Paid Advertising Crash Course

[Andy Black]

Google has decided to now quietly spend 2x more your budget, even though you set a limit, on high traffic days.

How you gonna budget now monthly? If you have high traffic early in month, you could have $0 at the end to spend

Charges and your daily budget - Previous - AdWords Help

Yeah, thanks Google.

 

[AdamMaxum]

I'm getting more heavily into Facebook ads lately. Do you have any insight into the following...

1. When you're choosing the ad type to run - are there any objectives you believe perform better than others in general? Obviously it depends what your goals are and the ads themselves, but are there some that generally work better or that you prefer to use?

2. Under 'consideration' -. 'engagement' - for post engagement and likes - are these worth paying for? I've been running some like campaigns and awareness campaigns for posts and for my FB page. I'm getting low cost 'post engagements' but not seeing any other side effects on the FB page or post itself.

3. Should I be running like campaigns for a FB page (within FB) and spending dollars on likes? If I build up relevant likes from targeted people - will these still help my organic reach with posts in the future?

4. If you had to build up a new Facebook page or group from scratch, what paid strategies would you use to do so quickly and efficiently?

5. How long do you wait to kill an ad set/group after running it?

6. Any helpful programs you use or recommend to create ads pretty quickly?

Thanks!

 

[Deleted29854]

Google doesn't mess around.

This is an awesome thread. Thank you for all the info and value provided. I took detailed notes so I could validate an e-comm idea.

Built the site, listed the product, built two rudimentary ads for Adwords and two for Facebook.

Both were driving minimal traffic in the first 24 hours. I expected this and just wanted to play around with things.

Well, 24 hours into Adwords, my account is suspended. "Your account is suspended, we've detected suspicious payments in your account" I fill out an appeal and they reply back within an hour saying I'm in violation of their terms. No further info is provided.

The only violation I can think off is my copy was a bit off so maybe that caused the flag. Technically it could fall under a "misrepresentation" which they appear to take very serious.

I'm writing to share so others that rip through here don't repeat my hasty mistake. Go fast, but double check and read the TOS so you dont make rookie mistakes.

Spanked but not down and out!

 

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[eliquid]

Could low budgets on FB (ex. $10/day) be the reason holding people back from generating sales?

It depends honestly.

If it's a new campaign with no history/metrics, yes. Especially if you are using Google or FB to optimize to a conversion. They have nothing to work with, and thus, need to spend money and get data before they can work their magic on your pixel.

They are going to have to spend money and get a history first. At $10 a day, that might take a long time until statistical relevance.

.

 

[Azure]

For those of you who manage Grant accounts, some big changes are coming that will likely disqualify many charities from participating at their current set up. On the other hand this will make professional account managers who can direct these accounts to meet the new metrics to be even more in demand.

1) No single keywords, no kw of competitors/other organizations at all, no location names, nothing with a QS of 2 or less.Mission-based campaigns - Ad Grants Help

2) Geotargeting requirement, ads/kw/sitelink extension requirements, 5% CTR requirement, thinly-veiled threat to cancel your account if you don't answer their surveys.Account management policy - Ad Grants Help

3) Oddly random and limited number of single-word kw that are exempt from the new rules.Ad Grants single keyword policy exceptions - Ad Grants Help

 

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[eliquid]

buying ads on adwords

 

[eliquid]

Say I have a FB ad where I took the product added a cool background and etc with photoshop. Should I use the same AD image on my Product Page?

The same ad? No.

Should it things look similar and congruent... yes.

 

[Andy Black]

It's something I use to do.

However, depending on setup and size.. you're basically moving a keyword from one adgroup to another ( or campaign ). Even if it wasn't a direct keyword ( farming and mining ), you are still negative matching it out of the original, and putting it into a new group/campaign.

The idea is that it could be problematic for you.

I've had setups where I found a winning keyword after months of farming/mining. The keyword had multiple conversions and was doing well.

I negative match it out and put it in it's own adgroup/campaign with the same ads, bid, and positioning and it does horrible for the next 5 weeks until I pause it.

I go back and remove the negative match and it's doing fine back in the original setup.

To me, it's pretty clear cut that could hurt you based on that.

You might not ever experience that though. You should try and see and find out where you come out at.

I no longer do this method with my higher end accounts that are critical. However, it could be something I try again with a lower end account in the future.

.

Yeah. I’ve seen that too.

I’ve also seen campaigns not working in a brand new account (low QS), but working when we export/import into an aged account.

