How to set up the right online campaign for your business
Ads – they’re inescapable. I read once that the average person sees 5000 ads every single day.
What started out on billboards and in newspapers has turned into social media posts and fifteen-second video intros.
More importantly, with an ad, consumers are only ever one click away from the product being advertised. Don’t even get me started on the siren-call of Instagram ads – so many late-night purchases I now regret.
In this episode, I’m going to take you behind the silky curtains of online ads to show you which platforms will really have you strutting your stuff down the marketing cat-walk.
Tune in to learn:
- What it means to run a digital marketing campaign
- What are the perks of advertising on:
○ Facebook
○ Youtube
○ Google - What are the best marketing strategies for each platform
- How many platforms you should target with your ads
- Which common money-wasting mistakes to avoid
Listen to the podcast
Share the love
If you like what you’re hearing on The Recipe for SEO Success Show, support the show by taking a few seconds to leave a rating and/or comment on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, or Stitcher. Thanks!
And big thanks to BFlanagan0418 for their lovely review.
Share the meme
About Ilana
Now, she runs an online training program, called Teach Traffic, where she teaches business owners exactly how to run profitable digital ad campaigns for themselves, without needing an agency. Ilana is also the host of a popular Podcast called Teach Traffic.
Ilana once appeared on a kids’ game show called Double Dare and completely humiliated herself on national tv.
Connect with Ilana
Transcript
Kate Toon:
Ads, they’re inescapable. I read once that the average person sees 5,000 ads every single day. What started out on billboards and in newspapers has turned into social media posts and 15 second video intros. More importantly with an ad, consumers are only ever one click away from the product being advertised. Don’t even get me started on the siren call of Instagram Ads. So many late night purchases, I now regret.
In this episode, I’m going to take you behind the silky curtains of online ads. To show you which platforms will really have you stressing your stuff down the marketing catwalk.
Kate Toon:
Hello. My name is Kate Toon. I’m the head chef at the recipe of SEO success an online teaching hub for all things related to search engine optimization and digital marketing. And today I’m talking to Illana [Wechsler 00:01:14]. Hi Ilana?
Ilana Wechsler:
Hi Kate? Hello.
Kate Toon:
How are you? I said your name in a foolish way because we were joking about it before the show. I also would like, before I go any further to give a big shout out to my new junior copywriter, [Kat Cosentino 00:01:27], who wrote that intro, which I think is fabulous. She’s great with the old idioms and metaphors, hang about and where you can see what… I was actually gonna have a different type of curtain, so if you listen to the end of the episode, you can listen to the outtake at the very end of the show. But anyway, hello Illana, how are you doing?
Ilana Wechsler:
I’m doing well. How are you?
Kate Toon:
Coping. We’re recording this during COVID. I don’t know what month, month 72.
Ilana Wechsler:
Blursday.
Kate Toon:
Blursday, I love that. But we met just before this all kicked off. We met at Digital Marketing Australia, DMA, I think.
Ilana Wechsler:
DMA, back when we were going to events, what’s that all about?
Kate Toon:
Yeah, we had a life, when we were doing things. And we were conference buddies briefly, although then you might’ve not made lots of friends with other people, which was –
Ilana Wechsler:
Stop.
Kate Toon:
Stop it. It was lots of fun. And you were presenting the… I think about this topic about ads in videos and pay-per-click and all that kind of stuff. And I thought you were super lovely and I wanted to get you on the podcast. No one else might know who you are, so I’m just going to put that out there. What I’m going to do is, awkwardly read out your bio while you listen and look at me, okay?
Ilana Wechsler:
Can I cringe a little bit while you’re reading that?
Kate Toon:
You can cringe, it’s awful when people read your bio out, but I’ll read it in a really nice voice, okay?
Ilana Wechsler:
Okay.
Kate Toon:
Illana is a former data analyst turned pay-per-click marketing expert. An authority in both Google and Facebook advertising, she is the founder of boutique digital agency Green Arrow Digital which has managed over $30 million in pay-per-click campaigns. Now, she runs an online training programme, called Teach Traffic, where she helps business owners learn how to run profitable digital ad campaigns for themselves, without needing an agency. Illana is also the host of a popular podcast called Teach Traffic, and we’re doing a – so I’ll be on her episode soon. Illana once appeared in a kid’s game show called Double Dare and completely humiliated herself on TV. How old were you?
Ilana Wechsler:
I was year six.
Kate Toon:
What did you do that was really humiliating?
Ilana Wechsler:
Oh my God, what didn’t I do? There were a few things that I did on that show. Were you in Australia then?
Kate Toon:
No.
Ilana Wechsler:
Then you probably not familiar with –
Kate Toon:
Was it one of those ones where you have to like jump in jelly and climb?
Ilana Wechsler:
Totally. Yeah. So the first humiliating thing that I did was, I fell over while doing… It’s show where it’s like, if you don’t know the answer to a question, you have to do a dare. And so the dare was that they had to wrap me in a bandage, like a mummy. I thought I’d be really clever, and I would turn, so that my partner could easily wrap me in the bandage. But the factor that I didn’t take into consideration was that one gets dizzy while turning.
