“Show Notes”
This episode is sponsored by Website for photographers. Website 4 photographers help photographers get more leads from their websites. You can get in touch here info@website4photographers.co.uk
Why would we use Google Ads?
You get instant results. As soon as you press go you get visitors to your website. But it means you have keep paying to keep those visitors coming. It can also be complex to setup.
When should you use ads Sam says the first thing you need to do is do some research before running ads.
1. You need to know your conversion rate (how many customers do you get for every enquiry). 2. You need to know the average amount of money you get from a customer
3. Find the ad costs for the ads you want to run. You need to use keywords here and the SEO planning podcast talks about this in more detail. You then need to work our the cost per click. The you need to know for every website visitors how many calls you get. You then need to know how many calls it takes to get a customer. You need to use this to work out how much money you will need to spend to get one customer.
That number needs to be low enough to make it worth you paying this much for a customer. You also set monthly ad budgets which Google breaks down into days. Once your daily ad allowance is spent Google will stop showing your ad for the rest of the day. Ads can work if the price is right, but it is also easy to lose money on ads. Marcus said that people from Google Ads phone you to help with your ads setup. But remember their main job is to persuade you to increase your ad spend. Once you have done the maths and know the ad is worth running you need to think about the three parts of the ad.
1. The words 2. The ad
3. The destination you send them to
The key is that the words, the ads and the destinations must all match up. The keywords should relate to the ad which should relate to the landing page. The landing page needs to be 100% focussed on the ad. Sending people from ads to
your home page is a really bad idea. If these 3 parts don’t all match then visitors won’t convert into leads and Google may not show your ad. It is best to make a different landing page for every ad that you run that is dedicated to match that ad. Marcus comments that it’s easy to spend a lot on ads. Sam says it’s important to constantly evaluate how the ads are working for you. Give them a few months to bed in. Once they have settled in and they are not working at all turn them off. If they are working well great. If they are a bit borderline then it is time to tweak the ads and the landing page. But only ever change one thing at a time. Make a single change, evaluate the results, then make another change and do the same. Remember the changes could be to the ads, keywords or landing page. But always make one change at a time.
So remember get the flow from the words to the ads to the page and make sure it adds up financially.
“Show Transcription”
Marcus: One, two, testing, one, two, okay. Well, hello there listeners. Yes, it’s Marcus speaking to you and I’m joined in the studio as always by my good friend Sam. Hi there, Sam.
Sam: Hi Marcus, how is everything with you?
Marcus: Yeah, very good, thank you. And you’ve just come back from holiday, you’ve just been telling me about it, it sounds like you had a fantastic time.
Sam: Yeah, lots of different countries to visit all around Eastern Europe, that was pretty interesting. Yeah, good choice, good choice.
Marcus: Okay, so you’re going to be talking about Google Ads, I believe.
Sam: That’s right, Marcus. This episode of Shoot to the Top is sponsored by Website for Photographers. I’m Sam Hollis from Shoot to the Top and Website for Photographers is my business. I help photographers get more leads and so more customers from their website. I do this through SEO and website services, both tailored specifically for photographers.
In this business, I only work with photographers and as you know from the podcast, I spend loads of time talking to photographers and really getting to know the photography business. So if you want more leads and more customers, get in touch with me via the Shoot to the Top website, email me at info at websiteforphotographers.co.uk, that’s the number 4, or look for more contact details in the show notes. And now, on with the show.
Google Ads. And so, as usual, how do I always start, Marcus? But why? Why? That’s the usual start of all my podcasts. Why would you want to use Google Ads? You’re giving Google an awful lot of money and they’ve probably got enough. But there are reasons why people use Google Ads. I mean, the first is really you get instant results. So if you’re doing SEO, you’re doing social media work, you’re doing newsletter, it all takes time to build, yeah? Ads, you give them the money, you press go and it works. So you’ve got that, that is a really nice, you’ve got results straight away and you’re straight away getting visits to websites. If you look at your stats, your website numbers will shoot up the moment you are paying people, paying Google for ads, as long as they’re set up reasonably well. But obviously, there are downsides to that. So you have to keep paying. So for those visitors to stay there, you keep paying. While if you’re doing the social and if you’re doing the SEO and things, they build and then they time to, over time, they can kind of work themselves a little bit. Obviously, you have to keep posting on social, but as your numbers build or an SEO, it builds and you need to do too much more. While ads, it is just keep handing over the money and the visitors keep coming, stop paying the money and the visitors will plummet. So there’s that side to it. And it can be a little bit complicated to set up, but I’m going to go through now kind of when you might want to do ads, what you might want to use it for, a little bit about in setup. We’re not going to go into like the technical details, but more the kind of big picture of how it works.