For newer accounts I’ll usually create brand new campaigns when I restructure, and pause the old ones. That way I have a fallback position if the new ones perform worse.

 

[eliquid]

This is a old method. I haven't used it since all the new privacy laws, so I couldn't really give info on it pertaining to it.

Last time I had to use this method was years ago.

It shouldn't hinder things though. Everyone has a privacy policy and terms of use page now that should cover this. I see no real difference in this and an affiliate pixel that collects retargeting information.

 

[eliquid]

Just wanted to bump for the weekend readers

 

[eliquid]

Just finished reading the whole thread. Thank you very much for sharing, much appreciated. Could you recommend some learning material for paid advertising? Could be some websites/blogs/forums/courses or anything you can recommend. As you know and said yourself, a lot of "gurus" and noise out there which is hard to filter out for someone new.

You should try @Andy Black course. I don't have the link handy, maybe Andy can post in here?

If for some reason you can not do that, I would try to get certified for what you want to learn as the next best option. If you want to do Facebook, get Facebook Blueprint certified. If Google Ads, get Google Ads certified.

The training is free from both, but not the best.

I would go with Andy's course instead.

 

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[Andy Black]

Thanks

Only going to comment on what I have been "hands on" myself, but....

1. Facebook issues ranging from iOS 14 to iOS 15 and tracking, along with removal of targeting categories is making FB a ghost town for advertisers. Not saying it's dead because it's not, but so many advertisers have had to pull out and stop advertising or totally change their approach that it's looking like a ghost town for a lot of industries.

2. TikTok is the place to be, if you can pull it off. When it fails, it fails hard. When it's good, it's some of the best you can get outside of Search. Their ad manager is just bullocks though. Many people that jumped off Facebook, jumped into TikTok. Sadly though, only a few of them got TikTok right.

3. Google is really pushing more automation on us within Google Ads. Which I hate in general, but the performance has really improved though with their AI/Automation. One of my best campaigns right now is a Performance Max campaign that is largely automated, but it just scares me when it starts to break or go bad how I am even going to attempt to fix since it's one of those campaign types that largely has removed a lot of "tweaking" compared to a normal Search campaign.

4. The move to GA4 is really causing people stress for lots of reasons. Pixel changes, updates, moving of reports and changes all seem to have people up in arms. I'm glad for most of what I do, I use the reporting on the platform instead of a 3rd party like Analytics for 90% of my work.

5. I'm seeing more interest from people outside of Google, MSN, Facebook, Tiktok now. More than ever before. Especially in native or pop or other PPC type traffic sources. I firmly believes this is mostly due to Facebook, but it's interesting to see people talk about sources now in general that typically only affiliates or high end marketers only really knew about.

6. I think we are going to start seeing a lot more in spaces like Identity marketing/tracking and terms like "identity graph" for funnels and marketing.. especially when it comes to PPC/Paid ads. Basically moves into 1st party data along with additional identify markup from an API or CRM to help with targeting methods later down the road. Not just because of FB and iOS, but those visitors that come to your website and bounce or don't fill in an email for that ebook lead magnet and being able to reach those people later outside of just the "remarketing pixel"

We’ve started messing with Performance Max campaigns too. Zero visibility of where ads are being shown. Even if they work well I’d rather work in niches where we win by loading thousands of keywords and ads.

 

[eliquid]

Wanted to bump for 2023.

I feel the landscape is changing a lot

 

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[eliquid]

Got a question if anyone can help?

Am running some FB lead ads and the CPM is crazy high - like £50 CPM vs about £4 CPM for a similar campaign ran about a year ago. Even though the new campaign actually started off converting better than the old one: 0.35% vs 0.21%

I am targeting a bit more specific than the old one:
Old one: Age over 24 + one interest
New one: Men under 45 + one interest

So yeah I guess targeting a bit more specific would increase CPM but surely not 12x?!

There is also an issue with the guys account I'm running the ads for is getting a message about the account being restricted but saying you can still run ads:

"Advertising restricted - You can still use this ad account to advertise, but there are now restrictions on how much you can spend and the advertising features that you can use'

So maybe this is the issue but it doesn't offer any clear instruction on what the issue is or how to fix it.

Any suggestion appreciated!

Facebook is an engagement and experience engine.

Any CPM over $20 is a signal that something is wrong. Honestly, you could go lower than $20 and say something is wrong, but it depends on several factors so $20 is a good threshold for CPM.

When you niche down, you will get increased CPM.. but $20 is still kinda high for what you have listed unless the interest you targetted has things focused in a ton.

