Transcript
Lewis: Hello everybody. This is the landing page. The Lowaire digital’s first podcast, we’re going to be using this platform to talk about digital marketing, Google ads, SEO, any upcoming updates and trends and news within this industry. Today I’m Lewis and I’m joined with my co-host Jamie, how are you today Jamie?
Jamie: I’m alright thank you. I’m alright Lewis how are you?
Lewis: Yeah I’m doing great.
Lewis: And the topic for today, everybody is Google ads, Google ads. In a nutshell, we’re just going to be scratching the surface today and finding out if it’s something that most businesses should be using the benefits and cons of Google ads. Because there are both things there. I’d just like to kick it off with sort of Google ads in a nutshell, for those of you who don’t know, it’s basically an advertising platform that allows people to target certain keywords on Google.
Lewis: And the beauty of this is the traffic you are generating is all user search intent. So people are going on Google to search plumbers near me. And if you can target that keyword, then you know, that that person is looking for a plumber relatively in the near future. And you know, if you can bring these onboard and convert them then. That’s one more client in your books.
Lewis: So, Jamie, I’ll just have a quick question for you. Should every business be using Google ads?
Jamie: Well Lewis if every business should use Google ads, I would say it depends on your budget. I would say because it depends on sort of market you’re also in. So for example, you mentioned the plumber, a plumber is quite a niche service, so you would need a medium-sized budget.
Jamie: I would say around £500 to get any sort of benefit from Google Ads. But yeah, I would say Google ads are possible for every single business. It just all depends on your budget.
Lewis: Yeah. I definitely agree with the budget that’s in terms of a plumber. Putting a 500 pounds sort of the number on that. I think it is difficult to sort of put a number on the budget.
Lewis: Because you know, is this person operating in London? Are they operating in Leeds, Liverpool? If a plumbers in London you know that there’s going to be a lot more competition for plumbers. There are going to be more plumbers available. And this kind of targeting in this area is going to be more expensive anyway.
Lewis: So, you know, maybe £500 is not gonna be. Get you as far as say, you know, if you’re operating in Leeds for example, if you kind of get where I’m coming from. So yeah, I can definitely see why you put the 500 target on there. I mean, £500 to start with is definitely a great place to sort of test, but I think, you know, it’s really dependent on location.
Lewis: And I think with that, you know, it’s very important that you do your research on location and the number of searches, the number of competition, the monthly search volume in these areas. Because again, you know, it really does fluctuate and I use London as the main example because. I mean, it’s the capital isn’t it.
Jamie: Yeah.
Lewis & Jamie: It’s the most populated place.
Lewis: So yeah, it’s one of those, but yeah, I mean, we’ve already sort of touched on spend and again, this is such a subjective thing is if someone rings up and goes, oh, how much do we spend on Google ads?
Lewis: It’s so…
Jamie: It’s a very varied answer. Very varied.
Lewis: Yeah. I mean, it’s just an open-ended answer. Isn’t it? You can’t really put a number on that. Until you’ve done the research and seeing if you can actually help that person.
Lewis: So many people, business owners who are potentially running their own Google ads, they’re faced with the situation where they don’t know which campaign type to actually create. I mean, you’ve got search, display video, so YouTube ads and App ads. So we just thought me and Jamie would run for a couple of these, give a few examples of what type of businesses, you know, suit, which kind of campaign and ad really.
Lewis: I think we should start off with search ads which is the main one, the most universal. Type of ad that you could do with a business. So do you want to just run for what the search ad and who really is beneficial for?
Jamie: Yeah, Lewis. I would say the search ad is really good for most businesses when they start Google ads as it’s the most popular one, and it gets the most results depending on what sort of business and market you are in.
Jamie: But search ads are really good. They’re just really simple text ads that you can create. On any market, any platform, for example, you can create a simple text ad with keywords about your business and the high chance is. If it depends on your market and the amount of spend you put into Google ads, but you will definitely see some results from search campaigns.
Lewis: You’ve basically hit the nail on the head with that one.
