Episode 20

Using PPC and Google AdWords to Test

Using PPC and Google AdWords to Test

If you want to start testing your keywords for your paid and organic strategy, you’re going to need to understand the basics of PPC and Google Adwords. In this episode, Joe and Tami talk all about paid advertising, search engine optimization, how to test keywords, and more!

Episode 20 Transcript:

Tami: Welcome to High Energy Marketing, a podcast with us, the digital marketing agency Ajax Union, where we interview our CEO Joe Apfelbaum on key marketing topics, and we share everything you need to know to properly grow your business online.

This is a question-and-answer podcast where I interviewed Joe, about different topics and trends in marketing based on his book, High Energy Marketing. You can get the book at ajaxunion.com/book to follow along with us.

This is the 20th official episode of our podcast about high energy Marketing. And today we’re going to discuss PPC or Pay Per Click and Google AdWords. First, a little housekeeping. Find us on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Where else do you listen to podcasts, Spotify? Just give us a five-star rating leave a review, and let us know if you’re listening and enjoying the podcast that really helps get the word out there.

Joe, do you want to hit us with a quick inspiration minute before we get started?

Joe: I want to talk about resources, Tami, a lot of people are looking for additional resources in their life. And the question I want to ask them from an inspiration standpoint is, what resources do you already have? You don’t need more resources, you need to become aware of all the resources that are available to you right now.

Take an inventory of your resources, think about your skills, the ones that you have and the ones that you’re learning, and think about the people in your life, the people in your company, the people on your team, the people in your family that you can leverage.

Think about that the environment that you have the honor to be in. Once you take stock of all your resources, ask yourself, are you already leveraging all those resources? An investor once told me that he would never invest in a company that wants to take an investment to operate the company, he said that investments are there to grow the company.

And if someone’s using the investment to operate the company, that’s really a loan. And they’re mismanaging their resources. So, it really got me thinking about the debt that many people get themselves into because they don’t believe in themselves.

I want you to know that you’re an amazing human being. And if you take stock of all the things that you’ve accomplished in your life or your skills, think about the people that you’ve attracted into your life, you realize that you’re a pretty amazing human being. So don’t look for more resources, ask yourself, what resources do I have already that I can leverage to take my life and my business to the next level?

Tami: Thank you so much, Joe, let’s jump right into it. We have several questions for you. First, what’s the key to a successful search engine campaign?

Joe: The key to a successful search engine campaign is making sure you have the right keywords. Google is the most popular search engine. And when people are searching on Google, what are they using Tami? They’re using keywords. And many of those keywords have intent. Understanding which keywords convert the best is the key to a successful search engine campaign. And there are all different types of keywords that you can choose in order for you to rank.

Tami: And how do you figure out what are the best keywords to use?

Joe: Well, that would depend on the type of business that you’re in and what the intent of the campaign is. So, if your campaign is there to brand yourself, you would choose branding-type keywords. If your campaign is there to create sales, then you would choose sales-related keywords.

If your campaign is there for you to just create exposure for your own brand, you would create branding keywords around your own brand, around your own products, and whatever stage in the funnel you’re trying to fill, and pick keywords that relate to that stage in the funnel. And we extensively talked about the funnel in this podcast to go back to a previous episode to learn about the funnel. The key is to figure out what would you like to accomplish and what is the user thinking when they’re searching those keywords?

Tami: What’s the difference between PPC pay-per-click and SEO search engine optimization?

Joe: A lot of small business owners don’t know the difference between PPC and SEO, PPC stands for pay-per-click. And SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Pay-per-click is when you pay every time somebody clicks on an ad on Google.

SEO is when you optimize your website, and you optimize your properties on the Internet and other people’s properties linking to your website so that you could rank on the organic side of Google. Google has two sections. When you go to Google, a lot of people don’t even notice this and you only go to Google when you search for something, right? It has a couple of ads on top. And then there’s the organic the natural side, the ads you can pay for and you can rank there within minutes.

But on the SEO side, that often will take many months, and sometimes even years to be able to rank properly because Google ranks people on the SEO side based on trust based on time and 500 other factors that go into the algorithm.

So, pay-per-click is a quick way to rank for any keyword on Google in minutes. And that would depend on your budget. That would depend on your account history and on how relevant the keyword is to the landing page and to the ad copy. So, you have to do it strategically. You can’t just throw them only added and expect to rank especially for really high-traffic keywords Google’s very protective over their advertising. You have to comply with the terms and conditions every ad needs to get approved. So PPC and SEO are two different worlds, but they use the same keywords, and they’re on the same search engines, just how you get there is very different.

Tami: And what can you learn from paid advertising?

Joe: What you can learn from paid advertising is, are people even searching for your brand? Are people even searching for your products and services? Are people going to buy because you’re able to test so quickly? You can learn what keywords you should be using for SEO from PPC. So, for example, before you go and invest $100,000 into an SEO campaign, first run a small PPC campaign for a few hundred dollars and see if those keywords have any value.

Just because you think someone should be searching for something doesn’t mean you actually want to actually is searching anything. So my recommendation is for you to take a step back. And to think about what you need to learn for your business to succeed? What do you need to learn to grow your business? And you can learn that from paid advertising.

Tami: And then how do we start making a list of keywords to test with Google AdWords?

Joe: The way that you make a list of keywords to test with Google AdWords is by using the keyword planner. Google has a tool called the Google Ads Keyword Planner. And you can use that tool to do research.

There are many other tools that are available, where you can find keywords like SEMRush there’s another tool called SpyFu, where you can spy on your competitors to find the keywords that they’re using and test out those keywords. The key is to do your research, you want keywords that have intent, you want keywords that match the stage in your funnel, and you want keywords based on what you want to accomplish in your business.

For example, if you’re a photography business, and you are offering photography in Chicago, don’t just rank for the word photography anywhere in the world. Because you’re gonna end up paying a lot of money for for people that you can’t even service. You have to use your geo-targeting correctly and make sure your ads reflect exactly the service that you offer and be really smart about doing it.

Otherwise, you’ll waste a lot of money. And then how long should we test for I like testing for 90 days, it’s a great 90-day test budget, and consider what results you want to get from the test. For example, if you want to get 30 phone calls as a result of testing, and you’re willing to pay $100 per phone call. So you might want to test $1,000 per month, try to get 10 calls per month from that $1,000, and see if it makes sense. If you end up getting 50 calls, then you might want to increase the budget right away. But if you get zero calls, then you may want to pause it and see if is this even a viable option for me to get calls from Google AdWords.

Tami: Thank you so much, Joe. That was amazing information. We hope everyone listening got as much out of this as we did. In next week’s episode we will be talking about search engine optimization SEO, so make sure to hit that subscribe button to catch the next episode.

You can follow us on Instagram at @AjaxUnion and Joe on all social media platforms at Joe Apfelbaum and follow him on LinkedIn at Joelinkedin.com. If you didn’t catch that, check our description for all of our social media links. Ajaxunion.com/podcast is where you can find more information about this podcast.

If you have any questions, shoot us an email at amazing@ajaxunion.com. And Our music is by Michael Suarez. This podcast is produced by Sara and Shannon and edited by Sami Mititelu. Thank you so much. We’ll catch you next time.

 

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