Q: How are you different from other agencies?

Our Qualifications and Experience : We’ve been successfully at this since 2006 Google Ads certified Hubspot Certified Partners Digital Marketer Certified Partners Google Ads Partners Our Ads team is a Google Ads Premier Partner Forbes Agency Council Members Named one of the Best Digital Marketing Agencies in Phoenix by Expertise We are digital marketers; however, we specialize in PPC ...and get a load of our case studies Our Tracking and Reporting Methods : We only use Google Analytics and Google Data Studio Monthly reporting and tracking methods are easy to understand We never use proprietary reporting or dashboards where data can be manipulated or hidden Our Communication, Pricing, and Transparency : You always maintain administrative ownership of your accounts There is always a primary contact in charge of your campaign (i.e. a dedicated client manager) We have clear communication schedules We are clear on the work you need to contribute (and what your time investment will be) Our fees are transparent and there are no long-term contracts Our Strategy, Setup, and Tools : We have a rock-solid onboarding process We take the time to understand your business before offering a solution We offer a marketing strategy in addition to tactical, campaign-based recommendations We are clear about the tools and software we use We don’t use automated tools to manage our campaigns — everything is done manually Our Culture : We work with clients who reflect our values and work ethic We have the brand recognition necessary to pull in (and retain) top talent We care. A lot.

Question 1

Why is my profit margin becoming thinner as we scale?

Accepted Answer

When you increase ad spend, it's common to see an increase in your CPL or a decrease in your ROAS. Here's why.

Increasing our ad spend means we are targeting a larger audience. These are people who aren’t ready to buy––and it takes more clicks and longer time to convert them.

Simultaneously, we are competing with big players who have enough money to over-bid on keywords. This brings our CPC up.

The more we expand the audience size, the less certain Google’s algorithm will be when they show an ad. That’s because we’re pushing the algorithm to go into uncharted territory––it doesn’t know who to target yet.

If our low-hanging-fruits are composed of only a small portion of our audience, it’s hard for Google’s algorithm to determine who will go for the click.

So we need to warm up our audience and add “brand awareness” strategies until the top-of-the-funnel audience gains familiarity with our brand.

For example, we can run a display ad that targets a proactive (not remarketed) audience. This might not get many clicks but we’ll get views that can increase our brand awareness.

How do we spend more without diminishing profit margin (i.e. lowering ROAS or increasing CPL)?

It is nearly impossible to increase your budget without thinning your profit margin, at least for a short time.

To balance it, we recommend temporarily “leaning out” your account when trying to scale. This helps you preserve your profit margin while waiting for the algorithm to adjust to a higher ad spend.

Here are a few of ways to do that:

Pause brand awareness campaigns like video shopping
Scale back brand campaigns by reducing budget and or changing bids
Find brand keywords that are taking money in the other search campaigns

When a campaign isn’t limited by budget, we can often increase the spend without lowering ROAS by much at all.

But what if your account has maxed out its spend and reached its entire market/audience?

Use lower-spend outbound campaigns. These are campaigns like YouTube or Display that help increase your brand awareness and introduce your offer to a new audience.

Start running these campaigns with a lower budget and analyze how they affect your overall campaign performance.

You will sacrifice your ROAS with these new outbound campaigns. So it’s best to keep the ad spend low in the beginning.

As a result, your main campaign conversion driver should become more active.

You’ll be able to increase your outbound campaigns’ budget incrementally.

Question 2

What is the best ad copy strategy to use for search campaigns?

Accepted Answer

The recommended approach for best ad copy strategy is to use 2 Expanded Text Ads & 1 Responsive Search Ad.

Every search campaign’s ad group has these 3 ads inside it.

The expanded text ads give a structured ecosystem to try out the two sets of headlines/descriptions you think will work the best, and then use the RSA ad to give you insights into which ad copy is most effective.

Effective copy can be a better click rate (which helps with the quality score) or a better conversion rate.

After there have been 100 clicks on the ads, then you can begin making changes to optimize the expanded text ads based on those insights.

Question 3

What does "Proven ROAS" mean?

Accepted Answer

A campaign that has proven ROAS means that it’s ROAS is or was at whatever number you need it to be at in order to make a profit.

For example, a 100% ROAS means you spend $1 on ads and get $1 back.

This is never a large enough number because the business will undoubtedly have other expenses beyond just ad spend, so this campaign has not proven it’s ROAS.

400% ROAS is a general rule of thumb for the minimum number you should be aiming for if the business doesn’t know it’s exact costs & you therefore can’t calculate an exact ROAS metric.

This is because 400% lets you break even if the business has a 25% profit margin. You get to make at least 4x your money back to break even. If you want to cover an agency fee, then they’ll have to get to 450% ish.

Find current ROAS: All conversion value / cost

Find minimum, break-even ROAS: If 60% profit margin, figure out how many times 60% goes into 100% (60/100 = 1.7). Then, add two zeros to turn that into a percent and you get 160% break-even ROAS.

