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Show Notes
This week we’re continuing our month-long series on running a PPC agency. This week’s episode is on the 3 step process we use to turn PPC leads into actual clients. It’s a great system for making the most of the leads that come in, and we hope you enjoy the episode!
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Transcript
Jason Rothman:
Hey everybody. Yes. Welcome back to the Paid Search Podcast. My name is Jason Rothman. As always, I’m joined by the great Chris Schaeffer. Chris, it’s a very special day for you. We’ve already talked about that off air, but just know that I know about what’s going on with you. Besides all of that, how are you doing? Are you having your cake and eating it too today?
Chris Schaeffer:
I haven’t had any cake. It’s my cake day, by the way, if anyone’s wondering, birthday. Thank you, Jason. It’s amazing that you… Thanks for noticing. It’s-
Jason Rothman:
I just knew. Yeah, I just knew.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, you just knew automatically that it’s my birthday. So, yeah, thanks. I’m not a millennial, so of course, I work hard on my birthday. I work hard on every day, and that’s the way it goes. So, happy to talk about today’s podcast.
Jason Rothman:
I think that’s what we should do. We should get into the podcast. I just want to preview the episode real quick, and then we’ll read a review. We’re in December. We’re doing the Agency Series. This is episode number two out of the four Agency Series, and this one’s very, very important. Last week, we talked about systems, but if you don’t have clients, who cares if you don’t need systems? You have to have clients, and what we focus on most of the time, Chris, is marketing. We focus on marketing, getting leads, and that’s what we do in our own businesses, trying to get PPC clients.
Jason Rothman:
But once you get the leads in, if you don’t close them, you’re nothing. You don’t have an agency. So, you have to close clients. There is a very large sales component to running a PPC agency. What we’ve done is we’ve looked at what we’ve done. We sat around, and we said, “Why do we have clients? Why when people contact us are we able to sign them up as clients at a high rate?” We broke it down to three things, a three-step process, and we will get into that process.
Jason Rothman:
But first, Chris, I want to thank WordStream. WordStream is the reason we’re doing this series here in December, and I want to tell everyone about WordStream Advisor for Agencies. You can go to wordstream.com/paidsearchpodcast. Learn about WordStream Advisor for Agencies and get a free 14-day extended trial that they’re offering to listeners of the Paid Search Podcast.
Jason Rothman:
What we’re talking about today is the importance and also how to do it, how to turn leads and prospects that your agency gets into actual signed up customers of your business, clients of your agency, and it’s super important. Yes, it’s important to know how to get leads. We’re marketers. We get leads. But if you can’t turn those leads into actual customers, if you can’t do sales and win their business, then you don’t have an agency because to have an agency, you have to have clients. To get clients, you have to be able to sell and turn prospects into actual signed-up clients.
Jason Rothman:
So, the way I do that is with WordStream Advisor for Agencies. WordStream is an award-winning PPC software. They’ve analyzed over $1.5 billion of advertising spend. They’re a Facebook marketing partner, a Google Premier Partner, a Microsoft Bing advertising partner, and week-to-week, we use WordStream Advisor for Agencies to do a ton of great things including very efficiently manage Google Ads and Bing accounts in the same place in one platform and then also we’re able to run automated reports weekly and monthly that we send out to clients to show them the data that they want to see.
Jason Rothman:
But when it comes to selling and turning prospects and leads into actual signed up clients, I use WordStream to do two things, run audits and send out proposals to prospective clients. These two tools and the WordStream Advisor for Agency software have been game changers for my business. These used to be the biggest pain points in my business. Running audits, sending out proposals, it used to be super frustrating, super time-consuming, and each prospect was different, and it took a ton of time, and just to be honest, it was really extremely frustrating, and it was probably the biggest hole in my game in terms of running an agency.
Jason Rothman:
But WordStream Advisor for Agencies has helped me plug that hole and fixed that problem, and now, what I’m able to do is I get access to a client’s account. I click the audit button in the WordStream software, and instantly, I’m able to generate a beautiful audit report for the prospect and turn them into a client and show them what they’re doing right, show them what they’re doing wrong and then tell them how we can help them going forward. Then when it comes to proposals, they have such a cool proposal generator tool inside WordStream Advisor for Agencies.
Jason Rothman:
When you get a prospect, you’re able to punch in information about their business, some sample keywords, where your ads are going to run, and then you just click a button, and instantly, you’ve generated a beautiful proposal with multiple budget options where you can show them, “Hey, for this budget, you get this many clicks, impressions, conversion. For these other budgets, you’ll get this much more, and I’m able to show clients what they can expect when they start working with me, and that’s helped my close rate, and then most importantly, I think it’s just got me motivated to sell.”
Jason Rothman:
The pain points of audits and proposals are gone. I’m more motivated to sell, and that’s had me engaging more leads, engaging more prospects, sending them these proposals and getting them signed up as new clients. It’s been a great month for me. I have three builds scheduled for next week, and I really think the reason why things have picked up is because I’m motivated to so because I’ve removed the pain points of audits and proposals because I’m basically able to do them within just minutes inside WordStream Advisor for Agencies.
Jason Rothman:
So, this tool, WordStream Advisor for Agencies, it’s really helped my agency grow. I recommend you guys check it out. Wordstream.com/paidsearchpodcast. They’re offering a free extended 14-day trial to listeners of our podcast. Go to wordstream.com/paidsearchpodcast. You can sign up instantly, and we recommend you guys check it out.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay, all right. Thanks, Jason. Appreciate that. Jason, do we have a review of the week to read? I do love to hear from people around the United States, around the world. It’s pretty cool. What do we have?
Jason Rothman:
Thanks, Chris, and you’re the fan interaction guy on Twitter and when people send in questions on the website. So, we all know Chris puts a lot into that, and he really appreciates when he hears from you guys. So, this week’s five-star review on Apple Podcast comes from Cyril, and he’s from Great Britain, and he says, “Solid PPC entertainment for all the family. Yes, yes, yes. Thanks to Jason for all the effort and hard work he brings week on week to make this podcast what it is.”
