Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning everyone and welcome to the Unscripted SEO podcast. Today we have Lisa Ressler. She is, she has been in the PPC world for what did you say, 18 years, is that right?
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Right. And many people have not been in the PPC world or SEO or whatever marketing world for maybe like five years is a long time. So 18 years is a good minute. And you've been making waves and numerous waves for yourself and your clients and yeah, we just wanted to have you on and so thank you for hopping on today.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Thank you for having me on. I'm super excited.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Love it. All right, so before we get into anything else, we were just talking about the new updates that Google announced for the, for the world of ppc, not necessarily SEO.
Do you want to touch on those real briefly?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Yes, I do want to touch on that really briefly.
So, so I would say 24 hours ago they, Google announced that they will be releasing a new, a new feature and it really changes the way that we will work with so search campaigns, which are the keyword targeted campaigns and what it's called is AI Max for search campaigns.
And it is a targeting creative feature update.
And there's. What they're saying is with one click you will be able to AI enable, not just AI ready AI enable your search campaigns. And what is so exciting but also nerve wracking about it is that they're employing a keyless.
Keyless.
It's also keyless and a key wordless technology where they'll be looking more at what the search intent is and what the behavior is online and all that jazz.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: I love that.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: To target the ads and they'll be looking at.
I had, like I said, just less than 24 hours old. So I want to quote what they said properly.
Learning from existing keywords, creative assets and URLs.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: This sounds so in the last, I don't know, six months, I've gotten relatively heavily for personal things, not clients, into Facebook ads. And even in the last six months it. With Facebook, about nine months, it has gone from very much heavy targeting to, hey, just give us your creative and we'll handle it all.
So it sounds similar to that. Am I understanding that right?
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Well, for, for the search campaigns, I mean it has traditionally been you have your keywords, you have the match type, whether that's more broad or more narrow with how they're matching up to the searches.
They are looking at different signals but they really stick to, you know, pretty close to those keywords and they stick to the landing page or what they Call the, you know, the destination URL, the final URL where you want to send people after you click on the ad.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: So in the, in this update, what looks interesting but also concerns me is that they'll be. They're using a final URL expansion which will send users to the most relevant page.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: What does that.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: That means they'll be looking at probably the landing page because it's. Well, it's supposed to be released at the end of, of this month, which it's being the beginning of May now.
So we'll put in one, one landing page, one destination URL that's, you know, the most relevant to our keyword themes and ads. And so what it looks like here is that we'll probably be giving them that URL, but they might be expanding it beyond that landing page and I.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Would assume that that would include expanding it to our other web properties maybe on the same website. Different website, whatever. That's ours and not a competitor obviously. Right, right, right.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: No, just on that website. No, no, for sure they wouldn't go to another website and expense usage to the most relevant page.
So like that I do not have the details on. But that's interesting because if you have certain specific calls to action. What if that's not on.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Page that they select or what if.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: You'Re a car with three locations in a five mile radius and you're running it to one and it thinks for whatever reason location two is the better one and we're running. You know, that does not. Yeah.
So that's going to be interesting to see how they deploy all that. Is this going to be as a replacement or in addition to sort of update.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: So it sounds like you have to opt into it and it is a button that you push.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: To opt into this new feature in your search campaigns. But I did ask the question when it was first announced of the, the Google Evangelist if you can exclude anything and she said you can.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: You cannot.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: So you should be able. You can. Yes, affirmative.
Yes. So you should be able to exclude different ad groups probably that you don't want this to be opted into. Or, or you should be able to exclude some different parts of the campaign that you don't want it to be automated.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: So that's.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: And obviously just not opt into it for certain campaigns that are really critical.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: So then that leaves like how who is this appropriate for?
[00:07:01] Speaker A: That makes sense.
Yeah. This is totally different compared to like you said.
Well anything before. Like is it just. It's going to be very interesting to see how it pans out.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think it's, I think that it, it can be very useful for some clients that especially that are doing, you know, awareness and reach and you know, maybe some local businesses that do need exposure and maybe there's just one call to action on their entire site.
Like you said, the, you know, there are a lot of questions about the, you know, identifying the location of the user, but that would, that dusty nitty gritty stuff. But I mean it can be useful for some things, but for others, I mean there are, I've worked, I'm sure you have for a lot of very, very quick clients and you know, have a very specific strategy of, you know, who we're targeting and what needs to go down after they click on an ad or so.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: So that sounds, well, so in line with this AI approach looking at.
Okay, so AI seems to be obviously changing the game for many, many people in many ways obviously tech world probably first of all. And then that's, you know, as broader adoption happens, that'll expand to more B to C stuff, more at home stuff, people trying to have more smart things talking, whether it be security or watch, refrigerator or whatever. Right.
But so in the world of SEO and ppc, how do you see.
And this could easily tie into that update. And you said it was aimax or what was it called?
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Yes, it is called AI Max.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Okay, cool.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: AI Max for search campaigns.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: So whether it's AI Max or another aspect of AI impacting marketing, PPC and SEO in particular, how do you see it just impacting things as of right now, with or without the AI Max update.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: How AI impacts, how AI impacts search obviously has made a huge impact on the industry with more people using the AI tools to do their research, to get answers to their questions and to be able to, you know, almost do a bit of a better job not only in grabbing the information from web pages, but also analyzing that information for you.
So how that plays into ads is that users search habits have changed dramatically and very rapidly.
And it seems like Google is really trying to play catch up at this.
I know it seems like a lot of the computers are.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Forgive me for nothing, it got really muffled for a minute. It was, I wasn't able to understand what saying.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: I think that Google is playing catch up right now with some of the AI features and releasing some of the features more hastily so that we're almost using, testing them while they're being released.