***Pro tip: If you are an e-commerce company, set up a custom column in Google Ads to display ROAS in a % format (fyi, if you don’t set this column up, you can look at “conversion value/cost” column which gives you the same ROAS number but in decimal format).

Question 4

What if I have a small budget of $500 monthly?

Accepted Answer

Accounts with small budgets (~$500) can be extremely difficult to optimize because there’s often not enough data to recognize patterns.

For example, if a keyword got 1 click last month and 1 click this month, should we increase the bid for that keyword? Well, 1 click is not enough information to make an educated guess.

In this case you may need to manually edit the budget twice per month because you want to spend the majority of it in a short amount of days and then pull back.

Do not turn on monthly budget because then it will spend that money evenly throughout the month, which isn’t ideal.

Question 5

Do you do Bing search campaigns?

Accepted Answer

Yes!

Typically, we wait until we have maxed out Google Ads. But in some cases, if your target audience is older, Bing can be a great channel to reach them.

Bing has about 10% of the traffic compared to Google, but it is very inexpensive and full of high-quality leads.

Question 6

Should I run LinkedIn ads?

Accepted Answer

The Social Media Examiner says proactive LinkedIn Ads (to cold leads) are only a good fit for:

High LTV ($15k+) B2B
White collar recruiting
Higher education recruiting

With remarketing it is a whole different story, since remarketing is essentially the same as adding one more place/platform/channel to display the exact same ad that we are already running with Google remarketing (Google has a very wide reach with lots of places/platforms/channels, but they can't deliver ads on platforms they do not own/not in their ecosystem like LinkedIn or FB or Reddit).

Question 7

How are you different from other agencies?

Accepted Answer

Our Qualifications and Experience:

We’ve been successfully at this since 2006
Google Ads certified
Hubspot Certified Partners
Digital Marketer Certified Partners
Google Ads Partners
Our Ads team is a Google Ads Premier Partner
Forbes Agency Council Members
Named one of the Best Digital Marketing Agencies in Phoenix by Expertise
We are digital marketers; however, we specialize in PPC
...and get a load of our case studies

Our Tracking and Reporting Methods:

We only use Google Analytics and Google Data Studio
Monthly reporting and tracking methods are easy to understand
We never use proprietary reporting or dashboards where data can be manipulated or hidden

Our Communication, Pricing, and Transparency:

You always maintain administrative ownership of your accounts
There is always a primary contact in charge of your campaign (i.e. a dedicated client manager)
We have clear communication schedules
We are clear on the work you need to contribute (and what your time investment will be)
Our fees are transparent and there are no long-term contracts

Our Strategy, Setup, and Tools:

We have a rock-solid onboarding process
We take the time to understand your business before offering a solution
We offer a marketing strategy in addition to tactical, campaign-based recommendations
We are clear about the tools and software we use
We don’t use automated tools to manage our campaigns — everything is done manually

Our Culture:

We work with clients who reflect our values and work ethic
We have the brand recognition necessary to pull in (and retain) top talent
We care. A lot.

Question 8

When do you update the ad copy?

Accepted Answer

Every month.

Here’s how it works:

After 100 clicks, we compare the performances of two ads.

We keep the ad copy with the highest click-through and conversion rate, pause the ad that didn’t perform as well, and build a new ad to compete against the winning one for another 100 clicks.

This cycle continues on a monthly basis.

Question 9

Here's What You Can Expect Now That You've Been Onboarded As A Client

Accepted Answer

Now that you have been onboarded as a client there are just a few technical things that we need to set up for your website, in order to properly track calls and conversions in order to better understand what optimizations need to be made.

This is a guide for you to know what these tools are, why they're important, and how they're paramount to the success of the campaign.

Don't worry. You don't need to do any of these things (that's what we're here for).

We might need to request access from you for some of these tools. If that's the case, we will reach out to you and make the process as easy as possible.

Google Tag Manager (GTM) Installation

Google Tag Manager is a tool that we use to track specific actions and events that happen on your website, such as conversions.

This tool integrates with Google Analytics, and allows us to see how your website visitors behave on your website.

By setting this up, we can track things like which forms a user has filled out, who has visited the website (important for remarketing), what links users are clicking on, etc.

Similar to how video cameras work to see what's going on in a physical store, Google Tag Manager with Google Analytics allows us to replicate that in a digital environment.

Call Tracking Metrics (CTM)

Call Tracking Metrics is important to set up, particularly if your goal is to have leads call your business.

This feature allows us to track conversations that leads have with your business. Our team will be listening in all of the phone calls to gauge the level of quality conversations that are being had. If lead quality is excellent, Call Tracking Metrics allows us to identify what campaign generated that phone calls so we can increase the frequency of calls from that campaign.

Conversion Tracking (Google Analytics)

Conversion Tracking helps us as advertisers to see when a user completes a desired action on your website, e.g. filling out a form, completing a purchase, etc.

Conversion Tracking utilizes Google Tag Manager in order to track actions and conversions.

Pixel Installation (Facebook)

Should your business goals require advertisements on Facebook, we will need to install what's known as Facebook's "Pixel".

