Don't make the same mistake I did when Googling your competition.

[NicoleMarie]

This deserves a face.

When searching Google for potential competitors to investigate, TURN OFF ADBLOCK.
I turned it off to find several different websites that include my niche that I could use for investigation. Luckily none of them are doing my exact idea, but still make sure to do this guys. It doesn't look like the companies in the ads are repeated in the normal search results.

Now I'm wondering if people who are using adwords are getting their full money's worth, since lots of people use adblock...

 

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[Kyle Tully]

This deserves a face.

When searching Google for potential competitors to investigate, TURN OFF ADBLOCK.
I turned it off to find several different websites that include my niche that I could use for investigation. Luckily none of them are doing my exact idea, but still make sure to do this guys. It doesn't look like the companies in the ads are repeated in the normal search results.

Now I'm wondering if people who are using adwords are getting their full money's worth, since lots of people use adblock...

Last I heard it was something like 10% of people use adblocking software.

Depends on the market, the more tech-savvy the more likely.

If you're only paying for clicks then it doesn't matter all that much.

But as a business owner and marketer I don't know why you'd use an adblocker.

There is GOLD to be found in what others are doing.

 

[NicoleMarie]

Last I heard it was something like 10% of people use adblocking software.

Depends on the market, the more tech-savvy the more likely.

If you're only paying for clicks then it doesn't matter all that much.

But as a business owner and marketer I don't know why you'd use an adblocker.

There is GOLD to be found in what others are doing.

Ok, thought it would be more. That is good information thanks! The target is 20-40ish but not a "techie" related niche.

Ah, I see what you mean. I only just started reading about what Adwords is about so I probably pointlessly mentioned that ha.

I agree, I don't turn Adblock on specifically for competitors. It's on for different reasons and I forgot that it was hiding people in my Google searches.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[Hope]

Thanks for the tip Nicole, I'd never thought of that before haha.

 

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[MarkNNelson]

In the same vein, make sure that you turn off personalized search. Otherwise, you're seeing un-representative results. Like you'll see your own site on the front page, and assume that everyone else is seeing the same thing. Not that that's ever happened to me...

 

[SJVC]

Same goes for using fb! I used to hate ads but now rather enjoy taking them to pieces

 

[NicoleMarie]

You're welcome guys and thanks for the additional tips!!
By the way @SJVC your avatar makes me laugh.

 

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[SJVC]

@NicoleMarie I just love Huey Lewis & the News...

 

[DaRK9]

This is yet another reason why advertising to older people works better.

IE,
No ad-block
Older people will actually look at ads

I don't know how many times my grandparents have pointed out an ad while reading an article online. I don't even see them anymore, even without ad-block. I only pay attention to FB ads.

 

[NicoleMarie]

This is yet another reason why advertising to older people works better.

IE,
No ad-block
Older people will actually look at ads

I don't know how many times my grandparents have pointed out an ad while reading an article online. I don't even see them anymore, even without ad-block. I only pay attention to FB ads.

I agree, this brings up something I've thought of. I'm not sure I even want to spend TONS of money on ads, as I'm part of the target audience for my startup and I ignore ads too. In fact, I used to have a saying, "If you see it on a commercial, don't buy it." Lol. I usually think "It's probably a scam." or "If they have to pay for ads, they must be struggling with customers." I know I'm negative but everything I use is from word of mouth/reading reviews, which is why I'd rather focus on getting people talking about it and getting on blogs or something.

 

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[Kyle Tully]

I agree, this brings up something I've thought of. I'm not sure I even want to spend TONS of money on ads, as I'm part of the target audience for my startup and I ignore ads too. In fact, I used to have a saying, "If you see it on a commercial, don't buy it." Lol. I usually think "It's probably a scam." or "If they have to pay for ads, they must be struggling with customers." I know I'm negative but everything I use is from word of mouth/reading reviews, which is why I'd rather focus on getting people talking about it and getting on blogs or something.