Marcus: Great.
Sam: Cool. Okay. And are you using ads, Marcus?
Marcus: Do you know what I do, Sam? So I’ve got a little bit to add to this as well. I’ve got a bit to add to your ads.
Sam: I was about to spot the same. That’s worrying, isn’t it? Anyway. So the first question is, when do you want to do ads? And the first thing I need to say is you need to do some research and some maths and some homework before you spend money on ads. You can spend vast amounts of money on ads and get nowhere. It has to add up. Okay. So there’s a few things you need to know before you start to run ads. And the first thing is, what’s your conversion rate? So in other words, once somebody gives you a call and inquires, how many of those do you convert into customers? And then on top of that, how much money do you get from the average customer? Because you need to kind of know that information so that you know how much it’s worth spending on ads. Because it’s not worth, you know, having to spend £1,000 on ads for a customer when a customer only gives you £500, yeah? Or £1,000 for every lead when, yeah, it doesn’t. So you’ve got to do the maths. So the first thing is, yeah, I know your conversion rate. So for every person that contacts you, how many turn into a customer, and now how much money you get from the customers. You then need to do some research into the ad costs. So once you’ve set up an ads account in Google and you put in some keywords, it will then start to tell you the costs. Now, I don’t want to really spend time on keyword research because we’ve got shows talking about that. So if you go back to the SEO shows, we’ll put a link in the show notes. It talks about keyword research and it’s pretty much the same idea, except this time you’re paying for the keywords. But kind of the ideas are basically the same. So once you know what words you want to appear for and what area you want to appear in, so in Google you literally list your words and then you list your areas. So do you want to be found in the whole of the UK or a particular town or county? You know, there’s loads of options there. And it will then tell you a couple of really useful things. And one is the cost per click. So that means, basically, every time people search for that, Google might show your ad. They might not. They might. Depends on a few things. And then if people click on it, you pay for the click. That’s why it’s called pay per click. You don’t pay for it appearing, you pay for the click. So once someone’s clicked on your ad, bang, you’re paying. So it will tell you the estimated cost per click for those keywords in those areas. And it is estimated because it’s kind of a complicated online auction. So sometimes it’ll be cheaper, sometimes it’ll be more expensive. But the estimate’s pretty good. And it will also tell you the volume so you can get an idea of how many people might be clicking. And so the key is, you look at the costs per click. And you go, OK, so it’s going to cost me two pounds every time anyone clicks. And then you kind of need to know, right, for every visit to the website, how many calls do I get? So you can then kind of work out, OK, so let’s say for every 10 visitors, you get a call. OK, this is pretty high, but it’s just for the simple math. So that means already, so let’s say it’s one pound per click. Yeah. And for 10 of those visitors, I get one call. So we’re now up to 10 pounds for a call. Yeah. Does that make sense? So then you think, how many calls does it take to get a customer? So let’s keep it simple again. Let’s say for every 10 calls, I get a customer. So let’s say that’s now 10 pounds per call. I need 10 calls. So that’s then 100 quid before I get a customer. Yeah. And then you go, right, how much am I charging a customer on average? 1,000 pounds. So is it worth paying 100 quid for that customer? Yes, probably so. But the maths might work against you if the clicks are different, if your conversion rates are different. Obviously, you might not know all of your conversion rates exactly. So you might have to do some estimating. But you really need to do that because there’s no point ploughing money into ads if you’re spending more on ads than you’re going to get from the business. Total waste of time.
Marcus: And as you said, Sam, it does mount up, doesn’t it? As I found it, I was quite surprised how much it.
Sam: It can do very quickly. You do set a budget as well. So you set a monthly budget. And what that does, Google does, it divides that up into days. So it then gives you a daily budget. And so what it does at the beginning of the day, you’ve got your daily budget, and it keeps showing your ad. And then if somebody clicks, it takes money off your budget. And then once your budget is used for the day, it stops showing your ad because your budget’s used. So that’s kind of how that works. So you can limit what you spend, obviously. But still, if the maths doesn’t work, the maths doesn’t work, and it’s not going to work. So you do be cautious. Lots of people think it’s magic and you just get customers. It can work well if the price is right, yeah? You know, if you’re going for something national or you’re going for something very London-focused, it’s going to be expensive. Now, if you’ve got a pricing structure that reflects that, then maybe the ads work for you. But if you’re not, then it might not.
Marcus: So, yeah, that’s… I’m sure you’re going to go on to this, but I remember when I did it, you get a person from Google phoning you up and going through the whole setup with you. And they do spend quite a lot of time. I think it’s about an hour or something going through it.
