The Sales Funnel Strategy Approach To Google Ads (Episode 167)

Please support our sponsors, they make the show possible!

Show notes:

This week on the Paid Search Podcast, Chris and Jason talk about how they approach the sales funnel and Google Ads. They talk about how they use the sales funnel with Google Ads and how that affects their strategies. A listener sent in a great question about the sales funnel and using it to structure a Google Ads campaign, and the guys talk about the question and give their opinions on the sales funnel and how it affects their AdWords strategies. Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode!

Please share the show with your friends and join us for the after show every week on Patreon! It’s just $2 a month and we do an after show every week.

YouTube

Transcript

Jason Rothman:
Hi. Thanks for joining us on the Paid Search Podcast YouTube channel and audio experience podcast. My name is Jason Rothman. As always, I’m joined by the great Chris Schaeffer. We are both Google Ads freelancers and do Google Ads every day for a bunch of great clients.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.

Jason Rothman:
And we have this podcast to help other people learn about Google Ads and share what we know, and talk about Google Ads that we love. This is the 167th episode of the show. If you’re new, welcome. And if you’re back, thanks for coming back.

Jason Rothman:
So Chris, how’s it going? We’ve been talking a little bit. It’s been very fun off scene, off camera.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. It’s fun to make the strange noises in the background while you’re trying to be professional, because I’ve realized that it is way more fun. Rather than trying to step into my suit and be super professional, just make noises into the mic and call that an intro. It is genius I have to say. It is fun and it’s unique. And I have to say, props to you for that. Yeah, it’s a hot summer day here in Texas, and I’m sure it’s just as hot in Oklahoma with just a few less trees and more wind and a chance of tornadoes all the time.

Jason Rothman:
Not really, not that hot today, but I don’t want to be disagreeable because that’s not good podcasting.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh my gosh.

Jason Rothman:
So I’ll just say that you’re right Chris.

Chris Schaeffer:
You’re right. Wouldn’t that … Aren’t you glad that we know each other well enough that we don’t have these awkward like agreements disagreements where we’re afraid to step on each other toes? Because that’s what I enjoy, is stepping on my co-host toes, and that’s why we’re here guys, to step on …

Jason Rothman:
Yeah, that’s why we’re here.

Chris Schaeffer:
On everyone’s toes. All right.

Jason Rothman:
I hope you’re wearing sandals.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s a good question. Okay before I jump into a super important point that we always want to mention at the top of the show, let me ask you. Jason.

Jason Rothman:
Yes.

Chris Schaeffer:
Are you wearing shoes?

Jason Rothman:
Yeah. Guess the brand. You should know the brand knowing everything you know about me.

Chris Schaeffer:
Wow, that … That’s sad. Maybe either I haven’t been paying enough attention or you think I’m a better friend than I am. I don’t know-

Jason Rothman:
It’ll make sense once I tell you, New Balance.

Chris Schaeffer:
I guess that makes sense.

Jason Rothman:
People out there know. They know.

Chris Schaeffer:
Well, that’s interesting because I absolutely have never worn shoes. In 167 episodes I’ve never worn shoes.

Jason Rothman:
Are you serious?

Chris Schaeffer:
Absolutely not. Why would I wear shoes?

Jason Rothman:
Oh. Are you serious? Absolutely not and then … Okay, maybe you misunderstood.

Chris Schaeffer:
No, no, I don’t.

Jason Rothman:
Maybe you don’t get out enough Chris because I don’t know if you understand. Okay, I’m taking it to an unprofessional, I’m going to go back to professional for the 167th. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I took a shot at you.

Chris Schaeffer:
Boring.

Jason Rothman:
Took a swing-

Chris Schaeffer:
Boring.

Jason Rothman:
Took a swing and missed.

Chris Schaeffer:
Boring.

Jason Rothman:
Took a swing and missed.

Chris Schaeffer:
All right.

Jason Rothman:
I’m sorry.

Chris Schaeffer:
No, I’m absolutely serious. I’m not wearing shoes now. 167 in and I’ve never worn shoes. Maybe socks and if it’s the winner but never shoes. So there you go, shoeless podcast.

Jason Rothman:
Can we get a shot?

Chris Schaeffer:
Absolutely not.

Jason Rothman:
For YouTube.

Chris Schaeffer:
And that is the premium level.

Jason Rothman:
Please.

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s the premium level that you have to pay for.

Jason Rothman:
New Patreon level.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah dude. That’s a $30 a month.

Jason Rothman:
Just one new foot shot a week.

Chris Schaeffer:
A week. That’s right.

Jason Rothman:
Please if you would subscribe, please let us know at the contact page paidsearchpodcast.com because if we do get enough subscriptions and requests for that Chris, I will demand that you fulfill that need out there.

Chris Schaeffer:
I will put a second camera on my feet. You don’t watch me talk. You just watch my feet. Okay. With that, with this wholesome conversation we’re having now, let’s talk about Opteo, opteo.com/psp.