Kate Toon:
One does.
Ilana Wechsler:
Yes, one does. And so I proceeded to get really, really dizzy while turning and fell over. And because I was wrapped up in a bandage, like a dummy, I couldn’t brace from my fall and it was just disaster
Kate Toon:
Do you have a video of that? I think that’s something that you should add to your website.
Ilana Wechsler:
I should. I used to, I have to find it actually.
Kate Toon:
Find it, because you know that I was on Graham Norton. I was the first ever red chair guest on Graham Norton.
Kate Toon:
Probably told the listeners this, but I… It was because of me that he invented it. I’m going to put that out there. Since me and Kylie Minogue on the sofa, I was called from the audience. I think I’ve got the video of it on my homepage now, it’s mortifying. I’m wearing the most God awful outfit. I looked like a flump, but he did say at the end of it, “Kate Toon, you are Chat Show Gold.”
Ilana Wechsler:
Oh, that is not great.
Kate Toon:
There we go. So I think we should incorporate some of that today. If you can’t answer one of the questions today, I’m going to make you do a dare. And I am doing this in a, but we’re going to relive our embarrassing TV moments throughout this podcast. No, we’re not. We’re just going to get over the outside.
Ilana Wechsler:
Okay.
Kate Toon:
Okay. Let’s talk about digital ads, quite boring really after that.
Ilana Wechsler:
I know, but I can try and make them interesting.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. The thing is I feel like you are the yin to my yang.
Ilana Wechsler:
Really?
Kate Toon:
So organic traffic SEO course, the recipe for SEO success. You have your teach traffic course, which is all about ads. So often there’s a bit of competition between those two. So I’m a big advocate of Google ads. I think it’s a great way to get started. But for those who don’t understand what digital advertising is, let’s go right back to basics. For anyone who’s not in the know, what does it mean to run a digital ad campaign?
Ilana Wechsler:
Wow. Okay. Well we all navigate the world online these days. So a digital advertising campaign would be getting in front of your target audience based on lots of different targeting mechanisms that you can do. Why? It’s sort of exploded in growth over the last five to 10 years is that it is so trackable. So contrast that to putting an ad in a local paper, for example, where you pay a flat fee and you really, apart from the circulation statistics that they give you, you really have no sense of how it worked.
Ilana Wechsler:
Businesses put their same phone number that they have on their website and on their marketing materials so that when the phone rings they’ve really got no way of determining if that person came from, as a result of seeing that ad. With digital advertising, it is insanely trackable. And so it becomes a very, very easy business decision to say, Hey, we spent $100 and we made $200 and therefore we should spend more. Or we spent $100 and made nothing and therefore we shouldn’t. So both are equal and viable options to do.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. When it comes to online advertising, we’re generally talking about the two major platforms. I mean, Google, and then Facebook, and it’s all family. Well, Google and it’s family, because it’s got the SERPs, it’s also got YouTube, whatever. And then Facebook and it’s family, which is Facebook, Instagram. Are those the main channels that you focus on?
Ilana Wechsler:
That is the main channels that our folk focus on. Google boasts that on their platform alone, so in their little family, as you say, you can access over 90% of all US internet users, which is pretty crazy.
Kate Toon:
Wow. That’s a fair whack, isn’t it?
Ilana Wechsler:
That’s right. So this whole concept of like, I might target customers or I’m in B2B, therefore, should I do this? Well, 90% of people buy from people or people sell to people if they’re in B2B.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I mean, basically you’re accessing most of humanity, so I’m pretty sure your audience is going to be the-
Ilana Wechsler:
Exactly.
Kate Toon:
Let’s dig into Facebook advertising really, because… I’m going to be quite honest with the listeners. So I have never really done any advertising of any kind. I’m going to give you a couple of examples.
Ilana Wechsler:
Wow.
Kate Toon:
Everything I’ve built in my business has been built purely on concept marketing. It’s generally because I had a couple of bad experiences early on and being completely narrow-minded and basic, I just was like, “Right, I’m not doing it anymore.” So maybe you can persuade me by the end of this episode to give it another pop.
Kate Toon:
So let’s talk about Facebook advertising, first of all. I did a little bit of Facebook advertising when I first started Recipe, but it was really remarketing and I will define that in a minute. Where essentially I was showing people who’d already been to my site, my ads. One person bought, and I was really annoyed because I had to pay for that conversion. I had to pay for that click. But they were already on my email list and I knew them and they would have bought anyway, but they bought through the ad and it really annoyed me. So I never did Facebook advertising again.
Ilana Wechsler:
Wow. That’s amazing.
Kate Toon:
A little story. So let’s break that down, when it comes to Facebook advertising, there are two… Wait, I don’t know why I’m telling you what they are because you’re the expert. But I generally think of it as display ads and remarketing, but how does it really work?
