per-conversion.”
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. All right. So, we have a couple more questions. We’re pushing into an hour here. I appreciate you guys sticking around. We have fun answering these; that’s why we always go long. So, before I get into this question-
Jason Rothman:
I love these episodes.
Chris Schaeffer:
They’re fun. They’re so much more casual, and we can just run with it, obviously. So, before I do that, I want to mention, get this before we hit the hour mark, because we are contractually obligated to tell you guys about Opteo.com/psp. But you know what? It’s not because of contracts; it’s because I want to tell you about this great tool that I use. I’m here to help you guys out. Opteo.com/psp. You can get a six-week extended trial. Chat them and say, “Hey, can I get an extra two weeks because I listened to the Paid Search Podcast?” and they’ll give it to you. Try it out. See if you like it. You know what they do. I talked about it the first of the show. We thank them for their sponsorship.
Jason Rothman:
By the way, Chris. Going from the four-week trial to the six-week, if you’re listening to the PSP, that’s a great thing because you can do over a full month cycle with a campaign.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, that’s true.
Jason Rothman:
Or with multiple campaigns, and see how it impacts your management performance and efficiency.
Chris Schaeffer:
Excellent point.
Jason Rothman:
So, try it out for six weeks. We also want to thank Directive Consulting. If you’re a listener out there who works with a large B2B campaign or a large enterprise campaign and you’re looking for an agency that gets it, that has great communication, that has great accountability, that wants to hear about your goals, and then reach those goals by getting you the most quality leads possible and scaling, we recommend Directive Consulting. Go to their website, DirectiveConsulting.com, look at some of the enterprise large companies they’ve worked with, look at their case studies. They do it all: pay per click, SEO, conversion rate, landing pages, content, digital PR, analytics, social media. They look for what works best. They’re able to attack the whole online marketing interface and figure out what’s going to work best for you, and then scale once you figure it out with them. Great case studies. They work for great clients. Check out their website and get a free custom proposal at DirectiveConsulting.com.
Chris Schaeffer:
All right. Ana from Kansas City, Missouri. I assume you don’t pronounce it “Kansass Cita from Missouri,” or whatever.
Jason Rothman:
I assume you don’t pronounce it “Ana” either.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, come on.
Jason Rothman:
Anna.
Chris Schaeffer:
No.
Jason Rothman:
Was that a joke? I just don’t know with you.
Chris Schaeffer:
Ana. Anna. Is it Anna? I don’t know. I don’t care. “One of my clients, a pest control company, services the majority of a state, so we have campaigns broken out bya major market and where they have offices. To make sure the campaigns don’t overlap”… uh-oh, here we go… “we have a pretty precise location targeting applied, but also exclude specific location targeting for other campaigns. The main concern is that without the specific location targeting, one campaign could acquire a lead that really should have been attributed to another campaign. I’m sure there are negative impacts.” She said it right there, “I’m sure there are negative impacts on the exclusions in targeting, but do they outweigh the positive?” Great question. Because you know we’re going to dig into the negative stuff. So, the question we should answer is: do they outweigh the positive?
Jason Rothman:
I guess, Chris, what’s the positive? The positive is knowing which location, which campaigns are bringing in the leads, which areas?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I guess the integrity of the conversion tracking assuming… that must be really important.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah. We can’t put a threshold on how much that matters to you.
Chris Schaeffer:
Or the client.
Jason Rothman:
We know how much it matters to you, and then so… yeah, or the client. So, what’s the downside, in terms of knowing what the downside is, so you can weigh it against the upside of having that great tracking? I’m going to try to think through this, Chris, but my main concern would be if someone in… okay, we’ll do St. Paul in Minneapolis; everyone knows those are right next to each other. If someone in St. Paul is searching for a Minneapolis plumber because they live in Minneapolis, but commute to St. Paul to work during the day, I don’t want to block from showing up in St. Paul. So, I think what it has to do, Chris, is your advanced location settings. So, on target you’re probably going to target people in or regularly in your targeted location; in this case, that would be people in or regularly in Minneapolis; and then in the St. Paul campaign, people in or regularly in the St. Paul area in that campaign; that’s as locked-down as you can get, that advanced setting.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, help me out here because there’s a lot to think about. I mean I’m a little nervous. I don’t think it would be a huge problem because people are in Minneapolis, you’re targeting them; people are in St. Paul, and you’re targeting them, but with excluded-
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. It’s never that straightforward. I think what Jason’s brain is cranking through here is the fact that it’s not as straightforward. Because if you knew all the aspect of what determines location setting, it’s not just your IP address. It’s also based on what you’re searching about.
Jason Rothman:
Phone towers. I have no idea. It’s like Google says it’s people here, but what is… Yeah.
