Google AdWords and Microsoft Advertising

[uneven_cyclist]

Hello Everyone,

I am posting here in hopes of connecting with someone who might be willing to provide a bit of coaching and feedback for someone who is just getting their feet wet with online advertising (Google AdWords and Microsoft Advertising).

Ads are fascinating to me because they afford seemingly endless opportunities to track and improve results, which is really exciting for me.

With that said...my initial efforts have been less than spectacular and so I am seeking to connect with a more experienced marketer who might be willing to hear about my efforts up to this point and to provide some guidance and ideas as I move ahead.

Thanks all for taking time to read this, and hopefully will connect with someone soon!

[KarefulKactus15]

I'm not an expert. 

I'm solidly in the mediocre camp lol.   I only use adwords for 2 businesses I own and dont do this professionally.

However I have invested about $15,000 into the school of hard knocks and hands on training. My ads are now profitable and have a ludicrously high ROI.    I also now have a google adwords consultant that google gave me to answer any high level questions.   (This is because I tagged my business as HVAC, not because of how much I've spent. I guess certain business sectors are very profitable for google so they want to help you? *shrug*)


Again I'm not an expert and I'm sure there is a wicked smart marketer on here that does this professionally that can help but let me see if I can start you with the right questions.

1.) What are you struggling with? Are you getting a lot of crap clicks?   Are you not reaching the right people? Are you not reaching enough people? Is your budget just being pissed away?
2.) Can you give us a rough idea of the industry? It doesnt need to be specific, but different industries have different strategies and wildly different Cost per click.    For example, my "easy" business, clicks are less than a dollar, for my "hard" business qualified clicks are around $50.   Is this retail or service or something else?   Is it a local business or an online business?

So that is adwords, lets discuss the big picture marketing questions as well as key metrics.

Have you read "The one page marketing plan" ?- Its my favorite marketing suggestion for people.  The two highlights you should take away is that you need to know your ROI from marketing activities and that also you should be focusing on growing a referral marketing system where your customers are out there advertising for you.     For one of my businesses I have reached a critical mass with referrals alone outpacing what I can handle.  I have reduced my google ads spend by 90% and the remaining 10% is for services that are 3x more profitable then my average service.


Now this last one is completely unrelated to your question but I like to share with people.  If you business is already functioning, do you know how you compare with your industry peers?  Would you like to?
https://businessreferenceguide.com/subscribe-business-reference-guide-online/

I'm not affiliated with them in any way, I only share because I find it useful.  You can subscribe for a one month subscription (And cancel before it renews, it wasnt any trouble) and download all the data you want.  It will include a template for your industry that shows all kinds of key ROI metrics that you can benchmark yourself against.  The reason I mention this is one key metric is advertising spend as a % of gross revenue.

[KarefulKactus15]

Also PPC is a bit ironic in the following way:

When you need PPC the most is when it works the least.   

When you first start out, you have low revenue to spend on ads, but this is also the time when your ads are least refined and have the poorest ROI which is exactly the time you need them to have high ROI so you can have revenue.

Don't get discouraged - Its starts out crappy then through refinement gets better and better.

[Michael in ABQ]

I recently purchased an ecommerce business and about half our sales are from Google PPC (mostly Google Shopping). We kept the marketing agency the previous owner used and so far they've been doing a solid job. I assumed I would just take this over and save the cost of their monthly retainer. However, I soon realized that I had neither the time nor the inclination to master another skill. However, we're also spending tens of thousands of dollars a year on advertising so their flat fee becomes more reasonable as a percentage of our total ad spend.

We are lucky to have very cheap clicks in our niche, generally less than a dollar, and on average less than $0.50. Our marketing agency says we have the cheapest clicks of any client of theirs.   

[KarefulKactus15]

I've really enjoyed the optimization process, but if one doesn't have time nor inclination it's a lot to take in.   You can't just learn ppc, you need some marketing basics, a knowledge of seo and a few other things.

[SeattleCPA]

Not an expert on this...

But in past, I've tried to use PPC for both digital goods (like ebooks) and for professional services like tax return preparation.

What I've found is that it's really tricky and soooooo easy to hosed by, I would say, Google and the made-for-adsense sites and then by your competitors who click away your budget.

And then even beyond those issues, one encounters pretty big challenges.

BTW I suspect I failed to get PPC to work for digital goods because I was trying to sell a single $50 or $100 item and I was competing for ad placement with people who might be selling a $500 or $1000 item or who hoped to acquire a customer with a life-time revenue of, for example, $5K or $10K.

Also, I think for professional services PPC works... but you can't really get THAT much volume. E.g., sure, you can buy $10 or $20 clicks from Google to get a, for example $500 or $1K tax return client that comes back year after year... and that's a great ROI. But you won't get many clicks.