Ilana Wechsler:
Well, yes. I guess that’s one of the perks with advertising online is that you have complete control as to who you want to see the ad and who you don’t want to see the ad. So your gripe of that, Hey, this person was on my email list, anyway, they would have bought, you can theoretically… Well, and you can exclude. You can upload your database to Facebook and exclude people from that audience from seeing your ad and therefore you’re not cannibalising, what would have otherwise been someone purchasing anyway.
Ilana Wechsler:
Facebook targeting is pretty insane when you think about it. People input obviously crazy amounts of details about themselves. They put in their real birthday, because people wish people happy birthday, right? They put in where they studied, they put in what they study, they put in their job title, they like certain pages. All those, they have what’s called first party data.
Ilana Wechsler:
And therefore all those data points are a mechanism by which you can target people. So it’s a marketer’s dream, really, because you can really hone in on exactly your target customer. So say you target three different types of customers. You can create sub audiences and show relevant ads to those three different types of customers. But yeah, from a targeting point of view, it is pretty amazing what you can do.
Ilana Wechsler:
But it is a different kind of advertising to let’s say, Google search ads, because people don’t go to Facebook to buy things. They go to Facebook for light entertainment and to see their friends photos, and what people have been up to, and probably participating groups generally. So it’s an interruption style marketing where someone’s scrolling through their newsfeed and you need to go, “Hey, stop the scroll. Here’s what I’ve got that might be of interest, et cetera.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I find that quite fascinating, the level of information that Facebook has about us, because often when we think in advertising and marketing terms, we think in these really broad and stupid demographic information. So this is Sue, Sue is 45, she’s married, she’s got a dog called Bernard. And really that doesn’t tell us anything about Sue. And the fact is that Facebook knows all our dark secrets because not only does it have that data that we enter into Facebook, but it’s tracking us around other sites.
Kate Toon:
Lots of people answer all these surveys and quizzes that you can get and we’re being pixels, and pixels, and pixels. And also obviously Facebook’s listening to all our conversations as well all the time. I don’t know if that’s true, I’m just joking.
I listened to a great episode on Reply All about that. I don’t know if you love that podcast, but it’s fantastic. So they know everything about us and that’s why the interruption style ads on Facebook actually work pretty well because they’re interrupting us with stuff that we probably want. It’s terrifying, isn’t it? Especially on Instagram. Because I think maybe people don’t realise that you can do Facebook ads that pull through to Instagram as well. Don’t you? Can’t you?
Ilana Wechsler:
100%, yeah. Well, Facebook owns Instagram. So yeah, if you only want to advertise on Instagram, you still need to navigate that through the Facebook ad platform. Facebook have an insane amount of data from what obviously what people input themselves, but they also buy a lot of data, which is what got them into hot water with the whole Cambridge. But everyone talks about Facebook having data and they do, but let me tell you, Google’s got just as much, they’re just… No one really talks about that.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. We’ll, we’re going to move on to Google in a second, but I think one of the biggest challenges for people with Facebook is that interface that you talk about. The ads area, where you go in, which seems to be constantly changing. And it feels incredibly difficult to wrap your brain around that backend system. And you talk a lot about audiences, but you can have like custom audiences, you can have lookalike audiences, you can upload your own audience. Can you just break down some of the core… If you were setting up a campaign for me tomorrow, what kind of audiences would you build out for me based on the data that they’ve gotten, and the data that I already have about my customers.
Ilana Wechsler:
Okay. Here’s what you do starting out. You would install the Facebook pixel on your website. This is a bit of a bunch of code, much similar to Google Analytics code that is at an ad account level. And you install that pixel on your website. You only have to do it once. And then it’s pretty much tracking the people that come to your site, which enables you to then do retargeting ads, which is following.
Ilana Wechsler:
So someone comes to your website, they leave and then suddenly they see an advocate tune the next day, when they’re scrolling through their Facebook newsfeed, okay? You would then start creating what’s called retargeting audiences. So website visitors based on someone who’s come, let’s say in the last seven days to your website, and you can show them an ad for seven days. If they don’t come back in those seven days, then you’ve stopped showing them ads and that’s fine. And you can create longer audiences as well. So the maximum timeframe that Facebook will remember your past website visitors is 180 days. And so you could theoretically follow people around on Facebook for 180 days.
Ilana Wechsler:
What is really cool that you can do is you can… I guess really the real power of Facebook ads is in their pixel and in their algorithm. So you can say to Facebook, “Hey, Facebook, here’s a list of everyone who’s come to my website in the last 180 days, and they’re my website visitors, but of course I want more website visitors, right? So you can create what’s called a lookalike audience, which is essentially you saying to Facebook, Hey, Facebook, here’s a group of people who’ve come to my website, of the 2000 plus data points that you have on each of these people, go away and find me people who are similar to these people, but not these people. Hence, called a look alike.
