So this is the paid advertising episode. It’s part three in my series on the three methods of getting more website traffic and honestly it’s the one I get the most questions about because people are either scared to try it or they’ve tried it and it didn’t go the way they expected.
I cover several paid channels including Google, Meta, display, newsletter, and podcast advertising. I also brought in two experts, one for Google Ads and one for Meta, and they both said something that I think is the most important thing to take away from this episode before you spend a single dollar.
Enjoy the episode!
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Google Ads
Meta Ads
Display Ads
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Choosing The Right Channel
🧰 I love me a good digital marketing tool. This week’s recommended tool is Berrycast.
If you’re familiar with Loom, this is like that. A screen recording tool that allows users to capture their screen, record their webcam, and create videos effortlessly. I like the interface better than Loom.
🎧 This week’s recommended podcast episode is The Internet Got Made at a Made Bed: Shamed or Just Shown? on Home and Hosting with Loui Burke.
I’ve been making my bed for years. Like I don’t know how to leave the bedroom without making the bed. It’s very minimalistic. One pillow, sheets and cover. I don’t do all the decorative pillows. Mostly because a few years back my dog, Phoebe would sleep on them and I didn’t want hair all over my pillows. So I’d always cover up my pillows. And if you have too many well, that’s just annoying to me.
Anyway, the point of my story… the other day I saw someone making the bed and sharing his opinion and showing what he does. It said the way I was doing it looked like a teenager’s room or something. And then he showed a better way. And it was simple! And in fact it looks so much nicer!
Turns out he upset people. Or rather people got upset by his video. So he put out this podcast in response. And it’s really good. It talks about the dynamics of people and social and misunderstandings.
I’m truly trying not judge the people who got mad but come on! I know everyone has their triggers… but it was just someone making a fucking bed!
Find other recommended episodes here.
Other Resource Links
Reach out to Dewan Chapman on LinkedIn.
Reach out to Allison Harpole-Coley via her website.
Your Website Affects Your Google Ads + More Insider Tips
https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001047-ads-in-chatgpt
Listen on Spotify
tbdListen on Apple
tbdA lot of service businesses shy away from paid advertising because they’re unsure how to track the return on their dollars, it’s confusing or they’re afraid to choose incorrectly and waste money.
This episode shares some paid advertising channels and what to consider in choosing. The best thing you can do when starting to advertise or considering a new channel to advertise on, is look at it like an experiment. Have a goal and understand that there are multiple outcomes.
Remember, there are three methods of getting more website traffic. Organic, paid, and earned. Today we’re talking paid. That’s the bucket where you pay for your traffic. Think Google or Meta ads, display ads, or advertising in a newsletter or podcast.
Let’s bring in questions 1-3 from the episode a couple weeks ago. They were to help you think through what channels to consider for your website marketing.
Question one was about how much time you have each week. Paid ads are not set and forget. I feel like a lot of people think you set them and blamo, you wait for the leads to roll in.
You have to monitor, correct, and keep adjusting levers to get results. So if your answer to question one was ‘not much,’ factor that in before you start spending.
Question two was whether you can track a lead all the way to an inquiry and ultimately a sale. This one is non-negotiable for paid. If you cannot track what your ad spend is actually producing, you have no way to know if the experiment worked.
Question three was how fast you need results. Paid is the fastest of the three traffic methods, but fast is relative. The platforms need time to learn. If you go in expecting leads on day two, you’re going to be sorely disappointed and probably pull the plug before the data gets useful. That said, it’s not like it can’t happen, it just doesn’t as a rule of thumb.
Paid Advertising Using Google Ads
First up, Google Ads. I’m bringing in my go-to-google-guy, Dewan Chapman of Trevally Marketing. He was on the show almost 2 years ago sharing how your website itself affects the performance of your ads. Link in the show notes for that.
Google Ads has changed and here’s how.
Dewan: A few years ago, paid search was much more manual. You would choose your keywords, write your ads, decide on where the traffic wins, set your bids, and then you’d largely control the user journey yourself. That still exists to a degree, but Google is more heavily leaning towards an AI and an automated version.
So when people hear the terms like Performance Max, which is also called pMax, AI Max automated bidding or smart campaigns, what Google’s really doing is using machine learning and some AI to make more decisions on your behalf or on the advertiser’s behalf. And honestly, that is probably the biggest shift happening in paid advertising right now.
