Answering Questions About Google Ads (Episode 524)

0:18Chris Schaeffer: Hello and welcome to the Paid Search Podcast. My name is Chris and today I am answering questions from listeners. I have an email that I check once a week and look through and respond to emails and most of the time respond to them right here live on the podcast. So if you'd like to be in the next episode of answering questions about Google ads, you can do so. Send an email to paidsearchpodcast at gmail.com to send me your question. I have some great questions from a lot of people here. And I'm going to jump into the first one right after I tell you about how this podcast is possible. It does take a lot of time to read through the questions, write some notes about the questions, and then record it and publish it and all of that.

1:11Chris Schaeffer: So my podcast is brought to you by Optio. Because without Optio, I wouldn't be able to do this. and without Optio, you won't be able to achieve your best Google Ads campaign. This tool over the years has become an absolute banger of a tool. There is no tool like this. What started out as this simple recommendation tool that was incredibly useful has now turned into a power tool for your online marketing. It still does Google Ads. It still prioritizes Google Ads and provides a ton of information for you to make decisions and analyze the data in your Google Ads campaign. Why is your cost per click going up?

1:57What is happening to your ad copy? Maybe help you to generate some new keyword ideas, diagnose some issues with your account, why things might be going up or down. This tool can help you do that. It's no longer focused entirely on just ideas. It's getting things done in Google Ads and getting things done faster.

2:20Chris Schaeffer: Very helpful if you want to get more out of every dollar you spend. You can try it for free at optio.com slash PSP. That's the URL. Tell them you heard about it right here on the podcast, and you'll get a 28-day free trial. That's optio.com slash PSP. That's O-P-T-E-O dot com slash P-S-P. All right, let's go in to the first question. This first question is about dealing with an extremely high cost per click. All right, so this one comes from Nigeria, so I'm going to try my best at Chidi. I'm going to go with Chidi from Nigeria. Don't know if I've gotten a question from Nigeria before, but Chidi says, hi Chris recently became a fan of yours but my boyfriend has been a fan for much longer in fact I would go as far as saying he's obsessed with your content you once mentioned on the podcast that some people listen to your episodes while they sleep he's definitely one of those people well I'm glad I have a paid search podcast uh fan couple that sounds fun um he's actually the one who encouraged me to pursue a career in Google ads and your advice has helped us both tremendously.

3:40Chris Schaeffer: So first of all, thank you. Well, you are welcome. Glad to hear it. Helping people around the world. That's amazing. All right. So let's get into the email here and I've edited it just a bit. And then I'm going to answer after I get through this question. So here it is. Here's a question. one of my colleagues increased a client's daily budget from$20 a day to$100 a day because the client wanted to spend more before the end of the month. Result of that change was massive increase in the CPC. It went from around$4 a click to$43 per click. I've since reduced the budget to just $50 a day, but the CPC is still around$22 per click, which is too high.

4:28At first, my first thought was to switch the campaign to maximize clicks to put a bid cap in place, but I'm worried about the impact it might have on the conversions. I've already reviewed the search terms and keywords, and they're all high intent. Okay, so multiple questions, and I'll go through these,

4:49Chris Schaeffer: and then I'll answer them in turn. What would you do to bring the PPC back down to something closer to$6? Question number two, would switching bid strategies make sense? Question number three, is a portfolio bid strategy effective for something like this that's only spending$50 a day? And then fourth question, more generally, do you have any advice for getting excellent results in agencies where you have limited control due to internal policies and multiple people working on the same accounts. Okay, so I'm going to answer the last question first because that one, I can tell you I have absolutely no advice for you there.

5:32I am adamant about when I work on an account, I only work on the account alone.

5:42Chris Schaeffer: There is no one else that's going to be working on the account with me. I work on the account alone, period. so I'm astonished that people would have to co-work on an account because you know it sounds like an absolute disaster I mean whose fault is it when things go right who's to congratulate when things go wrong who's to blame I mean it sounds like just a finger-pointing disaster to me but I have no advice because I could give you advice on how to manage the account but all you have to do is talk to five different PPC managers and you'll get five different advice points on how to manage the same account.

