Aaron Wild, from Reach Local, joins the show because I speak to a lot of businesses where Google Ads would be a great option for them but they, for whatever reason, shy away from it. Maybe they don’t like spending the money on advertising. Maybe they have had campaigns in the past but managed it themselves and they didn’t have great success and so they don’t think Google Ads are a very good option for them.
It is strange to me because we can
- conduct concrete research to tell us if Google Ads are likely to pay off,
- they are so highly trackable it is not funny so you’ll know your exact ROI each month,
- we can set our own budget, and
- we can stop and start them with a click of a button.
In the past, I used to offer Google Ad campaign management for people but those were the days when it wasn’t as complex or as competitive as it is today. That’s where Reach Local comes in.
Founded in 2004, Reach Local operates in 5 continents and has had over 19,000 clients, having delivered them over 201 million leads with a lead being a phone call, email, or web event from one of their campaigns.
That’s why, these days, there is no way I’m as smart or as organised as Reach Local so I can’t, in good conscience, charge people to run their Google Ad campaigns.
As such, any of my clients who need Google Ads, I simply introduce them to Aaron and let him and the team do their thing and generate leads.
You can get in contact with Aaron and learn more about how Reach Local can help you at reachlocal.com.au, connect with him on LinkedIn, or email direct on aaron.wild [a] reachlocal.com.au.
Enjoy.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
As part of the service, I have had this episode transcribed. Transcribing, proofing, and editing a podcast episode is A LOT of work. That’s why I use a service called REV who provide professional freelance transcriptionists who are vetted for quality. While they offer a 99% accuracy guarantee, I do not proof-read their work extensively. Instead, I simply copy and paste below and, as such, please note that this is not be a verbatim transcript of the episode and I have trimmed things like the intro, close, and mid-show ad.
Daniel:
Without getting too nerdy and technical on us, explain to the listeners how Google Ads work and it would be great if you could unpack the acronym PPC as well.
Aaron:
Thanks, Daniel. Look, trying not to get too nerdy in anything with digital advertising and Google is sometimes a challenge, but let’s try and break that down. Look, Google Ads is Google’s advertising platform in which a business can bid on certain keywords and phrases related to their business. Look, when you do a search in Google, say you’re looking for a plumber in Canberra, go to the search term, and type in plumber Canberra. Out comes four ads at the top of the page. These ads are identified with a little bold AD beside them. So you know that that business is paying to appear there in a higher position than they’d normally appear. And they’re trying to drive, you the searcher, through to their website.
Daniel:
And so how does PPC play into that? What does that acronym stand for and how does it play into Google Ads?
Aaron:
PPC stands for pay per click. This essentially means that when you set up a Google Ads campaign, you have a budget that you’re prepared to spend to get people through to your website, with keywords and phrases within that campaign. So when someone’s doing a search for one of those keywords or phrases within your business, again, out comes the ad. When you, the user, click on that ad through to the business’s website, they actually pay for that then.
Daniel:
Outstanding. So people aren’t paying just when the ad gets served, like they might on TV or the radio or the newspaper? People are only paying Google when somebody actually clicks on their ad and there’s some engagement.
Aaron:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. You don’t pay to appear. You only pay when you get someone from that ad through to your website. It comes out of your budget.
Daniel:
Outstanding. Now, when we’re around town talking to businesses, we quite often talk in terms of B2B. So business to business or business to consumer, B2C. Are Google Ads suitable for both, or is one more suitable for Google Ads then the other?
Aaron:
Oh, it’s a tough one. But look, Google Ads are suitable to both. I think it really depends on the product or service that their businesses is offering. You look at a software company that has limited search volume. They’re targeting business to business. They’ve got limited search volume, but they’re still running ads. They get someone there for one of their software products and they click through and they purchase. Like their buying cycle might be a really, really long time, but it still might be relevant to them.
Whereas you look at a locksmith, a dentist, a plumber, there’s a higher business to consumer, higher search volume, higher intent, need it now service. It’s going to work. I think the key to both is making sure that what we’re trying to promote for both forms of the business is relevant and it’s effective. And when we get someone from an ad through to your website, it says exactly what that searcher was looking for.
Daniel:
So, why would a business use Google Ads in their marketing apart from most likely being a slant or a lean towards business to consumer? So B2C, but not strictly. It could be B2B. What other things would maybe indicate to a business owner that Google Ads could be a good fit and could actually help them with their business?