Sam: Yeah, you can do it. It varies when they phone you. They’re actually salespeople, so they always do that.
And I imagine at the end, Marcus, what’s the final point? And this would work better if you spent more money is always their final point. But yeah, they are good. The only thing I find is sometimes they’re actually freelancers, I’ve come to discover over time. And actually, sometimes they’ll phone you over time. And sometimes one will say one thing and then, you know, six months later, someone else will phone you and want to tweak it a different way. But yeah, they can be helpful. But then they’re not like someone will always phone you them or a random thing that happens sometimes.
Marcus: Yes, I did notice that. Yeah, exactly.
Sam: Cool. So if you decide the numbers add up and you might want to go for it, you then obviously do a bit more work on the keywords. And like we said, there’s other shows on that. We’re not going to go into it. You then need to think about how your ad is going to work. And so the key is kind of three parts. There is the keywords themselves, which people type in and search for. There is then what your ad looks like and says, so your ad will give a little message. And there’s then the page that you send people to after the ad, the web page, although sometimes you do send them to an email or a phone number, but as well as the page. And we need to make sure and Google needs to make sure that everything flows smoothly from one to the next. OK, so if, let’s say, you’re really wanting to work with, I don’t know, with clubs, you’re like a food and drink photographer and you want to, an events photographer, you want to like clubs, so you get these exciting action of clubs. So you’re going, right, so your ad is about club owners promoting, excuse me, have some water. You know, your ad words are about, are you a club owner and do you need some images for social media or something like that? And then, so your keywords could be, club owner and social media and photographs or something. Then the ad needs to say something like that. The ad needs to be, are you a club owner and do you want photographs for your social media? And then your page needs to be something about that. It needs to be, we do great social media photos for club owners. And that’s essential for the, connect, it’s essential for the ad to work. If your keywords are about club owners and photography and social media and your ad talks about general photography and then you send them to your general landing page, that’s just, you know, Sam Hollis photography, do you want weddings? That doesn’t add up and it doesn’t work. And so there’s a couple of issues with that. And one is that the people who click on the ads will be confused. And two, Google won’t use your ad. So although you’re paying Google, they also want to make sure that their customers, which is the people using Google search, get the best search experience. So they don’t want a club owner who wants photography to search for something and end up looking at a wedding photography page because that’s delivered them the wrong results. And Google doesn’t like that. So there’s two sides to that flow working. One is the person themselves will go, what the hell is going on? This isn’t what I searched for. And two is Google just won’t show you ads because Google, you know, Google is the best search engine in the world. Let’s be honest. We don’t talk about any others. We don’t talk about Bing that much, do we Marcus? And all the others because they are the top and they are the top because they are good. And if you, even if you’re paying them, they won’t compromise that. They won’t show you ads. End of story. And they would charge you because no one will click. But getting that flow through is really important because a lot of people do this and then they send visitors to their homepage. Yeah. Do not send visitors to your homepage. Do not send them to any page. Write a specific landing page for your specific ad.
And probably if you’ve got slightly different ads on slightly different topics, have a different landing page for everyone. So you’ve built a special page that is just for people who’ve come from that ad so it’s dedicated to them. And you’ve thought carefully about what you want them to do when they’ve landed. Do you want them to sign up to your newsletter, book, call, whatever it is, and it’s a landing page just for them. Specifically, do not send them to the homepage. That’s just a disaster and it’s never going to work.
Marcus: Yeah. I mean, I mean, there’s no doubt you’re going to be talking about the benefits and cons of it, Sam. But I mean, just briefly, if I may say about my experience of it, I invested in Google Ads because I thought it was a great way of getting to the top page of Google. My website wasn’t getting to the top. So if I do ads, it’s a great way of getting me to the top. And yeah, you know, they’re a little bit complicated to set up, as you say, but nevertheless, you get there and you do it with it. And it’s important to get the chain correct. The disadvantage I found in it, it was that it’s you can actually see how much you spent, can’t you, over years. And I clicked it and saw how much I spent over, like, three years or something. And it was like, wow, I cannot believe that figure I’ve spent. It’s like, you know, so I did cut it back.