6:33I mean, everybody has a different point of view and no two people, even if they're working on the same account with the same kind of standard, most of the time they're going to have slightly different approaches to how accomplishing the same thing. So good luck with that. I don't envy that issue at all. Now, let's move on to the main point of this, which has to do with the very high cost per click. And I'm actually going to push back a bit on this because if the search terms, as you said, are still high quality, still high intent, you know, still good,

7:09Chris Schaeffer: why is the very high CPC a problem? Now, you had said it went from$4 to$43. I understand that is a drastic shift. But the fact is that higher CPCs are going to, of course, lead to better placement on Google, better ranking. You're going to end up showing it a higher position. And conversion rates are usually better when your ads are at the top. add with that the fact that your click-through rate is going to be significantly better when you're showing above organic. So very low CPCs will often lead to less than qualified traffic, most of the time, maybe not quite as ideal. And then number two, it's higher cost per click is going to lead to a better ranking, more visibility of your ads.

8:06Chris Schaeffer: So just because the cost per click goes up, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Now it's going to make the campaign probably only get, you know, one click a day at this point. So instead of focusing on the CPC, I'll come back to the cost per click in a moment and try and offer some advice there. But instead of focusing on that, what I think you need to do, because now the box has been opened and there's no way to closed and get back to where you were. That's one thing. If anyone could write a book about PPC, it's that I wish I hadn't have done this because now there's no going back. I mean, that's essentially the lesson we all learn.

8:49As soon as you make some kind of change, you realize that was a mistake. I shouldn't have done that. So what I would suggest is instead try, Try, if you want lower cost per click, try traffic that is higher in the sales funnel. Try question searches is a good place to start. How do, what is, who can. You know, these types of question searches are often very qualified because there's people looking for some kind of information solution, often a provider or product or something like that.

9:22Chris Schaeffer: And if you can get a longer, you know, kind of a longer tail question search, it could be highly qualified and often costs less per click. So I don't think the solution here is just throwing a new bid strategy at it and magically lowering the CPCs. That very well may be gone forever. It's possible. I think instead, when you're having CPC issues, you need to diversify. You need to blend different types of traffic, specifically value of traffic and type of traffic. I'm going to give you an example. I was recently auditing an account for a personal injury lawyer, and I found that this lawyer was only bidding on personal injury lawyer and personal injury attorney.

10:17That's it.

10:18Chris Schaeffer: And, of course, the cost per click was astoundingly high. So my advice, well, you probably need to try something different. You probably need to do something different around value, right? Which I might encourage them to try something around how to, what is, what does, who can, those kind of searches, right? That's a different value of traffic. Now, a different type of traffic might be something around personal injury lawyer four or motorcycle personal injuries or car or all kinds of different things. So understand there's two different ways to go about it. You can get traffic based on value, which is the intent.

11:02Chris Schaeffer: So a little bit weaker intent is going to cost less per click, which could be great. The other side of it is the type of traffic, what they're searching for, a different vertical, a different industry, some kind of, you know, slightly, it's still the same kind of service they're looking for, but they're searching for it in a little bit different way with different intent, right? So that would be my approach, diversify your traffic. Because if you've done something, if you've broken your Google ads campaign or now experiencing CPCs 10 times higher than you were before, you may need to try a different approach, throw different keywords at it because very often there's no going back.

11:50And then last, I mean, I have to throw this in. If you really want to control your bids, you have to first put a lid on

12:04Chris Schaeffer: conversion optimization, okay, because the method I'm about to tell you does not include algorithmic conversion-based optimization. You don't get it anymore, but what you do get is manual control of your bids. With manual bidding, that bidding strategy provides intimate, finite control of your bids. You can get precise control of your bids, and if you're concerned about a high cost per click, you immediately can solve that. Okay. It is the way that I approach all of my campaigns. When I need to restrain, when I need to set control on a certain campaign, certain set of keywords, I mean, that is it.