Chris Schaeffer:
This is a tool that Jason and I both use. We recommend for you to get to the next level of PPC management. Whether you’re using Bing, Google Ads, whether you’re using all kinds of paid traffic sources, this is the tool to get your campaigns to a new level beyond what you can think of with just, “Hey, should I raise the bid? Hey, should I do this?” This tool gives you additional graphical information, it gives you additional recommendations even over email to tell you about what you can do to improve your campaign.

Chris Schaeffer:
It’s a great tool. I use it all the time and it’s something that we recommend and we thank them for their sponsorship. That’s O-P-T-E-O .com/psp. You get a six week trial. No money required. Great deal. So check them out.

Jason Rothman:
Thanks Chris. And I just want to thank everyone for your reviews on Apple Podcast and Stitcher and anywhere you listen to podcasts. We really appreciate it when you do that. It sends signals to the search engines, or excuse me, to the podcast engines that we’ve got a nice growing show here. We are at 200 reviews in the US on Apple Podcast, 201 actually rating and reviews.

Chris Schaeffer:
Wow. Amazing.

Jason Rothman:
And we’re going to keep pushing and see how high we can get. So we appreciate you guys doing that. Chris, this week we are going to talk about the display … No, just kidding.

Chris Schaeffer:
No, we’re not.

Jason Rothman:
We’re going to talk. We’re going to go back to search, go back to our bread-and-butter here. Last week we were actually doing a Q&A, and we got a question from Katie in Louisville or was it Louisville Chris?

Chris Schaeffer:
Thank you.

Jason Rothman:
Do you want to take that one back?

Chris Schaeffer:
No. Yeah, I’m going to stick, it’s Louisville.

Jason Rothman:
Maybe you’ll change it.

Chris Schaeffer:
No, yep, it’s Louisville. I just changed it.

Jason Rothman:
Okay. So Katie from Louisville or Louisville, excuse me, she wrote in and we answered her question a little bit briefly, but it was such a great question, such a can opener, a bunch of worms came out, and we got a lot of things to discuss. It was a very thought provoking question, so we’re going to do a whole episode on it and we’re going to talk about funnel. So Chris, what I want to know from you is what funnels are. But before that, let me read Katie’s question and then we will get into a discussion of funnels. So Katie from Louis … Louisville. Just, it does feel natural when you look at the word.

Chris Schaeffer:
I think it does. It’s easier to say.

Jason Rothman:
I think you’re right. Everyone else is wrong. I think you’re right. I think you’re right dude.

Chris Schaeffer:
I’m right.

Jason Rothman:
Okay. “Hi guys. I would love to get your thoughts on structuring ad groups within a campaign by top, middle, and bottom of funnel themes. It may not be relevant for all campaigns.” She’s so reasonable Chris. Like she’s saying it may not be … it may. So I love that. “But I am currently working with one where I think it could potentially be effective. Have you ever experimented with this kind of campaign structure top of funnel,” she gives examples, keywords that would be triggered by informational searches, ad copy that’s more information … informational, and then educational informational landing pages, middle of funnel keywords that go into a bit more product or service depth or specifics, ad groups that highlight specific features, price quality details, free trial, competitive advantage, landing pages with product service information and conversion option, and then bottom of funnel, keywords that would be triggered by high purchase intent, ad copy containing conversion call to actions, and then landing page with product and/or service conversion options like big lead forms, big phone numbers with call-to-action.

Jason Rothman:
Katie thank you for the question. For everyone out there, we do Q&A shows regularly, paidsearchpodcast.com. The contact page. Send us your message, your question, and also feel free to call the voicemail and there’s a very funny dad voicemail from Chris where he’s like, “Hello.” I love this, this …

Chris Schaeffer:
Dad voice.

Jason Rothman:
Technology. That’s what Cynthia said when she, we called it the other day. It’s like, “Hello,” and it’s like the old man is so inspired by this technology that-

Chris Schaeffer:
I just got this-

Jason Rothman:
… didn’t exist when he was growing up. I wonder how many trips Chris made to RadioShack back in the day for little tapes for his little, I don’t even remember what we called it, message answering machine or whatever.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, little recorder things, yeah.

Jason Rothman:
But this is not the show where one co-host just totally makes fun of and bashes the other co-host who’s totally helped his career and he looked up to him at one point. This is not the show where one of them very rudely does that. This is a show about actionable advice, about content, about Google Ads, about passion for PPC. So we’re going to take it back on top, on top here. Chris, appreciate the question from Katie. What are funnels?

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. I really liked this question obviously as we’re doing a whole nother segment on it. And for me, and as a general rule, no matter what industry you’re working in, there’s always people that have an interest. I’m going to talk about top of funnel first. People that have an interest in the industry or have a need that could be satisfied by a specific service or product. You can think of it, let’s do an inventory. Let’s say they’re in the clouds. Okay. They’re in the clouds. They’re floating around. They have a problem. This is when they come to Google and they look stuff up, informational, educational. These are the terms that relate to this top of funnel idea. So many examples.

Chris Schaeffer:
I think it’s particularly hard to even give examples for something like this, but I’m going to try and I’m going to stick to something just easy and I’m going to say either plumber or AC company, I’m going to stick with AC repair company so it’s-

Recording:
Hello-

Chris Schaeffer:
… super high in the cloud.