Ilana Wechsler:
They exhibit similar characteristics, they’re new people. And let me tell you, lookalike audiences are gold. They work ridiculously well, particularly when you have a lot of traffic or website, people coming through your site where Facebook needs data, needs certain number of people to get a sense of who you want. I’ve got ad accounts to a point where we are literally only running look alike audiences with no other targeting whatsoever.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. So powerful. The other one that people talk about is going, I want people who like this person. I want to be the next Amy Porterfield, so please show my ad to anybody who said that they like Amy Porterfield.
Ilana Wechsler:
Yes. So you can target fans of certain pages, but those certain pages do need to be of a certain size. What that size is, is a grey area by Facebook. I mean, they don’t really tell you what’s the minimum threshold, but another cool thing you can do on Facebook in terms of audiences is, let’s say you do a whole bunch of videos that you just have on your page that you don’t even boost posts, right? People watch those videos, et cetera. So you can create an audience of the people that have watched that video, even if they didn’t go to your website. So they’ve watched a video on the Facebook platform, maybe even got halfway through the video, you can create an audience of people who’ve watched 50% of any of your videos. And then they can be on a separate retargeting list, even if they’ve never gone to your website.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. It’s so powerful. To do all of this, there’s a certain period where Facebook is learning, isn’t it? It’s chewing through the data. You put your ad live and the first couple of days, it seems to not do a great deal and then it starts to build up and ramp up. Is that just because Google… I keep saying Google because I’m obsessed with Google. Is that just because Facebook is working through its data? Why does it take a little while to kind of ramp up?
Ilana Wechsler:
It does need to learn who you want and who you don’t want based on now what’s called conversion tracking. So you certainly basically telling Facebook, Hey, this is a goal… If I could wave my magic wand, I would get people landing on this, thank you page, right? So that’s setting up conversion tracking. And so they are learning who are the people who land on that page, et cetera.
Ilana Wechsler:
It’s called the learning phase, but full disclosure, I do find Facebook ads to be quite volatile. You might have some days where you feel like a hero and you’re on top of the world and Facebook ads, the most amazing platform in the world. You literally don’t touch anything. And the next day it’s back at the bottom. The next day, day after it’s back up the top. So it is quite volatile. That’s –
Kate Toon:
The downside. As a newbie coming to Facebook ads, a). There’s the intimidation about the platform and the fact that it’s impenetrable unless you understand it, like knowing how to upload your ads and how to choose the audiences can be quite challenging. Obviously you have a course that teaches it. Boom. The next thing that scares people off is, how much money they should invest over what period. And then what is a good conversion?
Kate Toon:
If I’m paying $5 for every lead into my free lead gen, is that good value? And that’s all the conversion because of going, well, the percentage of people who moved from that lead gen to your paid thing is blah. It’s quite overwhelming, isn’t it? So if you’re starting off tomorrow, do you have a very… It’s probably impossible to say, because it’s a sweeping generalisation, but what budgets should people be thinking about and what duration for their campaigns?
Ilana Wechsler:
It’s a good question and one that people do definitely grapple with, I’m a big believer in starting small. So I always start, regardless of if we’re starting on Facebook or Google, we always start with a retargeting campaign because it’s low hanging fruit. We don’t need to-
Kate Toon:
A really super warm audience. They always now you.
Ilana Wechsler:
Exactly. So they’re going to be the most forgiving audience and it’s also not going to cost you that much money as well. So it’s small budget, we’re talking like $5 a day, depending on how much traffic you get to your site. That’s obviously very a big variable for different businesses, but most could start at $5 or $10 a day. And yeah, just start with that very forgiving audience and see if you can get that low-hanging fruit over the line.
Ilana Wechsler:
I am a big fan and this probably might be a little bit lef-field for you, but I’m a big fan of combining email marketing with ads. So you might have a newsletter that you send out to people. We will upload that database to Facebook and combine our ad with emails. So I did this for a client, was a membership website and they had a free video course so much like you were saying, “Using that to get people into free video course.” And then via email was where they were trying to make sales into their course.
Ilana Wechsler:
And so we combined ads with those emails and what we found, we had a huge uptick in sales for a number of reasons. The first reason we all know email open rates are not 100%. I mean, even a 50% email open rate is really good, which means the other half of the people and not seeing your emails.
Ilana Wechsler:
The second reason was people would share a Facebook ad. Like these days, people don’t forward emails to their entire contact list, I don’t know about you, but I don’t even know when the last time I did that, right? But they will happily share a relevant ad to their audience.
Kate Toon:
Or at least tag people on it. And then it –
Ilana Wechsler:
100%. Exactly. And they might say, “Oh my God, I bought this, so and so you should check this out,” et cetera. And so your ad suddenly gets sprinkled with all this social proof. Once again, very forgiving audience, they’re on your email list. They like the content you’ve produced and it’s super, super low budget and you could probably run it for seven days and then turn it off.
Ilana Wechsler:
I’m just going to say, in continuum, from what you asked with what’s a reasonable conversion rate, the answer is, it really depends on your business and how much you sell things for. And as somebody who’s run an agency for so long now the metric that we live and breathe by and are measured by is that cost per conversion, which varies for different clients.
