Hit A Wall? Strategies for Making Google Ads Work For You

[00:00:00] Hello everyone, this is Regina from Starter PPC. Today I want to talk to you about a bird's-eye view of how small businesses grow, what it really means to achieve growth, and why companies hit a brick wall when they try to scale but can't. They cannot go beyond a certain size at which they have stopped.

[00:00:26] So, uh...where to start? Most often, uh...I want to start by discussing the concept of small business development in general. First of all, you know what a sales funnel is, right? It is usually depicted in the shape of a funnel because there is a narrow part at the bottom where there are not so many people. These are people who are

[00:00:55] already fully prepared to buy, right? In the world of Google Ads, people at the bottom of the funnel are searching for the exact product or service you offer. They already have their wallets in their hands and are simply choosing what to buy. Next comes the middle of the funnel.

[00:01:15] It gets a little wider as you move up. The middle of the funnel is usually people who have already decided they need to buy something, but don't yet know exactly what or how to do it. For example, if it's a service industry, they might be looking for, you know, "what's the most cost- effective way to hire an agency?" or "what questions should you ask when choosing an agency?" So you see they are going to hire an agency. They just

[00:01:52] don't know yet what kind or type of agency they need. In the world of commodities, it would be, for example, uh...yeah, a question like, uh...sorry, it just slipped my mind. I don't know, "the best t -shirts for summer." They want a summer t- shirt, but you don't know if they need a crop top or something else. Top of the funnel. These are

[00:02:16] people who have a problem and are looking for advice. They haven't figured out yet that you have to pay money for this, right? This could be someone searching for, for example, “how to fix body odor” or “where to find friends” or whatever else they’re trying to fix. And you have a

[00:02:41] solution, but they don't yet know about you or the product or service you're selling. OK. So, this is a sales funnel. Typically, when starting out as a small business, you start at the bottom of the funnel and work your way up as you grow. This is a concept that our founders, Kasum and

[00:02:58] John, realized themselves. It dawned on them, they understood how it works, many, many years ago. And they were among the first to start talking about this concept. So you start by focusing on the simplest goals, right? Bottom of the funnel. There are n't many people in this market

[00:03:17] , but they are ready for action. Maybe one click and you're done. Two clicks and they're ready to buy. And you can identify them, right? Because they are looking for what you offer. Uh-huh. “ Google Ads Agency” is a keyword we would, for example, use. Someone is looking for an agency.

[00:03:35] The best Google Ads agencies or something like that. If you sell a product, for example, an orange crop top, size S. This is right at the bottom of the funnel. They are already sitting with a credit card and looking for where to use it. So, uh, often, because we at Starter PPC work with

[00:03:56] businesses with a budget of $5,000 or less. So most of the clients we work with are working with the bottom of the funnel, maybe a little bit with the middle. If they come to us and do a bunch of top of the funnel marketing, we always turn that off. That's why at Ser PPC, since we

[00:04:16] specialize in small businesses, we often try to avoid full Performance Max campaigns. We try to use only Performance Max Shopping because Performance Max often wastes small businesses' money at launch, if it's not a campaign set up yet, just because of a bunch of marketing at the top of the funnel. And we'll get into what that

[00:04:40] looks like in a minute. So they come to us, working on the bottom of the funnel, and it's often easy to get a high return when you're just working with it, right? Because you're still so small that you haven't even exhausted all the traffic at the bottom of the funnel. So, you can

[00:04:57] simply occupy your niche in the market without overpaying for expensive cost per click. You can earn higher profits than even your big competitors. Um, so they turn to us and ask us to help them develop. And this is where the hardest part begins, right? Because often when you increase your budget, as

[00:05:25] you've all seen, profitability drops, cost of acquisition increases, or your media efficiency ratio (MER ) decreases. Um, MER stands for media efficiency ratio. Cost of acquisition can mean cost per lead or cost per customer, depending on what metrics you are tracking. So you have to decide: do you

[00:05:48] stay small, or do you try to bridge this growth gap, where it becomes difficult because efficiency drops and profits are not yet enough to cover costs, like large competitors. So my returns are decreasing, and I need more profit. The only way to get more profit is to grow. But growth brings

[00:06:09] fewer returns, so you decide to stay small. OK. So the reason is that growth means moving up the sales funnel, right? As we just said, people in the upper stages of the funnel are not yet ready to buy. So it becomes less effective, right? These people will click three, four, ten times. And it's