Recording:
This is Chris.

Jason Rothman:
Chris, listen to this. This is pretty funny. Hello. Listen to this. Listen to this.

Recording:
Hello. This is Chris from the Paid Search …

Jason Rothman:
Hello, hello.

Chris Schaeffer:
Really? That’s what you’ve been doing. That’s what you’ve been …

Jason Rothman:
Let’s see how that came out. You never know. You take shots. You never know.

Chris Schaeffer:
It’s fine. It’s fine.

Jason Rothman:
All right. So it’s hard to make examples, but Chris, I want … what I want to hear from you, okay, I was doing Google Ads, I was doing great. I was onto something. I was very focused on search terms and I would always tell clients like we got to get on the right search terms, and then the conversation would end, and I wouldn’t know how to verbalize what I was thinking in my head. And then you told me about the funnel, the sales funnel, and how the perfect search terms are at the bottom. And it just totally opened my world. So I want it. What is that? Tell me about that teaching concept you have.

Chris Schaeffer:
Right. This is a good point. I should bring the funnel idea in as well. So they’re in the clouds and they’re-

Jason Rothman:
The name of the episode is funnels.

Chris Schaeffer:
The very top of the funnel is of course very wide. There is a tremendous amount of people and traffic and searches on Google that will represent this top of the funnel, because it’s got tons of possibilities. You could never build a campaign that covered all the top of funnel keywords because there’s a ton of them. Let’s say AC repair, top of the funnel might be my air condition isn’t working or how to check an AC.

Jason Rothman:
Or Chris it might be what is the average … What should your house temperature be at.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh gosh. That is-

Jason Rothman:
Top of funnel’s undefinable. How big do you want to go?

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s a good point. That sounds so, it sounds like such a bad idea, but it could technically still be top of-

Jason Rothman:
But you know someone’s thinking about it out there.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Rothman:
What if we pay five cents per click and no one else is advertising on it and every time someone does that kind of search, there is a chance they’re going to need some AC services at some point in the next couple of years and they’re going to be seeing our brand. Someone’s having that conversation today.

Chris Schaeffer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yep. Okay. So that’s top of funnel. Essentially there is no ceiling. The top of funnel goes up forever. You would never be able to satisfy the full depth of what top of funnel could be because it’s endless. There is no top.

Chris Schaeffer:
Then we move into the middle. The middle I personally have a problem with the middle because it’s …

Jason Rothman:
Me too.

Chris Schaeffer:
I feel like the middle is crammed in there between this massive area of clouds of just endless top of funnel keywords. Then the middle is just this little thin strip where it’s, it can easily go into bottom of the funnel or it can be in the top of funnel.

Chris Schaeffer:
I personally don’t like middle of funnel and we’re going to get into this later because it can so easily drop into top and be confused with top bottom. It’s really very difficult to define.

Chris Schaeffer:
An example of what middle of funnel might be would be maybe AC repair. No geographic term, no specifics about a specific type of AC, no brand of AC, nothing wrong specifically, it doesn’t say home AC, it doesn’t say central air or furnace or anything like that. It’s just AC repair. It’s two words. Okay, the smaller, the search is going to get more and more kind of undefined.

Chris Schaeffer:
Then we move into bottom of the funnel, and this is where Jason I mainly hang out. I mean we have a very comfortable-

Jason Rothman:
It’s where we live.

Chris Schaeffer:
Room in the bottom of the funnel that we just build campaigns at. And this is what we like because this is where Google Ads shines. This is where you can find people and ignore the rest of this huge funnel and get down into these very small percentages of people that are searching for Dallas AC repairman near me. Has geographic term on it, it has AC repair, and it has near me, all of that. So it’s geographic reference, all that kind of stuff. Even more specific, Dallas Lennox AC repair. It can get longer and longer and longer. The longer it gets, it gets into what we call a long tail keyword, and it’s get tighter and tighter into the very bottom of that funnel it’s just a great opportunity to the key.

Jason Rothman:
So the search is basically I want to find an AC repairman and give them my money, and the first one I find I will click on your ad and call you and schedule you for later today and I will have my money ready. That’s a long tail keyword right there. But that’s basically what those long tailed-

Chris Schaeffer:
That’s what you’re looking for-

Jason Rothman:
… super deep funnel keywords translate to us.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, yeah. So the conversation we’re having today is how do you build a campaign like this? What does this look like? Is it a good idea? And I have a feeling we’re going to come to a very strong conclusion at the end of this and you’ll have to stick around because we’re going to have a lot of points. I want to give this a fighting chance. I want to address everything that is the good and bad of it, and I think there’s a lot of it. Jason, I mean how do you use funnels? Do you use them regularly? Is this the kind of thing you implement?

Jason Rothman:
Oh, I never, I never start a campaign without funnels. I like the way you laid it out Chris. We’re going to give it a fighting chance. We’re going to say how someone could do it, the things you’d have to worry about and think about, and then we’ll kind of make our judgment call near the end.