Lewis: I mean, search ads, again, like you said, they’re good for every businesses running Google ads really. I mean, like you said, you’re targeting certain keywords that are relevant to your product or service and people that are searching for example, plumbers near me, you want to be showing up for that kind of term. Because the person that’s searching that is, obviously they’re looking for a plumber so we can get your business in front of them.
Lewis: Then, then you know, the search ads, the perfect way to do that.
Lewis: The other type of ads you’ve got display. I mean, display is a tricky one, depending on your budget. You know, if you’ve got a relatively low budget, I don’t think display ads is where you should be focusing. I think search is probably your best bet, display is more is for something just to gain a lot of awareness and visibility.
Lewis: They don’t necessarily have the highest conversion rate. Definitely not compared to search, but again, you can use audiences to, to target like certain people in certain type of audience, or affinity audiences to actually get these ads to show. I mean, the thing with display ads, it’s all about the images that you create as well.
Lewis: I think that they have to be very eye-catching and the only issue with display ads is the fact that because you can see these on like Google partner sites. A lot of display ads show up. So people aren’t really necessarily going to click through onto yours. They might, and it’s quite good for retargeting, but again, if you’ve got a smaller budget, I’d personally just stick with the search campaigns.
Jamie: Search will bring, I would say more results for you.
Lewis: Yeah, definitely. I mean, They have a high conversion rate, really. Moving on, then I want to touch on video ads. So these are YouTube ads for those that don’t actually know. What’s your sort of opinion on these and who potentially might work for.
Jamie: Yeah I would say video ads are quite good for businesses.
Jamie: Have well, we’ll get that promotion from visually showing something like a video, sharing something instead of a text way, showing something. So for example, if you’re a gym, for example, I feel like a gym ad would do very well on YouTube showing different exercises and stuff like that. If it was text, it wouldn’t pop as much as a video would, I would say.
Lewis: Yeah, I can see why you’ve said that. I agree as well, but they should still run search. the gym should still run search ads alongside video ads.
Jamie: Yeah, I would say so because some people do search for Gym’s near me. You wouldn’t search for gyms near me on YouTube, that sort of thing.
Lewis: Yeah for sure
Jamie: It would definitely be you searching for gyms near me and a search ad would definitely bring up the results, that they would be looking for and then bring more audience towards your Gym near you.
Lewis: Yeah another great sort of industry as a whole is the e-commerce space and a product based industry. If you’ve got a product and you really want to show that off. You know video ads are definitely a great way to do that. With video ads. It’s very dependent on the editing. What the actual video is. You know you don’t want a very boring ad.
Lewis: It’s going to be very creative and well thought out for people to even stop and potentially even click through.
Jamie: That’s very, very fast paced. That’s some, one of the big things at the moment with audience retention, definitely quick fast-paced videos. Get to the point straight away, because from my experience, most people do skip through ads.
Jamie: People don’t fully watch an ad all the way through, but that’s just from my experience. You want to get the point of through in the video in the first 15 seconds. At least you can skip an ad on YouTube in five seconds. So getting the point across in them 15 seconds and five seconds is the most important thing I would say.
Lewis: Yeah, a hundred percent agree. I mean, five seconds. That’s all you’ve got. You’ve got five seconds to, to, to win a potential person over. And the thing is with video ads again. Like you said, they’re not, they’re searching for that. So it’s not like they’ve even got intent in the products or service that you offer.
Lewis: So, you know, you’ve got literally got five seconds to stop them from skipping really. So there’s a few ways around that. We’re not necessarily going to touch on that this podcast because you know, we can be talking about that forever, really different ways to capture an audience via video. But yeah, I mean, just to move on as well, then we’ve got shopping campaigns.
Lewis: And I think shopping campaigns are quite self-explanatory in the way that when you search for something on Google, say a blue hat, you always have a carousel at the top above all of the searches that will show, you know, a bunch of companies that are running, shopping campaigns and all there hats. This is very, very powerful.
Lewis: If you have a product company, a product or over a service products, very visual people want to see what they’re buying and shopping campaigns can really, really help with that. And another great thing about the shopping campaigns is it shows, you know, the price of the products and the reviews within the carousel ads. So people can see what they are potentially buying before they even clicked onto your site that could save you a few dollars with wasted clicks and the clicks that do come through, you know, they’re going to be really, really high quality traffic.