Keep in mind you are not your market.

You may be part of the target audience, same basic demographics etc, but you are not them.

e.g. You use a popup blocker which already puts you (at best) similar to 20% of your market.

If you can launch/market without ads then that's great, but don't dismiss them just because you personally don't like them.

 

[NicoleMarie]

Keep in mind you are not your market.

You may be part of the target audience, same basic demographics etc, but you are not them.

e.g. You use a popup blocker which already puts you (at best) similar to 20% of your market.

If you can launch/market without ads then that's great, but don't dismiss them just because you personally don't like them.

Ok, thanks! I'll definitely look into adwords as it seems very valuable. I'm thinking of starting with other "free" methods in the very early stages, for the sake of money, and then decide if lack of a valuable business is the problem, or lack of exposure. Honestly when I freelanced, I had more than enough business because of word of mouth. However, I understand a big internet company will be different.
Wordpress also offers SEO plugins but I hear adwords is more effective and give results more quickly.

 

[nzerinto]

If you get annoyed with ads on normal sites, you could try what I do, which is to setup filters, so adblock doesn't run on either Google, Bing or FB....that way you still see the ads on those platforms, but not on anything else.

 

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[NicoleMarie]

If you get annoyed with ads on normal sites, you could try what I do, which is to setup filters, so adblock doesn't run on either Google, Bing or FB....that way you still see the ads on those platforms, but not on anything else.

I'd be interested in that, I'll have to do that as the only reason I really used adblock was for Youtube and other video websites in the past. Hey maybe I'd actually find interesting ads on Facebook and Google nowadays. Thanks!

 

[Yury]

advertising to older people works better

Not always the case though, like on two of my projects with somewhat similar overall ASL stats, one of them has a few times higher % of clicks from the younger part of the audience. Simply because the topic of this project resonates with them better as it serves their needs, and the ads are mostly relevant as well.

So if the younger people don't click on your ads it does not mean that they don't care about ads in general, first of all it means that they don't care about what you have to offer them or how you offer it. It's a good market signal that you don't wanna be brushing off because of an assumption like "they just don't click at all".

If you can launch/market without ads then that's great, but don't dismiss them just because you personally don't like them.

I second Kyle's opinion as unless you run a community of "ad haters" probably there's no reason to discriminate against people who do click ads (and lots of people obviously do, take a look at Google&co's revenue). Especially if you pay per click or, better, per action (CPA).

 

[DaRK9]

Not always the case though, like on two of my projects with somewhat similar overall ASL stats, one of them has a few times higher % of clicks from the younger part of the audience. Simply because the topic of this project resonates with them better as it serves their needs, and the ads are mostly relevant as well.

So if the younger people don't click on your ads it does not mean that they don't care about ads in general, first of all it means that they don't care about what you have to offer them or how you offer it. It's a good market signal that you don't wanna be brushing off because of an assumption like "they just don't click at all".



I second Kyle's opinion as unless you run a community of "ad haters" probably there's no reason to discriminate against people who do click ads (and lots of people obviously do, take a look at Google&co's revenue). Especially if you pay per click or, better, per action (CPA).

I was generalizing. Obliviously I wouldn't sell flashy iPhone cases to older people. I mean as far as having a higher through rate. Whether it by buy/click/lead. Not just internet as well. I think people forget there is more than the internet.

How many times do young people buy stuff from TV ads?
How many young people call about a newspaper/magazine offer?

From what I've seen, the younger crowd are impulse buyers with low repeat buys. Unless its fashion, apps or the newest fad cafe.

How many 16-30 year old people are ready to dish out money because of an ad they saw? As good as the ad or product is? Lets be real.

I'm not saying its useless, but heavy social interaction or social recognition gets the younger crowd a lot more.