Jason Rothman:
If we’re building on a campaign and someone does want low, medium, high, I would say just like things that come to my mind like red flags, like things I’m looking out for, first of all the word medium, I think that’s probably … that’s the toughest one because what’s medium versus high, what’s medium versus low. I can’t do this Chris. I’m not an actor. I’m a Google Ads manager. I’m a lover. I can’t do that. I’m not a faker, okay?

Chris Schaeffer:
Right.

Jason Rothman:
So I’m going to jump to the end and just give you my views because my views are going to impact the concerns I have and the advice I would give you if you wanted to try this, so.

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay, let’s do it. Let’s jump to the last chapter.

Jason Rothman:
Let me loosen up.

Chris Schaeffer:
All right.

Jason Rothman:
Loosen up.

Chris Schaeffer:
Wow.

Jason Rothman:
Get a little limber and just kind of speak bluntly here honestly. Okay, first of all, when you told me about this, the funnel and the clouds and all that kind of stuff, the next thing I knew I was half naked and I felt a little wheezy. But then I kind of woke up and I was like, “Okay, we’re talking about Google Ads.” I was under your spell and I was like, “No, this is amazing,” because like I was telling you, forever I had talked to people about getting the right searches, but I didn’t know how to verbalize what I was thinking. And your funnel discussion clicked for me. And it’s one of the things doing this podcast with you for years now, it’s one of the things I’ve really held on to, I think about all the time.

Jason Rothman:
So if you want to ask me do I think about funnels, how do funnels play a role when I build campaigns, they play, honestly they play a role every time we build a campaign. Because every time I talk to a client who’s doing search campaigns, the word funnel gets used, the word sales funnel. And basically what I’m doing is I’m telling them like, “Okay, I make $21 million of revenue a month. To be a client you’re going to have to spend $500,000 to $5 million a month with me.” And they go, “Oh no, no. We’re only going to spend 1,000 or 5,000,” and they go, “Okay, that’s fine. I’ll take you too.” And then I go, “Since you’re only spending 1,000 or 5,000, we need to talk about the sales funnel,” because you have a limited budget in a potentially very large search market.

Jason Rothman:
So if you’re doing moving in the city of Houston, if you wanted to do high funnel and hardcore medium funnel and all that, we could probably spend 20, 30 grand a month, maybe 40. But if you only have 1,000 to 5,000, we have our pick of the litter in terms of what we show up on. So if we have a limited budget and we only get to show up on a certain amount of things, I want every single click you pay for to be as close to the bottom to the funnel as we can get because those are the ones that convert.

Jason Rothman:
For me Chris, funnel always plays a role and all I do is low funnel. I’m just going to say it, like yes, I have some clients where we run remarketing, we run YouTube ads, and that is higher funnel. Some clients we try out pure broad keywords like a pro and we get into the higher funnel. But the majority of what I do, campaign budgets are limited. We got to turn these clicks into leads. How do you do that? You do that with the bottom of the funnel.

Jason Rothman:
So I’m focused on funnels, but I’m only focused on the bottom. That’s where I’m coming from. And my whole point is I don’t like the idea of ad group structure, campaign structure, all that based on funnels because to me that’s just Google Ads. We’re going to build out a campaign. It’s going to be focused on the bottom of the funnel keywords. And if we want to try a medium funnel keyword or a broad match higher funnel keyword, let’s try it out, let’s isolate it maybe with an experiment, maybe just monitoring it with the tag, maybe we give it its own campaign, whatever, but we try things out, we monitor results, we get conversion data.

Jason Rothman:
I have a personality Chris we’re like you besmirch my name, I’ll be a little upset. You slap my child in public in front of me, I’ll be a little upset. You pull a gun to my head and steal my vehicle, my beloved car, my Subaru with the dog bumper sticker on the back that says who saved who with the paw print.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh my goodness.

Jason Rothman:
Yeah, that’s me.

Chris Schaeffer:
Oh you have …

Jason Rothman:
Everyone that’s me. You steal my beloved vehicle which I own, hold me at gunpoint, I’ll be a little upset. You ask me to make something that’s simple more complex, I’ll never forgive you and I’ll hate you more than anything in the world Chris.

Jason Rothman:
So my personality, I absolutely hate more than anything, more than getting carjacked, more than anything, I hate when people try to make my life more complex than it needs to be. I love simplicity. And to me, to me, just my opinion, that’s what this whole funnel thing does. So that’s where I’m coming from. How do you feel about it? And then let’s kind of talk about how we would do it if someone was demanding it.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.

Jason Rothman:
And also Chris. I want to hear do you think I’m wrong? Am I closed-minded? Am I a caveman? Am I missing something? Or am I just going with what works and what’s made me a lot of money? I don’t know. You tell me.

Chris Schaeffer:
I’m going to lay it out like this. As far as what Katie presented, I don’t like the idea of a high, medium, low. I immediately am going to strike the middle. I’m going to say middle is too complicated. It makes my life too hard. It’s very undefinable and it’s difficult to know where it is.