Kate Toon:
And I think it could be high as well for people. I love this, just to rephrase what you said there, starting with a low budget, even $5 a day with remarketing to existing audience, that’s the lowest hanging fruit, the warmest audience. And then you go from there. And then I guess a lot of people, where are you going about which part of the funnel they should go for? Should they be going top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, should they be promoting their free checklist or their free lead magnet, their low cost course or their top level saying.
Kate Toon:
Which things should they be trying to sell through their Facebook ads? Is it better to use Facebook ads to get people into your email list than your funnel? Or is it realistic to expect that you can sell $2,000 mastermind off the back of an ad?
Ilana Wechsler:
I think it’s unrealistic to sell a $2,000 mastermind at the top of the funnel. So go straight to the ad itself. I used the analogy of retail, right? So let’s say I’m walking down the street. I’m in Sydney. So let’s say Oxford street, for example, right? If I walk into a shop and literally as soon as I walk in the shop, assistant step in front of me and she says, “Hey, do you want to buy this dress?” I’m going to be like, “Whoa, I don’t know. I want to look around a little bit.” And then I’m going to look around and I might pick a couple of items and then take them into the change room and try them on. And then I might be in a position to say, “Yes, I want to buy this.” But I’ve just walked into the shop.
Ilana Wechsler:
And I think people view their ads the same way and they don’t warm people up a little bit. No, I wouldn’t run a Facebook ad to sell it $2000 programme off, straight from cold traffic. But if somebody has consumed some of my content, they’ve already got my checklist, they’ve watched perhaps a webinar then maybe they want to jump on a quick call to ask some questions, then that might work.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I love that. Again, you see these people say, there’s a particular entrepreneur here in Australia who spent $150,000 on ads to make $300,000, which it’s a lot of money to spend, but it’s a lot of money to make. The thing I would think that after a while you just burn out your audience, that you’re running out of people to show your… You start slow. It goes up. And then after while surely the cost of conversion must go up again because you’re just getting to colder and colder and colder audiences. Is that how it works?
Ilana Wechsler:
I think it really depends on what type of product or service you’re selling. There are many people that as they go bigger, their ad costs come down actually, as they get more reviews as they get more testimonials. It really depends on the size of the market that they’re navigating in.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I guess you just have to be willing enough to invest and experiment and obviously use an expert that’s gonna give you advice. But as you said, as with SEO even the best expert can’t guarantee how the humans and the algorithms are gonna perform on that particular day. But the world climate might change, something political might happen and that could impact your ads, so interesting. So we’ve talked a lot about Facebook, let’s have a quick chat about Google. So obviously there’s different types of Google ads as well. So can you take us through what the different types of Google ads are?
Ilana Wechsler:
Absolutely. So the Google ad world is quite vast. Actually, most people kind of don’t realise how much there is to it, but think of it as four distinct different buckets, okay? The first bucket is Google Search. So someone’s gone to google.com. We’ve all done that. Let’s say we’ve typed into Google Sydney, for example. And those four ads come up above the organic results, which are all about this organic results, but those are the text ads that come up based on what you’ve typed into Google, okay? So that’s the search bucket.
Ilana Wechsler:
The second bucket is the Google Display Network, which banner ads on other people’s websites. So for Australian listeners, think Sydney, news.com, and all the major newspapers allow Google ads on their site for US listeners, New York times, LA times, et cetera. There’s literally over 2,000,000 websites that allow Google ads on their site. And therefore you can access advertising on their platforms through the Google interface.
Ilana Wechsler:
The Google Display Network behaves completely differently to the Google search network. You will be lucky to get a 1% click through rate on your ads, which means 1% of the people who see your ads click on it, but it doesn’t matter because you’re basically only paying for a click, as opposed to an impression versus Google Search. You will typically get a minimum of a 5% click through rate on the ads.
Ilana Wechsler:
The third bucket is YouTube, which is boasted to be the world’s second largest search engine, very proudly by Google. And typically what most people do is they do the video ads that come up before the video you’re gonna watch. And yeah, we could probably do a whole episode just on YouTube ads and is quite vast, but that’s basically how it works. There is a huge amount of traffic there. It’s insane numbers that Google say. I think it’s 300 hours is uploaded every single second to that platform, which is nuts.
Kate Toon:
We actually just did an episode. I did an episode with Tom this morning from Channel Fuel, who’s a video YouTube, It’s apparently 500-
Ilana Wechsler:
There you go. It’s changed. It’s an ever increasing ad platform in size because of the, just the amount of content that’s continually uploaded. And actually, I’m a big fan of YouTube ads. Anyway, so that’s YouTube.
Ilana Wechsler:
And then the fourth bucket is Google Shopping, which are the image ads with products and prices that’s on google.com.