Aaron:
It really does depend on the products and service that we’re trying to run in the campaign. At the end of the day, we want to drive leads into any business. And Google Ads is that critical piece in the digital strategy. I think, again, it all comes down to ads being placed at the right time and ensuring a website can convert any potential new users going through to your website into a tangible lead. When we’re setting up campaigns at ReachLocal, we do rely a lot on data and data from currently running campaigns, all around Australia, previously run campaigns that we’ve run and Google trends. What’s actually happening in that business segment or industry?
Is there a lot of search volume related for this service that we’re trying to offer? What are the costs involved? Is there a lot of competition in that market space and have businesses been successful in running campaigns? Would be a lot to cover when we’re setting up a campaign. The other thing is like, what’s the length of a buying cycle? We’ve spoken previously about locksmiths, dentist, plumbers, but as we said, they’re needed now, but then you go to a builder or home renovations. The path from lead to conversion can be up to 12 months. So we’ve got to make sure that where everything is measured and we’re getting the right return on the investment back for that client at the end of the day.
Daniel:
I think there’s some really good points. So let’s say somebody’s works through all of those with you and decides, look, let’s do a Google Ads campaign and they want to monitor whether it is working well or not. And you alluded to it in your previous answer when you spoke about data, but how long should the sample size be of somebody starting a Google Ads campaign?
Because I know some people in the past might run a campaign for a couple of weeks and then just say, “It’s not working.” But probably three years is too big a sample size. Can people get a good sense after maybe one month or two months, or is it six months and then they need to make that decision to continue or not? Or do Google Ads campaigns maybe need to run longer before we can really see return on investment and results?
Aaron:
A lot of people want to see a result in the first week and there’s a lot of time, measurement, keys to get a campaign set up and running. Obviously we work closely with the clients to make sure that everything that they want to achieve from the campaign, we have that as a brief. And we want to set that up into that campaign. Look, you can have all of that and saying that all that current data, existing data, you’re not going to predict a result a 100% of the time within the first month, even. We’re trying to achieve this for the client to get them the quickest result. But taking everything into consideration, I think a really good sample size is three to four months.
You’re going to know whether we’re going to get a result in that campaign within three to four months in. Also, we quite often have businesses come to us and say, “Look, I’ve got a promotion. We only want to run it for one month. Can you do it?” Yeah, well, we can do it, but it’s only one month and maybe if we started a little bit longer, we could attract a bigger audience. But look, everything in digital is measurable and you’re certainly going to see the results.
But back to your point, I think three to four months is a good starting base. And saying that, I’ve got campaigns that have started on a three month. Can we get a result from this? Seven years later, they’re still running. So yeah, that’s the difference. If you get a campaign set up and it’s running well, continued to improve, making sure that we’re always achieving the result that the client’s after. Yeah.
Daniel:
And you spoke about that sample size of, general rule of thumb being three to four months. And you say that you try and get all the information that you need at the start. So you can set that campaign up for success. Are you doing much tweaking and watching the campaign during that three or four months?
Aaron:
We’re always working on the campaigns. There’s so many variables in that and that we talk about within campaigns. And look, we want to make sure that we’ve got the right keywords in the campaigns. Are we targeting the right audience? This is where people can come and start by setting up their own campaigns and not actually knowing the target audience. What are the keywords that they’re looking like, that are related to their business? Have they actually got those in the campaign? It’s such a challenge.
Now look, we at ReachLocal have a whole team of analysts, and myself, that look at these campaigns to make sure that from the start we have the most relevant keywords in the campaign. And we want the most relevant audience to click on our ads and go through to the website. We don’t want to be wasting money on keywords that people are just researching and not actually going to engage with us. It’s all critical to the setup.
Daniel:
You spoke before, about how easy it is to measure and track digital. We can get access to the data. What sort of things does ReachLocal report back on to a customer client? And then ultimately, how does a business work through where the Google Ads is actually providing a good return on investment? When it’s put usually in a bucket with a whole lot of other marketing tactics.
Aaron:
This is one of the things that I get really excited about with digital advertising. You can see exactly where your dollar’s going on a daily basis. Look, we can go back and see what you’re spending and what are the results. At ReachLocal, we have our own client center, which is a platform the client can log into 24 hours, seven days a week. They can log in, look at their Google campaign and see, all right, yesterday, we spent a certain amount of dollars. Our ads appeared this many times. We had this many visitors through to our website. We got this many calls from our advertising campaign. This many emails, this many web forms.