Chris Schaeffer:
In order to truly create a high, medium, and low, you have to go way up. Just like you said, what’s the average temperature of a home, what temperature should I put my home for AC repair? You have to go so high into the clouds in order to come up with a medium that it’s just not worth it. Most of the budgets I just don’t see that it’s going to be worth the money and the time investment. So for that purpose, I’m going to strike the middle and say no. For this conversation I’m going to say top and bottom. Okay? So top and bottom.

Chris Schaeffer:
One thing that I do like that I think is an advantage is the ability to control bids. Bids are very black-and-white for something like this. You should look at something that’s labeled a high funnel campaign and a low funnel campaign and the bids should be very different. Just to give basic numbers. Let’s say one, the high funnel is a dollar and the low funnel is six. I mean, just, I have no idea what industry …

Jason Rothman:
50 cents.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. I mean a drastic difference. We’re not talking about $5 and the other one’s seven. No, no, no. We need to be a drastic difference between the two. So that’s what I really like about that. And I do this type of stuff with clients that have that type of industry where there’s people that would be researching a lot.

Chris Schaeffer:
I don’t often find that when it comes to … I’m going to stick with the same kind of thing, AC repair, that people tend to research a lot about AC repair. But if they’re looking for a software, if they’re looking for some type of personal product or something like that, they might … a new toothbrush, they might be searching a lot about things.

Chris Schaeffer:
So there’s room for that top of funnel and you can bring in cheap traffic. And it should be cheap and it should be people that are in the clouds on it.

Jason Rothman:
Yeah. And that’s a great point. I don’t want to be misunderstood. All right. So first of all, let’s just make something clear. The Paid Search Podcast guys, what we stand for is cutting out the medium. If you want to talk funnels, we’re just, there’s just not enough time in the day to differentiate medium versus low and high. So let’s just cut that out. Let’s basically separate this into the Old West good and bad, the good guys, the bad guys.

Jason Rothman:
The good guys are deep funnel. We know that’s going to work. We know that’s where the action is. That’s a no-brainer. We’re doing that. The bad guys, high funnel. That’s stuff we’re going to try out. I don’t want to be misunderstood Chris. I do love low funnel. Most of my campaigns run only on low funnel. But I’m not opposed to what we are calling today the high funnel. I’m not opposed to it. It’s just I don’t like calling it high funnel. I like calling it Google Ads basically.

Jason Rothman:
Or I’ll put it this way. I’m more open to calling it high funnel if there’s no medium. I’m more open going back to the funnel discussion beyond the first discussion of what Google Ads is if it’s going to be low versus high versus low medium and high. So we’ll cut out medium and I am going to say, I don’t generally like, if things are going perfect, I don’t get the inclination to go like, “Okay, I’m running a long distance moving campaign. Long distance movers near me are the kind of keywords we get clicks from. We’re getting a great cost per conversion. We’re spending the budget. Everyone’s happy.” I don’t get the natural inclination to go, “Huh, I wonder what would happen if we started targeting keywords like nightlife in Dallas, or home prices in Dallas,” if our campaign is based in Virginia. You what I mean?

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.

Jason Rothman:
Like that’s high funnel. That’s where someone could go, “Hey, we have this route going to Dallas. We love running movers to Dallas from Virginia. A lot of people are … ” Or say California to Dallas. A lot of people are moving there. Or California to Vegas. A lot of people are moving there. So instead of just deep funnel keywords like Los Angeles to Las Vegas movers or people in Los Angeles searching Las Vegas moving companies, let’s go a little higher funnel. Let’s try out Las Vegas home prices. Let’s try out moving to Las Vegas where they’re not telling us they need a mover. They’re just saying they’re thinking about moving to Las Vegas and they’re based in Los Angeles where our campaign’s running. I don’t generally get inspired to try those things because I’ve seen too much in my life. I know generally that’s really hard to make those things work.

Jason Rothman:
But I do want to make it clear to you Chris, I am open to that discussion, trying out non deep funnel keywords and seeing how they do. And it is something I do with some clients. It’s just not something I would do if I wasn’t forced to because I know deep funnel work so well. A lot of times we don’t have budget to play around with. But that said, both you and I, we do do this where we just stray away from deep funnel. We just try things out. And so you want to talk bids? I mean to me, that’s the first place my mind goes when you’re going to try out some higher funnel keywords is bids.

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. I want to lay out because sometimes it’s not clear why are we talking about bids. What does bids have to do with it and why is it-

Jason Rothman:
Oh, they’re everything Chris, they’re everything.

Chris Schaeffer:
I think I want to lay it out this way. I think the best way to do it is approach it with math. You say the reason we’re talking about bids needing to be so really low is because we’re assuming that the conversion rate will be a fraction of what the low funnel campaign is. So the top funnel campaign, let’s just throw some numbers out. Let’s say the top funnel campaign is going to be 1% conversion rate. That seems kind of high but let’s just go with it, 1% conversion rate. The bottom of funnel-

Jason Rothman:
Always set an expectations Chris.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yep. That’s right. Listen to the Patreon last week and you’ll know what I think about expectations. Let’s say the high funnel is 1%. The low funnel needs to be like 7%, 8%, 9%, 10%. You know it needs to be something much higher.

Jason Rothman:
Let’s say 10%. Let’s say 10%.