Kate Toon:
Wow. There’s a lot there. So I think the only thing I’ve ever tried with Google Ads is again, a little bit of remarketing with the display ads because obviously listeners to the show would’ve used the Google AdWords keyword tool to look at the cost per click. And you look at some of the terms that you want to go after, the cost per click is just feels astronomical and obviously there’s no guarantee that you’ll convert that click. It’s a challenging one as well. So YouTube ad sounds interesting. In your experience, are there businesses that lend themselves more to Facebook then Google or vice versa?
Ilana Wechsler:
Definitely. There are certain industries that are like a Google Account, basically. Like dentists, for example, actually used to specialise in Google Ads for dentists. That’s a whole other story, but anyway, but that is pretty much a mobile campaign, Google Search, that’s it. Dentists near me type kind of queries and stuff. You wouldn’t really advertise a dentist on Facebook where you could put some offer.
Ilana Wechsler:
But on the flip side, there are absolutely some industries that are very Facebook not so much Google, but I would say, probably the big difference with Google is the sheer intent based nature of it. Somebody has literally gone to Google and typed in Dentist [Bondi 00:29:46], for example. If you’re a dentist in Bondi you’re sliding your business card under the nose of someone at literally the instant that they have searched for that. It’s an amazing advertising opportunity, and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. So it is pretty incredible.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I mean, obviously this is what I say about organic search. I don’t go to Facebook, if I want to buy a new dress, I don’t get to Facebook and just sit and hope that an ad pops up.
Ilana Wechsler:
Exactly.
Kate Toon:
I go to Google and type in my exact requirements and I keep on adding keywords until I get what I want. I’m an organic person, so I take the rule that there’s a little bit of ad blindness and a bit of mistrust with ads and that the latest stats I read said about 22% of the critics go to the ads about 78 to the organic, but that’s changing all the time because they increased the number of ads. It used to be two, now it’s four. They used to be alone at the top and the bottom, you can also get local pack ads, as you said, YouTube ads.
Kate Toon:
People think of Google as this magnanimous beast here to help us in the universe, but they want to make their money. They want to make that dollar. So, it’s interesting. One thing that I’ve always found in just a random question is, I never quite understand those people who buy their own brand term for Google Ads. When that ranking. It’s such a good question. When they’re already ranking number one, when they own the first page of Google, and obviously what happens then is that I’m going to click the ad. You’re paying for my click when you were already of your first organic result. And I could just click that and you wouldn’t, and then…
Ilana Wechsler:
I do know, but I’ve got a couple of things to… Not to challenge you would be the wrong terminology, but-
Kate Toon:
-another challenge.
Ilana Wechsler:
… we can discuss. So one reason, many people do is because other people are bidding on their brand. That’s number one. And you could – for our Australian this is a fun thing I always like to do is, ask people, “Who wants half price pizza?” And of course, everyone puts their hand up and say, just do a Google Search for Pizza Hut and you’ll see Domino’s Pizza is running an offer for 50% off Domino’s Pizza.
Kate Toon:
That’s something that people don’t understand that you can’t do that in search. In organic search, we want to rank for Domino’s pizzas, you have to have their name on your website. You have to have the key words that Google isn’t going to show it, but you can negatively bid or whatever it’s called on other people’s terms on Google.
Ilana Wechsler:
It is perfectly legal like, you’re allowed to do it. What you can’t do is, you can’t say that you are Pizza Hut Domino’s Pizza. So you gotta be clear in that, Hey, we are not Pizza Hut, but we are Domino’s Pizza, but, Hey, here’s a special offer. Which leads me to my second point of why people bid on their own brand, which is they can send people where they want with organic SEO. Google’s deciding where they’re going to send people mainly to the home page, but if you want to funnel people into a webinar or a special offer or something, then you’ve got that level of control at your fingertips. And the third thing is actually, you don’t pay that much when you bid on your own brand. We’re talking 20 cents, I reckon.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. And I think there’s a full thing as well. If you are the first paid ad and the first organic ad, it’s like, you are the, do you know what I mean? You are the bomb. You own this. It just, I think that ads to your authority and the trust as well. So I’m not saying don’t do it. And as you said, the cost of that is so much lower. So it’s interesting.
Kate Toon:
Thank you. See, I was happy to be challenged. It’s always good to learn. If I’m thinking today, I’m all excited. I get very easily excited. I’m like, “I’m going to do ads. She’s convinced me.”
Ilana Wechsler:
Look out.
Kate Toon:
There we go. Is it best to stick to one platform, then get used to it or have a campaign running across many? If I was starting tomorrow, what would you advise me to do?
Ilana Wechsler:
All right. As somebody who’s run an agency for so long managing both platforms, what I always do is I do a retargeting campaign on both platforms. And let’s just see where the data is, because actually in the beginning, that’s basically what you’re doing. You’re buying data. And you’re buying data to understand how your users behave, number one. Number two, you’re seeing what offer converts to those people.
Ilana Wechsler:
So if you find your retargeting campaign does not result in it being profitable because it’s small budget stuff, five, $10 a day. If you can’t make more than that back, the answer is not to buy more traffic. The answer is to fix your retargeting campaign, change your offer, change your messaging, change the images you’re using your ad. You’re not bleeding money, you’re getting that retargeting offer that converts, which honestly is the Holy grail.