Yeah, so.
Right.
And so in order to adapt to these changes in searcher behavior, obviously they're coming up with ways to serve ads in the AI, AI overviews ads in Gemini and then using this targeting and creative way where they're using all of these automated features to serve the ads.
Microsoft has been working on the same thing. So earlier in the year they were doing rolling out ads in Copilot and they're using the same sort of theme there where they're not just looking at keywords that are going on in the chat, they're looking at the whole intent of the message as the, as the chat between the AI and the human evolves and serving the appropriate ads there. So that doesn't get talked about enough and it really should.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: No, it's not a question.
So with, with all that being said, as whether you're in the AI, whether, whether you're in the PPC world or SEO or Blend or whatever, how do you see, especially with those updates, how do you see us as marketers maintaining control and that targeting to the best that we can? Because, you know, like I mentioned, and I mentioned with Facebook, you mentioned with the Google side, you know, targeting used to be very, at least with Facebook especially, extremely precise.
I haven't done much with Google, so I can't speak to that. Well, used to be extremely precise where you can, you know, quite literally target like a quarter mile radius of, you know, someone who makes X amount of money, they drive this kind of car, they have this phone, et cetera. And now on Facebook side, it's very much, here's the creative, go find them. And you just say everywhere. Right.
How do you see on the PC or SEO side with AI, how do you see us keeping that control of who gets shown our ads? Or do we need that control and should we just relinquish it to the AI and let them just figure that out?
Make sense?
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh yeah, it does make sense. And you made me pause at the end. You threw that in there. Should we just relinquish our control to the AI?
I think, I think. Well, let me answer that part first. There are, in all of those ad platforms they have those, those billing features, or I should say bidding features where you can enter in. Here's the ROAS I want, here's the ROI I want. And in that case, if the platform can get quality leads at the cost that you define, then sure. Right, right.
But that's. Oh, that's not. The whole population of businesses that need to do advertising right now. They're not, they may not be that precise, especially when you're talking about smaller businesses or I mean, there's unlimited amount of different business models out there.
So. Yeah, in terms of. Yeah, so we, I mean we can target people based on the audiences, on their audiences if they're outdoors, outdoors enthusiast or you know, those types of audiences and based on their behavior. And I think those are those that remains the same how we define them. But how those lists are creative, created, have really evolved over time where Google is not just saying that they declared themselves an outdoor enthusiast or they did a couple things, it's much more sophisticated and how they're, they're developing those lists based on all like I think they said, millions of different audience signals.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: Yeah, especially.
Right. That, that immediately takes me back to the, the update from last year or the, the leak from last year with the hundreds of thousands of documents.
It was April, May or June. I can't remember the month. I should know this, you know, where they had the, the leak of all of the documents showcasing what they know of. Yeah, the algorithm is like, oh, you're looking at all these other things too. We kind of suspected that, but now we really know. Anyway, going back to what you just said, all of those millions of data points that they're basing all this information.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, the data points and the combination of those data points. Right. And things they can infer from those data points. Right. But it, it has really evolved over time.
So those same lists, lists might be called the same thing, but they're a lot more sophisticated.
And then our ability to mix and match those is, you know, truly amazing. Plus we can get reporting on those, those types of lists. So the, you know, the keywords has really, it's really always sort of been that almost, you know, that one for one sort of relationship where they're typing in the keyword. I'm interested in outdoor equipment, outdoors equipment, and you're going to serve me an ad about that. But with this AI Max Opportunity and all of the other AI features in the world, we will be getting more data not just on the keywords they're typing in, but what more about their intent.
So are they buying the equipment for themselves? Are they buying it for someone else? Do they have a family? Is it water equipment? Is it land equipment? Do they like hiking?
Do they like voting?
And you know that that's really some powerful ways that AI is helping with our targeting and sort of looking at the big picture.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Okay, so one of my questions I wanted to ask you was, was what do you see the blend or intersection between PPC and organic being? What's that intersection And I think part of that intersection. You've said this a couple times, and this is one of the questions I just noted down is intent.
How do you go about. Because, like, I have never worked with keywords. I have always like, our approach is people first. Like, literally, We in our SOPs, step one is analog research. We go in and we interview our paying customers. Not my mom or my grandma, because they think my product's good.
I go and interview paying customers, ideally my paying customers or my clients or whoever's. Right. And then from there, and we ask them a bunch of questions. And from there we try to get inside their head, figure out their intent, the emotional driving factors, all these things that dictate the actions or behaviors that then lead to search.
So we can then reverse engineer, get the content up front, and then we'll bring in the. The digital research aspect of things. Keyword research, or a big part of that is keyword research.
So with that understanding intent is kind of like everything in my book. Like, if you don't understand the intent, the keyword doesn't matter.
So how do you reverse that? Let's say you have a client.
My coffee mug. And I'm a big coffee guy. My own espresso. Me, I. I make. I'm a coffee snob. I'm. I make my own espresso at home two to 50 times a day. And I like. I'm always collecting fun mugs. Like, this is a mug from. From a dope little coffee shop in Somewhere in Wyoming.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: I was gonna guess that Montana.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Montana or Wyoming. I'm pretty sure it's Wyoming because their. Their flag is.
Has a buffalo in it. Montana's. I can't remember. Live in Idaho. So we're.
Anyway, so. So if.
If my intent in looking for mountain coffee mugs is to buy one, or if I'm looking for inspiration to make one or whatever that might be, because it could be. I could be very buyer oriented or inspiration oriented. Those are two totally different intents. When I type in mountain coffee mug or mountain ceramic or whatever the keyword might be. Right. How do you go about reverse engineering that intent that leads to those keywords?