Chris Schaeffer:
What?
Jason Rothman:
“Co-host Chris only brings a good bookshelf to the game when I bothered to watch him on YouTube. Would be good to see him more in the forum since starting my training in PPC this has been the one and only podcast I’ve listened to. A good mix of practical and smart solutions from both with the added sprinkle of genius from Jason.”
Chris Schaeffer:
What?
Jason Rothman:
“Top work.” So, Chris, you love the fans, and the fans love, so I thought-
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, yeah.
Jason Rothman:
… that would be a good review.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, that’s a great… I’m glad my audio podcast can provide a great bookshelf. That’s what I bring to my audio podcast. That’s great. Thanks so much.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, are you able to handle… I mean, it was from Great Britain, so I don’t know if there was some kind of dark humor, irony coming from Cyril about his thoughts on you, but I didn’t know if I was going to read that. But are you able to handle that okay? Are you okay?
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, Jason, you know me. I’m like a finely waxed car. Things just roll right off. You pour little water on there. But for the first time in my life, I’m highly offended and extremely angry about what he said, and I don’t know if I’m going to be back next week. So, why don’t you just take it from here?
Jason Rothman:
All right, Chris. Well, yeah, we’re about to get into it. Just to let everyone know, the things the Paid Search Podcast is doing overall. Questions for the show, we do Q&A episodes from time to time. You can send them in at paidsearchpodcast.com. We have the first 100 episodes available for sale for a just small amount on our website. Paidsearchpodcast.com/archive, and then of course, the most recent 81 are out there in the feed, forum.paidsearchpodcast.com. We invite you to join. Talk Google Ads and pay-per-click with other professionals and ask your questions on there and stuff like that.
Jason Rothman:
So, thank you for helping us grow the show everybody, and we’re back in our Agency Series for the month of December presented by WordStream, and this week, we are talking about the three-step process for winning over perspective PPC clients, and Chris, I guess we’re going to get into our three steps, and then we’re just going to have a conversation.
Jason Rothman:
But from my point of view, man, I don’t like sales that much. I really don’t. I like marketing. That’s why I do marketing for a living. I like getting in front of the right people and being so good at marketing that you don’t have to be the best at sales, but at the same time, as I said in a YouTube video this week, and people didn’t like me saying it. They’re like, “You shouldn’t say that,” but I’m like, “I’ve just got to be honest with people.” I’m addicted to money. So, if you want money, and you want clients, you got to be good at sales.
Jason Rothman:
Just looking at what we both do, it’s a three-step process, so why don’t you just preview the three steps, and I’d like to get your overall thoughts, and then we’ll jump into step number one?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Well, Jason, you’re right. Whenever I think about sales and I think about marketing, I imagine when you were a kid, you get a package in the mail, and it would have all those styrofoam peanuts or something in it, something horrible for the environment back in the ’80s, ’90s, which was great because they were so much fun to play with. I think about when I get a lead, it’s like taking a whole handful of those packaging peanuts and throwing them in the air, and every time I get a new lead, I’m like, “Yay,” and it’s fun.
Chris Schaeffer:
Then when I look at my inbox, and I think, “Oh, look at all these leads I have.” Now, it’s like I’m staring at these packing peanuts on the ground, and I think, “Well, crap. Now, I need to clean this mess up. Now, I need to take action on all of the wins that I’ve had because now, I need to take responsibility for the marketing that I put out,” so it’s a deal to be able to handle it. So, there’s three steps. Now, I think nobody’s going to be surprised by these three steps. They’re very common, but I think what they’re going to be surprised about is how we address them in our key points of how we do this part of the winning process for the interested prospect.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, number one, phone call, right? 90% of the time, there’s going to be a first phone call, and that’s the way just about everything goes. There’s going to be a discussion. Number two, there’s going to be an audit or a discussion of what the problems are, what the actual account, Google Ads account, and then number three, we’re going to have to lay out a proposal of what we’re going to do about the problems that we have, the KPIs that are being hit, the metrics that need to be improved, and that proposal is going to need to be very decisive and specific and have goals in mind.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, that’s it. One, two, three. First call, audit, proposal, and then we move on from there. That’s the three-step process. Let’s dig in. I know, Jason, you’ve had plenty of experiences with calls, me too, in the many years that we’ve done this, and I think it’s really cool that we can talk about this as completely separate entities because if we don’t work together-
Jason Rothman:
We might have disagreements.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah, we might have disagreements.
Chris Schaeffer:
My process is not necessarily going to be the same way your process is. So, what I think is unique about this is instead of hearing some guy just yap on about this is the way to do it, we could have completely different perspectives, and I’m pretty sure we will because we don’t iron out our processes together. We’ve decided on these separately.
Jason Rothman:
Right. So, last week, I talked about the onboarding form, and what that does for me is it helps the client qualify themselves to my business, and I know basically where they want to advertise, what they’re thinking in terms of budget, what topics they want to target, what their goals are with Google Ads, and then also what their questions are. So, I take care of that with the onboarding form, and then we get to the phone call, and that’s the first kind of voice of voice, and then if you meet someone, face-to-face interaction with the client.
Jason Rothman:
I’ve already told them through email exchanges and through just content out there what we do for them, what the service is, Google Ads management, trying to get them leads, tracking everything and stuff like that. So, they know what I do. I know what they want. I know what questions they have, and the calls end up being answering the questions that they have when they filled out the onboarding form. One of the questions is, “Do you want to run remarketing?” A lot of times, I get people that ask, “I don’t know. Tell me about remarketing.”
Jason Rothman:
So, we take care of questions like that, and then the other questions I get are particularly questions about my service. So, that’s what I find the topic of the first phone call being. It’s questions about how the actual service works, and then it’s answering their questions about Google Ads whether it’s a random remarketing question or random, “Hey. What should my budget be for this area?” Stuff like that. That’s what the calls are about, but there’s two things I’m always trying to do in the calls to sell because this is about selling.