12:50Chris Schaeffer: I go to manual. I get my hands back in the account and pull back the control of the automation of, of the algorithmic conversion based automated type of thing and say, nope, nope, we're going back to square one. I'm going back to manual. I'm going to take control of what's there and make sure I control that. So, great question. I hope you don't get into too many fights with your coworkers there because when you're all cooking in the kitchen together, there's definitely going to be some head-butting for sure. So, I'm sorry to hear about that. All right, so let's go now to another question from Jeff, who actually sent a video.

13:37Chris Schaeffer: I'm not going to play the video. It'd be just audio anyway, but I want to bring up something that Jeff had brought to my attention that I think is very important. He sent a video showing me how one of his accounts has a call report, and the other account does not have a call report. so I answered the question via email and showed him why that was happening but I thought this was a great point to bring up because it's not something that I talk about very much and it is absolutely a reality call reporting is a feature in Google Ads and in order to use call reporting you um must be using a google forwarding number okay so you must be using one of google's phone numbers and if this is new to you if you don't know what i'm talking about that's why i'm bringing this question up from jeff um if you didn't know it google does not show your real phone number in your ads.

14:55So if your phone number is something you've always had

14:59Chris Schaeffer: and then someone searches, sees your ad, and then clicks on the phone number in your ad, they do call you, but first it goes through a Google forwarding number. If this is a shock to you, if you did not know this, you should be aware. This is something I've brought up before. you should definitely be cautious because you do not own that number google rotates these phone numbers and shows these phone numbers randomly and just because you have a phone a forwarding phone number today doesn't mean it's the same tomorrow these are not your real phone numbers showing in the call asset so when your ad is showing the call asset actually shows a tracking number, right?

15:48It still looks like a normal phone number. Hopefully it still even has your same

15:51Chris Schaeffer: area code, but, um, it, it, it, it may not resemble any more than just the area code. It may not even have the same area code. Um, so be aware of this because, uh, there are third-party software out there that you can use to actually own your numbers and control your number so that the only numbers that show are ones that you own and always forward to you. Because this could certainly be an issue if someone calls you and then tries to call that number again a month later or two days later, and it doesn't forward to you anymore. It certainly would be an issue. So let's talk about what a call report is.

16:37If you didn't know it you can go to your conversions and actually go down to your uh your call um report which is there for the call from ads conversion so you can click on that uh call report button you can actually see details about who called what number they called from how long they were on the phone that the date and the time and uh some real real basic information uh is all there don't know that there's really anything you can do with it, because that's all it is. It doesn't actually show you what their search term was. It doesn't show you, you know, a lot of details that you might consider to be more important than just who they were or what the number was and when they called, but it is there.

17:25Chris Schaeffer: But I think the bigger point, again, to hammer home, if you did not know that Google uses a forwarding number for call assets be aware of that it could be causing a problem with how many times people are trying to reach out and contact you and maybe they can't a second time certainly could be a problem all right let's go now to helen's question helen writes in about pausing campaigns. Also another question about performance max versus search. Helen says, hi, Chris, long time listener of your podcast. And I love it to pieces. Thank you for showing up every week and sharing your wisdom and knowledge.

18:10Chris Schaeffer: Oh, that is very nice. I appreciate that. It's very kind, Helen. Uh, first question, she says, you mentioned that one of the worst things that can happen to a campaign in Google ads is to pause it or turn it off. Um, I'm wondering how you would suggest dealing with campaigns that should only be running for a certain time of year because they're seasonal like Valentine's day. All right. So we'll stop here and answer this first question. Helen, you're absolutely right. This is an easy one. You found a flaw in my rule. Um, absolutely there's no reason why you would not pause something that is Christmas, Valentine's, something like that.

18:55I mean, absolutely, because the campaign obviously is just going to be barely getting any traffic anyway. You probably wouldn't even really want that traffic because it's going to be some obscure thing that wouldn't even be relevant because they may not want to buy anything around Valentine's. They're just searching something around Valentine's. So absolutely, my advice about not pausing campaigns excludes seasonal campaigns. So if you're running a seasonal campaign that only runs for a month or two or, you know, maybe a few days of the year, absolutely feel free to pause it. Because sometimes my rule of avoiding pausing campaigns is not going to be relevant.