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay, 10%. Sure. Even numbers 1% all the way up to 10%. 10 times better. The reason the bids need to be so low is because your cost per conversion. If it takes 100 clicks to get one conversion, you need to pay 10 times less than what you’re paying on the bottom funnel, which is a one in 10 conversion.

Jason Rothman:
Round numbers here, ballpark numbers. Deep funnel you’ve got to get 10 clicks to get one conversion, 10%. When you start going high funnel, potentially your conversion rate is going to drop super low because the search intent. We don’t know if these people need a mover. We don’t know if they need HVAC. They could but we don’t know that so the conversion rate is going to tank, which means you’re going to need a bunch more clicks to get those conversions. So if it’s 10% conversion rate in the bottom of the funnel, you go high funnel it’s a 1% conversion rate. That’s 10 times the amount of clicks, 10 clicks versus 100 just to get that one conversion.

Chris Schaeffer:
Got to pay less.

Jason Rothman:
So what you’re saying if you pay the same cost per click for 10 clicks versus 100 clicks, the cost per conversion is just out of control, it’s 10 times bigger I think.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, it doesn’t work.

Jason Rothman:
A lot of numbers going on.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah, it doesn’t work. Okay. I’m trying to lay out the positives, but I think eventually we’re going to end up doing a one-two punch and this thing’s going to be dead. But here’s one thing I like about funnels, and this is something I know you’ve heard plenty of times, and Katie probably has heard it as well who is our excellent question … questioner, question asker. Chris, you got 50% more leads this month which is great. It should be the end of the conversation, right, but it’s not because they’ll say, “75% of those leads didn’t end up closing. We want to take up the quality of the leads.”

Jason Rothman:
You want to have that discussion.

Chris Schaeffer:
We want to have better quality. We want people who are not just considering AC repair. They’re ready to do it. They’re sweating. Their AC’s broken and they’re about to die. So what I like about funnels it’s you can immediately control the quality of the lead and not just go after huge volume where people are putting a email in because they can get a 10% coupon for AC repair, which is not a true lead. It’s just kind of a maybe they’ll call us back. Instead, they’re calling the number on the page because their AC is broken. That’s a true low funnel lead.

Chris Schaeffer:
So you can push towards having better quality leads. That’s what the top and bottom funnel system does. Jason, I’ll let you respond, but I’ll say what kind of world do we live in were anybody who would not choose to have bottom of funnel all the time? I mean like if you’re going to get 100 leads, why not just have 100 that are just solid conversions?

Jason Rothman:
Here’s where the conversation takes a turn and here’s where there’s never a wrong or right answer and that the freaking only answer is it depends with Google Ads, it always is it depends. Let’s say you’re running in a super high cost per click industry, and you’re competing with some big companies, and your cost per clicks getting to the hundreds of dollars. And you can’t sustain that. Well then, you got to play in high funnel and you got to play with super low bid keywords and you just got to hope that, yeah, most people searching the high funnel keywords, even if they convert, they’re not going to be as ready to buy, it’s not going to be as good a conversion, as good a lead. However, some of them are going to be as good. And if you can get your cost per click low enough or if you can get your conversion rate high enough, it can make sense.

Jason Rothman:
So here’s where we’re getting into it just depends, and that’s … I guess that’s my overall point Chris, is I don’t like creating different ad groups and campaigns and ad copy and having all these strategies and all this complexity built up into this because to me this is just jujitsu. To me this is just 3D chess. To me this is just Google Ads. I get a client. It’s an easy case. We’re just running deep funnel. Okay. It’s easy. I get a client. We’re in the super high cost per click industry. They’ve been through 10 Google Ads managers. No one can crack the code. I’ve got a lot of experience. I’m going to say, “Hey, bottom of funnel’s too competitive for this individual company. We got to try top of funnel. We got to try low bids.”

Jason Rothman:
I like having that option and I like just being able to make that decision on the dime and not have all this complexity about landing pages and all that kind of stuff built up with it. So that’s where I’m coming from.

Jason Rothman:
But Chris, I think both you and I, the point we want to get across is, you play in the high funnel area, number one, conversion rate’s going to go down, number two, the quality of the leads you get will go down, just like you were saying. And number three, how do you account for those changes? It’s with the bids. Now, let me throw one on to you Chris. What if we’re doing maximize bids automatic bidding? How do we factor for that? Well … That’s why I like manual bids. I got to take a minute.

Chris Schaeffer:
Jason’s right. As he catches his breath, I mean he’s right. This is the kind of thing where if you are running a multi funnel or a multi level funnel, and you turn things on automatic, and let’s say you just set one campaign at automatic with a top CPC of $1, then the low funnel you have a top CPC of $10, you’re going to have trouble because what the system will do is it will tend to push towards the lowest hanging fruit. You don’t have finite control of what you are doing.