Jason Rothman:
Just for all the moral, high-ground people out there, I hope you have a landslide because I just can’t stand you because when I’m hearing myself in my earphones say, “The two things I’m always trying to do when I sell on calls and be strategic,” I am trying to be strategic. So, I can see these moral high-ground people out there with their nose high in the air saying, “Oh, you’re trying to be strategic with people. That’s so gross, whatever, blah, blah, blah.” It’s really not.
Jason Rothman:
I’m trying to get people to do what I want, which is sign up with me, so I can help them grow their business. So, that’s the way I look at it, and if anybody has a problem with that, I’ll see you in the homeless line when I make so much money that the money doesn’t do anything for me anymore, and I have to turn to other substances, and I get addicted, and I lose it all gambling, and-
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh my God.
Jason Rothman:
… I’ll see you in the homeless line, and you’ll be in the homeless line because you never made it because you’re on the moral high ground, but it’s about being… You got to be strategic, and you’re trying to persuade, but again, Chris, it’s to help them. It’s to help them see the light and to hire you, so you can get them perfect search terms, so you can get them great cost per conversion, so you can get their phone ringing off the hook, lead forms coming in every day and help them grow their business, hire people in the community, pay their local… I mean, how much do you want me to go on here, Chris, in terms of how good we are? But you get it.
Jason Rothman:
So, I am very strategic on these calls, and this comes from experience, and I’m sharing this on the show today. I guess I don’t know why, but we’re doing it, because it’s very important information. There’s two things I’m picking up on. One is experience in their field. I have found that this is hands down for me. I literally put my hands down for everyone out on YouTube.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, I saw your shoulders slumped. You were like, “hands down.”
Jason Rothman:
That’s what you’re missing out on. It’s the biggest sales point to me, experience in their field. The theme I get over and over on this first phone call is they want to know that you understand Google Ads, pay-per-click, being Facebook, whatever you’re offering, and all capital, and that you understand their business and their industry, and we’ll talk about that, but that’s the first thing I’m looking for, and if I do have experience, I like to highlight it.
Jason Rothman:
The second thing is I listen for their pain points, their problems. That’s the main thing I’m listening for whether it’s something they don’t understand, whether it’s a bad experience with a former provider, whether they don’t know what’s going on in terms of whether it’s working or not. I’m listening to their problems. So, those are the two things I’m trying to accomplish on the phone call, Chris. Well, I guess three things. The third thing is to move the ball forward, access to their account to run an audit, or if they don’t have an account yet, send over a proposal, jump to step three.
Jason Rothman:
But those two things I do on the phone call, Chris. Listen to see if I have experience in their field and talk about that and then also listen for their problems and pain points. I have a feeling you’re going to maybe have a bone to pick with one of those and then with the other one, you’re going to think it’s awesome, so what are your thoughts on those two topics? And is there anything else that’s a primary goal for you in that first phone call or are those the two things you look for or think about as well or neither of those?
Jason Rothman:
I’ve never had a sales call with you. I’ve never called you and said, “I need Google Ads Manager because I do it myself for a living, and I can run my own ad campaigns,” but if I wanted more time with you each week, which I do, and you don’t give it to me because if someone looked at our messages back and forth, I think I counted 13 in the last 24 hours I sent in a row, including one video-
Chris Schaeffer:
Yep, seven-minute video.
Jason Rothman:
… and I didn’t get anything back from you.
Chris Schaeffer:
You got nothing.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah, seven-minute video, and I would bet everything I have that Chris did not find at the end of that seven-minute video.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, I did.
Jason Rothman:
Like somewhere between-
Chris Schaeffer:
I did watch it all.
Jason Rothman:
No, you didn’t.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yes, I did.
Jason Rothman:
I strongly doubt that. You don’t watch anything I do fully. You don’t listen to me, but I learned so much from you that I look up to you, and happy birthday to you, big guy.
Chris Schaeffer:
Can I-
Jason Rothman:
So, yeah, those two things on the phone call, Chris. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.
Chris Schaeffer:
Can I talk now? Okay.
Jason Rothman:
Is that what this podcast has come to, Chris? We don’t play off with each other anymore? It’s just I over-caffeinate myself?
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s my time. No, it’s my time.
Jason Rothman:
I go through so much stress in the week, and they don’t let Michael Jordan be Michael Jordan sometimes, and I just come on this podcast, and I just roll, and then it used to be bounce back and forth, and now it’s like bouncing a basketball against a curtain, and you literally have to jump in with like, “Can I just? Can I just? Can I just?”
Chris Schaeffer:
A basketball against the curtain. I love that. It’s like, “I’m going to throw it. Oh, there it goes. I think I saw a foot when the curtain parted for a second. Oh, okay, yeah.”
Jason Rothman:
When the curtain… That’s how you’re using your time, your small valuable time I’m giving you right now because you’re going to talk about the foot, the curtain, the blah, blah, blah? We get the metaphor.
Chris Schaeffer:
I’m going to play on that.
Jason Rothman:
It was a good metaphor. Don’t beat it to death.
Chris Schaeffer:
Okay.
Jason Rothman:
Go ahead.
Chris Schaeffer:
What are we even talking about? Okay, we’re talking about AdWords, and then we’re talking about sales. I think got you.
Jason Rothman:
The two things that I really focus on in this phone call, experience in the field and then listening for their pain points. Are those on your radar? What else is on your radar?
Chris Schaeffer:
So, I don’t often hear experience in the field, mainly because… I think you hear that a lot because I think you are really the king of pushing-
Jason Rothman:
Careful, Chris. Careful of talking about someone else’s business. Careful here, Chris.
Chris Schaeffer:
… to a specific industry. You’ve always been the king of talking to-
Jason Rothman:
All right. I’ll give you that.
Chris Schaeffer:
… people’s pain points and specific verticals.