19:42So good question there. Hopefully that resolves that. And thank you for the question because I certainly would hope people don't keep their Christmas campaigns on in July. Wouldn't make a lot of sense. So let's go on to Helen's second question. Why, and this is my favorite one. This is a great question.

20:03Chris Schaeffer: why do stand-alone search campaigns keep failing when the same search appears to perform well inside of my long-running performance max campaign so i'm going to edit a little bit here and just wrap up with this on the question why does a dedicated search campaign uh replicate or improve upon the performance of a performance max campaign? That's essentially the question that Helen is asking. So what you're experiencing is very common. And I have a reason about why I think this happens. And it goes down into the understanding of what a performance max campaign is and what a search campaign is. You know, what these are, how these work, how they function.

20:55It actually has to do with the engine inside of them. So just to clarify, what Helen's saying is, I have the search term, you know, buy flowers in my performance max. I look at my search terms, and I can see buy flowers is one of my best search terms. And then when I take that search term, put it as an exact match and get that same traffic in my search campaign, it doesn't work. She wants to know why. So the first thing I would say, if you do want to try and

21:37Chris Schaeffer: pull traffic from a performance max campaign, the best chance you have is to use exact match keywords in your search campaign to try and prioritize traffic from one campaign to the other. Don't know that it really works very cleanly, but that's really your best bet is to avoid broader, wider keywords and go after really specific exact match targeting. But before you try it, let's talk about how search campaigns, performance max campaigns actually work and why you're experiencing this. Performance max and search campaigns are built differently. Performance Max uses a lot of different signals to match your targeted assets.

22:24So think of it this way.

22:26Chris Schaeffer: When you build a Performance Max, what do you build it? How do you build it? You don't choose keywords, right? You choose assets, audiences, topics. You might put some keywords, you know, search terms into a grouping, but you don't even have ad groups. Those just apply to an asset group is all they apply to. So there is no linear equivalent from a performance max asset group to an ad group that has keywords in it for a search campaign. the result of a performance max asset group getting specific search terms is the result of all of the targeting that you've put into this system it's a result of factors that we can't see we don't get to see what part of the asset group triggered these search terms these search terms could very well be triggered based upon an audience so if you were to take a search term from a performance max campaign and target it specifically in a search campaign you are now essentially ignoring all the other factors that made it successful in the original performance max campaign.

23:58Chris Schaeffer: So you're taking the end result and saying, hey, I put the quarter into the machine here. Something happens that I can't see and it spits out this. I'm just going to take this and put this into my search campaign and it'll work. The magic is not in the search term that you pulled out of it. It's how that search term was produced. Someone that types buy flowers may be incredibly different from someone else who types buy flowers. Search terms only provide the intent of the moment. They don't imply all the other signals. Time of day, gender, age, device type, previous searches, previous activity that the person's doing, typical conversions, other types of things they've done on that, you know, habits and interests and things like that.

25:00All of that is weighed in on a performance max campaign within an asset group. In no way does an exact match keyword for a new search campaign have the weight of complexity that Performance Max does. Now, I'm not saying that Performance Max is in any way far superior to Google Ads because of that. I'm just saying that it runs differently. This machine runs differently than this machine. They can produce different things, but you can't take the result of machine A and put it into machine B

25:36Chris Schaeffer: and expect the same result. So that's why. You're not doing anything wrong, most likely. You're just using the wrong input. try and find searches that replicate that same kind of audience, that same kind of need. And it may not necessarily be that exact search term that does it. Okay, last question here from Ben about limited by budget. This is a question that has to do with the new change that we're about to experience here in about a week or so here in August. And Ben brings up a very good point. And before I read Ben's question, I want to tell you about Optio. Again, AI integration for a new power tool that you've never seen anything like before.