 

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[Yury]

I agree with what you say @DaRK9 but my message was not about some general case of 16-30 y.o. and TVs (I have no idea about that anyway as I don't watch TV since last millennium or so) but about @NicoleMarie 's specific case of doubting about efficiency of online ads for her 20-40 y.o. non-techie target audience.

I just posted to share that in my project that addresses some needs of a young audience (much younger than the one in question), teens do click on ads even better than other age groups, and the advertisers are happy (re-booking direct ad slots again and again) so obviously teens don't ignore them just because they came via ads. That's it.

 

[NicoleMarie]

@Yury Thanks for your opinions! Maybe teens are more trusting and think that all ads are completely legit and high quality products. I used to fall for everything haha.

@DaRK9 I agree that younger people (my target audience) would be more likely to pin it on Pinterest or talk about it on Twitter and stuff. They also are more likely to try new cool looking websites out and talk about/show each other things they discover. It ties in with the part of MJ's book which is still relevant today; word of mouth is powerful and free. Now that sounds like good advertising.

 

[Yury]

Maybe teens are more trusting

Well as I've mentioned, I was comparing two my websites, with the younger public clicking on ads much more on one of them and much less on another one. The difference? One of these sites solves their needs, while another one does not. If you have no value to offer to them, yeah the ads probably won't work for you.

Btw on one of these websites like half of the clicks comes from 25-34 y.o. (2nd largest group for another one) so the theory about naive teens & seniors and totally-ad-avoiding 20-40 y.o. might sound snappy but ... Oh well, just sayin'

Now, of course it's better to go viral and things, but relying on that and dismissing all other tools kind of limits your options.
Ads are not about flushing your cash down the toilet; like any tools ads can be misused or used in a smart and efficient way.

For example, in a project that I used to be a part of, we used ads to instantly get some enough amount of first visitors - enough to validate/rebuild certain things and enough to quickly get these first users many of whom got engaged and contributed greatly and propelled the project to a million-plus audience by spreading their word of mouth and helping us to show the organic visitors that the place is bustling with life already so it's great to join it. Very soon we stopped the ads as we did not need these anymore. The tool was properly used and discharged.

So the trick about this word of mouth is that you seem to rely on, without ads and/or some good PR (which is great but sometimes ads are faster, easier and cheaper! as you don't spend your time and attention which are usually expensive for a startup) the word-of-mouth will start with only one (your) mouth spreading the word, then your friends, then some dozens of people, then some hundreds etc. Might take days or weeks or even months to get a steady user base of a few thousand people.

When in many cases you can easily and cheaply jump-start to these few hundreds or thousands of users (or other number that suits you) like in a few hours.

Word of mouth is somewhat like compound interest. Larger initial numbers help.

You can ignore all that if you like but hey I honestly don't understand why to limit your options, just trying to help

 

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[NicoleMarie]

Well as I've mentioned, I was comparing two my websites, with the younger public clicking on ads much more on one of them and much less on another one. The difference? One of these sites solves their needs, while another one does not. If you have no value to offer to them, yeah the ads probably won't work for you.

Btw on one of these websites like half of the clicks comes from 25-34 y.o. (2nd largest group for another one) so the theory about naive teens & seniors and totally-ad-avoiding 20-40 y.o. might sound snappy but ... Oh well, just sayin'

Now, of course it's better to go viral and things, but relying on that and dismissing all other tools kind of limits your options.
Ads are not about flushing your cash down the toilet; like any tools ads can be misused or used in a smart and efficient way.

For example, in a project that I used to be a part of, we used ads to instantly get some enough amount of first visitors - enough to validate/rebuild certain things and enough to quickly get these first users many of whom got engaged and contributed greatly and propelled the project to a million-plus audience by spreading their word of mouth and helping us to show the organic visitors that the place is bustling with life already so it's great to join it. Very soon we stopped the ads as we did not need these anymore. The tool was properly used and discharged.