Jason Rothman:
Movers.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I mean, movers, and I mean, you’re owning other industries too. So, I know that you do that, so I wonder if you get a lot of those comments simply because you push the fact that you are a king in a set of industries although you can work in any of those industries. I’m not saying that you are one-trick pony. So, I don’t hear that a whole lot. What I definitely do on my first call is, I think you said it best, listen, right? I mean, listen is huge because I often hear someone pass through some little comment very quickly in their quick history of the Google Ads campaign. They’ll say different things. They’ll mention this, that, and that, and then they’ll prod a little further, and it turns out they’ve been through six agencies in the past two years or something.
Chris Schaeffer:
Or they’re having major issues with product sales, and they’re calling you because they’re about to lose the company. I mean, there’s all kinds of little hints that you can hear, and this makes a really big difference not only in pitching the call, but I mean this would be a whole nother conversation, but whether you want the client or not is going to be a big deal because when you listen, you may find out that there… I’ve even had people who contact me who have a plumbing business, but they only wanted me to manage a certain set of ZIP codes or the west side of town or the east side of town.
Chris Schaeffer:
What I find out is, as they have strange answers about what they’re saying, it turns out they’re playing two different managers against each other. They want to see who performs better, and they want to hire that guy. So, I’ve had stuff like that before, and you have to listen-
Jason Rothman:
I’ve had that too.
Chris Schaeffer:
… for these little situations because there’s so much you can learn in that initial history of the campaign discussion, or here’s where we at. Let me talk about my business kind of thing, and it’s easy to tune out because you quickly want to start talking, but it’s a critical part is to listen to that, and let’s say you’ve gotten past that listen part now, okay? You’ve gotten to the point where they’re like, “So, tell me about how would you do this? How can you help me or how does your business work? Tell me about your prices,” whatever, once they hand the baton off to you.
Chris Schaeffer:
I think you summed it up really well on things to talk about. I’ll tell you the things that I often get clients simply because I don’t do certain things. Let me explain a little bit about what I don’t do. One of the things I hear a lot, and this happened. I heard this just a week or two ago from someone that hired me simply because I didn’t act like the know-it-all who says, “I have Google Ads figured out entirely. Follow my strategy, and it will work. I’m going to use SKAGs. It’s the absolute best system. I think it’s wonderful. It’ll work great, guaranteed to work. I’m going to get you amazing results.”
Chris Schaeffer:
Or, “I’m going to use geo-focused landing pages. We’re going to build you 60 landing pages,” or, “No, no, no. This is going to work great on display. I’m going to do display in YouTube, and it’s going to be great. You’re going to get millions of impressions and lots and lots of clicks, and you’re going to get a lot of leads from that just because of the number of eyes.”
Chris Schaeffer:
When someone approaches this call in a know-it-all type of situation, they will basically dig themselves a hole, and if the person that they’re talking to does not like the pitch… I’ve heard plenty of times people say, “Okay, yeah.” I mean, they say, “Oh, wow.” When you’re telling a story nobody cares about, and they say, “Wow, how about that? Wow, that’s interesting.” You get that kind of response from people. You could be pitching this amazing SKAG idea, and maybe they just don’t really like SKAGs, or they don’t know what SKAGs is, and you’re talking out of their league.
Chris Schaeffer:
You’re using language they don’t understand. You’re talking about landing pages, and they just spent 20 grand on a brand new website, and now, you just want to build landing pages and send people to cheap landing pages.
Jason Rothman:
Oh, yeah. That’ll make people mad.
Chris Schaeffer:
You know what I mean? You never know what kind of touchpoint is going to fire for them. So, number one for me is don’t be a know-it-all. Don’t think that you have the solution and that your solution is the best and any person they talk to is inferior to your product.
Jason Rothman:
I think that’s an excellent point because I know that if they talk to you, listening to them and then giving them advice about Google Ads and their business, based on listening to them, that you’re the only person doing that out of the five agencies they talk to. Everyone else is talking about their blah, blah, blah, whatever specialty they have to offer, but they’re just in that know-it-all mode or not answering.
Jason Rothman:
So, Chris, that’s what I’d do. I think the biggest tip with the first phone call is to listen. So, just like you’re saying. You throw it out to them like, “How can I help you?” You listen to them, and then how do you close it and get it to step two? To me, it’s tailor the Google Ads advice and the kind of vision that you set out for them, what you can do for them to their problems.
Jason Rothman:
So, if they’re talking about, like they don’t understand pay-per-click and what’s going on, I might go heavy on search terms and being able to control exactly what people show what they search on their phone and computer when our ads show up. If they talked about, yeah, we’ve been spending $5,000 a month for the last five years, and we just know it’s working, but I’m just so frustrated because I just spend the money, and I just don’t know what’s working or what we can do better. Then I’ll really go into all the facets of conversion tracking, or if they talk about just client communication, and this is a weird one, Chris.
Jason Rothman:
I’ve had two of the biggest money makers I’ve ever made in terms of clients. Their former pay-per-click person, they would say things like, “Yeah, he does our Google Ads and stuff, but he’s lazy or on substances and drugs,” like they would just say that. I mean, I guess some people don’t want to hear that, but there’s so many people in our industry that there’s not a lot of barriers to entry. You don’t have to go for five years of college and then take a state certified CPA exam and be a CPA. It’s just you fire up your laptop lifestyle, passive income, blah, blah, blah.
Chris Schaeffer:
Lifestyle, yeah.
Jason Rothman:
You get all these people that do drugs and manage client account. I’ve heard that multiple times from people. So, then, in terms of that conversation, I’m listening to their need, and they need a professional. So, then I’ll go into how I do this full-time, how I have employees, how we have a client communication customer service system and business hours and all that. So, really, listening to what they’re saying on the call, listening to what their pain point is and then explaining whether it’s a business thing or a Google Ads specific thing, how we can solve their problem, and let me ask you a question, Chris.