Chris Schaeffer:
And in the end, I would say it would have to be the client’s number one priority; like they would literally fire you and hire someone else, even if you’re getting great results, if you were not keeping the integrity completely separate. In the end, I wouldn’t tell them. I might get fired from clients that hear… if clients listen to this, they might fire me if they hear me say this, but I might not put exclusions on my campaigns. I might target everything, but I would leave-off the exclusions because the targeting doesn’t bother me; it’s the exclusion part that scares me.
Jason Rothman:
Exactly.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, I would show them and say, “Hey, here’s your campaign. Look, we’re targeting these zips, these counties, and this one is targeting this,” and I just don’t mention that I don’t have any exclusions because exclusions is when you could potentially get a click, but it’s showing up in the wrong area, but they’re searching in this area, and then it doesn’t overlap and you get no impression, and you lost the click.
Jason Rothman:
I got some clarity on what I was having an issue with. If you target the area around Minneapolis… the zip codes, the City of Minneapolis, whatever… and then in another campaign you target the zip code for the city or whatever of St. Paul, and there’s no overlap and you don’t have to do exclusions, that’s fine. That’s like essentially targeting LA and New York; you’re targeting two different places. But the problem is if you only target the little City of Minneapolis, the city limits, you’re not targeting a 20 mile radius around Minneapolis, if you want the whole city. So, if you do a 20 mile radius of Minneapolis, then that’s probably going to pick up St. Paul, so then you have to exclude St. Paul from the Minneapolis 20 mile radius campaign, and that’s where you’re getting into screwing things up with the exclusions and all that.
Jason Rothman:
You can try it, see how it works out. But if it did become a problem, what you can do is you can target a 20 mile radius around Minneapolis. It can pick up St. Paul. It can pick up other suburbs; that’s okay. Go to your locations, click on geographic report, click on user location report, click on United States, select view, look at your city list, and that will tell you the cities the people were in when they clicked on your ad. You’re targeting a 20 miles radius around Minneapolis, but it’ll tell you whether they were in Minneapolis or St. Paul, and then you can get conversion data and you can say, “Hey, this is our geo report. Is there something wrong with that?”
Chris Schaeffer:
I’ve had clients like this. The problem is they probably need to see a specific phone number or go to a specific page. It’s because this so-and-so franchise is paying for this area; and if so-and-so franchise gets a lead from someone else, they’re stepping one someone else’s toes. So, it’s probably not about the reporting; it’s about the phone number.
Jason Rothman:
Then it’s like buying a house. We want a big back yard, but we also want this much square footage, but we want a new kitchen.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
But we want a remodeled bathroom. It’s like you’ve got to give up sometimes if you want to have this nice… People are in St. Paul, they see the St. Paul phone number, St. Paul page, whatever; there’s a little give and take. But definitely when you’re excluding areas that are within the targeting of another campaign, that’s where you might run into some funny stuff. Maybe you get great cost-per-conversions in both campaigns and it’s not a problem, but just be aware that could be causing issues. Is that fair to say, Chris?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I tell you, people like our show because we’re honest, and I’ll tell you this: maybe someone will snip this out of our YouTube video and play it and say, “Can you believe he said this?”
Jason Rothman:
“Can you believe he said he doesn’t know?”
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. So, here’s the thing I’m going to say that’s controversial: if anyone says that they’re doing this and it’s absolutely clean and perfect and works every time, they’re lying. There’s no way. Take it. You can be mad at me. If you say, “We’re doing it and it works perfect,” no you’re not, and you’re not looking at it close enough. So, I’ll say that.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah. Just from our background, I think you and I are always nervous about cookie-cutting locations up [crosstalk 00:58:45].
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
I think we’ve just had some bad experiences where someone wants to target two little zip codes in one campaign; we just know people are going to be in that area missing out, and we’re not going to be running as optimally as we could. So, we’re always hesitant, but then again you’ve got to send people to different pages; if you’ve got to do stuff like that, you’ve got to do it. So, it’s just give and take, and you definitely want to review your options.
Jason Rothman:
So, Chris, here we go. Helen from the UK, “My question is about podcasts. Would you recommend running PPC campaigns for a new podcast that’s launching, or do you feel this isn’t the best route to go with other marketing channels instead, such as email? Would there be a better way to promote it?” Chris, you’re going to love my answer. Helen, check the show notes. We wrote an article… and by “we” I mean I wrote it and then I gave Chris, both of us, the [inaudible 00:59:33]. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that accurate?
Chris Schaeffer:
That’s absolutely accurate. I looked at that article and I was like, “Oh, my name’s on this. I didn’t write this.”