Ilana Wechsler:
Once you can get that working, then you start to engage in a conversation with yourself about feeling that retargeting audience, by buying more traffic, either through organic SEO or whatever. I wanted to add one thing, what we were talking about Google Search, because I know your listeners are heavy SEO people and absolutely I think SEO has, of course has its place in the world. But I would say that buying search ads helps your SEO because you are understanding what keywords convert to then invest in SEO.
Kate Toon:
I absolutely agree. In fact, one of the things I often do is, because once you sign up for Google Ads account, often you get like a little voucher and you can have a little play. And I’m like the best way to understand what keywords work is to run a lot campaign, but also not just that you really can hone in your copy for your… One of the things I used to obviously is I’ll look at the top performing ads and the phrases they’re using, the authors, the incentives, and I’ll take those and I’ll work them into the meta description, then title tag of my organic results.
Kate Toon:
-they emulate ads. But if I can see that the other brand has… they probably spent a huge amount of money on ads and they are mentioning free Australia wide delivery. And then they have they’ve realised that that gets the clicks. Well, I’m going to put that in my description. I absolutely agree. I think I said not just the keyword research, but what copy works as well.
Ilana Wechsler:
Absolutely. And you can really work out what are your converting keywords as opposed to your high traffic keywords that take a long time to rank in SEO and don’t actually result in leads or sales, but what are your lower competition, but more converting keywords that you can then invest in SEO.
Kate Toon:
Now, I could talk to you all day and I’ve got loads, more questions, but I did commit to my members of the Digital Masterchefs that I would ask a couple of their questions before we finish up. And if we have time, I’ll ask you about common mistakes. I’m always letting people down and forgetting to ask that question. So I’ve got two for you here. No three I think. No, two. So Krystala Charalambous from Modella, which is a fashion website asks, “I tried Facebook Ads about three years ago. My pay-per-click is great. Got lots of people to the website, but no orders. I sell women’s clothing. Is there a conversion benchmark? What are some tips for me to try again?”
Ilana Wechsler:
A hard question. So you’re probably getting a lot of people browsing and therefore they’re not quite ready to buy. Maybe they’re standing at the bus stop waiting for the bus to come and go, “Yeah, I want to check this out, but I’m not exactly going to whip out my credit card and do a purchase straight away. Going back to retargeting, like I would just retarget that traffic with some offer or free shipping or something to sweeten the deal a little bit. Generally speaking, and you would probably know from copywriting, people will delay making a decision if they can and they don’t have to. So that’s why offers work so well. So that’s why free shipping or something like that to, Hey, get this now and you can get free shipping or some kind of offer.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I mean, we do a lot of pricing, psychology stuff in the digital masters shares and the whole notion of this whole 10% discount that people offer is not going to persuade someone to buy that wasn’t probably already going to buy anyway. So if you really want to get someone to buy who wasn’t going to buy, it has to be a chunky, like 20% discount, but you could target that to just people who visited the car a couple of times.
Kate Toon:
The other thing I think that works really well for fashion is having that big carousel of images, a lot of your products. So five or six different… because maybe I don’t like the first for the third or the fourth one gets me to click. So that can work quite well as well on it
Ilana Wechsler:
Totally, as well I love video ads and I think video ads on Facebook are great, obviously because it’s so visual and it’s so engaging. But also as I sort of going back to what I was first talking about with that engagement audience of people, who’ve watched a certain portion of the video, you can then retarget them.
Ilana Wechsler:
I know for e-commerce many people do liaise or engage with influencers, but then they’ll use the imagery of the influences with their product in their ads itself to have that social proof come in, and I know first hand that actually does work even though I feel quite morally opposed to that. So there’s lots of different things that you can do.
Kate Toon:
Keneena Fanning from Kablooie store, teeth back in. I’d love to know more about retargeting. I’d, e.g. retargeting a warm audience from a previous campaign. So we touched on this, but I guess there’s… The question that I would rephrase answers is like, is there a way of doing that, that doesn’t make it too icky because there’s one thing about retargeting that it can actually become a bit ick, especially when they say things like we noticed that you didn’t do this, or when ads just feel like they follow you and follow you and you’re like, will you ever just go away? Is there a point of ick with retargeting that we need to be careful about?
Ilana Wechsler:
Yeah. And that’s a good point. So what you’re talking about is the frequency and people bombarding people with the same ad over and over again. So you can be, have your retargeting campaigns to be a lot more elegant so that you can, what’s called frequency cap. So on the Google side of things, you can say, Hey, Google, don’t show my ad to the same person more than once a day, for example, or three times a week as one example. So it will automatically frequency cap.