Lewis: So that’s a great thing about shopping.
Jamie: Another good thing about shopping. Is that you are able to see the images of the actual product before you even click on the actual link to the product itself. So you can definitely get that visual image across of what the product is. The description of it, the price of it.
And I think shopping campaigns, or really good for businesses that have a lot of stock, a lot of products on offer and they could just get across in them, in them threeways description, image, and price.
Lewis: Yeah. Perfect. And then finally, then we’ve got the app campaign. And this is definitely a lot more niche than the others.
Lewis: You don’t tend to see this as much as, you know, shopping, video, search and display. The reason is because it’s for people who are pushing app downloads people to see their app. And again, it can be very, very, very powerful. If you do have an app, you know, you can push these out to people using Android, iOS, Android. It works very, really well for tradesmen and people who are trying to push for If they’ve got a new app.
Lewis: I’m not sure off the top of my head. What an example would be, but if you’re in the trade industry, app campaigns tend to work really well on Android. And you know, it’s again, it’s, self-explanatory one really.
Lewis: I mean, if you’ve got an app and you’ve just created it and you want people to download. Yeah. You’re gonna launch an app campaign aren’t you really.
Jamie: Yeah if you’re intending on selling the app, an app campaign is the perfect campaign for that specifically made for app developers to get sales in their apps and get visibility within their apps.
Lewis: And installs as well. That’s the big one. I mean, a lot of people that made this really great app or game it’s so good, but no one’s got it and no one’s going to see it and it will never take off without the visibility. So this is where app campaigns can really, really help. So, yeah.
Lewis: So Jamie, talking about Google ads as a platform itself. What do you like about it? And what’s the thing that you like doing on Google ads?
Jamie: Yeah. So with Google ads, I do really enjoy the variety of the ads you can do. I mean, it all depends on sort of what campaign you do, display, shopping app, that sort of thing, but you can have a very, very big variety of different ads that you can do.
Jamie: So you can have text ads, video ads, that sort of thing. It’s really interesting just to get different sorts of products on your website. So you can actually see different responses to your different ads. That sort of thing.
Lewis: I definitely think the variety is great with Google. I mean, like I said, you’ve got all the different types of campaigns and then within that, you’ve got the different ad groups.
Lewis: And you’ve got the different keyword targeting. And at the end of the day, it’s all down to you as an individual of what you target. And if you generate results, then that’s the whole goal, but there’s so much you can change,test which is really, really great. But I mean for me, like the thing I love about Google, I mean, ads in general and paid media, it’s all done in real time.
Lewis: You know, you set a campaign live and you can just monitor it, make changes accordingly in real time, you know, with something like SEO. It’s such a long term thing and the timescale is so long. You can’t just adapt things on a daily basis. It takes a while for the changes to be noticeable and kick in. So that’s the thing I do really like about Google ads itself.
Lewis: And some of the common issues that I’m not a fan of. I don’t know about you, but this is the most recent thing Google have announced the fact that. They’re turning off expanded text ads, and they’re only sticking with responsive. And, you know, what’s your sort of opinion on that? Like, do you think that’s a good change or is that something that they should have kept?
Jamie: Uh, I believe they should have kept it Lewis if I’m honest because as I’ve mentioned, I do like the variety of the different sort of ads you can do. So I feel that removing a type of ad is a very big hindrance to possibly some businesses that did thrive off them type of ads.
Lewis: I feel it’s so difficult to say because the change hasn’t happened yet.
Lewis: I mean, it’s not til June next year so we’ve got a long time and Google. They might bring out some new type of campaign or new type of ad that’s doing that. But the way it looks at the moment is they’re just going to be sticking with, you know, responsive ads, responsive ads you should have in every ad group anyway.
Lewis: But for me like the problem with the responsive ads is because you put in 15 headlines and four descriptions, then Google just mix and matches them with using the algorithm and whatever the user searched. It’s so difficult to see what’s working within that you know, you could have one headline that’s always performing.