More than likely, your ads are bad, causing less than expected experience, or something 3 clicks past the ad click is causing an experience issue.

If you just want to drop the CPM without doing any work, target the 45+ MEN with no interest and see if the CPMs lower a ton. If not, then you know it's the ads or experience after the ads. Be sure to use the same post ID if you go this route.

I would make sure you are running video ads that have good hook measurement and good view through measurement. If those are off, then you will have CPM issues for sure, but something after the ad click... up to 3 clicks afterward could be causing people to drop off and hurting your CPMs too.

 

[eliquid]

I've been in the ad game for 5 -6 years now and curious if you would alter or change any of the thoughts here as this post is now 8 years old (if you've already done an update - feel free to link it). Thanks for the post.

Probably not.

Understanding the past and where things came from is extremely important.

It's one reason seasoned professionals are X better than mediocre and beginners.

Would I change the original posts, no. People need to see where these ideas and thoughts came from, how advertising was.

Would I add more to it, to include the things that change as to clarify for how these platforms are different now. Sure.

However, you can learn a lot about something today, knowing how it started and why changes had to happen.

 

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[The Grind]

Jeezus @eliquid you animal. Thanks for the post I'll be reading through the rest at a later time. I'm getting in to PPC with Google for my current product and there's some great insights--if things go sour may get in contact with you for a bit of 1-on-1.

Nice write up, will help tons of people.

I'm in the Facebook ad platform 10 hours a day, when I read "Facebook being Facebook" I gave you a virtual high five...

 

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[Deceiver]

Anyone interested in any updates to this?

Just curious if anyone is reading or would like to know more.

@eliquid Just to let you know that your generosity and efforts are NOT wasted; I read it and I'd also like to know more!

If you have other gem bombs feel free to drop 'em here!

Lastly, I'm going through the whole Digital Strategy Crash Course on BuSo too!

Thank you for all you shared here.

 

[V8Bill]

Well, there goes my Saturday afternoon. It's now getting dark and cold and I'm starving but wow, after reading the entire thread I've got to say thanks. What an incredible contribution @eliquid I learned so much!

Once an affiliate signed up to the program I developed, all they needed to do was submit the sites they would be promoting us on. This is similar to what eBay does now days for many of their affiliates where they want to know the sites you promote their product on.

I've owned a Platinum Post Affiliate Pro licence for a few years now and have set up my own affiliate programme and one of the things P.A.P. does is exactly this. Affiliates submit their domains and they can drop the affiliate links as all traffic from there is marked as theirs. I'm not sure if it was available when you were using it. You're right, it's an awesome feature but the SEO benefit was a light switching on for me.

One thing I was thinking as I was reading was how powerful and profitable having someone with all that knowledge on my team would be and was trying to guess at the costs of having someone manage an entire digital campaign. Obviously their skill would have to be demonstrated but what might be the ways that one could hire someone with this sort of knowledge. A lot of what you share above was like a slap in the forehead. It would be so cool to watch someone work like that on my own campaigns.

@AllenCrawley nailed it... instant gold.

 

[eliquid]

Try it out.

It might not work on an old ad, but it could.

Let me know how it goes though

 

[Andy Black]

Haven't dropped my PPC geo bomb to you all yet, but I got some updates...

By now, most of you all should know you can add in a Text Message extension to your ad. If not, now you know. Its a new feature.

What it does is allow you to put in your ad a text that might say, "Text FOOD to 313131 to get a menu" ( that's just an example ).

Most of you might think that's not a huge deal, but it gets you extra real estate on the SERPs and it also lets you do something clever if you listen to the end of my recent podcast here where I drop a business idea on you and talk about this SMS texting stuff -> https://www.serpwoo.com/blog/podcasts/predicting-the-future/

Starts at the 28 minute mark, but would be best if you listened to the whole thing really.

Yeah, I've seen the Text Message extension but not had a play with it yet. Will listen to your podcast. Thanks @eliquid

 

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[TheDillon__]

Checking in - how's that book coming along? I'll pre-order right now if I can grab the first few chapters from you.

 

[Mamista]

Hi @eliquid,

Great information you're sharing here.
I have some questions and i would love to here from you :
I'm willing to start my own digital marketing agency and now i'm a little bit confused; Would you choose doing SEO for your clients or just going with google adwords ?
Another question is that : When i check my keyword planner, i see that some of the local keywords are getting like 200 Searches per month, now are all of those people who are searching the term in google are going to see my ad ? And isn't that a low traffic ?

