Google Ads Strategy (2022)

Past History

-> Engaged King Kong <dates>

KK are running the Adwords in their account to “protect their IP”. You will find attached a number of screenshots I took when I was doing the initial google hangouts brief with them.

Summary of the current situation:

- KK engaged to design & build website in July 2017. Pleased with the job they did.

- Given KK position themselves as a Digital marketing agency (& not a web dev team)… given I was happy with the website, felt they would also do a good job of online marketing.

- Discussed: Adwords, SEO, & Facebook advertising.

- Agreed that this would be our strategy/ target:

stage 1: 90 Google ad words campaign (KPI: 1 full paid keynote/ workshop locked in per mth from website) budget: $1500 Adwords, $1000/mth KK mgt fee

stage 2: if meet stage 1 KPI continue Adwords + 90 day Facebook campaign (KPI: 2 full paid keynote/ workshop locked in per mth from website)

stage 3: if we meet KPIs above, commence SEO campaign 

-> KK felt this was super reasonable (“easy!”)

- Throughout campaign I have expressed concern (almostly weekly) of lack of quality lead gen from website during campaign. KK keep saying campaign is doing great.

-Feedback from KK last week when expressing concerns:

https://www.useloom.com/share/61000efd1c9b4ea7afb54e0f418517dd

Just a quick summary to address some of the point you raised on the phone earlier.

Results: You mentioned you've only received one lead. However, the data shows that you've received 11 leads most of which have been phone and contact forms. 

Strategy: You were wondering if the platform was the right play to drive leads to you and the answer is yes AdWords has the data to demonstrated that their is a consistent audience of users who are searching for your services.

What to consider: Sales Cycle is longer than anticipated. You may have expected users to quickly decide to make contact but so far the traffic is converting at roughly 1% This can indicate that your audience needs more time to research and shortlist candidates for events they're planning. This month we're activating remarketing which will help deliver return users to the site who are still planning. We couldn't do this any sooner as we needed 500 clicks before we could activate so that we can optimise the remarketing strategy.

Steps towards improvement: As mentioned above we need to start reaching users who have been to your site before which is part of what we'll be doing in the period we're going into. Please watch the Video I shared in my response to Donna that was produced by Farah where she talks through our strategy moving forward.

Why you're in the right place: We are a Premier Google Channel Partner which is only given to agencies who are verified to have the knowledge on how to optimise for best performance. 

Suggestions: Pushing your messaging to a targeted audience in social media. This can help to increase education, consideration and ultimately lead to booking. I would consider this as a secondary marketing channel to add to your mix. 

Please find attached screenshots, proposals & Adwords summaries.

After you have a chance to review, it would be great to have a chat next week (can we book in a time Wednesday?) to discuss your thoughts & whether you could do better than KK.

Thank you!

Cheers

James

Barin recommendation:

Nial Phillimore

t 02 8084 2516  |  m 0415 655 616

e nial@imexpert.com.au | w imexpert.com.au

418 Pittwater RoadLevel 2

North Manly, NSW, 2100

Hi James

Thanks for this, I have watched the video to see what I can extract. The main observation is that the bulk of conversions they have tracked come from the brand protect campaign.

These are likely calls and forms that would have come through without AdWords as they already knew you.

I was able to get the account ID, so we should try to work with Google to reclaim the account. (this may be restricted but worth a go)

Key Observations

• Daily Budget set to $39.34

  • This is detailed on screen

  • Monthly Spend $1180.20

  • Monthly budget $1500

  • Underspend $320 per month

• Conversions specifics are not defined in the report

• Conversions weighted to brand search

  • people who know your name and the business

If we were to work with the same budget, using the full $1500 budget and not bidding on brand search, we would quickly resolve the impression share issue.

A couple of questions....

• Do you have access to the Analytics account?

• Access to the Tag Manager account?

No issue if not, we should be able to transfer the analytics when we do the AdWords account.

Let me know when you can talk through this and the options.