The Pixel is Facebook's version of Google's "Tag", and it accomplishes many of the same functions that Google's Tag does.

Competitive Analysis

It's important to understand that other businesses in your space are likely advertising on Google as well.

Part of the process of creating a successful campaign is to see how your competitors are advertising. We uses a myriad of tools to identify what your competition is doing, if it's working, and how we can improve on it.

Ad Copy Creation

The Ad Copy is what a potential customer is going to see on Google when they type in their keyword to the search bar.

Every ad that we create will be relevant to the product/service that you sell and will be specific to the group of keywords that best describe your product.

Campaign Creation

Once we've received all the information relevant to your campaign, we can start the process of actually building out the PPC campaign. This is a complex process that involves taking the information that you filled out in the on-boarding process and translating that into keywords and advertisements.

Having the proper keywords, key phrases, ad budget, ad schedule, ad groups, landing page destination, etc. in place make sure that your ads are being shown to the right people, at the right time.

Also, depending on what your campaign goals are, it's at this stage that we configure the campaign to fit your desired customer actions, i.e. increase quality phone calls with potential customers, eCommerce transaction, contact form completions, acquiring customers for a particular cost, etc.

After The Campaign Has Been Created, But Before Launch

After the campaign has been created, we will schedule a time to review the campaign and discuss what has been created, why it's been created in that way, and the expected outcome.

Question 10

Last Steps Before We Launch Your PPC Campaign

Accepted Answer

After a campaign has been built, but before it launches, we like to schedule a time with you to review the campaign before it goes live. This is to ensure that your initials goals are being strategically implemented, and allows everyone who's a part of the process to voice any concerns.

Below you'll find a list of topics and items that we will be reviewing during our discussion. Once we have reviewed the campaign with you, made any changes needed and have received your full approval, the campaign will go live!

Ad Budget

While we're confident in our abilities to successfully deliver and manage PPC campaigns, but it never hurts to double check things, especially the budget.

Campaign Schedule

The campaign schedule is the time of day and days of the week that the campaign will run its advertisements.

This is important because you may want to receive traffic to your website during the night, but also want to have traffic, plus phone calls during the day.

Geography

It's important to make sure that we have the proper geographical settings in place prior to launch.

If you are a business that is running advertisements to people who live within a 25-mile radius of your physical location, it would be inappropriate to have your ads set to run outside of your targeted market area.

Structure

The structure of your campaign is essentially another way to refer to the overarching goal of the campaign.

For instance, someone who is running a campaign to maximize conversions defined by email signups will have a different campaign structure than someone who just wants drive clicks and traffic to their website.

Ad Copy

This is a crucial step because the ad copy is going to be the first experience a potential customer has with your business.

It's important that we have proper ad copy in place that is relevant to what you are offering on the other end of your advertisement. We also want to make sure that the ads are relevant to the keywords that they are attached to.

Relevant ad copy is something that shouldn't be overlooked because the higher the relevancy is to people searching on Google, the higher your ad's quality score.

A higher quality score can help in the bidding process to lower your Cost Per Click, increase your ad rank, and increase overall campaign performance.

Negative Keyword List

There is nothing negative about negative keywords. In fact, compiling a list of negative keywords is a great thing!

Negative keywords increase campaign performance because they eliminate a lot of bad traffic and irrelevant clicks.

For instance, say that you run a business that sells luxury jewelry. The last thing you would want is for people clicking on your ads who search for "cheap jewelry".

The person who is searching for "cheap jewelry" isn't likely to buy luxury jewelry, and if they click on your advertisement you get charged for that irrelevant click.

The great thing about negative keywords is that if we add "cheap" as a negative keyword, your ad will never show for people who use the word "cheap" in their search.

This, in turn, saves you money on the campaign that can be used for more relevant clicks.

Ad Groups

Ad groups contain a collection of advertisements and keywords that are relevant to the overall goal of the campaign.

For instance, if your company offers a wide variety of services, each ad group should reflect that service. This offers much more in the way of scalability and control when wanting to expand your marketing around those specific services.

Keywords

A keyword is essentially a word or phrase that people search for in Google.

Keywords are the beating heart of each campaign. If the keywords don't match with the products/services you're advertising, it can cause problems.

We also focus on keywords and keyphrases that generate the type of conversion you want. By adding keywords and key phrases to your campaign such as “buy”, “for sale”, “near me”, etc., we can generate a conversion much more frequently.

Bidding Strategy

There are a few types of bidding strategies that you can use in an AdWords campaign. Depending on your business goals, some bidding strategies will be better suited for you than others.

For instance, if your business is trying to maximize the number of clicks to the website, a "Maximize Clicks" bidding strategy might be best. If your business is trying to capture conversions at a specific cost, then "Target CPA" bids might be best in that scenario.

It's also important to keep in mind that as your campaigns evolve, the bidding strategy used will likely evolve along with it.

In Summary...

If for any reason we have left one of your questions unanswered, you can always request another campaign walk through!