Thank's mate

 

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[TheDillon__]

Note taking is very lax in this industry.

If you're an entrepreneur and you're in the paid search market, every damn bell in your head should be ringing at this sentence.

This right here is a golden opportunity to profit off of the laziness/ineptitude of others.

I know @Andy Black has a video or two around where he touches on excel. Anyone know where I can read into more depth on the note-taking aspect?

Cheers

 

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[Andy Black]

I don't know about customer LTV as I haven't tracked that, but CTR and Conv Rate and Cost/Conv can have drastic differences.

That's a screenshot of kw data over 3 months.

Avg Position is the first column "Row Labels"

Notice how avg position 3-4 for this specific account is the best CTR, best Conv Rate, and best Cost per Conv.

Some accounts and setups, it might be 2-3. Some it might be a different number.

However, if your keywords never see the light of day above position 5 because of a low bid or budget, you wouldn't really get this data and know. Also, if you just bid into #1 every day, day in and day out.. you might not also get this data.

Or you might be able to build the same pivot table I just did with all the positions, but the amount of data for those higher position is not statistically relevant to draw a confident result from, even though you have the numbers for Avg Position.

It's best to "buy data" and be in several places at once for this specific data set. Now I know where I need to bid for best CTR + ConvRate+CostConv.

I't super rare you get something that converts well AND has a good ctr. Normally I see a good ConvRate and poor CTR.

It's good to know how to dig into data, right?

It's no coincidence that the best people at AdWords are good with Excel...

Are you analysing at the search term level?

 

[Andy Black]

I've never once took the Adwords certification in my life.

+1

 

[johnp]

Can I ask your opinion on landing pages, I'm running a PPC campaign for my employer, a large car dealer, I'm bidding on used car search terms and sending traffic to the used car results page relating to the search term the user used for example if someone searches on Google for 'used ford fiesta for sale' they would be sent to a page listing all our used Ford Fiesta stock. I read on a PPC blog that I should be using a custom landing page, what's your thoughts on this, it's a bit tricky for a car dealer with lots of various makes and models.

I'm kind of wondering about this too for the car industry. For example, landing pages have always been easy for me when generating leads for things like plumbing, email services, and some ecommerce products. But I too am kind of confused about the car industry.

My assumption has always been that the landing pages for the auto industry are more like templates with scripts that dynamcially change content based search query, kind of like Unbounce's dynamic keyword insertion features. For example, if I search used honda civic 2007 in philadelphia pa then it's pretty easy to change all of that content dynamically. In fact, I saw cars.com dong something like this awhile back. They would even match the BG image to the search query (for the most part). But maybe I have been wrong all of this time. So I'd also love to hear more about this.

On another note about landing pages, awhile back one of my ppc managers sent me a weekly report for the wrong client. It was an ecomm store in the sun tan lotion niche. The store was doing making 100's of thousands of $$ per week and they were just sending traffic straight to the shopify home page. It kind of blew my mind to see that they weren't doing anything with dedicated landing pages.

 

[amp0193]

One example of a recent coming change is they are taking away 2 ad rotation options. Now instead of 4, you will only have 2.

Which 2?

 

[johnp]

So Adwords is making some changes!

They are also are changing the entire UI.

It actually looks nice... I tried it but quickly reverted back.

 

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[Andy Black]

Which 2?

The dumb one where it rotates evenly for 90 days then optimises.

 

[eliquid]

This is one of the most profound takeaways that I've ever seen on here. Thanks so much for the value you're sharing on here. I've copied this quote into OneNote, so that I can reference it regularly.

As someone who leverages SEO, I completely agree with you. Paid traffic is only going to become more and more important in the future. I'm about to start leveraging PPC as much as possible.

Here's another cool trick for anyone else who does SEO: Canonical content (secret paid traffic campaigns).

Basically, you can have a public, SEO-friendly version of a blog post on your website, and you can also have a canonical version of that same exact post that's optimized for paid traffic (with affiliate links / lead gen opportunities).

You can then use the WordPress plugin "WP Hide Post" to hide all of your paid traffic campaigns on your blog.

I know that some people do this to leverage SEO *and* paid traffic at the same time. This gives you a really clean (non-spammy) public appearance, while also enabling you to take advantage of running ads, and heavily monetizing your content.

Glad you like it.

It really rings true. You can find some survivorship bias where someone is teaching that is a do'er but for 90% of the time what I said stands true.

There are some people that don't mind to share while being a do'er.

Good tip on the canonical content