Jason Rothman:
For me to do that on a call and get to the next step and basically move the ball forward, I usually only need to do that one time. So, I usually only hear or focus in on one pain point. I answer and tailor my answer to one pain point. Yeah, there’s some back and forth about smaller, other questions, but usually, I just need to prove that I’m different and qualified one time to them, and listen to their pain point, explain clearly how you can help them, assist them, and then they’re willing to move the ball forward. What do you feel about that just one-time thing?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, I definitely agree. I think the first phone call, if you can’t… I mean, you’ve said it before. You should be able to do a 15-minute discussion and know within that 15 minutes that, “Yep, this is going to work. I can help you. No, I can’t help you,” right? I mean, it certainly shouldn’t be an hour. I think when I first started doing this, I would spend an hour, and I would start the discussion about, “Yeah, I grew up in East Texas,” and I just start with this completely irrelevant stuff and go through a life history. I realized I am not saving them any time. I’m not making this easier. My process does not make this a simpler thing for them.
Chris Schaeffer:
They might as well go and learn Google Ads by themselves rather than engage me, because I’m making this more complicated. So, one thing that I like to do to explain to people about how I fit, once I’ve listened, and I’ve responded to a few things. My simplest answer into how I fit into Google Ads is to simply say, “I manage and run and know everything you need to know about Google Ads, and you know about your business. You know about your industry. You know about your products, how much you need to sell, how to sell it, what kind of clients you need to hear from, what kind of searches typically work or what kind of key phrases you hear on the phone from your clients.”
Chris Schaeffer:
“So, when we match these two together, you know about your business, and I know about Google Ads, we have a winning team here.” Once we have these two ingredients, the key component that I try and move forward from here into step two, into the audit part is we start mixing this pot with these two ingredients. Slowly, my PPC knowledge is going to leak over to him. He’s going to understand more and be more comfortable about PPC, and I am going to understand more and more about their business over time to make better decisions about their keywords, about their ad copy, about bidding, about all these strategies.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, eventually, we have a very blended mix of these two expertise, and we have a winning team. That’s how I usually try to, in a bigger picture, explain my role and how our relationship will work.
Jason Rothman:
When I combine your business-
Chris Schaeffer:
There you go.
Jason Rothman:
… and my pay-per-click knowledge… Sounds familiar.
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s magical.
Jason Rothman:
Chris, I might start using that analogy or that explanation. Mine has been a little more crude.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, boy.
Jason Rothman:
What? Come on, come on.
Chris Schaeffer:
Such a nervous Nellie over there.
Jason Rothman:
No. What I say to them is basically… I don’t know if this is just laying it on a little too thick sales-wise or whatever, but literally, I say to people like, “Basically, the way to think about our service is you’ve got a picture in your head of what you want Google Ads to be, and we’re just the magic system behind the scenes that almost like a software just gets it done for you.” So, whatever’s in your head in terms of your goals, so long as they’re reasonable of course and achievable, we get that done. So, if you want to show up on these kind of search, we get that done.
Chris Schaeffer:
I like that.
Jason Rothman:
If you want your cost per click to be this, we get that done, or at least we focus on it.
Chris Schaeffer:
As long as that you can explain to them that the images in their head should be goals, endpoints, and not keywords, ad copy, settings, and things like that, and micromanagement.
Jason Rothman:
Well, that’s the thing. Yeah, I don’t want to hear you’re going to get that done with this one keyword you want to try, or you’re not seeing yourself number one, which we’ll talk about in Patreon. By the way, I do have a Patreon, just came to me. I’m going to take a second to write it down here on a coffee-stained napkin, Chris.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, well, I’ll take us two to number two here. So, number two is audit. Sometimes, this is a very important aspect of the sale, and sometimes it’s not. I mean, I just this week, I got access to someone’s account, and I’m gearing up. I’m setting aside some time for an audit. I open it up. Jason, they’re running a smart campaign. Done. My audit is complete. I have no reason to do an audit because I can skip the whole thing because a smart campaign cannot be edited, cannot be optimized. It cannot do anything that I can help with.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, I think, “Hey, here you go.” Now, we can move into the expert process of the Google Ads system. So, an audit wasn’t important. But other times, someone who comes to you said, “I’ve been running Google Ads for six years, and they have 60 campaigns, and there’s a lot to look at. There’s conversions with conversion value. They have issues with… They have branding campaigns that are leaking into non-brand. So, you don’t have a clear picture of what their real return on ad spend is.” I mean, all kinds of things.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, I’ll tell you, for me… Of course, on situation two, this is the important stuff here because I’m going to need to convey a ton of information in a short amount of time. I’m not going to be able to keep their attention for a hour-long session. Who the heck wants to even go through an hour-long session of an audit? Nobody cares. That’s the reason they’re calling you is because they don’t want to have to make decisions like this. So, I’ll say I’m the king of a 10-minute audit. I can take an account, look at it live while I’m with them on the phone and immediately pinpoint, “This is a big piece. This is something I’m concerned about. This is a red flag. This is a red flag,” and I don’t want to be the know-it-all, right?
Chris Schaeffer:
I don’t want to be the guy who’s like, “You should absolutely never use exact keywords or broad keywords. I might see broad keywords, but you have to look at the big picture. I mean, what are the metrics saying about this? What’s the search terms look like? What kind of conversions are they getting? What’s the search impression share, their position, all this kind of stuff. If you draw a line and say, “Oh, I looked at your account, and it’s all wrong. You’ve been in it for six years completely wrong. I can’t believe you’re even making money at this.”
Chris Schaeffer:
You want to get somebody who say, “Okay, thanks. Bye,” and go to the next person. Give them that line, right? I mean, that’s a horrible-
Jason Rothman:
No, I think it’s all about laying out a vision for me with the audit. So, just like we were talking about, listening to their needs and their problems and in the phone call. Then when you get to the audit, you’re right. An audit can go on forever because there’s so many aspects to a Google Ads account. I mean, you could go through everything they’re doing wrong, everything they’re doing okay, but you could do it better a different way, everything they’re doing great, and you want to build on it, everything they’re not even doing it all and introduce it into the discussion.