E.g., you buy 25 $20 clicks so pay $500 and that's to get a $500-a-year client. That's good. A great ROI probably. But if you can only get 200 clicks a month? Wow, it's a long road to growing the business to a size that works.

[KarefulKactus15]

The OP has never come back!

Happens lol. 

If they ever do come back Google gives you the tools (If manipulated correctly) to get a reasonably accurate estimate of ROI before starting a campaign.  I guess that should always be the first step - Is this PPC campaign even a good fit based on potential ROI.   I can give 3 examples of good and bad ROI.

1.) Good ROI - One of my businesses gets clicks for for about 50 cents with a 33% conversion rate.  So I pay about $1.50 to get a customer. For this service my customers have to come back 2x a month. Typical spend is $900 over 6 months on a service with a 30% profit margin.    So that $1.50 PPC spend bought me $900 revenue and $300 profit.  - Not bad.....  Insanely high even? 

2.) Good or Bad ROI - In my HVAC business a click is $50. My business falls into 2 categories, service and replacement.   A replacement job runs $4500-$7500 with good profit. In this use case the ROI from clicks is still good.  It may take 5 clicks to convert but the huge revenue is worth it.

3.) Appears bad but could be good - Back to the HVAC, let me give this example.   I run the same ad that cost $50 a click.  Instead of getting replacement work, I get repair work.  So I've paid upwards of $200 for a conversion that leads to work that is maybe $150-250.    At surface value I've just lost money and on paper, for that specific transaction I did lose money.   This is where you absolutely MUST know your numbers.  You have to track lifetime customer value, as the example I gave could go either way.     In my specific case my customers usually refer me to an average of 3 people within 3 months time.  Those customers typically do the same if its during the busy months.   So that one $200 conversion didnt actually = the $150-250 sale that I made.  The ROI on that click is much higher when you ad in the new referrals I would have not had otherwise and also consider that a % of those will need replacement work in the near future.

TLDR - The most important part of any marketing is tracking. TRACK EVERYTHING.




Modified - So a practical application of knowing the numbers is being able to estimate the required PPC spend to achieve your revenue goals with all marketing channels activated. PPC can be used as a form of non sustainable growth hacking. This is especially true if your business is one that has a referral rate at 10% or higher.   Anything with referrals has a critical mass level and once you hit that, you no longer need to spend as much on PPC. But it can be expensive to hit that critical mass.  My HVAC business is $70,000 PPC spend to hit the target I want.  My other business was only $12,000.  This isn't pocket change, but it enables you to fast forward YEARS worth of organic growth. 

[SeattleCPA]

The OP has never come back!

Happens lol. 

If they ever do come back Google gives you the tools (If manipulated correctly) to get a reasonably accurate estimate of ROI before starting a campaign.  I guess that should always be the first step - Is this PPC campaign even a good fit based on potential ROI.   I can give 3 examples of good and bad ROI.

1.) Good ROI - One of my businesses gets clicks for for about 50 cents with a 33% conversion rate.  So I pay about $1.50 to get a customer. For this service my customers have to come back 2x a month. Typical spend is $900 over 6 months on a service with a 30% profit margin.    So that $1.50 PPC spend bought me $900 revenue and $300 profit.  - Not bad.....  Insanely high even? 

2.) Good or Bad ROI - In my HVAC business a click is $50. My business falls into 2 categories, service and replacement.   A replacement job runs $4500-$7500 with good profit. In this use case the ROI from clicks is still good.  It may take 5 clicks to convert but the huge revenue is worth it.

3.) Appears bad but could be good - Back to the HVAC, let me give this example.   I run the same ad that cost $50 a click.  Instead of getting replacement work, I get repair work.  So I've paid upwards of $200 for a conversion that leads to work that is maybe $150-250.    At surface value I've just lost money and on paper, for that specific transaction I did lose money.   This is where you absolutely MUST know your numbers.  You have to track lifetime customer value, as the example I gave could go either way.     In my specific case my customers usually refer me to an average of 3 people within 3 months time.  Those customers typically do the same if its during the busy months.   So that one $200 conversion didnt actually = the $150-250 sale that I made.  The ROI on that click is much higher when you ad in the new referrals I would have not had otherwise and also consider that a % of those will need replacement work in the near future.

TLDR - The most important part of any marketing is tracking. TRACK EVERYTHING.




Modified - So a practical application of knowing the numbers is being able to estimate the required PPC spend to achieve your revenue goals with all marketing channels activated. PPC can be used as a form of non sustainable growth hacking. This is especially true if your business is one that has a referral rate at 10% or higher.   Anything with referrals has a critical mass level and once you hit that, you no longer need to spend as much on PPC. But it can be expensive to hit that critical mass.  My HVAC business is $70,000 PPC spend to hit the target I want.  My other business was only $12,000.  This isn't pocket change, but it enables you to fast forward YEARS worth of organic growth.

Great info @Kroaler ... Shame OP didn't come back and benefit from your insights. :-(