[00:06:34] not just that they click on your ad ten times. You also need new ad types. What do I mean by new ad types? I'm talking about ads for the middle or top of the funnel. They need …which we will move on to now. They also have to be in your field of vision for a while, right? Many people

[00:06:57] need to be " warmed up" because they are starting from scratch. They don't even know what solution they need. Then they need to explore options. This can take days, weeks, and sometimes months, depending on what you are selling. There's also a brand awareness aspect to this, right? You must

[00:07:17] appear in their field of vision several times. It's like making a new friend, right? You don't go to an event, you don't meet someone, you just instantly hit it off and become best friends. You usually see this person several times. They are like in your circle of friends, in your

[00:07:33] environment, and over time you realize that you have common interests. That's how it usually happens, isn't it? They should have a good impression of you. They need to know that you have the solutions they need and that you, um, are the best fit for that solution. So it becomes more expensive

[00:07:48] because you have to do all that hard work to get them to buy into your brand. How to do this difficult job? There are like two pieces of the puzzle here, right? There are mid-funnel and top-funnel ads within the campaign. And there are other things this ad needs, right here. Um, and these things that are

[00:08:10] needed to run such an ad. Let me back up and just explain what I mean by mid-funnel or top-of- funnel advertising. So, um, usually, um, a top-of-funnel or middle-of-funnel campaign is, for example, an outbound campaign on YouTube. That is, launching video ads not only for the list of people who visited your site, but for a new, "cold" audience who can now see your videos. This is really

[00:08:42] great, especially for lead generation, because you are usually selling yourself, your processes, and your services. Um, so you need to have video so people can see your face and, um, see who they're hiring, who they're going to work with. Um, so, um, releasing videos that appeal to "

[00:09:01] cold" leads, um, is great for an initial lead generation campaign on YouTube. Another example would be, um, you know, if you run search ads targeting different keywords, right? Not just people who are looking for this product or service, but people who are, um, comparing and contrasting different types of products or services. You know, the

[00:09:26] best questions to ask an agency. Um, you know, um, fashion trends for the summer, um, something like that. So, search campaigns. And by the way, if you're going to start adding middle and top of the funnel search queries, I would separate them into separate campaigns. So we often, when we

[00:09:46] develop, have a campaign for the bottom of the funnel. We call it bof search, um, which stands for "bottom of funnel," and then we start to create something like top of funnel or middle of funnel for search. And they have separate budgets because if you just try to add those keywords to your bottom-of- funnel campaign, you'll see that the middle and top of the funnel are getting a lot more traffic, and they'll take up all the budget, so you'll stop any search targeting for the bottom if you try to combine the budgets.

[00:10:13] So be sure to separate them into separate campaigns. Um, more examples—this is full-scale PMAX, right? Full-scale Performance Max campaigns simply do whatever they want. So they spend a significant portion of your budget on things like native display advertising. Hmm, this seems like image

[00:10:30] advertising aimed at a cold audience, right? It's like a billboard. This simply fuels people's interest in your brand. Now we are working on brand awareness. Um, another example of this is Gmail advertising. By the way, this is great for the garment industry and companies that sell clothing. You should definitely be

[00:10:52] running Gmail ads, Gmail remarketing at the very beginning, and then adding outbound Gmail ads, you know, when you're in your inbox and you see something that looks like an email but is labeled " promotional"—that's Gmail ads. When you open it, there's, you know, the clothes you

[00:11:10] want to buy. Not just clothes. I'm sure there are other types, usually commodity brands, that benefit from Gmail advertising, but clothing sells particularly well through Gmail. Um, okay, so this is what I mean when I talk about mid- and top-of- funnel advertising. However, to run this advertising,

[00:11:31] we can't just have a dropshipping store, a kind of primitive dropshipping store. We can't just have a basic website selling services with three pages and a "Contact Us" button. This is normal when you are just starting out and that is all you have and you are only targeting the bottom level of the funnel trying to get the engine of your business going. But I

[00:11:55] think the mistake clients make is that they hire an agency like us and expect us to just grow advertising in a vacuum without creating the other elements we need to help them grow. So what we need from our clients while we're setting up advertising is to build a brand. People call it "

[00:12:18] brand building." I like to call it " taking advantage of all the opportunities." You'll often hear me use this phrase—" taking advantage of every opportunity." But that's synonymous with " brand building," right? First of all, make sure your website is great. Make sure you have a high

[00:12:35] click-through rate. Hmm, maybe you should start blogging on your site. This is exactly the case when a person, having visited your site several times, will look for fresh content. By the way, Google will also see that you are publishing new content, and this will have the biggest impact on things like SEO. So

[00:13:03] if someone has already been to your site and you add new posts, and that person is searching for similar services on Google or reading about them, Google is much more likely to move you higher in organic search results. If you have fresh blog posts, a visitor will see your site and think you are a much bigger company than you actually are, right?