So they can see dollar for dollar, what they’re getting from their advertising campaign. On top of this, we also use a piece of code so that we can track all the calls. So any call that’s generated from an ad is recorded into this platform. The business user, the marketing manager, whoever we need to give access to this reporting can go in and listen to every call generated from that campaign. So they can work out, was that a good lead, was it a bad lead?
Daniel:
How did we handle it internally?
Aaron:
Good point. Because then I can go back and they can use that call as coaching and training within their own business and go, all right, that call we’re handling is really well, but that call that we got on Monday wasn’t great. We actually do have that product or service available. Maybe we can do some coaching and training to engage our staff, our team members in this business better, to get a higher conversion from our Google Ads campaign. So Daniel, everything is available.
Daniel:
I think that’s a fantastic feature of what ReachLocal offer, that recording any phone calls that come through from an ad. And I know from past conversations with you, some of that might be confidential. So if you’re a business listening who thinks, we can’t really record phone calls. That functionality can absolutely be turned off. Now, Aaron, you spoke before about converting people once they got to a website after they clicked on a Google Ad. What sort of things can businesses do once somebody’s clicked on an ad and they’ve gone to a website or they’ve called a business, to help enhance and support the process of turning them into a customer?
Having well-written ads. All right. So you can pay all day to have your ads appearing there, but you’ve got to entice that person to get them through to your website. You need to have a well-written ad. Those are the things that I recommend that people have in their ad is a local phone number, having their address or locality in there. You’re paying to appear there. So you want to be making sure that everything is relevant from your ads. The other thing that Google does that’s really cool, it has a thing called Dynamic Ads. What that essentially does is that, whatever that search term was put into Google, that headline will switch out and be the headline of your text ad to really attract someone.
So an example of that is, you’ve got a blocked drain. You need a blocked drain plumber in Canberra. You do that search into Google, blocked drain plumber, Canberra. Up comes four ads. The first ad reads, plumber Canberra. Yeah, it’s relevant, but do they actually do what I’m after? The next ad, the second ad, Dan, reads, blocked drain repairs. Yeah, blocked drain repairs. Yeah, I’m after that. The third ad down reads, blocked drain repairs, Canberra. All right, so they fix drains and they’re in Canberra. You click on that and it takes you through to their page. Says, blocked drain plumbers, Canberra, servicing all areas. You need that service, now. You’re more than likely going to engage with that business straightaway. So having what’s in your ad relevant to the user, you’re going to get a higher engagement.
Daniel:
Are all those little things like the location and a local phone number and reflecting back in the dynamic ad, the search term that somebody put into Google, are they all just little teaks in the consumer’s mind to go, they get me?
Aaron:
Absolutely. So we come back to digital and we talk about it all the time, but it’s relevance. What were they looking for? Yes, they were looking for a blocked drain plumber in Canberra. Longer search term, specifically what they’re after. They see that and they go, that’s exactly what I’m after. There’s a local phone number, all areas, Canberra. They’re more than likely to engage with you. I think you can’t be more relevant in digital ads. You don’t want to waste money with poorly written ads. The business may offer that service, but the user doesn’t have any relationship with you at this point. So you’ve got to be engaging in your text ads to get that user.
Daniel:
I said before, not to get too technical and nerdy, but I think you might have to on this answer because it isn’t just budget that will affect the business’s Google Ads performance. There’s also a thing called the Google Quality Score. So can you get technical and nerdy and explain to us what that is and why it’s important?
Aaron:
Oh, I can. And try not to be too technical and nerdy. We’ll do it. Google’s quality score is a combination of things. The quality of your ad, the relevance of your ad, the keywords within your campaign and the landing page. We spoke previously about the landing page. Where a user, once they’ve clicked on that ad, goes through to your page within your website. Google then gives you a quality score out of 10. We keep using our same analogy of the blocked drain, a plumber in Canberra. And everything within that ad is on your website, that’s going to give you a higher quality score.
Whereas if you had blocked drain, plumber, Canberra, and they go through to your website and there’s everything on there about plumbing and nothing to talk about blocked drain plumbers in Canberra, and we fix drains and we service all areas. It’s just farming in general. Google’s going to go, well, that’s not exactly that user was looking for. So then you will get a lower quality score. And essentially the other nerdy thing about it is, the higher quality score, the lower you have to pay per click to get someone to the website. As it’s Google’s way of rewarding good quality for the end user.