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26:47Chris Schaeffer: All right, Ben says, hi, Chris, long time listener of your podcast and have used a lot of it to help manage my clients. Oh, good. Thank you, Ben. Ben says, given the recent upcoming change for Google ads, I feel that I need to understand budget constraints a bit better. For a long time, I've been mostly ignoring the giant red limited by budget that shows up at campaigns. and instead I focused on lost IS due to budget. Now if I lost some of you right there, I'm going to explain what lost IS is in a moment. These two metrics have not always agreed with each other. I feel like the lost IS metric is more honest than the limited by budget warning.

27:40Chris Schaeffer: So I've always managed using the lost IS metric instead. now that google is going to trigger bidding changes depending on whether a campaign is limited by budget now i feel like i need to focus on the limited by budget banner instead what's the actual difference between limited by budget and lost is budget okay so let's let's let's uh simplify this for those of you because i i just went into google ads um terminology pretty deep there. I need to add a couple vocabulary terms for you. So lost search lost IS budget is your impression share that is lost due to a lack of budget. So if you have a large amount of impressions that you're not getting your lost IS budget percentage will be 70%, 50%, maybe 90 okay so this is a measurement of how much you're losing so if you want to lose very little you'd want something like zero percent lost is budget so to get to ben's question you are a hundred percent right ben search lost is budget is a lot more accurate to measure the constraint of your campaigns due to budget.

29:09I find that the warning, the giant red banner that shows up that everybody sees that you can't get rid of, limited by budget, that red text on your campaigns is much slower and does not disappear when you're no longer limited by budget. It doesn't react in any kind of predictable way. Sometimes it can pop up.

29:32Chris Schaeffer: Sometimes it doesn't disappear when it should have after you've already raised the budget. It's very slow. So what I've found is typically the limited by budget warning is triggered when your search lost IS budget is increasing up to the point of 15 % or higher. so if you're about 15 % or higher usually that's when you see the lost IS budget so you know the main question is how in the upcoming change to the bidding how do we react to a campaign that's limited by budget should we look for lost IS budget or should we look for the limited by budget warning. Well, I, the fact is, is I, I'm at this point, at the point of recording this podcast, I have not yet experienced this, this new bidding change.

30:40Chris Schaeffer: I've not changed. I have not experienced it. I have not tested it. Um, so I have no idea what it's going to be like, but my thought is this, and here's the rule I'll probably live by. If my campaign has a, has a search lost is budget that's above 15 i need to regularly lower the goals to make sure my campaign is not being capped so if i'm running a target cpa or a target return on ad spend a target roas i need to you know every couple months maybe just bump those target CPAs bump those target ROAS numbers down a bit a bit to make sure I'm not being capped because that's the new rule starting August 17th is if you are limited by budget or as Ben has pointed out you have a lost IS budget of 15 % or more which is the number I arbitrarily throw out there this, you know, that that's probably a significant amount.

31:52Chris Schaeffer: Not always true, but let's just say 15 % or more lost IS budget. You need to bump those target CPAs down, bump those target ROAS numbers down. And when I say bump, I mean, small bump is not shove bump is not absolutely throw off a cliff. I mean, small movements, small movements are very important when it comes to Google ads, especially with this new bidding strategy change, because supposedly Google's going to respect our adjustments a bit more. They're not going to be quite as erratic when we make these target CPA and target ROAS adjustments like they used to. So I hope that's the case. I hope it's a better engine, a better scaling tool for us, because the overreacting absolute blow it out that we experience now is not conducive to scaling a campaign.

32:53Chris Schaeffer: All right, so that's it. I appreciate all the questions. Again, you can send in your questions, paidsearchpodcast at gmail.com. Or if you'd like to speak with me, I do work with anyone who's interested in getting their Google Ads campaign to perform better. That's what I'm here for. That is my one and only job I do. Google Ads expert of 20-something years now, very long time. And if you'd like to reach out to me, I can provide one-on-one coaching, or I can also provide full management services for you. You can find more at chrisshafer.com. Otherwise, I'll see you guys here next week.