[00:13:25] So, blogging is one way to build a brand. Great for lead generation, but not very suitable for a grocery business. Um, hello. Quick interruption. Do you know the main reason that prevents small business owners from setting up their Google Ads account for growth and scaling? Budget. Many

[00:13:43] companies, especially those just starting out, have limited budgets. That's why most advertising agencies turn them down, because they have minimum budget thresholds they are willing to work with. So, business owners have to learn Google Ads on their own. The problem is that most

[00:14:00] advice on the internet is designed for large accounts and does not contain the strategies or tricks that can "push" the algorithm to give a small account an advantage over larger competitors. Therefore, it often simply doesn't work, and the business loses money month after month. If this

[00:14:15] sounds familiar, Starter PPC can help. We offer Google Ads management services designed specifically for accounts with budgets between $1,000 and $5,000. Since all of our clients are just starting out, we have invented ways to make our management fees significantly lower than most agencies. Because

[00:14:32] we know that every dollar saved on commissions goes directly into the advertising budget, which helps the algorithm gain momentum and efficiency faster. So, if you are serious about growing your business and want a team of Google Ads experts to help you without spending too much, visit our website starterpbc.com.

[00:14:46] Okay, back to the video. YouTube channels. Okay, friends. I can't stress enough how valuable YouTube channels are. The coolest thing about YouTube is that every video you create while working with us, you submit to us to run either within YouTube remarketing or for outbound marketing. It

[00:15:10] accumulates views through advertising, and Google counts these views just like organic views. So, your YouTube channel has the opportunity to grow much faster if you actively and consistently create videos while running YouTube ads. But this is another example of building your brand. Without

[00:15:38] this, firstly, we won't be able to run outbound marketing on YouTube or even effective remarketing. And secondly, when people who have already interacted with your business and are considering whether to hire you or buy your product go to YouTube, Google is more likely to show them your brand because they have already been to your website, searched for your brand name, etc. So this

[00:16:03] person will think you are much bigger than you really are because they will start seeing you everywhere. Google will show you to them because Google also wants you to buy and be successful. Sorry, Google wants this user to make a purchase and get everything they want. Ahem. So, things of that

[00:16:21] type. Social media posts are also very important. You know, if you're just a dropshipping store and you don't have anything else set up, no YouTube channel with videos, no social media, or no blog, you run the risk that people will perceive you as just a dropshipping store and buy from Amazon instead, right? People are afraid of

[00:16:45] small businesses that quickly set up shop and then steal money and run away with it. So it's these kinds of things that can build and strengthen trust. OK. Next you move on to fairly complex campaigns. When you want to work with top-of- funnel search queries, you need to drive traffic to a landing page, right? So, for

[00:17:11] the bottom of the funnel, you just send them to the home page of your site, right? Or if they are looking for a service, you direct them to the relevant services page on your site. For top-of- funnel queries, such as “ how do I do this,” you need a landing page with valuable content that answers their primary query. Often

[00:17:30] you'll want to have a lead magnet so they can subscribe and learn more, right? We’ve seen free calculators become “value bombs,” followed by a call to action to sign up and learn more— that’s what a lead magnet is. This is exactly what works well for such top-of-funnel landing pages. As

[00:17:51] an agency, we can't help you grow without these resources. So, if you decide to work with an agency but aren't actively working on building your brand, don't expect growth. Unfortunately, you will inevitably run into a dead end. Okay, I want to quickly list a few "don'ts" before I end

[00:18:15] the video. First, don't run campaigns at the top of the funnel with open audience targeting, okay? You should choose a hyper-targeted audience because Google will simply take your money, show ads to anyone, and just waste it, because Google likes to spend the entire budget. And he