Nial

• We have set $10/day budget for each of the campaigns - this is just an initial budget so that we can launch and get everything approved

• Based on the average cost per click we would recommend a monthly budget between $500 - $1000 per month to begin with

• Budgets can be changed at any time but we we typically reassess every few months

• The actual amount spent may be more or less than the daily budget but should be no more than the daily budget times the number of remaining days in the month 

• For various reasons we may spend more or less than the allocated budget but we try to stick as close to the budget allocation as we can

• More on our philosophy for budget management here: https://simpledigital.net.au/budget-management/

• After launching our campaigns it usually takes 12-24 hours before campaigns are live 

• Google Ads is a great platform for generating traffic quickly but keep in mind that performance is likely to be at its lowest point in the first few weeks after launch

• Even when campaigns are live and approved Google may only show ads periodically because it has no data about us as an advertiser and will prefer more established advertisers ads over ours until it has enough data about our performance. Unfortunately there is not much we can do to speed this up

• Rather than launching all approved campaigns at once, we will generally launch approved campaigns gradually to better manage spend and performance

• In our experience Google Ads accounts typically see the most momentum from month 3 onwards. This is because:

  • • We know the least about consumer behaviour at this point in time - we need to keep our targeting measures quite broad to gather data about when, where and what device are most likely to generate a positive response 

    • We do not yet know which keywords are "buyer" keywords so we need to test many variations to see what works

    • We are have not yet gathered enough data for Google algorithms to know where to place our ads relative to the competition

    • We also have not gathered enough data to find the right balance between our bids and ad position

    • It can take multiple interactions with a business before someone is ready to buy. This is particularly relevant as we are reaching new audiences your business has never reached before

    • Any remarketing audiences have not yet kicked in

• We use various keyword targeting methods which means that ads may show up for variations of the target keywords not just the exact keywords specified 

• On the positive side this means we can identify new targeting opportunities and expand the reach of our campaigns but it also means that we may show ads for keywords that are not relevant such as competitor terms or non-target locations

• We regularly check what keywords are triggering ads and filter out any unwanted searches

• Also some keywords that were requested in initial discussions may have been left out as they are either too general or are not regularly searched

• We have developed multiple ad variations so that we can split test and see what ad messaging performs best

• Often it is not the ads that we expect that perform the best so we try to test an assortment of variations

• We can add new ads or ad variations at any time

• If you have any messaging that you want us to test please send it across

• Currently, the ads are scheduled to show 24/7 but they won't necessarily appear all the time. For example, if the daily budget has run out or we have not bid high enough an ad may not show

• We can also change this schedule to only show ads on certain days or time of the day but we would generally advise starting with 24/7 so we can get some performance data on different times/days first

• We also have some very specific location targeting set up, so depending upon where you are located and other targeting factors you may not see your ad appear

• Note: Searching for your keywords on Google is not advised as it will:

  • Cost you money if you click on the ads

  • Drive up the cost per click if you don't click on the ads

• A conversion just means a desirable event or outcome for the business - typically a lead or sale but it could include other important events such as newsletter subscribes

• We will try to cover every important event on the website with our tracking

• Some of these will be included as 'conversions' in early reports and others will just be tracked and possibly added as 'conversions' later

• We may adjust what constitutes a conversion over time

• It may distort the data slightly in the first few months but it also gives Google's algorithm the chance to pick up on higher quality traffic faster and optimise better

• We will also from time to time make recommendations to assist with performance. Please try to implement or give us feedback on these as soon as you can as account performance can suffer if disregarded  

Matt and I (Sana) have reviewed the ad account and here are our thoughts:

1. Paid Search is contributing to the highest source of traffic according to Google Analytics, our task next is to scan through the search terms to see if there's any irrelevant traffic.
   
   

2. We've seen some generic search terms such as 'team building activities', 'team building exercises' etc with high bounce rates. It looks like these people are looking for just activity ideas so we have excluded them from our keyword list.
   
   By doing this, we ensure that the budgets are not spent on unwanted keywords and daily budget limits are allocated towards high intent keywords. This is a major part of our optimisation efforts in the first three months.
   
   

3. We've also noticed the ads appear for other motivational speakers such as kerwin rae & tony banks. Though they are not in your list of direct competitors, we have gone ahead and excluded them. Targeting competitor search terms at this stage will just drive up our avg. CPC and we do not know enough about customer intent. We have also added the direct competitors mentioned in the brief form to the negative list, but if you have any others let us know so we can be more proactive about this.
   
   

4. I have included some notes from our initial comms on the expectations in the first 3 months below for easy reference. Since we have started with a brand new ad account, it will need some time to collect performance data so we know what works best and do more of that.  