[00:20:14] Speaker B: You just gave me a really difficult example because most.
So I think that, I think that your methodology. And you said you called it analog. I think that is. I think that, that.
I think that being able to double. Okay. I think there'll be an advantage to continuing to do that. I think that human element of get, you know, getting inside the head, the psychology of understanding who your customer is is going to be more critical than ever. I still think it's, it's really important because you have to, the human has to start somewhere.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Like literally our approach is people first. Like that's our whole thing, people first framework. That's everything revolves around people first.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Right. So you know, Google will have the, you know, the web page to get information from, but we still have to guide it. So starting out, you know, with any campaign, any sort of digital campaign online, we need to tell that platform, here's what we want to do, here are our goals, here's what our customer is looking for, here's what they look like.
And so that's going to be more important than ever. And I think that's one of the things that will be our advantage moving forward where AI really cannot replace us. They, they can't be, they don't understand the human element. They can't be the feet street, they can't be, you know, listening. They don't understand the trends. And that's something where that's going to be, I think, super, super critical to keep gathering that information. But it's really an, you know, after we inform the machine, after we tell them, you know, here's what we think for the keywords, here's what we think for the audiences, here's our basic copy. In theory, that's how it's supposed to be working right now, is that we're giving it the high quality strategy, direction, targeting assets and then it's taking that, you know, like, you know, catching the pass and then running for the goal with it from us so that we can, you know, start the process all over again.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: So to piggyback on part of that, you made a comment, something to the effect of.
One of our big advantages right now is we feed that initial data set of the raw human experience component into the AI.
When do you see? In the near future.
So I'm a big, even though I live in Idaho, I hunt bears.
I like bear around and you know, I'm very rugged in that regard. I love sci fi and futuristic shenanigans. Star wars is favorite, you know, the Matrix, all that kind of stuff. Ray Kurzweil wrote a book, the Singularity is near in like 80s or something like that.
No, it wasn't the 80s, just 2005, I think, looking at it.
And I'm assuming you know what the Singularity is, right?
Oh, okay. So the Singularity is basically the, the intersection of time in which AI or machine learning is able to out process that of a human brain.
And so.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Yeah. So then it becomes, it can then become a sentient being or entity and can take over the world because it's so smart that it's smarter than human as like a single processor will be, a single processing unit processor will be able to literally outperform a human brain in every regard.
And you know, his initial prediction was 2055 and now I think that's, he's bumped that up substantially to like 35, 38, 2038 ish.
But with AGI advancing as fast as it is, you know, if we look back to, I think one of the first AI marketing tools that was widely public was Thin.
It's now Jasper. I can't remember Jarvis was the first version, first name and then Marvel told him to cut that out.
And you know that because I was, I was in the first 100 customers with Jasper.
And you know, contrast that to whether it's Manus ChatGPT or Quad 3.7 or whatever, it's night and day different in like three years.
So contrast that to, you know, five years from now.
Coming back to my initial question as a long tangent of a rabbit hole, I apologize. Do you foresee in the near future AI making that raw human experience obsolete? Because AI will be able to do that and all we have to do is say, hey, AI, here is our product, we want more buyers, we want people to buy this. And we think all of this stuff, here's our buyers list, you know, give as much data as we can. But you know, do you foresee that initial input being becoming obsolete?
[00:25:52] Speaker B: I mean, I think the amount of the input can change.
And so if you, you know, if you program it, if you currently customize it or program it right now with your, your customer Personas, you don't need to continue to re enter that in. But if something happens in, in the economy where you have new leadership that imposes a bunch of tariffs and you have some economic uncertainty, well, how does does the. I don't know if the AI knows that or if it will in the future. So now you have a huge variable that you need to input into the model.
Right. That can change it quite a bit.
So, and that's been something that I been talking about is we've got this huge variable, we have to insert it into our strategy now, but AI could help me. I can say here's, here's what we're doing, here's the current situation.
How should we tweak our approach?
And by the way, can you do some research on Made in America in marketing. I just did a, did some research on that. It was really interesting, but it took me to be able to tell it. Here's what I, you know, here's what I think is going on.
And so I don't, I mean, will it ever completely replace us? I mean, would that be a good thing so that we could live a life of being on vacation and leisurely pursuit while AI runs those. All of the other, the tasks we don't to do. I, I mean, I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know that.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: And I probably won't see it in my lifetime, but I don't know if we might. Yeah.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Have you seen the movie, the Pixar movie? Wally?
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Oh man, it's been a long time.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: The basic premise is humans used up all the resources on Earth and Earth is quite literally looks like Mars with millions and millions of, of trash piles that were stacked by machines and humans. The remaining humans in one massive ship set out for a new planet to find, to populate that they could, that had resources for humans to live off of. And the whole movie is, you know, about this little robot and eventually he finds life on Earth and they, humans eventually return to Earth. But in the meantime, humans on this ship become like morbidly obese because all they do is sit around and AI takes care of.
[00:28:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean that's, well, you know that, that, I mean that has happened to some extent since we all use computers. Just our work is computer oriented. So I mean that wouldn't be an unfair prediction at all. That's really interesting. But I think, you know, as, you know, as the, as AI is taking off, there are a lot of people have it just in general, not just advertising, but people have a lot of concerns about it there, you know, there's, there's all sorts of different points of view and legislation that's going through. So I think, you know, in terms of it, you're taking over the world. I think that someone would intervene. But that is for you. You know this the super smart people and data scientists to answer.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: I know it gets out of my. I'd like to keep it, I like to keep on top of it and to understand it. But I should have studied that when I went to college.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: I know same.