Jason Rothman:
So, just goes on and on and on, but I like focusing on things they had a pain point with, and then I like focusing on really obvious things. So like search terms, pretty obvious thing to focus on. They’re either good or bad, and if they’re bad, I tell people why, and then you can also tell them how much money they’ve spent on some bad search terms. You got to be careful because it can really-
Chris Schaeffer:
Hurt some feelings.
Jason Rothman:
… upset people, especially maybe if they were managing the account themselves. There’s no need to be a jerk about it.
Chris Schaeffer:
Or a family member.
Jason Rothman:
Or a family, yeah. I get that all the time.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, [crosstalk 00:35:08].
Jason Rothman:
You got to be careful about that. So, if they did spend $25,000 on bad search terms over the last two years, and I mean, maybe give them a taste of that, but you don’t need to just brutalize it. If we were talking on the call, and they were talking about, “Well, I don’t know what I’m getting for it.” I might focus my audit on conversion tracking, and I might be like, “Hey, I looked for the conversion codes. Your reported conversion seemed almost non-existent. We’re only seeing calls from extensions. I looked on the site. There’s no website call conversions. I looked on the thank you page on your form. There’s no code on the thank you page. I don’t see the global tag.
Jason Rothman:
So, I focus on things like that. But yeah, Chris, I think my main piece of advice would be if you’re going long with the audit, you’re doing it wrong. Long is wrong.
Chris Schaeffer:
Ooh.
Jason Rothman:
You like that?
Chris Schaeffer:
You’re full of sexy taglines.
Jason Rothman:
Because if you’re doing it long, you’re not conveying the value you can offer just by focusing on a couple things that you could do a whole lot better. I’m going to throw one on you, Chris, that we didn’t talk about.
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh.
Jason Rothman:
I’ll tell you what I do after you tell me what you do or up front, whatever you want to hear. What do you do if you get into an account, and the search terms are solid, if conversion tracking is in place, and the cost per click and the cost per conversion look like numbers that seem acceptable to you, with your experience in that industry, if they’re spending their full desired budget, if their location targeting is great? What do you do if everything’s great?
Chris Schaeffer:
Man, yeah, that is a-
Jason Rothman:
Because people are going to run into that.
Chris Schaeffer:
I’m going to tell you the truth. What I’ve told people before is, “You have a great campaign.” I’ve had people that come to me that currently have an agency and want to know, “Could you look at this? Could you get a third-party review on this?” I’ve told people, “You don’t need me. Whatever you’ve been doing is working,” and I’ve turned down work because they’re like, “Can you bring the conversions… Can you get it twice as good?” I see 90% impression share. They’re targeting everywhere they want to target, the search terms.
Chris Schaeffer:
Just like you said, everything’s hitting, and the metrics are good, and I think, “No. No. I mean, this is beautiful. This is optimized. This is working great.” Instead, this is a maintenance, and I mean, this is a side note, but what I usually do is I offer them training. I think, “You need to maintain this. You need to learn optimization. You don’t need a full-time manager on this because you’ll just be paying for something for them to just twiddle their thumbs.” So, absolutely, that’s what I say.
Jason Rothman:
Good point, Chris. I think that makes my first of two points about that situation where you’re asked to audit something that’s in really good shape. One, there’s a potential that they’re going to be a bad client because if they’re not happy with something that’s great already-
Chris Schaeffer:
Oh, good point.
Jason Rothman:
You know what I’m saying?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Then that might be a red flag in terms of client selection, which we may talk about on a future episode, client selection, because if they’re not happy, and then you get in there, and you’re just able to achieve basically the same, then they’re not going to be happy with you. So, a little bit of a red flag. Maybe on the positive side, they don’t understand how good they have it, maybe, but most of the time in my experience, they know they’ve got it good, and they’re just one of these people that have unrealistic expectations.
Chris Schaeffer:
I think that’s an excellent point is that a lot of people can’t… I mean, we’re in a minority of people that can look at hundreds of accounts and have an idea of what success looks like and what good and bad looks like, and a lot of times that’s a good point. That would be a very important point in the first call and in the audit, and then the proposal is to mention, “Here’s what success usually looks like,” and use realistic numbers on what you actually see in other accounts.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, I mean, for someone who has a banging campaign maybe is just hearing that, “Hey, you realize most people have single-digit conversion numbers, and you’re in the 25%? You realize your return on ad spend is five times, and most people are happy to get two or 1.5,” something like that.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah, and the second thing, to me, it says is that maybe it’s more of a relationship, a customer service issue… a person-to-person issue. They’re not happy with their current agency, and how can you tell them how you can communicate better? How can you tell them you can work with them better? Maybe there’s a need in that area that you can fill, but that’s what I see when there’s a perfect audit.
Jason Rothman:
So, step three, Chris. We talked about the phone call. Then you do an audit. Sometimes, they don’t have a Google Ads account yet, so you just jump to step three, and then after the audit, you use the audit to create your proposal. So whether they don’t have an account yet, and you just go from a sales call to the proposal, or they have an existing account you audited, and you go to the proposal. Step three is the proposal.
Jason Rothman:
So, I guess my first point I want to make to you, Chris, is, and ask you if you’ve seen the same, in my experience, people… I used to not do proposals, but now I have WordStream. I could put a few factors in, and I’m able to get them done quickly, and lay a road map out for clients. But before that, I wasn’t really doing them. That was to my detriment because my point I want to make you and ask you is people absolutely freaking crave these proposals, okay?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
I try to use my verbal, beautiful voice skills that are fine-tuned week-to-week on a podcast, listened to by hundreds of millions of people… hundreds of billions of people-
Chris Schaeffer:
Hundreds of billions. There we go.
Jason Rothman:
… around the galaxy, and it just doesn’t do it for people. I’m like, “Are you listening to this, right now? Do you have two ears?” But they want to see it with their eyes. They want visuals.
Chris Schaeffer:
Colors and graphs.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah, colors, graphs, stuff to chew on. Have you just seen this absolute craving for proposals?