Chris Schaeffer:
I would say it’s almost like building the super fancy cake. If you build a campaign high funnel or high funnel campaign or low funnel campaign, you go through, you have phrase match long tail keywords, you have exact match keywords, you have put intimate details into the ad groups and the search ads and all this kind of stuff. And then, if you go in and throw automatic bids on top of this when you’re just starting, it’s like taking this fancy cake and then going to the store and getting a big scoop of cool whip off the freezer aisle and just throwing it on top and calling it good. You have to put … You’ve got to-

Jason Rothman:
Okay, I just got back and I don’t know what you’re talking about with cool whip and … Maybe someone needs to eat before the show. But I’m sorry I got a little overheated there Chris. But do you feel, like does more my first question make sense?

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.

Jason Rothman:
Like if I am in a really tough campaign and I am having to try higher funnel stuff to make things work, it’s very difficult for me where I’m used to manual bids to then try to do all this complex strategy stuff with automated bids where I’m giving up all that control. And someone would say, I can hear them right now, oh, they’re so annoying but I can hear them out there, “Well, if you just set your cap, you can run different campaigns and you can have a higher cap on automated bids on the lower funnel campaign in the lower cap and control your cost per click on the higher funnel campaigns, right? Okay.”

Jason Rothman:
Well, yes, but then what if … Here’s the deal. When I’m playing that 3D chess Chris, stuff changes quick, and I want to change my funnel bids. I want to change my high funnel bids and go even lower. But then I’ve got to change my cap on automate. Then I’ve got to wait for the system to catch up. Then I don’t know when the system has caught up. And then I got to know am I overdoing it with the changes and throwing the system off. That’s why I like manual bids, call me crazy but …

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah. Okay. I have one more thing that I’m going to suggest. Jason, you’re talking about 3D chess. I’m going to take this flat board that we’re talking about and I’m going to tilt it. I’m going to bring us into 3D chess here because what I think is a better idea, we’ve been talking about AC repair. Suddenly if we get off of this level playing field of AC repair and we take things out of how can I get AC repair as a longer keyword and get better and better low funnel searches, instead we start talking about the different ways that people search, not necessarily changing the length of the keyword but instead we start talking about the type of keyword that’s searched. So easiest example again is to stick with AC repair.

Chris Schaeffer:
Instead of doing AC repair we do HVAC installation. Still a very short keyword, but now we’ve changed something which would be relatively high funnel. Just AC repair. You could put that on an exact match and blow a budget very quickly. Won’t take any time. Done. You’ve spent all your AC repair budget. HVAC installation now as an exact match keyword it’s still a very small short you would assume high level, high funnel keyword, but instead because of the way you’ve written it, now it’s a low funnel because HVAC would imply somebody who’s possibly a business, industrial, something like that now and you’re dabbling in the B2B type of stuff. Installation goes beyond repair. Now you’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars for installation and not just repair, which could be a couple hundred dollars. It’s a big difference.

Chris Schaeffer:
Maybe instead of focusing on I’m going to try and get these low-hanging fruits for five cents a click, instead we start talking about let’s diversify what the bottom of the funnel can look like and there is an endless number of possibilities there if you start getting creative and playing in that field. And that’s where Jason and I play. I mean that’s what we do and that’s, honestly that’s what it comes down to-

Jason Rothman:
So you’re saying that when someone has a limited budget and they’re running what they like and it’s running and they’re kind of maxing it out, you’re saying before you kind of just go, “Hey, high funnel, let’s do it,” you’re saying there’s probably more of that surface area you can suck up and just get these easy leads down at the bottom if you have some experience and really are going for things.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yeah.

Jason Rothman:
I like that mindset.

Chris Schaeffer:
I mean if you ask, I mean if it’s a client you’re working with or it’s your campaign you’re working with, if you had an ideal client, what would you prefer to get most of? Most the time I hear like AC companies say, “Well, we want installations. We don’t want these a little short one-hour repair jobs where we have to scramble to get to it really fast and then get paid barely anything. We want these big business installations. We want this stuff that makes us tens of thousands of dollars, not these little repair jobs.” That’s the kind of thing that usually is going to warrant the effort.

Chris Schaeffer:
Jason, that’s what this whole episode could be called, Funnels, is it worth the effort, because that’s what we were talking about, if sometimes it’s just not worth the time.

Jason Rothman:
Well Chris, there’s other things to consider here, structure, how do you do it with structure. I will just tell you like if I’m going to try different keywords that are higher in the funnel, I’m just going to throw those in the existing campaign because that’s the easiest thing as quickly as possible. And the thing is anytime I try high funnel, I do it with super low bids to start, like we were talking about. That’s why again it’s about making things simple. I just throw them in there, see how they do. If they start eating up too much of the budget or it’s too hard to control, you can always throw on an experiment, you can always throw on a new campaign, but generally just to start I like to do that.

Jason Rothman:
And then another thing comes into play with ad copy and landing pages. Katie had some great ideas about like high funnel, the landing page, or the place you take them to and the goal. Instead of trying to get the lead information, maybe you try to get them to sign up for a free guide. And so if it’s high funnel moving and you’re getting people that are high funnel for office moves and they’re searching words like LoopNet which is like the Zillow for commercial offices, that’s super-high funnel. Maybe they’re going to need a mover if they have ever moved space, maybe not.