So then coming back to the second tangent of that question. How do you determine, let's say again, I'm trying to sell a mug.
How do you go about determining the keywords and then the intent of those buyers, whether for the keyword, you know, example and you can give me a different analogy if you want to run easier.
But, you know, Mountain coffee mug. Right. Am I a buyer or am I looking for inspiration to create my own or whatever else might be in between? How do you determine intent when looking at keywords? Or what is the intersection between intent and those keywords when you're looking at them both, trying to understand what's what?
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Well, I think a lot of times when, when searchers or consumers are looking for something that's product oriented, we assume it's a buying type of a search.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: They're not gonna, they're not going to automatically put in buy mug, you know, buy Mountain mug.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Although it used to be in the olden days they would. Right.
Buy, buy mug, mug for sale, cheap mug, ceramic mug. Those are all, all keyword modifiers that signify their intent a little bit.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: And you know, without doing the keyword research on this for those do it yourselfers for those artists, creators, they might have slightly, slightly different keyword intentions, such as, like, ideas.
I know ideas will be a big thing. It, you know, inspiration. If you kind of think of like the Pinterest users or, you know, I was looking up some, I was looking up some, like gardening ideas the other day, like art project ideas, and I, I got more results for just art supplies than I did for the finished pieces, even though I did see some for the finished pieces. So that's a, that's a tough example. So I think it is digging, digging into that. We can still use negatives right now, because right now, as we stand without the robots reading our mind, they don't know the nuances and the subtleties of the products to be able to say, okay, I'm selling, I am selling this mug.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: You know, I have a good example, actually. I have a client that's a, that's a manufacturer and steel is involved in their manufacturing product, and they'll. We'll get a lot of searches coming through for blacksmiths and hobbyists.
[00:32:25] Speaker A: That makes sense.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: And so.
Yes, and so one way that I deal with that is to ensure that the ad copy is very clear that it's, that it's a manufacturer, what they exactly sell. So I'm communicating very clearly before they click on it. Right. Because that's where the money's coming in.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Okay. I mean, it's not the worst thing if it shows up accidentally.
We don't want them clicking through on it.
But then backing up before that. I do look through the search terms and look for themes that are Coming through. And that's where you can find that stuff like you know, swords, blacksmiths, all kinds of things. Let's say that's not even close to what they do but that's what Google thinks they do.
So I can use that as negatives. I could even use audiences as negatives or people that are interested in like Renaissance festivals.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Right. Is coming up.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: You know. But right. So I mean there's lots of different ways that we can, we can tweak that sort of thing where it's going to be really hard for the computer to understand, you know what this steel manufactured part is in comparison to a sword.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: Okay so, so correct me if I'm not hearing you right but so your. The intent intersection.
How do you discover intent sort of line of thinking or how are you. Are you just flat out targeting correctly?
Is modifiers keyword modifier. It's plain simple. Going back to the mug analogy. Buy mug mug inspiration. Plain simple.
Is that to dumb it down to a simplest way to say it. Would that be one of the bigger aspects that you're using successfully to determine that intent and target is keyword modifiers.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: That's the only way that we have right now. So unless they come up with a, with a feature that says tell us, you know, tell give us like a negative type of an audience and I can type in there. We, we want to exclude anyone looking for, for swords. Do it yourself, blah blah blah. And I can explain it in there. I need to have a way for me to discover where these I guess you would say like where the loopholes are for Google that they don't understand it. For me to identify that I have to do that manually.
Then go in there and say hey this, we do not want this stuff.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: This doesn't, this is, this is not relevant to the, to the clients.
To the client's product and we don't want the ad served. Then secondly it would be for me to make sure that the messaging that's going out in the ads if they slip through so that the, the user knows that it's. It's not about them.
This, this is, this is a totally different thing than what you're searching for. We just happen to show up. Sorry about that.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Right. So then the second half to my question there was in the exclusion process to Sl. Exclusion process of making sure you don't get the people who are not buyers clicking on your ads and targeting is the headline copy itself.
[00:36:03] Speaker B: Oh yeah def. Yeah definitely the right. The, the. The headline copy the description.
You can take Care and the images, if they have image thumbnails that they're serving as well, you can really qualify the customers with that very well. Oh yes. Not only. Yeah, not only for the, the product, the search intent. You can also, you can also qualify them for like price points.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: And all sorts of different things. Right. So I mean you've seen like there's, there are products that have like a wide variety. It's like okay, the, the traditional, like the negative list of negative, free, negative, cheap.
[00:36:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: You know, negative what you know, whatever. So yeah, there's, there's many different places where you have to hit that up in order to ensure that the user intent that you know about is coming through on any of the advertising and any platform.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Love it. And what's. I, I bring up those two elements, the copy itself for targeting and except including and excluding and then the same with the keywords including and excluding or the modifiers.
Because a lot of people, I was talking to someone the other day, he's been doing SEO for about three years and so he's an, he's, he's an experienced noob. My opinion. And that's anybody with a working. And it's not just SEO, it's just like you're good enough to know you're dangerous in whatever field you might be in at 2 to 3 year mark but you're not 18 years experienced and you're not going to have you know, the level of wisdom and experience that you know, 18 years anyway. And we were talking about click through rates and okay, so AI overviews is a thing. How do we still get as much click through rate as we can?
And a big piece to that was largely the headline is like we have one client, we have an average of like 9% click through rate for all the keywords included non branded and that's really strong. And we have 310 to 320,000 monthly visitors with this client and they crush it. And it's because their content is just so on point speaking to a very specific site set of customers and when we were looking at his stuff with some of his clients and projects and whatnot, a lot of the headlines were just not well crafted.