Chris Schaeffer:
I think back in the day, and it’s my birthday, so I’m reflecting back on time and aging, and the old days. But back in the old days, I would write up an HTML email that had a bolded headline and had a couple bullet points in it, and they would be red and green and organized, and that’s what people wanted. But also our reports were emailed spreadsheets with clicks and graphs that were created in Excel. Now, we have online tools that can make beautiful PDF proposals.
Chris Schaeffer:
So, because of the proliferation of technology, yes, I absolutely think this becomes something that people crave because now, it’s so much more readily available. People didn’t crave that email with colors and bold and italics and bullet points, but now that they can see something very graphical and informational that they can chew on. Yeah, and now, it’s like, “Hey, can you show me what you got? Give me something to look at.”
Jason Rothman:
Okay, Chris. Well, in those proposals that I create, I just lay out different scenarios with budgets, clicks they can expect, conversions they can expect, impressions they can expect. My big point with the proposal is that the whole goal of doing Google Ads work that moral high-ground people get ready, stand up straight.
Chris Schaeffer:
All right.
Jason Rothman:
You’re about to get an earthquake on your little hill. The whole goal of this business is to keep people retained month after month, year after year. Okay? Moral high-ground people get ready. You know why that’s the goal, Chris?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.
Jason Rothman:
Because if you get paid for two months versus one month, that’s more money. If you get paid for 12 months versus one month, that’s more money. If you get paid for eight years versus the first year or 12 months, that’s more money. All right. Moral high-ground people, get ready. What’s the goal of business? Make money.
Chris Schaeffer:
Make money.
Jason Rothman:
Is everybody okay? Is everybody okay? Does anyone need a shoulder to cry on? Did anyone’s dream just get crushed?
Chris Schaeffer:
But is that for the betterment of society? Is that what you’d say? It’s to make money.
Jason Rothman:
Well, Chris, some people would argue that’s the absolute beautiful thing about a system that took a country 250 years ago from nothing to what it is now. Capitalism. It’s good for me to make money. It’s the way I make money is by offering a product or service you want. Therefore, I exchange what benefits you for what benefits me, and it’s a win-win, so that is what business is about. That’s the way I approach it. That’s the way I think it really is in reality, and I think that’s why I’ve had success because I’m living in reality, and the whole goal is to make money. How do you make money? You provide what people need.
Jason Rothman:
But my point is, Chris, the goal is to make money over and over and over again month after month and to keep the client happy and to keep getting them good results that help them grow their business, help them hire people locally, help them pay their local taxes for schools, help them give to their favorite charity, but it’s also to help you make money, and what I found is if you don’t lay out a… It can be positive, but it’s got to be realistic in your proposal.
Jason Rothman:
If you don’t lay out a realistic scenario of what they can expect, then they’re not going to stay with you because you’re not going to deliver what you said you would. So, obviously, you want to be positive. One thing I’ve made a mistake on is I’m way too negative when I talk with people because we can get into this Patreon in Patreon’s 16 personalities. My personality is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. One of the things in my personality is I don’t know if you guys want this out there. I don’t know if 2% of the population has it because they do.
Jason Rothman:
As soon as you tell me a scenario, I will take you through every single angle and look for all the loopholes in the way it’ll fail, and we can safeguard against them in redundancies on redundancies. And Chris, it’s a personality. With the brain, it happens instantly, instantly.
Chris Schaeffer:
Amazing.
Jason Rothman:
So, one of my flaws on sales calls and then someone in proposals, I’ve been way too negative because I’ve seen a lot of Google Ads campaigns that haven’t worked for various reasons. So, you don’t want to be too negative. You want to be positive, but my approach is you got to be realistic because I want them to be happy with their results. We actually are able to get them, keep them coming back, keep making money, everyone’s happy. When I say the word realistic on proposals to you, Chris, do you agree with that or do you think there’s shady agency people out there that are going, “Huh, realistic.”
Jason Rothman:
Well, I don’t even know. I’ve never heard that word before. It’s all about selling, selling, selling, signing them up. So, do you see how the proposal plays in with the way they think of your service? What do you think about that?
Chris Schaeffer:
Let me tell you, the message that I put forward in my proposal, my discussion, all this in the first call, is there’s only one thing, and let’s talk about being honest in reality. There’s only one thing I can promise, and that is that I’m going to deliver good traffic. That’s all.
Jason Rothman:
Oh, man. I’ve heard this from you before. I’ve heard this when we talked about how many X they can expect, how many Y they can expect. Then your thing is you can’t control how people answer the phone and their intake. You can’t control how fast they get back to people on lead forms. You can’t control whether their website crashed yesterday and no one told you. You can’t control, and I know you hate this one, when clients change their page lengths and don’t tell their Google Ads Manager.
Jason Rothman:
There’s special places where people go. That’s very frustrating because it kills the performance results, because you just send people to broken pages. No one told the Google Ads Manager. Then they don’t let Michael Jordan be Michael Jordan, and then they just got to… I digress. Your whole thing is traffic, what you can control. That’s basically what you like to focus on.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, I mean, when it comes down to reality is listen… I mean, you want the brutal truth. The brutal truth is, “Listen, I’m going to do a bang-up job on your Google Ads, and if your product fails, it’s your product.”
Jason Rothman:
Whoa.
Chris Schaeffer:
I mean, I don’t say that. Of course, I don’t say that, but I mean that’s the message.
Jason Rothman:
Well, that’s because you don’t work with clients anymore where they’re selling testosterone pills or something-
Chris Schaeffer:
That’s true.
Jason Rothman:
… you know that’s like… or a guide for how to run a car wash [crosstalk 00:48:13] like, “Come on.”
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, the ebook guy who wants to-
Jason Rothman:
And target the words “car wash” or so.
Chris Schaeffer:
… sell some ebook thing. Yeah, I mean, that’s true. I typically prefer to work with businesses with established products and services that have been around for a while that have a guaranteed… I mean, not guaranteed, but-
Jason Rothman:
So, your proposal’s based on what you can do for them, like literally what you can do.