Ilana Wechsler:
One thing we like to do is we like to create what’s called short term audiences. So an audience of people who’ve come to the website and let’s say one to three days, then we’ll create another audience who’ve come from four to seven days. And we rotate through those audiences by showing different creative. And therefore it feels a lot more native. You’re not so showing the same people the same ad over and over again. And I’m personally of the belief, I don’t know, if someone doesn’t come back in 14 or 30 days…
Kate Toon:
They’re never going to-
Ilana Wechsler:
I’m taking the hint. We move on. That’s cool, we can be friends, but-
Kate Toon:
Don’t stalk people, don’t stalk them.
Ilana Wechsler:
Exactly, a bit of a Ninja tactic I like to do on the Google side of things is, we will filter out of an audience. People who’ve spent, let’s say less than five seconds on a site and therefore haven’t really hung around. I don’t think they’re warranted in being on a retargeting list. Let’s just filter them out and then at least we’re dealing with a very engaged audience, very engaged. Six seconds, but obviously that amount of time threshold depends on your business. I mean, I filtered out people who spent less than two minutes on a site, this was a particular site that did get a lot of traffic. And so we just had a hyper engaged audience then.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I think it’s interesting. Isn’t it? That six seconds means engagement these days. It’s funny, isn’t it? So let’s finish up with a couple of mistakes. We have too many, because I’ve kept you for a long time, but if you could think of two of the biggest mistakes people make when they are investing in ads online, Facebook, Google, wherever, what do you think are two of the biggest mistakes?
Ilana Wechsler:
Okay. Are we talking both platforms or separately?
Kate Toon:
Yeah. I think either all you, whatever you want to share with us.
Ilana Wechsler:
Okay. So what would be the biggest mistake on Google would be to show ads to your customers. Let’s say you did buy those shoes online and then suddenly you see ads for those shoes, right? Would be a classic mistake. It’s like, “Hey, I bought your shoes. You don’t need to show me an ad.” Right? But having said that, that being the biggest mistake on Google can actually work quite well on Facebook where we actually do that strategically, is we will show ads to existing customers because they’re going to say, I bought these shoes, they were awesome, so and so, you got to check them out.
Ilana Wechsler:
So it actually can actually work in your favour because of that ability to comment on an ad, which they can’t do on Google. Another mistake people make is, what we were talking about showing the same ad over and over again, which is just… I can’t stand that, it really irks me. So they don’t frequency cap. Oh my God, there’s so many mistakes.
Ilana Wechsler:
They don’t think of the sales process. They just go straight for the sale. Especially people with Facebook ads is they write the most boring ads and they just try to expect people just to click and buy. Whereas it’s a social network, it’s a social platform. You need to engage people. You need to tell a story. And we do a whole bunch of story-based ads, which are actually long copy ads, like 500 words because they almost become like mini landing pages. And anyone who does click actually is very likely to convert if they actually make it all the way down.
Kate Toon:
Fantastic. Illana that was so useful, so helpful. Thank you. I’ve learned some things. I have been making little notes on my pads. I’m going to ask her about these things after the show finishes. Thank you so much for joining us today. I will, of course include links to all your various bits and bobs in the show notes, but if someone wants to find you right now, where should they be Googling? Where can they find you?
Ilana Wechsler:
Two possible websites, teachtraffic.com is my main site and also, greenarrowdigital.com. You can send me an email. Ilana@greenarrowdigital.com. That’ll come to me as well.
Kate Toon:
Fantastic. Okay, so we are done.
Ilana Wechsler:
Thank you.
Kate Toon:
That’s the end of this week’s show. If you have more questions about paid advertising and how to use multiple platforms to increase your sales, you can head to my, I LOVE SEO group on Facebook. I like to end the show with a little shout outs from one of my lovely listeners and this week, it is B.F. [Flanagan 00:44:29] 0418.
Kate Toon:
And the testimonial is, I’m a military wife located in the U.S. and I’ve been a photographer for years, but not really looking to get more involved in SEO because I’ve many friends, always asking how they can better their SEO. I also have a small child that I stay at home with, I want to enjoy him for as many years as I can. I’m excited to hear your podcast and to start learning more. Plus I love supporting fellow women in business. Thank you for all you do.
Kate Toon:
So there you go B. Flanagan. You’ve learned a little bit about SEO and paid ads today, so you can work in both those strategies. Thanks to you for listening. If you liked the show, please don’t forget to leave a five star rating and review on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you heard the podcast. You can learn, help others find the show and learn more about search engine optimization and digital marketing. And you’ll get a shout out.
Kate Toon:
As I said, you can head to the www.therecipeforseosuccess.com to learn more about Illana, check out all her useful links and leave a comment about the show. And finally, don’t forget to listen to my new podcast, The Kate Toon Show. It’s my personal podcast about living a life as a misfit entrepreneur. My tips and advice on how to have a happier, more successful business. Until next time happy SEO-ing.
BLOOPER:
In this episode, I’m going to take you behind the furry curtains of that sounds disgusting. I can’t say furry curtains.
Ilana Wechsler:
Yeah. What curtains are furry?
Kate Toon:
That just sounds rude to me, does this sound rude to you?
Ilana Wechsler:
Yeah, a little bit.
Kate Toon:
Okay.