Not to disrespect this guy because he'll be listening to this probably or let alone anybody else.
My point is a really well performing campaign, organic or paid, can literally be made or broken by the copy and the creative that you use.
Would you say that is accurate from what you're seeing on your side of things?
[00:39:20] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Absolutely. Because I think.
Yeah, that does go to a little bit of wisdom too, because you really are tempted to maybe go with what AI is suggesting.
Okay. And they're. It's just grabbing stuff. It's just. It's grabbing stuff. I mean, somewhat intelligently. And you're also tempted to be super creative. You know, this sounds great.
And, you know, it's really not one of. I have not found in all my years of doing this that you really need a hook in an ad.
You really want to tell them what it is. And a lot of times people forget to just do that.
It is this particular thing. It is this thing. It is a manufactured part that does this, or it is. Or a mountain coffee mug or, you know, you have to. So, yes, to answer your question, yes, that's. That's very important. And, you know, that really goes back to basic marketing skills and knowing the fundamentals.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Which.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Yeah, you said something that is very. Because, you know, is this visible in my thing? Yeah, you can see some of my small library collection. That is.
The rest is in boxes at the moment, but I think I still have up there. Yeah. I do three of Russell Brunson's books. And, you know, he's very.
The most basic framework that he talks about that is in every piece of marketing debatably, is the hook, story, offer framework. And so, you know, you have someone at his caliber saying, hey, hook, story, offer.
And you know, you.
When you're studying headlines or frameworks, whether it's, you know, the ada, attention, interest, desire, action or problem, agitate, solve, or whatever other framework someone wants to come up with tomorrow, it always starts with a hook in some form or fashion. So I find it super interesting that you say almost the opposite right there with, you don't always need a hook. You just got to tell it. Tell the customer what it is that they're buying or about to click on.
And that comes back to a.
A principle that I just only recently, in the last couple months learned about, which is a copy hinge.
And, you know, you start with the headline, but then the hinge of the copy, the piece of the copy that really hooks them in is telling them what they're about to read. And that comes back to, you know, speech class or writing class in college.
What's the core framework for speech? Tell them what they're about to listen to.
You're. You tell them about what you're about to talk about. Talk about what you just told them that you're going to talk about. Then you recap what you just talked about sort of thing and it was. I. And like the conversions that I was seeing went from like, like a half a percent on paid ads conversion to cash to 3 to 4%. And that's just with one particular campaign that I was personally working on that had, that didn't have the copy hinge. And that in the second one, the better version did have the copy hinge, which is flat out telling them what they're about to get.
I find that super interesting. That said halfway the opposite of what everyone else and other bits.
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Well, I was thinking more of. More of a sensational sort of hook thing because. What. Because in, in paid search ads, it's. The writing is a little different. You only have so many characters to get your message across.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: And Right.
And you only have so many characters. You're completely limited by that. You can put a lot more words on a billboard if you wanted to.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:43:24] Speaker B: But each, but each piece of, of advertising materials that you consume have different purposes. And, and PPC ads have a very specific purpose, which is different from Facebook ads.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Very.
[00:43:40] Speaker B: Facebook. That would, yeah, Facebook. That would work better.
And that might work better also for display ads and video ads that we're doing. But for search, PPC ads, we're trying to answer their question there. That's. Google is supposed to be categorizing the world. Right.
Wasn't that their original purpose?
Catalog the world?
[00:44:03] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: Right. And the search, the search engine is supposed to be answering questions. If we get down to the very basics of what it's supposed to do, it's supposed to answer a question.
So you don't want to get too fancy or too creative with your copy because you want to tell them, hey, I'm answering your question.
And secondly, if you get too fancy and they're expecting to get something different from what they click through to get, then you're just making them agitated and irritated and starting off in a bad foot with that person because they didn't get what they expected. You're not meeting their expectations. So it's, you know, each one of those and is going to be different. And knowing that is really important that you get with wisdom. And also something the AI doesn't capture very well.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: No, it doesn't.
And what I find interesting is because, you know, as an SE, I've been doing SEO for 14, 15 years, and so, you know, I've seen my fair share of Google Ads is, you know, I'm. What, what, what marketing person or let alone average human doesn't open up Google Daily versus, you know, people like us who work with Google Daily.
So we definitely have seen our more fair share of stuff. And so contra. And then contrasting what I see on a regular basis with Google PPC compared to what I've been learning in recent. The last year, ish, 9ish months with Facebook ads.
Just validating, just seeing, validating your point from my perspective, totally different.
But so that leads me to a question that I had and that was between the copy between. Or headlines, mostly headline. Because sure, you know, with the meta description we can put it in there. But of course Google may or may not show what we want it to show when it comes to that.
With the headline on Google, whether it's paid or organic, what do you see the difference between the two and what do you see working with either of the two.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: The difference between the organic headlines and the paid head, the paid headlines is that the paid headlines can be completely customizable per the search or audience.
Would you agree?
Because SEO is your expertise.
[00:46:50] Speaker A: Well, when you say customizable, can you clarify what you mean?
[00:46:57] Speaker B: We can, we, we can customize the message more in the headline for each and go into great detail for the keyword themes than you can in SEO.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: Got it.
[00:47:11] Speaker B: So we could, so we can do, we can do a different group for mountain coffee mugs versus zoo coffee mugs.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: Yeah, big difference.
[00:47:29] Speaker B: Right.
So an elephant versus a kitty cat. You know, like we, we have that ability to have more, have it more customized to the keyword or the keyword themes.