Jason Rothman:
It’s from a few years ago. But, Helen, I guess I would say, yes. Obviously, marketing a podcast and other channels, there’s tons of great ways to market a podcast, Chris and I are always trying to figure that out, but we do think there is room for Google Ads when you’re marketing a podcast. Check out the article we wrote, we’ll link to it in the show notes, and it’s specifically about how to use Google Ads to promote a podcast, so check out that link. And for anyone listening that can’t see the show notes, just Google “super charge your podcast growth by using Google AdWords, Jason Rothman and Chris Shaeffer, Paid Search Podcast.” It’s on Buzzsprout.com. You’ll love it.
Chris Schaeffer:
There you go. All right.
Chris Schaeffer:
Last question before we jump to Patreon. Jordan, from Patreon, which honorary last spot, this is a special spot, post-one-hour spot. Jordan from Patreon says, “Let’s say you’re serving a client who offers only one service. Do you find that sometimes the keywords may be so specific that you’re looking at 20 or less keywords and pumping a lot of negatives to compensate?” So, I assume what he’s saying there is he has 20 or so less keywords, so he’s saying a very few number of keywords, but they’re all broad-match and wide-reaching, hot funnel.
Jason Rothman:
Or frayed, yeah.
Chris Schaeffer:
Stuff like that.
Jason Rothman:
Okay.
Chris Schaeffer:
He can’t seem to find specifics. He can’t seem to find exact matches because they’re all super long one-time search, kind of thing. One impression, one click kind of stuff.
Jason Rothman:
Wow. Okay.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, the only way he can find them is with broad-match stuff. I think that’s what he’s saying. “So, is this a viable strategy? It feels as though this shouldn’t work with so few keywords, as if it’s too easy,” He’s worried about there has to be more to this. “Am I not fully optimized if I approach it this way?” I think that’s a great question. It’s a super high-level kind of question because he’s saying, “The only way I can get the clicks that I want is if I approach it with a broad reach and then block all the junk I don’t want,” and I’ll give a quick answer. Jordan, I do this all the time with stuff that just doesn’t fit into a box of searches, stuff that’s like B2B complex kind of thing that’s difficult to know exactly how people are searching, and I just throw like a two… I’ll even throw pure broad out there and just say, “Maybe it’ll help,” and then I’ll start blocking stuff. So, my thought is absolutely it does work that way, but it just doesn’t stay that way. You should eventually start pulling in a few more targeted things, you should learn a few things, but it’s absolutely viable. It happens. I’ve done it plenty.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, you mentioned personal training. So, I’m assuming it’s some kind of very specific personal training, and the problem is if you type in… Say it’s personal training for senior citizen, what are those keywords?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Right.
Jason Rothman:
What are people searching for, and how do you know that they’re senior citizens? So, yes, you can do the age demographic thing and all that kind of stuff, but how do you actually find those keywords? The problem is if you just go into the account and start typing keywords, you’re going to get marked with that low search volume thing, and Google is going to say, “Well, this super long-tail phrase keyword you did is searched for so little that we’re not going to even allow our system to be taxed by it and target it because it’s searched for so little,” one out of every five years, whatever, “We’re not going to put that in our system and tax our system. So, we’re not going to target that keyword. Sorry. Unless it starts to get searched for more.”
Jason Rothman:
So, I think what he’s maybe doing is he’s adding personal trainers, personal training phrase match, and then getting a ton of stuff that comes in, having to add all these negatives. So, yes, you’re going to have to add the negatives. But like Chris says, when you see something with your topic… in this case in my example, senior citizens… come through that search terms report, jump on that. Take that search term, cut it up, target it different ways, target that search term, broad-match modified, target that search term phrase match, and think about other ways people would search based on that search term.
Jason Rothman:
Another strategy: go to Google, say it’s senior citizens, how do we know what people search for that with personal training? I Google, “Personal trainers senior citizens.” What’s really cool is if you scroll down to the bottom of Google and you look at “searches related to,” and then it puts in what my keyword was, “personal trainer senior citizens,” it gives me ideas. Now, I find an idea, Chris, “Personal trainer for 50-plus.”
Chris Schaeffer:
Ooh.
Jason Rothman:
So, now I can go into my account and I can do phrase match and broad-match modified… and exact, if you want… personal trainer for 50-plus, for 60-plus, for 65-plus, for 70-pus, for 80-plus.
Chris Schaeffer:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Jason Rothman:
“Personal trainer for 70,” phrase match. “Personal trainer 70,” broad-match modified. “Personal trainer years old,” broad-match modified. So, searching Google, looking at the related searches, that’s how you can get some ideas, and there you go.
Chris Schaeffer:
There you go. All right. Well, we’re going to jump into a special question from Jessica from Lincoln, Nebraska, who has sent a question before, and she has a very interesting one about client issues. So, if you are a freelancer, a manger, an agency kind of person, join us there and you can hear the answer to this super interesting question. But in the meantime, thanks for listening here. Leave a Like. Leave a comment. Leave a five star. Subscribe. You know what to do.
Chris Schaeffer:
You’re welcome. We’ll catch you next time.
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