So the trick about this word of mouth is that you seem to rely on, without ads and/or some good PR (which is great but sometimes ads are faster, easier and cheaper! as you don't spend your time and attention which are usually expensive for a startup) the word-of-mouth will start with only one (your) mouth spreading the word, then your friends, then some dozens of people, then some hundreds etc. Might take days or weeks or even months to get a steady user base of a few thousand people.

When in many cases you can easily and cheaply jump-start to these few hundreds or thousands of users (or other number that suits you) like in a few hours.

Word of mouth is somewhat like compound interest. Larger initial numbers help.

You can ignore all that if you like but hey I honestly don't understand why to limit your options, just trying to help

I'd say I've got about 20 people ahead of time who already want to join and are very interested in the idea, but that probably won't be enough (and they'll be the website testers/feedback givers in the beginning).

I agree with everything you said. Wait, so adwords doesn't have to keep being used forever? I should mention my website will be an ongoing interactive marketplace.

I'd be more inclined to do what you said and use it in the beginning to test, although here's my problem. The way my website's structured, I won't get immediate payment/benefit from people visiting. People will have to actually find something they like and then go through the process of buying it (which also isn't immediate). There won't be any sign up fees or advertisements or anything. I feel like adwords would be more suitable for instant purchase services/products. You don't have to go and explain all of adwords but I'd like to know if your business would benefit more from initial heavy adwords usage more than mine would. Thanks as always!

 

[Yury]

so adwords doesn't have to keep being used forever?

Exactly! Just to get some strangers on board as fast as possible, because...

20 people ahead of time who already want to join and are very interested in the idea, but that probably won't be enough

...it's awesome! And yeah it's good to get even more people in the very beginning, but even more beneficial is the fast that these people coming from ad words will be strangers, so their opinion will be unbiased.

And that's important as you understand, because your friends and these who are in your waiting list are often less likely to spot some problems or to tell you harsh truth - but that's the very best thing, when people do tell you some harsh truth (or you notice it when tracking their behavior) so you can assess and improve it without having to fail the whole project first.

I feel like adwords would be more suitable for instant purchase services/products.

I see you point - but well, in my example above, we used it for a community! Exactly to do what you described in your previous posts - to get the word of mouth rolling. It was not even a shop at all, yet these ads worked great for us.

The best thing is, you can try it for your project for a tiny amount of money (the one that you would spend in a cafe), find/fix some problems and then use it at a comfortable pace (by setting your daily spending limit) until you no longer need/want it. I think we limited our spending there to like few hundred dollars overall, yet it helped a lot. Quick and easy ads with no commitments or anything. What an amazing time we live in! Just imagine doing that before the internet, I figure that would be way more tricky.

I won't get immediate payment/benefit from people visiting

As I said, while you might not get the immediate payments, the benefits will be there all right - people will show you if they get and like what you have to propose.

Just be sure to track it all! I can't stress that enough, you need to be sure that you're tracking everything there (there's lots of tools for that, and some of them like Google Analytics are free).

I would highly recommend to use tools that let you visually track the actions of visitors, like how they are moving their mouse on your page, how they click and tap and scroll and type. Seeing as complete strangers use your website is invaluable.

With this and other very simple tools (heat maps for clicks etc) you'll be able to quickly assess whether random visitors get engaged or not.

Do these strangers like your landing pages and want to click more? Where do they click, where do they never click - watching all that, often you'll have surprising results as often people act in a way that you would never even think of (especially as your website is a marketplace with different features, it's good to see if these are needed/used/well presented etc).

So the main point of having these initial strangers coming from the ads is to quickly assess if everything works as you planned:

People will have to actually find something they like

You won't have to wait for weeks or months, you'll see it straight away, can they find stuff? Do they realize that there's more of this stuff on your website? Not your friends, but strangers.

Are they coming back, are there any obstacles in the purchase process?

You don't need to assume much, as your assumptions often will be wrong - mine are. Fresh example: last week I tried 3 different layouts for a website, and I hoped that one of them will work better than others because I liked it more. But.... a few thousand visitors later, another layout clearly won the race in 3 out of 4 most important metrics that I track.