And we can also put in, you know, all kinds of special messaging such as, you know, promotions, features, benefits, all that kind of jazz, which it's really complementary to the organic listings.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Yeah, they really do compliment. They have to.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: It's bo. It's like a bonus.
[00:48:03] Speaker A: Yes.
So in, in regards to the, the way the copy is structured and the way it's communicating to the user, do you see a difference there?
[00:48:18] Speaker B: Do I see how it's communicated? I mean, it depends on. It's. It's the depends. It depends answer.
[00:48:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: So, so typically what I personally will do is, is see how they're showing up or if they're showing up for the organic searches and how it's showing up.
So then that gives me the opportunity to say, okay, well there, this is, you know, basically the homepage is showing or category pages are showing, but we're not getting, you know, these other pages. We also don't have an offer in there most of the time as well.
But I mean, like I said, it's completely Complimentary. It's. It, it's when those, when those, it's so powerful to have those two show up together so that you're dominating the results.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: Oh yeah, that's another great question. Do you ever see campaigns that are working better than others when you have a client that is dominating with organic and paid versus they're only dominating with organic or only paid? That makes sense.
[00:49:31] Speaker B: Yeah, there. And there are actually studies on that too that I think it's something like there's a 20% lift in, in them both. I don't remember. It's pretty old study. But I mean it only makes logical sense, right? If you're getting more exposure in the search results for your, for your brand or for your products and you have a, you know, a nice organic listing and then you max out your PPC ad with maybe more detailed messaging.
Again, you know, the features, benefits, any promotions speaking directly to that audience.
The call to action. Again the call to action.
You're just, you're really, you're really amplifying that. So it's always been confusing to me why over the years I've always heard this, that this is being cannibalized or that's being cannibalized and that I don't know, I mean there's, there's data on it, but it, it doesn't make any sense. I mean if you can have more of a good thing in this case, it is, it's good and it doesn't, it shouldn't be one, it shouldn't be one or the other. I mean you, we, I have seen over the years that if what the big debate over should we bid on our brand name because we're already showing up. And I'll always say it's great to be there. You know, you can control how much you want to pay for that.
And wouldn't you feel bad if your competitor showed up there in the first slot above your organic listing?
So a handful of.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: So Surf Pro, they are a multi billion dollar brand. They do fire and water restoration. They're the biggest period in that space. No one is even close to their size and revenue or in any aspect. And like literally we've talked to dozens of, if not more of different firewater restoration companies that are exact copy paste of Surf Pro, but just infinitely smaller.
Like maybe one location versus the two or three thousand that Surf Pro has.
And their whole strategy that they're making millions on is literally bidding on Surf pros like Surf Pro. File frustration. Are all the variants of those keywords like that is their strategy. And in some areas like bigger metropolis, New York City, Miami or whatever, bigger city, it works and it can print money for them if they have the ad budget to, to compete against Surf.
But, but yeah, so.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And also some of those are going to be, they're, they're going to be prioritized because they're doing local targeting, they're doing geotargeting and versus maybe Serv Pro is doing larger geotargeting or national targeting. Does that make sense? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So Google will prioritize that lo. That local targeting, that detailed geographic targeting. I haven't talked about that for a very long time.
[00:52:50] Speaker A: I, I've had, I've managed over 20,000 locations between the businesses that we've served. So it's definitely been a, I've always had a local client in some form or passion, whether a Fortune 10 or you know, my personal chiropractor that I'm going to go see tomorrow.
Right.
So many questions.
So with.
Okay, let's get a little bit more tactical here.
What.
So we have all of these AI tools at our disposal.
Quad GPT Manus is, I'm really digging Manus personally or, and all the other agent suites out there and whatnot.
What are these specific tools that you are using or AI powered processes that are enabling you to have successful campaigns with ppc?
[00:53:50] Speaker B: Okay, so what, okay, so what tools, what tools am I using?
[00:53:59] Speaker A: Basically, yeah.
[00:54:01] Speaker B: Okay.
I'm not using any one tool that can create an entire strategy or campaign for me but it has been definitely helpful in getting ideas that, beyond what my human brain can think of. But I need to prompt it a lot. Right. So I need to put in.
And this will be. I'll go between Chat GPT and Gemini.
And Gemini actually you.
I don't know if that's surprising or not. It does better with any Google Ads questions. Right? You would think it would. It's just, it is, it's always better. So it's obviously trained better on the help files and the, the data and then I, I always try to trick it and say is there anything you know, that you're not telling me? But you know that's just my own entertainment.
[00:55:04] Speaker A: Right. Does that ever come back with anything useful?
[00:55:08] Speaker B: No, it will, it will always say that it, it can't give me any confidential proprietary information.
[00:55:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:55:20] Speaker B: So it's always worth trying.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: I know. So, so you're.
[00:55:25] Speaker B: But so it can really. So Gemini can dig into a little bit more of the details. But of course you do need a Human to be able to fact check that because sometimes it has outdated information or it doesn't really understand how it works in real life.
So I can say my, my client sells, sells xyz.
What types of keyword themes would be appropriate? I don't know where it's getting those from. I don't think it's not using a keyword tool for what is actually being searched on. But what you can do is you can take those keyword themes and then you can, you know, go back to the keyword tools if you want to do that, to see what the search volume is.
[00:56:07] Speaker A: So you're correct me if I'm wrong, so make sure I'm understanding. So you are using AI, whether it's GPT or Gemini, to come up with ideas, maybe flesh out ideas, brainstorm, et cetera, maybe in some tasks, maybe speed up the task. But at the end of the day you were still the human driving machine. There's not one set of tools, there's not one set of routes that go per se. You're just maybe speeding up certain elements or making certain elements in the creative process easier.
With AI.
[00:56:43] Speaker B: Yes, yes, absolutely.
So the, the Made in America that I, that messaging that I touched on earlier.
So a client wanted to know about the Made in America messaging, so I did.
So I started out with doing research, research in AI about that. I'm not going to read a hundred websites about that, but it came up with some interesting, interesting studies on it and came up with a conclusion that seemed to make sense, which was that people, people like the idea of things being made in America but will only pay so much for it.
That's a thing, right? And so to, so to use that, to use that messaging for value and convenience, but not necessarily for patriotism.
So that is, that make, that makes common sense. That's something that you can check, you can check the sources and say, hey, that, that's a pretty good direction. And it would have been very difficult for me to research that all myself. So then I can take that, talk about that more, research it more and you know, give the client, here's the direction, here's, here's what we have found about, you know, using this sort of messaging and then apply it to the campaigns. Obviously the whole campaign is not going to be about being Made in America, but subbing out some of the headlines, you know, and you know, putting that in as a, as a benefit to purchasing from them can't hurt right now.
[00:58:35] Speaker A: Totally.
When you were talking about Made in America, my mind immediately went to Fender because I've. I'm a bass player and Fender.
[00:58:45] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:58:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And they've been making their bases or at least their bases I'm sure probably the other guitars and instruments but I only pay the bases in either Mexico largely in Mexico and the US and you know there's. And in Germany and other places, but largely Mexico in the US and the US products are always more expensive.
But what's interesting with them is and this is just a total side tangent of a thought is their US products are substantially better and they last longer and their quality control is more consistent because I've owned three Mexican bases and like five or six over 20 years American bases from Fender.
And you know, I don't buy the cheaper ones and the. I'm regularly having my American bases outlast the Mexican basis anyway. It just as you were talking it made me wonder if they charge a premium on purpose and then on purpose don't put the quality control into the cheaper ones in other countries. So we do buy American made and pay that premium.
[00:59:59] Speaker B: I thought it. In this exact case, I actually thought that the, the Mexican Fenders were produced to be lower end starter models or beginner models.
[01:00:13] Speaker A: You can, it used to be kind of, but you can literally spend two grand on a Mexican base vendor.
It's, it's because like, like with Fender they have this Squire model, their line, you know, Lexus versus Toyota, they have their Squire line and it's notably cheaper. Like you're not going to get all the bells and whistles but it's a great out of the box space. And then you have Fender, you can buy a cheap and expensive of both of those models in Mexico and, or from Mexico Mexican made or American.
But yeah, so like it may not have used to be in that way, but at least right now I know just because I was a couple months ago I was in the market for oh what I have a new scratch ditch.
But yeah so it just made me wonder if people if that strategy was in place on purpose.
Anyway, what do you. So in the world of PPC as a whole, and this is a super broad question so it could be super general answer or as specific as you want.
What do you see working that you did not expect to be working right now or and it may be nothing, just hey, this is the usual stuff and it just works. It's got to be deploy the foundational principles properly.
[01:01:44] Speaker B: I think you always have to stick with the foundational principles and I think that it's important that we continue to provide the high quality manual assets for the ads.
And we talked a lot about that today, about the strategy, about the visibility and the search results in comparison to other organic listings and searcher intent. So there's a lot that goes into it that AI just cannot do right now.
[01:02:22] Speaker A: Right.
[01:02:22] Speaker B: So it's important for us to continue to be on top of that and to make sure we keep it real, keep it real, keep it human, keep a strategy involved. But there are some areas that we can, we can have use AI to do this research like I mentioned earlier, give us some seed ideas and then you can use that to validate, validate that information.
And you've just saved yourself, you know, hours of time in that research and maybe those starter ideas.
So I think that is, you know, that's definitely working for me.
And I just, I love this, this concept of the, the story of this, of the Made in America messaging because it's something that came up very suddenly. It would have taken me hours to do and I was able to really, really accelerate the, the process of incorporating this into our ad campaigns by using AI. But the AI didn't do it.
[01:03:29] Speaker A: All right.
Always like there's a, there's a reason like the influx of prompt engineering as a job has like exploded comparatively in the last couple of years because it's, the prompt is initiated by a human and not an AI and the AI is driven by the prompt.
As of right now.
What are the, what are those foundational principles that, that like as a PPC marketer you must abide by in your mind, what are the top.
[01:04:06] Speaker B: They must, they must abide by.
There are many things that they must abide by I think to have a, a quality PPC campaign in general.
And we touched on all of them.
So I smell a social media post coming out of this because it's important to understand your buyer.
We talked about understanding their intent and I agree with you. I think it's really important to have that hands on approach.
Oops, sorry about that. They have that hands on, hands on approach to understanding your customer, what their behavior is and ensuring that there's a strategy for every, every campaign, not just taking the AI's word for it with whatever tool that you're doing and having strategy for the ads that the ads are going to have. You know, XYZ messaging per the keyword theme. You're not just duplicating it all across and always a strong call to action that is tying back to the website. I mean you wouldn't believe how many people forget to have a Call to action.
[01:05:27] Speaker A: No, I believe it. I believe it. I believe it, Sue. Then let me ask you the flip side of that question.
I wrote it down. I wouldn't forget it if I have. If I'm running ads right now and I'm having lackluster results or no results.
[01:05:43] Speaker B: How.
[01:05:44] Speaker A: What would you go. What would you do to audit what your campaign is doing so that way you can fix it? And how would you then go about fixing it? It's kind of like the opposite of the question of what are the foundation.
[01:06:00] Speaker B: Okay. So if someone isn't. They're not getting any results. Not getting the results they want.
[01:06:04] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:06:07] Speaker B: Well, there are a lot of reasons why things don't take off and they don't get the results they want. There are. There's a lot of different touch points where it could not be.
It could not be working.
I think the first one that. And the first one that I see is usually budget.
That there isn't enough budget to get enough. Get enough impressions, to get enough clicks, to get enough traffic, to get enough conversions.
[01:06:32] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:06:33] Speaker B: Sometimes you can just. You can very, very easily just do the math on that, like common sense math in your head and say, it's not physically possible to get results, given this.
[01:06:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's, funny enough, the same on Facebook. I. About a month. Month and a half ago.
So I'm in. I'm. I'm in a paid group called Nothing Held Back by Alan Sultanic. Everybody and their mother should get in there. It's amazing for all forms of marketing. And they have a Facebook ads coach in there.
And I was like, hey, Lauren, I'm. Here's all the stats, here's all this stuff. Here's the copy, yada, yada, here's everything.
And it's not working.
And he's like, yeah, this looks great. Turn up your budget. I'm like.
And like, literally, I'm not exaggerating. It went from one to two sales a day at. It was like $40 a day, and I turned it up to a hundred, and my. My cost of acquisition went down by 30, 40% by just increasing my budget.
So granted, that's on Facebook, but so I'm just saying from my personal experience.
Limited personal experience with media buying it.
I can attest to that for sure.
[01:07:49] Speaker B: Yes.
Yes. There are a lot of technical reasons why that happens.
And it's kind of. It's one of the most painful things for advertisers to hear. Right.
And they think, oh, I just have to throw more money. It's not really about throwing more money at it. It's not about spending more as much as it is gathering data so that the algorithms can work properly.
[01:08:18] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:08:19] Speaker B: And yeah, and it takes, and like I said, there are some general calculations that you can do just like that. That coach, he could just look at and say, yeah, just here's what you need to do. Try that first.
[01:08:33] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:08:34] Speaker B: You know, some other, some other things that come up is just having real, having really disconnected keywords, messaging and landing page. That's a fundamental congruency that's been around since the beginning of the creation of the Google Ads world.
And another one that comes up that is, is a re. Is the campaign's being restricted by the targeting. Sort of like being restricted in the first example being restricted by the budget is that people go in and they're like, I, I'm going to target this audience perfectly with every exact detail.
And they don't realize that they have, you know, narrowed down the targeting so much that they're not allowing the algorithm to serve it. They, you know, you're, you're asking for this, this one little thing and we can't even, can't get you there.
Yeah, this, with this detail targeting. So like, like I'll say like crazy detailed geotargeting and then exact match keywords and then, you know, and small budgets. Like, why did you bother? Because it's not going, it's not gonna happen.
[01:09:47] Speaker A: It's the same with us on the SEO side of things. Because you know, someone, we, we just, we have a client who will probably listen to this.
I don't want them to think I'm talking about them, but they, when we started with them, their budget did not ref their SEO budget that they've prior to us that they were investing did not reflect the assets and authority that their site should have had with the two plus years of eight, $9,000 a month. I'm just like, this is all you have after over $200,000.
Like, what?
And I was frank with him, but I'm just like, you're one, you're spending money on the wrong things.
And we started off with them and like, yeah, we don't need to spend this much.
Because you're just, how do I say that's right.
You don't need to spend 8, 9amonth to get the results that you're looking for. If you just put the money in the right place and having those assets unlocks those, that unlocks those opportunities for Google to come in and properly rank similar but different.
[01:11:07] Speaker B: The same concept where, you know, being, being very exact can restrict your opportunities.
[01:11:15] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:11:15] Speaker B: You know, you have to, you have to look at, you know, if you're, you know, if you're best buying, you're selling TVs, you have the world of people searching for TVs.
[01:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah, Sam.
Right, that's good.
Okay, the last question, if so, we've talked about a lot of, a lot of things. Some of it more broadly, some of it a little bit deeper.
What is the one piece of information that you want listeners to walk away from? You're like, if this is the only piece of this, this conversation that you listen to, I want you to understand or recognize or pay attention to or execute on this.
What is that, Sam?
Yeah, I agree. Especially on the, the SEO side because, you know, too many people will pay attention to literally. I had someone ask me, a coaching client the other day, ask me, hey, can you just do a quick comb through on these couple pages, make sure our H1s and all those things are properly in place. Those are important, don't get me wrong. But like I can strip all of those out of an entire silo of a website and still crush it because that's too granted. Again, it's important, but it's not always a make or break and sometimes can be too much in the weeds of a, of a, of a factor compared to all the other things.
So I love this conversation.
[01:14:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:14:48] Speaker A: Definitely. That's for sure. It's oftentimes the strategy is the North Star sort of thing, like, oh, is this in line with my North Star? Yes, do it. No, don't. Maybe not. Sure, put on the shelf and revisit later sort of thing.
Very cool. Okay, so where can people connect with you? Sign up to your email list, your sub stack, your hire you to do PPC or whatever. Where can they find out more about you and connect with you?
Very dope. Yeah, and I'll be sure to link all those in the show description and anywhere else that this might be published.
Well, thank you so much for your time.
Yeah, it's always fun talking SEO ish shenanigans with someone who doesn't do SEO, but kind of like on the flip side.
Yep, very cool. Well, I could talk. I, no joke, could talk for probably hours, but I know I want to respect your time. I have calls here in a little bit, so until next time. Lisa, thank you. And everyone else live longer.