Daniel:
So the opposite would be true as well, wouldn’t it? If you’ve got a really low quality score, but you think that you can dominate Google Ads by just paying the most amount per click. That’s probably not going to help you as much as you think it might.
Aaron:
No, absolutely not because you’re virtually paying a higher amount to get traffic through to your website that you’re not super relevant to that. So you’re just paying a lot of money for probably not many leads because the user gets there and goes, that wasn’t what I was really after. So once someone’s clicked on that, it did come out of your budget, but they’re less likely to convert. So the end of the day, you might get a lot of visits to your website, but your return on your investment is really low because people aren’t engaging with you.
Daniel:
Aaron, I think the key takeaway there is that it isn’t just a volume of visitors game with Google Ads. It’s also important to really focus in on the quality and the relevance of the people that you’re trying to talk to. So Aaron, to round that all up, give us an example, talk us through a case study. You able to share one of maybe your favorite campaigns with us and run through the budget and the numbers and the results that, that business was able to achieve. Just so we can tie it all together in the minds for the listeners.
Aaron:
Yeah, for sure. Look, I’ve run a lot of campaigns in Canberra in the last eight years and there’s some really, really enjoyable campaigns. There’s some challenging campaigns out there, but one of the campaigns is a locksmith campaign. We started that client as a four month trial. To see what he basically, what it was new to him. Wanted to see what lead volumes he could get from that. It was new to me, it was my one and only locksmith campaign that I’m running. And I was excited, he was excited. We built this campaign out and it started. And the first one to two months, we were monitoring it the whole time. And then this got on a real roll. Now that client is continuing to advertise, what can we do better? What can we do differently? But that campaign, it works really well.
Look, the budget’s $2,000 a month they spend, servicing Canberra and Queanbeyan and surrounding areas. On average, we get between 350 to 400 visitors a month through to their website. At an average cost per visit, you just work that backwards, it’s about $5 a visit to get someone to his website. So our ads have to be well-written. There’s competition in his market. We want to make sure that our ads are really relevant, all the time. We don’t want people getting there and not converting and bouncing out. He gets between 150 and 200 contacts a month. A lot of it is phone calls. Locksmiths, they’re needed now. So he gets a lot of phone calls. One thing I really like about this business, Daniel, is that, they will answer the phone 24 seven. If you’re locked out, you’ve been out all night, you locked yourself out of your house. You ring this locksmith. They will answer. They’ll get someone out there.
So they know the value of a phone call. In saying that, their conversion runs at about, on average, 75%. So if we work this out at 75%, they have 90 jobs booked a month at an average cost per sale of $180. They’re spending $2,000 a month for a return of somewhere between $16 and $17,000 a month. They actually listen to every call that generates. From the reporting platform that we have, they go back, they put notes in the system, that call resulted in a sale and the dollar value was this. Talking about return on investment. They know they put this in, this is what they returned and happy to say that they’re very happy clients.
Daniel:
I think one of the key things to take away there, again, is that old adage, is that you have to spend money to make money. And I think Google AdWords provide, for a lot of businesses, particularly business to consumer, an outstanding opportunity to spend a disproportionate amount of money for the amount of money that you can actually make. Now, Aaron, if people want to get in touch with you and find out more about how you and ReachLocal can help them, what should they do? Where can they go? How can they get in contact?
Aaron:
ReachLocal, have a really good LinkedIn profile that we’d put quite a lot of information up through that. Our website reachlocal.com.au has a lot of great information about case studies, examples, and all of the other products in the digital landscape that we haven’t spoken about today, that we also offer to our clients. If they want to get in touch with me personally, my email is Aaron A-A-R-O-N dot Wild W-I-L-D @reachlocal.com.au. My mobile number is 0422 265 684.
Send me an email, send me a text, give me a call. Look, happy to meet with anyone and have a chat about what they’re doing now, what they could do differently. Have they done it before? And did it work? A lot of people I work with have tried AdWords and they’ve got a bad taste in their mouth. Back on what we were talking about. Was it set up correctly? Did they have the right budget? What do our end users look like? So, happy to have a coffee anytime and chat about Google AdWords.