Expectations - First 3 months

• Google Ads is a great platform for generating traffic quickly but keep in mind that performance is likely to be at its lowest point in the first few weeks after launch

• Even when campaigns are live and approved Google may only show ads periodically because it has no data about us as an advertiser and will prefer more established advertisers ads over ours until it has enough data about our performance. Unfortunately there is not much we can do to speed this up

• In our experience Google Ads accounts typically see the most momentum from month 3 onwards. This is because:

  • We know the least about consumer behaviour at this point in time - we need to keep our targeting measures quite broad to gather data about when, where and what device are most likely to generate a positive response 

  • We do not yet know which keywords are "buyer" keywords so we need to test many variations to see what works

  • We are have not yet gathered enough data for Google algorithms to know where to place our ads relative to the competition

  • We also have not gathered enough data to find the right balance between our bids and ad position

  • It can take multiple interactions with a business before someone is ready to convert. This is particularly relevant as we are reaching new audiences your business has never reached before

  • Any remarketing audiences have not yet kicked in

We will send the performance report in the first week of June and we can discuss what we've found and take actions depending on what we gather until then.

Information about Leads:

According to data that we are seeing in the ads account for May, 4 leads came from the Speaking Request form and 1 lead booked a free discovery/consultation call through calendly form. Are you able to see these 5 leads on your system? Rest of them (1 each) were from subscription to newsletter and lead magnets.

Regarding the volume, as mentioned in the report, our priority in the first few months is gathering as much performance data as we can which will help us better optimise for leads and conversions down the track. Any leads we get in the first few months is a bonus. Google needs data to feed its algorithm on what is working and our task in the first few months is to make sure that we are setting the right bids and budgets so Google prioritises our ads over others. June is already looking much better than May, we are seeing 7 speaking form submissions and 1 calendly form submission. Let us know if you are seeing this on your end as well and if any of these have converted.

People that are searching for a guest speaker at this stage might just be starting out on their research and their actual decision making process may be much longer so if they haven't converted in the first month, they could come back a few months later to book a session. Building a sense of urgency on the site to get in touch as early as possible might be one way to encourage more bookings. As we collect more data especially with conversion rates, we will be able to assess the next steps. It is also always a good idea to conduct A/B testing on the site with different CTA options to decide which one works best based on actual data. I would also recommend installing hotjar or another heatmap software to see where user flow is being interrupted and which elements are most effective in helping users find the right resources for their needs.

Extensions:

Extensions expand your ad with additional information, giving people more reasons to choose your business. These may increase an ad's clickthrough rate by several percentage points. The options in our campaign planning document consist of three types of extensions: sitelink, callout and structured.

Key stats:

• 474 clicks

• 157.7k impressions

• 10 leads

• $107.78 cost per lead

• $1,077.85 cost

June was a solid step forward for the account. There were improvements across the account in all significant metrics, especially a 23.57% increase in conversion rate and -12% cost per lead while securing 3 additional leads compared to May. We are pleased to see a month-on-month improvement as the first week of July is already looking much better.

Discussion Points

Overview of Campaigns

This month, the Teambuilding and Speaker campaign recorded its first 3 leads each. To recap, the teambuilding campaign targets keywords such as "corporate team building events" and the speaker campaign targets keywords such as “motivational guest speakers”, “top motivational speakers”, etc.

Similar to last month, the Speaker Location campaign, i.e., the campaign targeting those looking for a speaker in specific locations such as AU, Sydney and Melbourne recorded 4 leads with “Australian keynote speaker” being the top-performing keyword.

Please let us know if you have any feedback on the quality of these 10 leads and if any of them have converted into actual bookings.

The display campaign is slowly starting to pick up with 148k impressions and will be optimised with the aim to build awareness and bring in traffic to the website. 

Customer Match List

The account is now eligible to utilise customer match lists that will let us target ads to those similar to the previous customers using the data they share with us. We can also create retargeting lists to target similar audiences. We will upload a CSV file including customer data and upload it into Google Ads to incorporate this targeting into your campaigns. Could you please share this file with us with atleast 1,000 contacts? These could be previous customers and newsletter subscribers.

Key stats:

• 449 clicks

• 547.2k impressions

• 8 conversions

• $125.81 cost per conversion

• $1,006.47 cost

In August, the account registered 8 conversions - 5 from contact form submissions, 1 from free call booking, 1 email click and 1 click to calls. Out of these, 6 can be considered as hot leads. Let us know if you are able to see these on your end. 