[00:18:34] doesn't really know who to target. So you should choose an interest audience or a keyword-based audience for targeting. Also, don't choose too broad an audience. Try to choose one main one when you are still small and, for example, launching a YouTube channel. Be sure to add the audience there. Uh, okay

[00:18:54] . Don't turn off top-of- funnel campaigns just because you're not seeing conversions in Google Ads. Guys, again, it takes people days, weeks, and sometimes months to convert. They can interact with your campaigns, see you everywhere, maybe even click sometimes, but none of this is tracked. Very

[00:19:15] often, top-of- funnel campaigns show zero conversions, even though they still impacted sales. They help increase conversion rates in lower- funnel ads. So, even if you don't see conversions, don't turn them off. Also, when you turn them off, you reset the learning algorithm, right?

[00:19:35] Let's say you have 20 videos in a campaign and the algorithm consistently spends $10-20 every day for a month, and it starts to understand which videos work best for which type of people. Sometimes he even figures out, "Okay, video A is great for the first two impressions, and after they've seen two impressions, I notice that video B is doing well for impressions number three and four for the same user." Truth? So, it

[00:20:00] starts to detect these patterns to get longer viewing duration and higher click -through rates. If you disable this, you will reset all of this progress. It's like you're interrupting his whole process. And all this data is becoming outdated. It has to start over when you restart it.

[00:20:17] So, just consistency, guys. Ensure consistency in the algorithm. If you have launched a campaign at the top of the funnel, don't turn it off, no matter what you see. You can optimize it. You can add more videos. You can improve image images in display advertising. By the way, videos and

[00:20:33] images — the best ones are always people looking at the camera, talking to it, smiling with text underneath them while they talk. Yes, okay. Another “ don’t”: try to avoid lowering your overall account budget, Google Ads in general. I would say the only exceptions to this rule are seasonality and of course if your business is about to go bankrupt due to cash flow issues. In general,

[00:21:04] if you had a bad month and you decide to simply lower your budget because you can't or don't want to risk another bad month. Uh...it's okay if you have to do it. But that sets you back, doesn't it? All that training the algorithm just did to expand its knowledge of your market disappears. And, you know, a

[00:21:26] bad month could have been a fluke or a temporary glitch. Things could be much better next month, especially thanks to all the optimizations you made when things were going badly. So, yes, the only exception here is seasonality. If you say, "Oh my god, I know that market volume drops by 20% in the winter." So let's plan for a 20% lower budget for the entire winter. This is normal. I

[00:21:50] understand this because... it just works that way. And one last “don’t” for you today: when you start growing and profitability is falling, don’t just apply a target return on investment (tROAS) or target cost per conversion (tCPA) rule and leave it there forever. They should be used

[00:22:17] temporarily, right? We have an internal rule: we apply them for a maximum of seven days per month. The reason is that when they are activated, the algorithm only works with a small segment of your market, and the rest of the data it was working with stops updating. In fact, all this data is

[00:22:39] simply becoming outdated. You will see that the budget is not being spent in full, and your entire account will start to decrease. This is great for achieving goals, like if you need to push the algorithm for a week, but don't leave it for too long. As for working with reduction, with

[00:22:56] decreasing profitability, it's difficult. I think this is a topic for another video. I actually made a whole video about this, it's called "The Top Mistake Small Businesses Make with Google Ads." And it's about how to determine what your MER should be, what it should be and what you can accept, because this marketing performance metric is partly set by the market. It will

[00:23:32] decrease, but you need to know your minimum, what is acceptable and competitive, what your competitors are working with. This is something I have to come to terms with. And as soon as the indicator drops below this level, I have a problem. Then I need to slow down the growth, let the

[00:23:47] algorithm learn, and make some optimizations until it can run efficiently. So know your numbers, friends. I will continue talking about numbers. Be sure to watch that video about the biggest mistake small businesses make, as it breaks down different scenarios and explains how to grow. How to think about growth from a

[00:24:10] payback perspective. Uh, okay, I think that's all for today. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to like and subscribe. This really helps us tell the algorithms that we are creating valuable content so that more people will see it. Thank you for watching. I wish you success. Hello everyone, this is

[00:24:44] Regina from Starter PPC. Today I want to talk to you about the most direct way to make more money from every dollar of your marketing budget spent. This is mostly for e-commerce companies, as I'm talking about very direct ways to make more profit on