Sam: So I mean, that leads on to the next thing, which is you just need to constantly evaluate. So like initially you calculate and you work out, does this work? You then need to be every month going in and going, right, how much have I spent? How much have I made? And yeah, the first month you might not have made anything, but you can have a look and go, I’ve got some lead. So it might be that you need a couple of months for everything to go through. But before long, you should be able to go, you know, how much am I spending? How much am I getting in? Is this working? And it might be that it’s like making you quite a lot of money. So that’s great. It might be that it’s absolute disaster. So just stop it. Or it might be it’s okay and it could be improved. And if it’s in that it’s okay, it could be improved. That’s the time to tweak your ads. So probably that’s not the time to give up. That’s time to go, right. So maybe you’ve got three different ads. Are some of them working better than others? Does it work at different places better? Let’s try some different stuff. So if it’s kind of borderline, experiment, tweak little things, give it a go. But if it’s, you know, if you’re spending vast amounts and you’re not getting vast amounts in, stop it. This will not change. You will lose money. Yeah, be really, really cautious with ads. If done well, and if done for the right search terms, and if the maths adds up, it can be really great. But it can also just be a way to throw money down the drain if you’re not got your eye on the ball.
Marcus: Yeah. And I mean, what do you think? I mean, when, you know, it’s a small business like myself, and I looked how much I could spend with Google, how much I was spending. And then you scale that up to think how much these larger companies are spending with them. It is incredible, isn’t it? How much money is spent on Google Ads?
Sam: Them and Facebook are the biggest advertising agencies in the world. But the key is, do the maths. Yeah, do not just throw money at it and then look at your business and go, I’m doing all right and I can afford it.
It’s not can you afford the ads? It’s are these ads generating me leads? Yes. Yeah. And customers. And let’s look at the value of these customers that have come directly for Google Ads. And does that make the maths work for me paying for Google Ads? And you’ve got to just be, you’ve got to do that every month, you’ve got to otherwise you just throw money down the drain. And it’s I say, it could be working really well for you. It could be you need to tweak it a bit. If you do tweak it, change one thing at a time. And then see what happens. Don’t change six things at a time in your ads, because otherwise, if it goes up or down, you don’t know which of the six things it is that make it do it. So change one thing. And you can do this every like, you don’t have to wait a month, you can do this quite regularly, wait a couple of days, maybe a week, but change one thing, you know, has that made things better? Has it made it worse? Then, you know, based on that, change something else or change that further. But you know, just one of the things with ads is there are lots of people going through, so you can see the results straight away. And it might be the ads you’re changing, but it might also be your website, it might be that the ads are getting people to your website, but your website aren’t getting people to book a call. So it might be go what, I’m going to tweak my website page. And you can even do a B testing where you send some people to one and some to another and make different changes. But the key is one change at a time, or you don’t have a clue which change made the difference.
Marcus: I mean, it’s all interesting stuff. And also, I should just say as a caveat, and you did a show about this, the Google Maps, which is Google My Business or Google Maps, which is free. And that is another great way of getting your name to the top of the Google listings.
Sam: It is. Again, there’s a whole SEO thing around that. And people pay for ads on that as well now. So you can pay for ads. Ads can go within the maps listing. So people do pay to be at the top of that. And if you do pay for ads, no matter how good the SEO is, the ads will always be at the top of the Google search, because Google puts in there. But most people do know their ads. It says ad, doesn’t it? And most people are pretty aware which are the ad results and which are the regular results. Some don’t. But most, a lot of people will skip the ad results. But a lot of people won’t. Yeah. So yeah, it’s all swings and roundabouts. But I think the key is all with evaluation. And especially this because of the money you’re putting in, look at it all the time. Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate.
Marcus: Excellent stuff. Yeah.
Sam: I think so. I mean, the setup is long. The setup, you can do yourself. It is quite complex. A few things that help you. Google does give recommendations when you go into your ads. Google has recommendations. So that’s quite nice because you can just go in and go and, you know, as long as they’re sensible, accept them. It will gradually over time recommend more keywords for you, recommend keywords to take out, recommend negative keywords. That means keywords to avoid. And there’s all sorts of tweaks. You know, we could do five shows on the settings, but we don’t generally. I think we could bore everyone. We don’t generally do the technical stuff, do we, Marcus? I think that big picture idea really is just, yeah, the really key is getting that flow through, like we said, from the keywords to the ad to the page and making sure it works financially.
Marcus: Excellent stuff, Sam. I should go and have a look at my Google ad campaign and evaluate straight away. Thank you.
Sam: Excellent. Good. Right. Listeners, if you want to make sure you don’t miss a podcast, and of course you don’t want to miss a podcast, then you need to be getting the newsletter. So go to the website shoottothetop.com. There you can sign up to the newsletter. You’ll get the episodes every week in your inbox. You get extra information from Marcus and me. Get a chance to be a guest. You get bonus old episodes sent to you that you probably might not have heard before. If you’re a news listener, it is well worth being on the newsletter list. So head over there, sign up, and Marcus, I will see you next week.
Marcus: See you next week, Sam.
Sam: Take care.