Lewis: And one description that’s always doing well. But you don’t actually, you can’t see that because it’s just all classed as a responsive ad, you know, whereas with the texts, the expanded text ads, the headlines that you put and the descriptions, are what show. So you can test two different descriptions. You can AB test that.
Lewis: And see which one’s performing better, but you know, as I said, with responsive, It’s just not something you can do anymore.
Jamie: Yeah. I completely agree, Lewis. So I think we should go into a couple of reasons why Google campaigns don’t actually work at the start. I mean, I’ll start this off. At the start I mean, I would say that it’s to do with people underestimating the market and how much money you actually have to put into the ads.
Lewis: Yeah for sure.
Jamie: So if you’re going into a big market. And thinking not, not a big budget around £300 I would say into Google ads. You’re most likely not going to see any results as the market is so big. You will not be able to rank anywhere on Google.
Lewis: Again I think it’s difficult to put a number on it. So, I mean, you’ve touched on £300 there, but again, I really think it’s dependent on the location and the industry.
Lewis: One I can throw out there now is lawyers and that sort of sector. You know, that’s very, very expensive on Google ads compared to something like garden maintenance, just because of the level of clients you get from being in the law firm, they’re going to be high ticket clients. And again, you know, a lot of these kinds of people and companies pay a lot of money for clicks on Google.
Lewis: You know, the traffic that there is, they’re looking for lawyers, solicitors, anything like that is all very very high quality traffic. So that’s just one of the things that I think there’s a reason why you last doesn’t work for every business, just as an overall thing for people or business owners, themselves who are looking to potentially get into Google ads.
Lewis: It’s a case of, do you have budget to try paid campaigns and see if it’s something for you. It’s so difficult to say yes or no. It is for you without seeing the market channels that you’ve done before, how you’re generating business.
Lewis: What is customer value to you? You know, is it someone that’s going to be a repeat customer or is it just a one-time purchase thing or, yeah, these are all things.
Lewis: The lifetime value of a customer is very important with Google ads. So these are all things that you need to consider or even speak to someone about. Before you decide to dive into Google ads. For anyone starting Google ads. If you were looking to get involved, have you got any tips or suggestions on what to sort of do.
Jamie: Yeah. The biggest tip I can come up with and the best tip that I’ve learned so far from doing Google ads is to understand your market and understand. What your budget will do in a market. So if you underestimate your market, you will be pretty much,to be Frank flushing your money down the toilet. As the money you put into the ads will not be anywhere near the top of the searches compared to other people that understand the market more than you, as they will be putting the money in the right place, in the right ads and getting the results that you desire as well.
Lewis: Yeah, I mean. To be fair that’s pretty much as a nutshell, what I’d suggest as well. I mean, knowing your market, you know, speak to any business owner and they think they’re an expert in their industry, you know, rightly so. I mean, they might be really knowledgeable within the industry, but Google is another kettle of fish really.
Lewis: You’ve got a bunch of keywords that you can be targeting that just waste your money and it just generates nothing. And you are, like you said, just flushing money away. There’s so much skill involved with Google ads. You know, anyone can create a campaign, but to create and manage a campaign well is a completely different thing.
Lewis: You know, you’ve got the campaign copy, which is really, really important to make sure you get right and get across. You’ve got the landing pages that people come through onto your webpage or the landing page. And then you’ve got the actual keywords themselves. And I think the keyword targeting is one of the most important things you get, right.
Lewis: Because without that, you’re going to be attracting the wrong sort of traffic. So just to sort of end off here, then everybody, if you do, or are looking to get into Google ads and you know, it feel free to give us a call or even fill out a contact form. And, you know, we’ll be sure to give you, if you are running Google ads, we can do an audit for you.
Lewis: And if you’re not, we can talk to you about whether it’s something that you could potentially be doing. So I hope this is really helpful. And if you’d like to listen to me and Jamie a bit more, I’m sure we’re going to be producing many more podcasts in the future.
Jamie: Thank you.
Lewis: Thank you, everybody.