You don't have to dive deep straight away so I'd better cut myself short here, but I think you got the point - invite some strangers (via ad words AND/OR some other source(s) that will bring you a bunch of more or less random strangers) and track them to turn your assumptions into validated facts, and improve your project where needed, based on these facts.

Oh and please be careful with your test run of ad words - https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/how-i-lost-550-to-google.53043/

 

[NicoleMarie]

Exactly! Just to get some strangers on board as fast as possible, because...


...it's awesome! And yeah it's good to get even more people in the very beginning, but even more beneficial is the fast that these people coming from ad words will be strangers, so their opinion will be unbiased.

And that's important as you understand, because your friends and these who are in your waiting list are often less likely to spot some problems or to tell you harsh truth - but that's the very best thing, when people do tell you some harsh truth (or you notice it when tracking their behavior) so you can assess and improve it without having to fail the whole project first.


I see you point - but well, in my example above, we used it for a community! Exactly to do what you described in your previous posts - to get the word of mouth rolling. It was not even a shop at all, yet these ads worked great for us.

The best thing is, you can try it for your project for a tiny amount of money (the one that you would spend in a cafe), find/fix some problems and then use it at a comfortable pace (by setting your daily spending limit) until you no longer need/want it. I think we limited our spending there to like few hundred dollars overall, yet it helped a lot. Quick and easy ads with no commitments or anything. What an amazing time we live in! Just imagine doing that before the internet, I figure that would be way more tricky.


As I said, while you might not get the immediate payments, the benefits will be there all right - people will show you if they get and like what you have to propose.

Just be sure to track it all! I can't stress that enough, you need to be sure that you're tracking everything there (there's lots of tools for that, and some of them like Google Analytics are free).

I would highly recommend to use tools that let you visually track the actions of visitors, like how they are moving their mouse on your page, how they click and tap and scroll and type. Seeing as complete strangers use your website is invaluable.

With this and other very simple tools (heat maps for clicks etc) you'll be able to quickly assess whether random visitors get engaged or not.

Do these strangers like your landing pages and want to click more? Where do they click, where do they never click - watching all that, often you'll have surprising results as often people act in a way that you would never even think of (especially as your website is a marketplace with different features, it's good to see if these are needed/used/well presented etc).

So the main point of having these initial strangers coming from the ads is to quickly assess if everything works as you planned:


You won't have to wait for weeks or months, you'll see it straight away, can they find stuff? Do they realize that there's more of this stuff on your website? Not your friends, but strangers.

Are they coming back, are there any obstacles in the purchase process?

You don't need to assume much, as your assumptions often will be wrong - mine are. Fresh example: last week I tried 3 different layouts for a website, and I hoped that one of them will work better than others because I liked it more. But.... a few thousand visitors later, another layout clearly won the race in 3 out of 4 most important metrics that I track.

You don't have to dive deep straight away so I'd better cut myself short here, but I think you got the point - invite some strangers (via ad words AND/OR some other source(s) that will bring you a bunch of more or less random strangers) and track them to turn your assumptions into validated facts, and improve your project where needed, based on these facts.

Oh and please be careful with your test run of ad words - https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/how-i-lost-550-to-google.53043/

These are all very great points. I did not consider the word of mouth factor, considering the visitors will be real people looking for my service. I can see how even a temporary campaign would help with this and would be worth the money. That's great to hear because I can spare several hundred dollars as well. Yay modern internet! I like how we as entrepreneurs have all these tools at our disposal and each one is competing to be the best quality, so we have lots of great stuff to choose from (including future employees who are also competing).

Fortunately I've got Google analytics already set up but those other tools look even more helpful. I'll definitely check them out. You wouldn't happen to know the name of some would you or how I could search for them? Specifically the moving mouse/scroll one. I'm bad at knowing what to Google sometimes LOL.