Discussion Points

Overview of Campaigns

This month, the conversion rate dropped by 36%, though the click-through-rate from the ads was up by 29%. This means that even though the volume of clicks was stable, the conversions from these clicks dropped considerably. Have you considered adding ‘hotjar’ to the website to gather some data on what might be occurring on the website?

The biggest change this month has been the Speaker campaign, which recorded 6 conversions in July, but did not record any in August. There hasn’t been a major shift in clicks and demand from this campaign.

The Speaker Location campaign, i.e., the campaign targeting those looking for a speaker in specific locations such as AU, Sydney and Melbourne recorded 2 conversions.

Videos

To get started, could you upload some of the top performing videos from the organic channels (Facebook, Instagram etc) to a YouTube channel? Please make sure that:

• Each video is between 10 seconds - 3 minutes in length. Our recommendation is short 15-30 second videos in landscape format.

• The videos end with the brand logo, website and a call to action (e.g. contact us today, Book a call with Cas)

• We could test both high production style ones and selfie/testimonial style videos. The aim is to introduce your services or business in less than a minute to someone who has never heard of it. The video should have one simple clear message.

Here are some video tips from Google. If you have any questions, happy to jump on a call with Nicki to clarify further.

Customer Match List

The account is now eligible to utilise customer match lists that will let us target ads to customers using the data they share with us. We can also create retargeting lists to target similar audiences. We will upload a CSV file including customer data and upload it into Google Ads to incorporate this targeting into your campaigns. Could you please share this file with us with atleast 1,000 contacts? These could be previous customers and newsletter subscribers.

Key stats:

• 467 clicks

• 1.987k impressions

• 5 conversions

• $228.52 cost per conversion

• $1,142.59 cost

In September, the account registered 5 conversions - 4 from contact form submissions and 1 from free call booking. The YouTube and competition campaigns were gradually launched, which resulted in a massive increase in impressions. 

Discussion Points

Overview of Campaigns

The conversion rate from most campaigns dropped this month despite a stable and consistent click-through-rate. The good news is that conversions appear to have bounced back in early October as the account has recorded 3 conversions already. Let us know if you have any update with adding Hotjar to the website.

The breakdown of leads can be viewed in the campaign dashboard under ‘Conversions’ - this will give you the exact listing of where the leads are coming from.  

New Campaigns (YouTube and Competition)

Two new campaigns were launched this month to drive additional traffic to the website — competition and youtube video ads. Since there is a potential for ad spend to shoot up when YouTube campaigns are launched, the budgets for all other campaigns were raised after one-week of performance. All campaigns are gradually building up in terms of clicks and impressions, we should be able to see more traction from these campaigns in October. 

In the meantime, if you have any other videos that we can test, let us know.

Reviews

Even though the Google ratings are listed clearly on the website, we believe that adding the reviews to the website using a plug-in is an area for potential improvement. Here’s a screenshot of our recommended plugin for wordpress, but this can be confirmed with the web development team.

Customer Match List

The customer list sent last month has successfully been added to all the campaigns. This will need to be updated every few months as the database grows.

Key stats:

• 1,294 clicks

• 2,759,830 impressions

• 11 conversions

• $228.52 cost per conversion

• $1,142.59 cost

October was an important month for the account. With the launch of new campaigns in late September, the account recorded +177% clicks, +38% impressions and +120% conversions in October.  

Discussion Points

Overview of Campaigns

After launching the new campaigns and increasing budgets gradually per the agreed amounts, all the campaigns recorded an increase in both visibility and traffic. Teambuilding and Speaker Location were among the non-brand campaigns that recorded conversions. However, the YouTube videos add to the holistic experience of taking a lead from awareness stage to conversion. 

Here’s a breakdown of the leads, which can also be viewed in the campaign dashboard - 

• Calendly Book a Call - 4

• Form Submissions - 7

Apart from this, there were also 4 signups to the mailing list.

Let us know if you have any feedback on the leads that came through in October. 

Reviews

Are you able to create a landing page for reviews? We can use this page as a sitelink extension and increase visibility to the website with social proo

To recap from last month, here’s a screenshot of our recommended plugin for wordpress, but this can be confirmed with the web development team.  

End of Year Plans

Please let me know what the end of year plans look like for the business, especially in the second half of December and first half of January as these are usually quieter with people mostly away on holiday. We can front load some of the budget in November and reduce it in the quieter period.