Chris Schaeffer:
This is what I’ll do. I will-
Jason Rothman:
I can show you on these search terms. I can get you the most clicks possible-
Chris Schaeffer:
You want a guarantee.
Jason Rothman:
… but There’s a floor.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, you want a guarantee on something? I’ll guarantee you good traffic. You tell me what kind of clients will buy from you, and I’m going to send those clients to you. That’s what I’ll get you. Yeah, and that’s it.
Jason Rothman:
Okay. I’m just thinking through all the agencies I’ve ever worked with. There are going to be agency people who disagree with that approach, because they’re going to be like, “Well, then, some people are going to say, ‘Well, that’s not good enough. I have these unrealistic expectations, so I’m going to hire the agency that matches my unrealistic expectations.'” Can you imagine the conversations? Because I’ve heard some of them, Chris, from advertisers who have unrealistic expectations and agencies who try to just match their unrealistic expectations.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, to confirm them.
Jason Rothman:
Like it’s a never-ending cycle of blame and mysterious things about Google Ads and, “Well, what if we run from 11:00 AM to 12:00 on Mondays and then on Tuesdays, from 3:00 to 4:00. We increase our budget by 700%, and then what if we try to run… ” It’s like they come up with endless things because they’ll never get to it because it’s unrealistic.
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, and they’ll say, “Oh, sir, absolutely. That’s a wonderful idea. Nobody’s thought of that before. I guarantee a 15% increase in conversions by tomorrow. Done. Thank you.” Hang up. It’s a sad world.
Jason Rothman:
It’s different strokes for different folks because I guess some people just want to keep… They just see the dollar bills, and they keep it running. My whole thing is I like clients that stick with me for the right reason. So, I think we’re both coming at it from the same perspective. With our proposals, we to promise what will happen that we can control in reality because reality will happen in the next few months, and just a quick sidebar, Chris, in terms of sales. Just something I want to talk about before we wrap up here. We’ve heard this a lot. “You need three months on Google Ads to see how good it can work or to get things tuned up.” I’ve heard that metric a lot from various people in the industry.
Jason Rothman:
I used to think that was a selling technique. I used to think, “Oh, I’m the greatest Google Ads manager on the planet. I can get you perfect search terms in the first week.” Yeah, there’s a ramp-up I talked about, but the ramp-up is over in a few days, and things are just perfect from a couple weeks on. That’s what I used to think. I thought it was just a sales strategy. I have changed on that, Chris. I now do believe and agree that it is a three-month process. It’s a good overall metric for all industries, and the reason is quality score and quality score history and things that I can’t show you data on, things that I can’t prove, but just in the past few months, I’ve dealt with some new accounts where, man, for various reasons, things are just way different, way easier once you build up some quality score history, and I have seen it change over the first three months.
Jason Rothman:
So, I’m with everybody else now in three months. Just sidebar, do you also think about that metric or what… So, let me just ask you a question. If a client says, “Hey, Chris, how long is this going to take to work?” because you’ll hear that in the proposal when they review it. You’ll hear it on the sales call. What’s your answer to that question? How long will this take to work?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, I mean, I usually give them a scale. I say, “The first month I’ll know more than I did when I started. At the end of the second month, I’ll know even more, and by the third month, we’ll know pretty sure if this is going to be a viable system or not.” So, yeah, I’m absolutely with you, so it’s a progression. It’s not like three months is magical. It’s that it’s a certain amount of time that builds and builds. 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, and now I know enough. I’ve gotten enough data, had enough full weeks to see what happens in the process.
Jason Rothman:
Yeah, that’s a great point, and nothing magical about three months, but it’s just a good threshold number to set expectations. So, Chris, we’re going to keep this series going all month long. Next week, we’re going to talk about how to manage a ton of accounts and talk about some management techniques. Then we got Patreon today, but first, why don’t you tell us about WordStream Advisor for Agencies?
Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, so, we’ve been talking about winning the sale today, which can be an extremely time-consuming process, as you’ve heard us talk about, if it wasn’t for WordStream. Using WordStream’s Advisor for Agencies system, you can make the process faster and more accurate. Without the right data, you’re walking into a new relationship completely blind, and the sale won’t happen if you don’t hit all the notes. So, with WordStream’s Advisor for Agencies, you can finally give accurate estimates about expected cost per click, impression volume, cost per conversion.
Chris Schaeffer:
It’s all there in one tool. No more guessing, right? You want to know the worst question a new prospect can ask. Jason, we didn’t talk about this, but they asked, “How much should I spend?” I never had a good answer until I saw WordStream’s budget proposals. This is a great tool. Plus it looks really sharp and clean, and I don’t know if we’re allowed to use strong language on the show, Jason, but I’m going to say the A-word, okay? Audits. It takes a lot of time just to wrap your head around a prospect’s account, and then you have to present it in a way that they can understand.
Chris Schaeffer:
With WordStream’s Advisor for Agencies, you can audit accounts with an award-winning tool backed by over 1.5 billion in spent. So, stop working alone. Get some real tools in your sales tool belt. Go to wordstream.com/paidsearchpodcast. All one word. Wordstream.com/paidsearchpodcast. Sign up for a 14-day trial. No credit card required. Sign up and try it out, no hassle. That’s wordstream.com/paidsearchpodcast.
Jason Rothman:
All right, Chris. Thank you for that. We’re going to jump over to Patreon and talk about some things that happened this week in the management of Google Ads campaigns, and we’ll see you guys over there, and we’ll be back next week with the next episode of the Paid Search Podcast.
Similar Episodes:
- How To Use Systems To Grow Your PPC Agency Without Going Crazy (Episode 180)
- How to Convey Value to PPC Clients When They Say It’s Not Working (Episode 169)
- How To Manage a Large Number of PPC Clients (Episode 182)
- The Sales Funnel Strategy Approach To Google Ads (Episode 167)
- Can’t Find Keywords? Don’t Panic! Here’s a Strategy! (Episode 177)