Wow, that must be a downer. I hope the layout I like more won't have that happen lol but it should help that I'm in the target audience and people have expressed they would like a "nonartsy" website, surprisingly. Works out for me! How did you deal with that and learn to like the one they chose?

Haha I will definitely be doing thorough research especially since money is involved. You really can Google your way through a business, well mostly.

Thanks again and thanks for the detailed response!

 

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[Yury]

You're welcome! I'm glad to help.

Specifically the moving mouse/scroll one

As I'm from Russia, I'm used to the tool from the main Russian search giant (yeah they beat Google in the Russian-speaking market) Yandex, it's called Yandex Metrica (same thing as Google Analytics). It's WebVisor feature does just what I've described, tracks and draws for you every mouse movement (fingers tapping) etc - and it's free, http://help.yandex.com/metrica/webvisor/replaying.xml

But I'm pretty sure that you can find lots of other dedicated tools like that, google for smth like 'website visitors mouse tracking' or ask people in here!

How did you deal with that and learn to like the one they chose?

I'm fine with that, these were my 50-something layout versions for that website I test new ones from time to time to improve certain bottlenecks.
Having my crowds of visitors a bit more engaged makes me happier than sitting with my perfect website alone

 

[NicoleMarie]

Hey I'm part Ukrainian, haha. Aw darn, well I will look around for something similar and perhaps ask the forum (although I already feel like I ask too many things lol).

Wow, that's a lot. LOL alone...I suppose you're right.

By the way, you should make a progress thread.

 

[Emanuel]

It doesn't look like the companies in the ads are repeated in the normal search results.

Hmm that can't be true.

Also, I thought Google paid a bunch of money to AdBlock Plus in order to have their search ads displayed at all times. I see the search ads even with AdBlock activated.

 

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[NicoleMarie]

Hmm that can't be true.

Also, I thought Google paid a bunch of money to AdBlock Plus in order to have their search ads displayed at all times. I see the search ads even with AdBlock activated.

Weird, I don't see anything ever. I just use adblock without the plus so maybe that's why.

 

[Yury]

Cool the world is small!

I already feel like I ask too many things lol

Doesn't look that way, and anyway that's what forums are for eh?
Btw just googling what I've proposed brings the very first result doing exactly what required, try it out LIVE right there!
www.mouseflow.com/demo/
Unlike the tool that I use it's not free but the price seems to be reasonable, as even the cheapest 1k recorded sessions will tell you a lot

Wow, that's a lot

I'm sure lot of people from this forum test much more daily Nowadays there are automated tools for that and so on.
Don't let this scare or overload you, all this is quite simple once you start actually doing it!

Hmm that can't be true.

Why? Rather on contrary, if you can't make it to the top of search results, you can use ads to get seen. And vice versa, if you're seen up there for free, usually there's no need in paying for the ads... (though in some cases it's still a good idea)

 

[NicoleMarie]

@Yury Hahaha I suppose. I actually just did a search through all the results and only found one "free" one. Darn everything costs money lol. Tried the demo, pretty cool! Oh hey there's a free one for 100 views ha maybe I could start there. Thanks!

No I mean that's a lot of times to get shut down, lol! I agree, I've done a ton in just 2 months in my opinion. Only focus on the next few steps as MJ says. Thank goodness things get easier with time or it would be like highschool science class all over again...Lol.

By the way, I think @Emanuel meant something different.

 

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[Yury]

Darn everything costs money lol.

What holds you from creating and promoting a free one?

I think @Emanuel meant something different.

Sorry then, I thought "that can't be true" was about companies in ads not being seen in search results... Probably time to go to sleep
I hope to hear more about your progress soon!

 

[NicoleMarie]

@Yury Well I'm definitely going to try it out.
Ha nope I don't think so. It's actually sleep time over here lol so that's what I'm doing! You will if you go to my progress thread.
Thanks!