Jason Rothman:
But maybe you run ads on that low bids, office moves can be valuable. So you max out office movers, deep funnel keywords. You’re trying out words like LoopNet Dallas, very, very low bids because that’s going to be super high volume. Maybe you layer on income group like top 20% or something like that. Maybe you layer on business owner age 30, 30s, 40s, 50s, whatever. But you do low bids to protect yourself, control your budget.

Jason Rothman:
But then, when you take those people to the page instead of getting them to give you their lead information where their move might be six months away, maybe you have a guide to moving offices and you get their email information, get them in your system and give them that guide.

Jason Rothman:
Here’s what I’ll say to that kind of idea with different landing pages for different parts of the funnel. That’s a great idea. It’s just to me, I just don’t see that being practical for movers that are spending $1,000 to $5,000 a month. They don’t have that infrastructure. They need leads. Maybe it’s a good thing, but you got to weigh a couple things. One, is it worth the time and effort for someone to set up that kind of system, set up the guide, whatever. Number two, like how much work are we doing for free? In terms of educating an audience, super high funnel, I think it’s worth. The only way would be worth it is if you get them in some kind of email system and then they’re part of your system and you can reach out to them later. But that would be the mindset.

Jason Rothman:
I just want to say there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s probably good business. But if you have $5,000 a month, is that worth 5% of your budget $250 in getting a couple of leads? Maybe it is. It’s probably good business. But for hardcore deep funnel, we need leads this month kind of Google Ads managers, I just don’t run into a lot of clients that are those kind of clients.

Chris Schaeffer:
No.

Jason Rothman:
So I think it’s a good idea. I just don’t do it that often.

Chris Schaeffer:
Okay. I mean final thoughts here is, for me, Jason you can add on anything you want here, but for me I’m going to say knock out that middle funnel. I’m going to say avoid the complexity. Keep things simple. I’m going to say focus the majority of your work at the bottom. You could play a little bit. If you’re going to split the budget, maybe an 80/20, a 90/10 kind of split. Don’t put too much money into this, especially at first. Put the bulk of your work into the low funnel and then kind of play with the top because it’s an … Like we said, it’s an endless possibility, endless sea of top of funnel keywords.

Chris Schaeffer:
And then in the end, keep grinding out that bottom of funnel because that’s where you’ll find the gems, that’s where you’ll find … You’re not going to find gems floating in the sky because you find one and it’s going to be $600 more before you find another one and then you’ve completely beat the idea of trying to do top of funnel at that point.

Jason Rothman:
An interesting thing Chris, and again, it just goes back to the it depends, this is a never-ending game. What if you try out higher funnel keywords and then you look at the search terms you’re getting from them, and those search terms sprout more deep funnel keyword ideas that you and I have been exposed to. And then you’re able to spend your full budget again on deep funnel and you go back to only deep funnel. And the high funnel caused you to be even more deep funnel. It’s just a weird thing.

Jason Rothman:
So I think, yeah, that’s good closing words you had Chris. Mine would be, like you say, let’s take out the medium. Let’s look at it as deep funnel versus higher funnel. Deep funnel it’s where the conversions are at. As you go higher funnel, generally conversion rates drop. So to account for that you need to drop your bids. I am very … where we talk about this funnel and landing pages and ebooks and different ad copy and all that, I don’t go down that road.

Jason Rothman:
My main focus is on keywords and conversions. So what are those higher funnel keywords doing for me? Are they leading to some kind of conversions? If they are, how low do I need to bid to still get a cost per conversion I like? And I’m going to use the data I get from those higher funnel keywords. All those bad search terms that come in from those, some good ones are still going to come in, and I’m going to use those to sprout off even more deep funnel keyword ideas and keep growing the campaign.

Jason Rothman:
I think that’s my advice. Chris, give us some parting words about Opteo and then we will go into Patreon.

Chris Schaeffer:
Yep. All right. So like I said at the beginning, guys you should definitely try it out. Check it out. See if you like it or not. That’s what the six-week trial is for O-P-T-E-O .com/psp. We tell you to go there because what you can do is you can fill out the quick little chat there and say, “Hey, I’m a Paid Search Podcast listener. Can I get the six week extended trial?” And they’ll say, “Welcome to the club sir. We’ll give you that. No problem.” And you’re done. You can try it out. See if you like it. We think you will. It’s a great tool. Everybody needs that extra little kick when it comes to PPC management.

Chris Schaeffer:
Thanks for joining us. Katie I think got the most thorough answer we’ve given anyone on a one email question. Great question. Katie please send us more content because that’s what we need you for, good questions like that. All right, we’re going to jump into the Patreon. If you want to hear whatever the heck Jason’s about to hit me with, after this show, because he always has something interesting, because I sure as heck don’t. He has nothing. Okay, he’s telling me he has nothing. It’s going to be interesting though because Jason-

Jason Rothman:
We’re really selling it.

Chris Schaeffer:
I don’t have to sell it too much, just $2 a month. Go to the paidsearchpodcast.com, click on the link, and try it out. You get wonderful content every week for $2 a month. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week. Have a good day.

Please support our sponsors, they make the show possible!

Show notes:

YouTube

Transcript

Similar Episodes: