I had one client who spent $375 on a single click.
In this video, we're gonna discuss some of the biggest mistakes that we've seen with Google Ads and probably some mistakes that you're making right Now we're gonna talk about how constantly changing your Google ads can actually backfire.
You have to wait.
Do not look at it.
I would say 6 days later, we had a call and he was like, you were so right.
We're at $4 to $5 cost per lead.
We're also going to talk about how increasing your budget can actually result in worse ad performance.
The system is overwhelmed if you increase your budget by 10 x in a day.
Last and final, we're gonna ask a very crucial question.
Can you or can't you trust Google Ads recommendations and which ones? And the problem I've seen is not just to raise your budget, but then also when it asks you to switch to target CPA, target cost per acquisition, it often times automatically raises your budget with that.
Sirius.
My name is Devin Thomas and I'll be teaming up with Pamela Wagner, an ex Google Ads employee who's optimized over 3000 Google Ads accounts.
And together, we've helped entrepreneurs from all across the world.
Figure out Google Ads for their businesses.
So stick around.
You're gonna love this episode.
So the biggest mistake that we see people make is they're like, hey.
I have a budget of, like, 30 bucks per day, and I wanna try Google for, like, 2 weeks.
And then they wanna know whether it worked or not.
And that on a very basic campaign set up.
So, I mean, early it used to be smart campaigns.
Now it's performance max campaigns.
You know, maybe even with a whole bunch of broad match keywords.
And, yeah, I think just really not being aware of the longevity of Google Ads.
And, I mean, I I just had this last week with a client that I love and adore, but this was a question about Facebook ads and literally had the ads around for, like, 6 hours.
And he sent me a screen, and he was like, this is not working.
And I was like, You just spend seven bucks on this.
You have to wait.
Do not look at it.
And then, literally now, as almost, I would say, 6 days later, we had a call.
And he was like, You were so right.
We're at $4 to $5 cost per lead.
Wow.
Wow.
And all you had to do was just wait.
Wait.
That's it.
Wait.
And that's But that's also the biggest issue for people these days because they can have everything, like, you know, at the slip of a singer so that when it's actually about waiting and not making too many changes at once, then they're like, they're half freaking out.
What do you think it is about us business owners in particular? Whereby, we automatically assume that every time something doesn't work, it's it's a failure and we we are so ready to pronounced things as failures when things haven't even gotten started.
I'll give you an example.
When I started my business, I had this thing in my mind that in the 1st year of business, I was gonna make a 1,000,000 South African rand.
Basically and, uh, like, a $100,000 somewhere around there.
Um, so I said to myself, if I don't make that amount in the 1st year, then my business is a complete and utter failure So what happened was I put myself under so much stress to get that, and it just never came, and I was just never happy.
So what is it about business owners that when I'm running a Google Ads campaign, and things are not going well.
Um, after 4 hours, I wanna throw in a towel and say this whole platform doesn't work.
Nothing works.
It's I think it comes from the startup culture, right, and the startup culture people work a lot with fast deadlines.
Like, they say fail fast, right? And because investors wanna see a return of investment as quickly as possible.
And so it's highly driven from that aspect and what we don't consider is that Honestly, what you, Devon and me are doing is not a startup.
It's a business.
We are not necessarily reinventing the industry.
We're just doing things a lot better than others.
So unless you're like, into some kind of innovative start up, and I've I've seen my fair share of that.
Then things take time.
Behavior change takes time.
Right? Like, learning to get to know or getting to know your customers take time, understanding what actually makes them come to you.
Like, let me give you this example as well here with going back to Google Ads campaigns.
So what we keep seeing in, for example, the health care sector is that the lower or the first, the younger half of the age groups that you can segment for, usually tend to have a lower cost per conversion than the older ones.
But what we figured out is that the older ones just convert less directly on the devices.
So the young ones are very much used to everything being tracked.
And the older ones might see an ad, but then they're gonna dial it on their phone.
And then, of course, you're not gonna track it because maybe they don't even have a Google account or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So for somebody who's listening to us right now and they're saying, listen, I'm I understand what you're saying that I should wait, but why can't I just, like, increase my budget on day 1 instead of spending $10 per for 40 days, why don't I just spend the $400 on one day? And then I'll know, why can't I do things that way? Because the way that machine learning works is that it adjusts with the amount of data that it has and time.
And also you have to consider that you might work with different days of the week so people might behave differently on different days of the week.
So for example, um, let me go to a physiotherapy practice example.
Monday, oh my god.
Everybody calls in because they're, like, from the week and they're like, I need to call.
I just suddenly figured out I need to do something.
Right? And then in the run of the week, it usually gets a bit slower.
And then you have those, like, emergency cases on, like, Saturday Sunday that are looking for, like, places to be open.
So the behavior changes throughout the week.
And so if you just look at one day, it's not gonna be possible.
And even if you wanna look at behaviors during for, like, how do you behave during a week? You can't just jotch from 1 week.
You literally have to wait.
Like, in this case, like, 48 weeks at least in order for you to able to recognize a pattern there, and then you can optimize.
And the same accounts for Lake City, so let's say you're targeting the United States.
Lots of people, if you spend a hundred bucks, you have about, let's say, 50 states, then you spent 2 bucks per state.
Now you you didn't even have any tests there.
You might have not even gotten any click from any state.
Right? So it's just way too little to actually understand what works on a statistically relevant occasions, statistically relevant people is always a number above 30.
So that's what we tend to work with.
Okay.
Alright.
So when you say a number above 30, you mean, uh, above $30 per day, or do you mean about 30 clicks to know that this is something specific? Um, in some instances, like, I think for an ad group, um, Google says you should get about, like, at least 3 1000 impressions before, you know, making any decision in in terms of, like, Conversion, sometimes it's a bit less, but anything that's, like, above 30 clicks or whatever on one ad, then you at least have gotten a a solid number where a pattern is recognizable for machine learning.
Now this comes this brings a couple of interesting things, uh, to mind.
Uh, number one is because I have students and students come to me all the time and they say to me, hey, Devin.
I just had 6 clicks on my ads.
Clearly, something's wrong.
And, um, people have this beautiful path that they take, and I love it because it's always the same things.
Number 1 is it's always the settings.
It's never the ad.
So this is another thing that I I I see quite a lot where a lot of people say that if they have the correct settings, somehow everything else is going to fall into place.
Um, so I would have people And we'd have these long talks and debates, and they'll tell me that this big YouTuber said they should put, um, this bidding strategy in, and it will just work.
And what happens is people get so locked in trying to make the big YouTuber's words come true that they don't actually pay attention to their own unique situation.
Have you ever encountered or seen anything like that as well? Where you mean, like, where where people just just are too, like, too hectic after, like, couple of clicks? I think A lot of people are more committed to getting the configurations light, like the settings, right, than they are actually paying attention to.
Oh, yay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I actually see it the other way around where people are and I'm trying to pull up ad accounts in the background for some examples later on, um, where people are trying to get the ad as perfectly done as possible, as well as have as many keywords as possible.
We'll get to that later.
And then forget about the settings completely.
So they might have a search and display campaign run as in one campaign, or they might not know much about the language targeting, or they location targeting is literally everywhere, every everybody, everywhere.
So I feel like the settings in what I encounter is often the more missed part.
Okay.
I I think from my point of view, what's happening with my YouTube video specifically is people come on and, uh, they usually people who are trying to figure out the correct settings.
So what happens is they try and set up everything perfectly, um, get the right bidding strategy, keywords, everything like that, and we'll go deeper into keywords if you're listening into this.
But what happens afterwards is instead of kind of looking at the ad and measuring their creatives and see if their creatives working and see if they're getting in front of the right people, they kind of like give up, uh, it's it's hard to describe, but they kind of enter this phase where They've convinced themselves that the whole ad doesn't matter if I just get the right bidding strategy, everything will come to you.
That's what I see a lot of.
Yeah.
I think I think what people oftentimes forget is you want your clients to say yes multiple times, not just once.
So the first yes happens when I decide to click on the ad.
And when I decide to click on it, I might have not consciously read everything, but I've read everything subconscious sleep.
And then what my mind tries to do is to find exactly that same information, again, on the website.
So let's say your ad copy is quite a bit different from the voice that you reflect on your website.
Then you might lose people quickly, and you'd be wondering, oh, why are people hopping off? Well, you're not matching on your website exactly where you have in the ads.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's so true.
That's so true.
So what you're saying is we need to look for a lot more yeses in the rope.
So yes, I've read this ad.
I understand what's on there, and I'm very interested in the product or service.
And then I click on it, and then yes, This confirms to me what I've been reading on the ad.
So it's kind of like, um, your landing page should mirror what is on your ad, not exactly, obviously, because you want your landing page to elaborate more about your product or your service.
But you can't have somebody clicking on a ad for cupcakes and then all of a sudden you add a section where the guy's talking about, he'll change your gearbox in less than 3 days.
Doesn't make any sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
After the break, we'll get into add recommendations and talk about which ones you should pay attention to and which ones you should completely ignore.
Now 9 years ago, I used to work at Google.
I have 8 years ago, I founded my own ad agency, Ajala Digital.
And since then, we've helped over 3000 advertisers all over the world grow with Google ads.
And the matter where they're based on this globe, they have one challenge in common.
They are usually tired of having to figure it all out on their all with ads and not getting the return that they are looking for.
If you are currently tired of the ads, if you had tired of figuring it out on your own, and you need help of a real specialist and expert, then feel free to reach out.
Check the link in the description below.
Let's just talk about mistakes.
Um, I mean, I see so many.
It's weird because, you know, we we speak to clients, we encounter the stuff all the time.
Um, so what are some of the things that you see on average on the daily that drives you crazy, um, in customers' ad accounts and also about the way that customers think about their ads? So I think one of the aspects I still see people get wrong is when they look at the recommendation section of Google and Google suggests to new keywords to add, they just add the keywords blindly without thinking about them.
And that could end up costing you a lot of money because Google does it as a broad match.
So yeah.
That's amazing.
We had one student her auto apply recommendations were on, and she kind of had 31 keywords in the group, 31 or 36 keywords, um, in a campaign.
And the next day, she went to go find there were a 100 and teen extra keywords all broad match added to a campaign as well.
And obviously, she was freaking out because the keywords went from being this little to being that much.
And when we looked at most of the keywords as well, This is not her specific campaign, but when we look at a lot of auto recommended keywords from Google, they are very broad like they are.
They are way out there.
They're not even specific to what you're selling.
Um, so I think he here's the thing.
And this is the thing I try and tell all my students is you can't trust Google.
Is it fair for me to say that, Pamela? I would say you can trust their automated decisions.
So there are pretty much only, and I'm trying to see where I can pull them up now.
Um, there's only three recommendations that you wanna keep on auto apply.
1 is to remove, um, any keywords that might be duplicates.
Okay.
Um, let me see if I can bring somewhere.
Um.
What about the famous raise your budget? Yeah.
Don't.
Don't.
It's like it's like you, like, really think about whether that makes sense for you or not.
And the problem I've seen is not just to raise your budget, but then also when it asks you to switch to target CPA, target cost per acquisition, it often times automatically raises your budget with that.
Sirius.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So so if pretty much all the times that it targets CPA and the campaign was a certain budget and we changed the target CPA from the recommendations interface, then it also increased the budget.
Wow.
I didn't know that.
I did not know that.
That is scary stuff indeed.
Yeah.
A lot of what I get questioned about with my students and a lot of the mistakes I see are regarding optimization score.
Um, and the the size hand in hand with those 3 recommendations that you were talking about, whereby I always get this question of, Devon, my optimization score is almost brilliant.
It's perfect.
It's like 88%.
So Pamela, why if my optimization score is, like, above 80%, why am I even struggling to get sales and conversions? Because, I mean, according to Google, um, this is like an a great score.
So if my ads are quote unquote optimized, then what is the real problem if I have a high optimization score? So okay.
I'll get to them in a second.
I just found the 3 the 3 options that should be an auto auto apply and then we're gonna untick everything.
So it's use optimize the application.
That's okay.
Remove redundant keywords.
That was the one I was referring to before.
Yep.
And then remove conflicting negative keywords.
So that's absolutely Okay.
Um, so let's talk about that.
Let's talk about remove conflicting negative keywords.
Why is that okay to put it? So what I've seen is when people have conflicting keywords out there is something wrong with the way that your keywords are set up.
So you're either not covering the right keywords.
You don't have the right keywords setting a match option.
So that's usually what it boils down to, or sometimes it's also location mismatch with, like, your keyword is being triggered somewhere else.
But yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
I think for me, a lot of entrepreneurs, when they are approaching Google Ads, I think There's 2 types of entrepreneurs, really.
There are those ones who wanna be very cautious like they want a campaign with only, like, 3 keywords in them.
Um, every time that Google Ads spends a little bit more than what their daily budget is, they freak out and think, like, something's completely wrong, and they have to dig through the the campaign and find out why is it overspending.
And then I also meet another type of entrepreneur, and this entrepreneur is convinced that if they spend x amount of money on their ads.
That's somehow some way the ads are going to perform better.
In your experience, do you think that, um, spending more on ads, like, for example, if I go from a $50 a day to a $500 per day budget.
Would that increase the performance of my ads? Would my leads get cheaper? Would I get better conversions by doing that? In your experience, what do you think would happen if if I did that? So the system is overwhelmed if you increase your budget by 10 x in a day.
So you wanna give the system and with that, I mean, machine learning and AI and all of that, enough space to adjust to the new budget.
And really see how it can work best with this new budget.
So ideally, the best practice is Joan, raise your budget more than 20% once a week.
And that way, you give the system that that kind of like space to slowly increase the performance.
And also the one thing that you have to consider usually, I prefer to to make a budget change once every 2 weeks.
And the reason is the 1st week after the budget change is more like a test of how it is going with the new budget.
And then the 2nd week is where the system actually now knows how to work with it, and that's when you get home.
I see.
So, basically, the system is just experimenting on your behalf.
Yes.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Alright.
So some entrepreneurs might say, hey, Devon and Pamela.
I'm watching this podcast, and I'm really happy for everything that you guys are telling me.
I know you guys are the experienced professionals, but, hey, I've got bills to pay.
I need to ramp this thing up.
I got Christmas coming up.
I have to pay my stuff.
They're Christmas bonuses.
I need to make sure that I take care of my bills and stuff.
What would you say to this type of person? Because I tend to meet this personality type all the time where they want the results, they want them now, and you're just supposed to give them how much should they spend to get to those results.
And I know I keep on, like, circling back to this question, but I really I I really want a comprehensive, um, answer to give this type of person because I meet a lot of entrepreneurs that are so impatient for results that they would literally do anything.
They would even sacrifice performance just to get the next ten customers in the door.
Would you say that's got more to do with the way they run their business, or has it got more to do with the ads? It's the way they run their business and usually also their life.
So I'm gonna be very, very harsh here and direct.
If you see that you're in a hurry right now because of holidays, and most likely, this is not the first time you're in a hurry.
Most likely, you have been in a hurry before, and there are certain things that do not work on your schedule.
So Google Ads is its own schedule.
Meta Ads is its own schedule and so on.
So you cannot force anything right now.
The best thing you can do is work with the system and learn for it for next year.
Yeah.
So, you know, this is probably a moment for, like, reflection and growth as I like to call them and be like, you know, write down, hey.
Where where am I hurrying in my business? And, you know, usually, hurry never leads to good outcomes.
Like, and what can I do better next year? What what would have to happen in order for me to start early next year or to plan better? And speaking of planning your next campaign, What I wanna do is I wanna take this moment and tell you a little bit about my Google Ads course for small business owners.
Now this is one of the only Google Ads courses on the market that offers continuous monthly coaching calls and continuous content updates for a once off price.
You'll also get access to my private community so you can ask me any questions.
You can come up with any concerns.
You can show me your add data and get real time feedback from me, which is pretty cool.
So if you're interested in that, the course's name is profitable PPC, and I'm gonna link to it down below in the description.
And, yeah, that's basically all I wanted to say.
Now let's get back to the video.
Yeah.
That makes perfect sense.
I think and we can get into a little bit of a sidetrack over here, but I I think it's a fun sidetrack to go down is people start businesses, uh, for the for the wrong reasons.
And also, I've seen this one status, it said, if you're a business owner, um, trying to get your business to grow quickly is like being a farmer and screaming at the ground that your potatoes are not growing fast enough.
Yes.
Why do most entrepreneurs fall into this trap? This mental trap of I need it done.
I need it now.
Uh, listen ads lady.
Listen ads guy.
Get it done now so that I can prosper.
So I think one aspect might be, and I just had this conversation yesterday with with a friend of mine who who's a coach and there's someone that from her roster of clients who who's now a coach as well and that a woman was like, I just don't wanna do anything in my business.
I just wanna coach.
I don't like the accounting part.
I don't like the website part.
I just want somebody to run it for me.
And in that moment, you gotta be honest with yourself and be like, do I actually wanna be a business owner? Or am I better as an entrepreneur? Wouldn't I be better as a coach who's then employed by a company rather than, you know, running a business myself? Because if you run a business yourself, there are certain things you have to do and have to show an interest in.
Otherwise, you're gonna run into huge problems later.
If you don't know the basics of accounting, you're probably gonna be surprised at one point that you might have been overpaying in taxes that, um, you know, you have been paying more for certain things or whatever.
So you gotta show an interest or else to be really honest with yourself and and be like, is do I really wanna have to deal with this stuff? Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's I think that's very important to say.
And I think a lot of business owners On one hand, they feel like that they are saving money by running their own ads.
But on the other hand, they're not showing interest in the ads that they're running themselves.
They they don't really care.
They just want the magic you know, the the magic formula to just get my ads producing what they're supposed to be producing.
And Google Ads is weird because I know when I started, I had the same exact mentality.
I was like, listen, I'm just gonna get traffic to my website.
The traffic will convert and then that's it.
Then I buy my yacht.
I go to Monaco.
I find the apartment.
I always wanted, and then it's just chilled.
It's all all good.
All good.
Just me, Angelina Jolie, and my yacht.
That's all I really needed life.
But once I started running Google Ads, I started realizing there is a lot more that goes into setting up your ads, setting up your landing pages, figuring how everything works together.
This is something that We don't talk about enough, and I see this online all the time.
There are a lot of ad experts over there that spend all their time talking about the ads, and they don't talk about your brand.
They don't talk about your offer.
They don't talk about your positioning.
They don't talk about, um, determining who is a great fit for your company and who is not a great fit for your company.
Um, a lot of entrepreneurs think that they will just take any customer because anything is better than nothing.
And I think this is a big mistake because when you create your ads, when you create your landing pages, and when you make your own website to just accept any customer, it very unclear for me as a customer that comes on that wants something specific to find what I need because you're bushy catering to kind of everybody in the space.
So I think one of the biggest mistakes that I see is Business owners have the survival mentality where they just wanna make money.
They just wanna get clients through the door, but they are not fussy enough when it comes to clients.
And what usually ends up happening is Those are the ad campaigns that I see get 800 clicks, a 1200 clicks, and absolutely no one converts what's whatsoever.
And, uh, those companies will always say that, yeah, this is because, um, our Google ads aren't good at You could have the best Google ads on planet Earth, dude.
But if somebody searches for a specific keyword, as Pamela mentioned before, and if you're sending them to a landing page that confuses them or website that confuses them or bombards them with too many options, The average person only spends 53 seconds on the website.
You have 53 seconds to make that person understand who you are, what you do, and why they should trust you.
And a lot of business owners fail the 53 second test.
Ian, and that goes all the way back to what you asked me before, bud, you know, the 80 plus percent optimization score and WAMA WAMA are getting conversions.
And, like, First of all, you can dismiss recommendations from Google and the optimization score still goes up.
And that's okay.
Sometimes you have to do that.
Right? Actually, more often than not, you have to do that.
So by far, I don't accept everything.
I think I accept maybe 5% of the recommendations and everything else I dismiss.
And but then the question still remains is how are people behaving on your website? What do they find when they get there? What are they reading in the ad? Right? Are you using all the necessary assets and everything? So there are a whole bunch of other aspects that actually play into the customer journey than just the optimization score.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's very true.
And I think, um, a lot of business owners, to be honest, if I'm gonna be beauty brutally honest, they are not ready to have that conversation.
No.
No.
It's hard.
It's hard.
Yeah.
I think, look, you you love.
I'll I'm the same way with my business.
I absolutely love my business, man.
I wake up in the morning, and I'm like, I love what I do.
I love my website just the way it is, you know, I started this thing from scratch.
And, uh, now I've got employees and as business owners, you tend to fall in love with your business a little bit too much, and it stops you from being able to stand back and look at what you're doing in an objective way.
And I think a lot of us business owners, we struggle with that.
Even me, myself, like, I just hired a web designer to do my website and it's kind of hard for me to let go of that control of, oh my gosh, I don't know what my website is gonna look like.
I don't know if this person is gonna do a great job.
Yeah.
But also, I understand that somebody who is not Devon is going to be able to design the best website because they'll be able to look at my website from an outside perspective, whereas I could assume that the customers know this and the customer knows this, but a web designer with no knowledge of Google Ads He's gonna make up the website or she, in this case, is gonna wait make up the website so that it makes sense for somebody coming from the outside in.
And, I mean, in terms of, you know, like, top failures with Google Ads or top ways to fail with Google Ads, what's like a common horror story that you've experienced? Me, myself, or one of my clients? I mean, with your clients.
Oh, there's so many.
I had one client who spent, I think, $375 on a single click on his ad.
Never resulted in anything.
And, um, I the it's so difficult to speak about this because I love this client to bits.
I absolutely love this client's to bits, but He was so adamant at going down one route with his ads and following this one strategy to the tee that he couldn't stand back despite myself and his other staff members telling him that, listen, this is not working.
It's just really not hoping.
And what happened was every single month, we just ended up burning through more and more and more money.
And, um, it was so heartsoul just to just to witness somebody just burning through loads of money and telling me, I'm, listen, guy, it doesn't matter how many clicks you have.
We need to, at some stage, go, okay, that's enough of the strategy.
We need to prove it.
And, um, this is an important thing that I need to talk about, and sorry, Pamela.
I know I'm answering this question in a very roundabout way, but I think we should talk about this as well.
Different ad types are gonna work well with different types of business.
Mhmm.
Right? So I'll give you an example.
Let's say your, um, attempt.
And, um, you fix a lot of people's teeth.
Yes.
You can still get good outcomes with your um, YouTube ads, you might get good outcomes with your display ads.
But where you really wanna be as a dentist is in the search, because when people have urgent dental problem They are most likely going to Google them, and they're most likely gonna search for the solutions.
And those people will usually have the intent to wanna do something about the problem then and there.
However, if you're a dentist and now you wanna run your own Google Ads strategy and you wanna tell me that, no, I think we should spend $3,000,000 on display ads.
Well, we can keep on spending that $3,000,000.
I mean, I'm still gonna get paid.
I'm still gonna send you my invoice.
I got no problem with going down um, the the wrong route with a client, but I think sometimes being stubborn as a business owner, especially when it comes to Google Ads is not a good thing because that hope theory that you have, like, oh, I if we just get a 100 more clicks, If we just get a few more clicks, if I just up my budget by a $100 per day, I know sooner or later, something really good is good.
I I'm very scared of that mentality, and it's one of the scariest things to witness up front where you could literally see a client just burning through ads and just wanna keep on going.
Yeah.
I think for us, that's a very easy way to make a decision whether we wanna work with someone because either they accept what we say.
They can, of course, argue with it.
No problem.
We can always discuss it.
But if they don't end up accepting most of what we say, then there's no use of us coming in.
And I've had these clients, unfortunately, before, where and thankfully not many, but they just wanted to work with someone to prove themselves that they were right.
Oh, spicy.
Tell me about that.
Tell me about that.
It's an ego thing where you, literally, you maybe everything's going wrong right now, and you're looking just for one thing to be right in.
And you know, just looking for another person who can say, hey.
You know what? I knew it.
Or you can prove your team is like, hey.
I knew it.
I told you so, like, or you can show, hey.
Nobody does it as good as me.
So it's a very ego driven thing.
And thankfully, these days, we don't have it anymore because now, like, I I know how to recognize that in in the first call that I would have with a potential client, but, yeah, that's sometimes that can be rough.
So if, you know, if freelance is watching this or know the ages use someone, Always know that you have a choice.
Always have a choice with who you want to work.
You might think you don't have a choice, but that's just a lie of your brain.
You always have a choice.
And so Why work with someone who actually doesn't even wanna listen to you? Yeah.
Yeah.
But I think that's something that somebody somewhere needs to hear right now.
And does I would say the same thing to business owners as well.
Look.
If you're in business and you have your fundamentals down, that business can make money no matter what.
I know that we're Google Ads experts, and we're gonna tell you that, listen, Google Ads is the best platform on earth.
And because for us, it is you know, we work with the stay in and day out, but you could make money with TikTok ads.
Mhmm.
You can make money with Facebook ads.
Sorry.
Meta ads.
You can make money with Reddit ads if you really want.
However, I feel like a lot of business owners don't have the fundamentals in place, and that makes running ads so much more difficult than it has to be.
Um, if you don't know what your main offer is, if you don't know how much profit do you have if you don't know what is a a a good lead and what is a bad lead.
And, you know, we talk about these things and somebody might be listening to us and say, yeah, but of course, Devon, I know how much profit I make.
I know how much I charge.
I I assumed, right, when I started off, I assumed all business owners know their their numbers, their margins, and stuff.
But the more business owners I meet, they literally are just shoving money into ads and somehow your business is gonna be profitable.
We don't they don't know the numbers.
They don't know how much their lead should cost.
They don't know how much they they should be, um, what is a good cost per lead, what is a bad cost per lead, They don't know their margins on their products, and it's kind of hard to set up a good campaign when you don't know what a good campaign looks like.
Yeah.
And I I've heard this now multiples.
I've heard of multiples people say this.
And it's so true.
It's, if you don't know your numbers, you don't have a business, you have an expensive hobby.
Oh, that is true.
That is super true.
That is super true.
And I think also if you have this expensive hobby, don't bring me into the expensive hobby.
You don't be.
Being the I'll be all by yourself.
You know, you don't have to hire.
Sometimes I feel like real talk.
I'm a consultant.
Google Ads consultant.
People hire me.
People pay me per hour for my advice.
Within sitting with somebody for 5 minutes, I will tell them something.
Yeah.
And they will tell me they already knew it.
They already knew what I what I was gonna tell them.
Okay.
So here's here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
Why why do we so oftentimes know things, but we don't do them? Um, because it's more it's easier to be comfortable and wrong than it is to be uncomfortable and have to correct something.
Yes.
True.
Yes.
Yes.
And what I would add to that is that we actually haven't internalized the information.
So we just talk about it.
We're like, and, hey, guilty as charged.
Um, we just talk about it, but we haven't really, like, internalize it and fault it and actually believe it.
Okay.
So let's dig deeper into that.
Could you give me a a concrete example? Who said many? Let me see.
What are we gonna take here? Um I like the way she smiles.
Like, she's looking around a room of people in the mind, and she's like I'm just trying to, like, pull up full of different thoughts.
I'm like, hey.
I wish direction we're gonna take this.
So easiest example.
Now this doesn't refer to Google Ads, but, and this refers to money.
People know they should save money.
Or they should invest money because in your bank account, it's not gonna grow.
Now people are already gonna invest? No.
Are they gonna save? No.
You still I think in the US, like, more than, like, 50% of people have, like, less than a thousand bucks in their savings account or something.
So why do people not do that? Because they actually have an internalized knowledge.
And they, as you said, don't wanna make a change because it's so much more controversial in a place where they are.
Yeah.
And then painful to realize that you've been wrong, then you might have missed out on doing things differently.
Right? And That also relates to Google Ads, right? It's like you gotta put your ego down and understand that to do things better and do things differently, you cannot keep doing the same thing that you did because then, I mean, also many people said this, not my words.
Is if you keep doing the same things, keep getting the same results.
So you gotta do it differently.
You gotta be open, and you gotta be open to experiments.
So I think one of the biggest aspects that we kinda help our clients realize is I gotta have this patience and this trust and think differently for things to now go differently.
Yeah.
That's beautiful.
That is beautiful.
I love to tell my students this.
I tell them, trust the process.
We will get you there.
You will make mistakes.
It will all work out in the end.
But one thing you need to have is you need to have buy in and you need to have trust in the process.
I am still making mistakes with my Google Ads to this day.
There's it's no such thing as but what I absolutely love to do is I absolutely love to go and experiment.
Um, so, for example, Google ads, um, just, uh, released demand gen campaigns, I think they're cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now I don't know anything about those.
I really don't.
But I told my, um, community manager, Irene, just go and take a shot.
Like, take $5 a day and go burn them on a demand gen, and let's see what happens.
Like, just go and play around.
And immediately, she got caught up this in, oh, what do I do? How do how do I do this properly? And I said to I do not want you to do this properly.
I want you to go out there, and I want you to just let it flow.
Just figure it out.
There are no expectations.
If you get this wrong, we're gonna lose $5 a day.
I think we'll be fine.
But I want you to go out there and really get a feel for what the campaign is, what it does, and what your initial results are.
I think a lot of people have this thing where they've already made up the initial results in their mind before running the ad.
And if the ad doesn't meet those expectations, then all of a sudden the ad becomes a failure.
Yeah.
It's and and just honestly just go with what you feel is right, um, because and I'm just looking at demand gen.
And, honestly, it's a simplified version of a performance max campaign mixed with how Facebook sets up its campaigns.
I had that feeling as well.
I had that feeling as well.
As soon as I saw what demand gen was, I was liking this just sounds like a mini performance max campaign.
That's it.
Yeah.
That's pretty much it.
I mean, the the one thing that's new is they give you now carousel image ad options.
That's what Facebook does.
Facebook gives you an option single image ad video ad carousel image ad, and that's exactly what Google is doing here.
So We are.
Sorry to interrupt you, but you know what? I find so amazing about Google ads is They've literally got every single digital marketer on the planet telling them exactly what they want.
More transparency.
They wanna be able to take exact opposite.
And they just go and they look at it.
So what we're hearing is what you guys really want is carousel ads.
This is this is what we're we went into the lab.
We've come back, and this is what we've come up with.
Look.
You get these fancy little carousel ads now.
It's crazy.
It's absolutely crazy.
So I think for our final thoughts on this, if I I'm gonna give my little condensed summary about this is, and if you're listening to this podcast and You feel like when we describe these business owners, you feel like you might be one of them, or you might feel like the shoe fits a little bit too well.
Um, there's absolutely nothing wrong with any of these personality types.
You know, all of us are somewhere in life and all of us are trying to get somewhere else.
Uh, myself and Pam included, we are doing this podcast because we're trying to get somewhere in life.
However, placing unrealistic expectations on your ads and not standing back and absorbing the information so that you can get the right type of results would be a big mistake.
It's it's something where you can't delegate this to somebody else unless you have a marketing agency running your ads or unless you have somebody who does it for you.
But it's Google Ads is not a overnight thing.
It's not a 3 week thing.
It's not a, oh, I just need to get customers in the door thing.
Google Ads is at least gonna require 6 months or even more of your serious attention to get any types of, um, outstanding results.
It could be it could be less I've had some students have gone to my course material, and they've got a leads and great results on day 1, but it's not the average.
Usually what happens is, and this is myself included.
You run a campaign, you get some data back, you use that data to inform your strategy and inform your decision, and then you keep on running those same campaigns and usually slowly, but surely over time, the results become better and better because you know more about your ideal client.
I think that was that was a perfect ending.
Love you.
Yeah.
Definitely.
Okay.
So now let's talk about why Google Ads doesn't want you to go to the toilet.
Alright.
All creative for you to put it in that connection.
So yeah.
Definitely.
That's what we're gonna talk about.
Am I gonna share my screen and show this article on you? Sure.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Cool.
Give me a second.
Let me just pull it up here.
Um, there we go.
Great.
And somebody who's just responded to this, and and you can understand this.
And you can read this.
They're gonna post it.
It's like, And all to take a test where the answer to all questions is use smart bidding and use the performance planner.
I I read that as well.
Auto apply all recommendations.
Alright.
Cool.
So for those of you who don't know what we're going on about, basically, um, if you wanna take the Google Ads certification test, right, And we're not talking about the main certificates.
I think they've branched out, and there are so many of these things now.
I can't keep track.
When I started, there were only, like, 3 of them.
Now there's, like, a whole bunch that you can qualify yourself in.
But basically, um, you are not allowed to have other human beings around you when you take the test.
Um, you can't have headphones in when you take the test.
Um, in fact, there's a a whole list of stuff here.
So I'm gonna I'm gonna talk you guys through it.
You're not allowed to have open books not allowed to have notes.
You're not allowed to have use scratch paper.
You're not allowed.
It's my favorite one to take restroom breaks.
Not allowed people.
If you have a p, hold it in.
Get your certification instead.
You are not allowed to use a handy old calculator.
You will have a calculator built into your test screen.
You are not allowed to use headphones.
You are not allowed to wear hats.
Um, okay.
I thought our AI was very advanced, but, apparently, you're not allowed to wear hats.
Um, you can't take your exam, and I think this is the most damaging one.
Uh, you can't take your exam in a public area without any people in the background and moderate background noises allowed.
Come again? You can take your exam in a public area, but you can't have any people in the background.
Oh, I'm sorry.
But I thought the definition of public area was that there would be people somewhere in the background.
I mean, you know, now, you know, whenever you enter in the next Starbucks that, you know, whoever's sitting on a soft foot, there's no people behind it.
We're like, we'll have to stop.
Exactly.
And stick your air if you don't like the person, just stick your head in and wave, and then you know that person, That person will never go anywhere in life.
Yes.
I think one.
Yeah.
Sorry, Pam.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
I think the funniest thing is not the article.
The funniest thing is the comments at the bottom of the article because that shows you what digital marketers are really thinking.
Not a bit.
They'll go there yet.
They'll go there yet.
Well, um, the Otter the thing that that bothers me here as you know, a European and and someone who values some sort of data privacy is you have to take a video of your surroundings.
Why why do they why is that important to them? Yeah.
And, honestly, when I read that, I think I'm just not gonna renew my certifications anymore because I I agree.
Look, holding up an ID.
Cool.
Taking a picture.
Cool.
But, honestly, like and and I'll be already be on camera, so you already see what's behind me, and you already see my eye movement.
You're already proctering my screen.
Why would you have an interest in anything else around me? That's the part I don't trust.
Yeah.
Like, what's the access so much data? The question I also have is, are these gonna be just AIs watching you again? Are these you ones? No.
No.
No.
No.
It says it's real people.
So there is a, It says during the exam, a live proctor will monitor your activity via webcam and screen sharing software.
If the proctor notices any unauthorized behavior, they will pause your exam and message you.
Which is also a little bit ridiculous because you think, what is the value in this of Google getting so many people where their only job is to proctor you? Yeah.
At any point in time, that means you gotta be staffed 247.
Yeah.
Um, now, I think it's a good idea to put some measures on it, like, to not make it as easy as it was so far to get it.
But I think my my silence protest maybe this time, and I'm just not gonna do them anymore.
I I honestly didn't bother.
I made a whole YouTube video about this way.
I met so many people who have that piece of paper and still don't know how to optimize.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Still don't know what they're doing with the campaign.
I feel like also Google Ads, if you wanna say that somebody certified to actually work with your ads, Could you at least teach them how to run the ads? Could you at least teach them a couple of fundamentals? Because if the whole Google ad certification is just about us applying your recommendations and technically speaking, we don't need the certification uh, in the first place.
And I think also this is where the comment section is really it's really spot on.
So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna take a look at the comment section and then to see how other people are reacting to this.
Alright.
So let's go through it.
Um This is the top one is Yeah.
This is Pamela's favorite one.
Pamela, I'll let you I'll let you read this one out to us.
That's what I'll wear.
And all the tests were the answer to all questions is use smart bidding and use the performance planner.
Um, I think he should have said more like an all to take a test where the answer to all questions is 42.
Yeah.
That's basically true.
That is super true.
And, uh, Melissa writes here, uh, this is so crazy without any people in the background, no headphones, uh, WTF, some of us work from home with other people around and wear headphones so we don't bug others.
It's completely ridiculous.
I tend to agree with her.
Like, in I it's so it's not picky.
I disagree because honestly, we were all taught in school to focus.
Right? So now, yes, music could help you to focus.
But honestly, if you can't focus for, like, 45 minutes or an hour, then you really gotta check yourself.
Like, honestly, like, And I know we're in this in this time now where we use mobile phones and and people cannot focus anymore.
And, honestly, the Google Ads exam is silent.
There is no volume, so tackling you doing it would not bug anybody else.
Do you think that maybe they're saying that people shouldn't wear headphones? Cause they're scared that you could be on a call with someone.
Yeah.
And somebody's giving you the answers on the call.
And now it looks like you're listening to music, but they're really giving you Okay.
Alright.
Cool.
Alright.
Because I listen to music everywhere I go.
So Yeah.
And I mean, I I love music as well, right, and I sometimes have my my music on and everything.
But this is actually the the rules that they have is the same rules as as they would have in universities minus the video use surroundings.
Again, that's not common.
Right? So and it's gonna be interesting for me to see how my students are gonna deal with that because, actually, like, when I teach this in university, getting one of the Google ad certificates gives them bonus points for the class.
Um, they have to to pass that.
And, obviously, in the past, quite a lot took advantage of that and did it.
So So it's gonna be interesting to observe how how that's gonna be this time.
Yeah.
Well, people, that was the news.
Um, as you can see over here, um, if you wanna have the Google Ads test, then make sure that you go to the bathroom and just take care of everything you need to take care of before.
Remove your head collection.
Exactly.
No no fancy looking hats.
No no swag.
Just go in there.
Do your thing.
And then after that, you should be fine.
So, yeah, there's another interesting news article and people that was the new session.
Well, thank you very much for watching.
Um, we enjoyed the session.
Did it repair? We did.
We did.
And, um, I think the takeaway is just remove people from your life.
Yeah.
Completely.
Like, Google just doesn't want you to have any friends, any family.
There's just nothing, basically.
So if you're on a if you're on a deserted island, perfect time to take your Google Ads exam.
Alright, guys.
We'll see you in the next one, please.
Pamela, how are you doing today? I'm good.
Thank you.
I'm just trying to find a middle of the screen and somehow.
I'm absolutely confused, but I'm really, really ready for for everything I'm gonna talk about.
Okay.
So the middle of the screen is always where you think it's not.
So go the direction that you think it's not gonna be.
That's where you're gonna find the middle of the