When you hear terms like Performance Max or P-Max or smart campaigns and your eyes glaze over, like what the shit is that… Dewan explains what goes into each.
Dewan: With Performance Max, instead you’ll give Google in one campaign all of those formats or all of those assets, like headlines, descriptions, videos images, landing pages any of the signals, conversion goals, and then Google automatically builds out and distributes those ads across those formats or across its inventory.
The system then continuously tries to test, so it’ll try and use different headlines, it’ll try use various audiences that you give it placements, bidding auctions, all of those types of things and obviously the conversions. And it is doing this at scale, so no human would be able to do this as fast as Google is.
And again I wanna say we’re giving Google the credit here of saying it is doing this. It obviously is, but you fit with inside its system. So if you don’t give it all of those formats, it has less to work off of. This is exactly like training an AI. So the more assets, the more videos you can give it, the more display creatives you can give it, the more text variations you can give it, the more conversion signals or pushbacks, like closed loops you can give it, the more that it’ll be able to work with and the better it’ll get.
But very often a lot of advertisers I see give it as little as possible and then it doesn’t seem to work as well because it doesn’t have much to work off of. Yeah. Then the next one is AI Max for search. And I think this is probably one of the bigger evolutions that we’re seeing. So historically from a search perspective Google would rely heavily on us, the advertisers or the person running the Google Ads account to choose the correct keywords, and we also have match types, but I won’t get into that now.
AI Max expands beyond that. So Google now looks at broader intent signals, obviously through everything that you’re giving it. Landing page content, so your website becomes very important. Historical search or behavior, this is inside their own black box. User signals and then predictive modeling to decide where your ad would be the most relevant or should be served and if it’s an exact keyword to your account.
So instead of matching keywords, Google’s now increasingly trying to interpret the intent. That sounds great, and that generally is great, but it can also get it wrong, and that’s, I think, the part where advertisers need to understand or businesses need to understand that AI is going to get things wrong at times, but the benefit should outweigh those times where your brand might not be seen in the correct way that you want to show it or you’re matching to traffic that you might not want to, and you need to then make those corrections.
Remember question two from episode 106? Whether you can track a lead all the way to a sale? Here’s where that comes in.
Dewan: This is important for almost any business, but specifically for these campaigns. The modern Google ad campaigns that I’m talking about no longer just work off keywords. So you have to be feeding these campaigns the right data, the right conversion signals for them to improve, for them to get better, for them to match better.
If you tell Google every time a form submitted across your website is equally valuable, it’s gonna keep optimizing towards all of those. However, if you tell it one is more valuable over the other, or one service is more valuable, and this can be done in various different ways through these campaigns, you’ll then start to change its behavior, the way that the algorithm or these smart campaign AIs are running to get you the best quality.
But if junk leads come in and you’re not telling it, “Hey, these are bad quality leads,” or, “I don’t want these leads,” that’s when we then have, um, the issues of it keeps generating those bad quality leads ’cause it hasn’t learnt in any way. So yeah, the businesses that are winning with automation today are usually the ones feeding Google the best data, who have the cleanest data.
So qualified leads booking consultations, revenue, customer quality metrics, whether it’s lead weighting, any of those things, or actual sales, and what we like to call is like the closed loop, pushing that information back in to your Google Ads account from a CRM. Those companies are seeing the best results because it’s not just saying, “Hey, somebody came in and completed a form.”
If that person came in and completed a form and they’re looking for a job and you’re not a HR recruitment company, that’s not necessarily a lead for you. So to keep getting more of those and spending budget on Google Ads to get those doesn’t move the needle forward. So if we say, “Oh, let’s remove those out of it,” and we actually got fewer leads and then we keep saying to Google, “Train off of those,” you’re gonna get a better outcome.
So that is definitely where you wanna be focusing because the AI is only as good as the data that you give it.
So if I were to sum this up for you, if you’re just considering Google Ads and not yet run them, it’s this. Get your foundation solid first. Clear messaging, good tracking, an optimized proper landing page. Then let the automation do its thing and stay involved enough to correct it along the way. Or preferably hire Dewan. That’s what I do. It’s made my life that much easier. Here’s what he recommends.
Dewan: It really depends on the goal you’re trying to set for these, but it can really move quickly. If your your website, just to recap, if your website and your messaging is weak and y- you… it’s very unclear and you don’t really know who your audiences are and your tracking isn’t set up and your sales team aren’t feeding back data, I would probably recommend not moving into some of these campaigns yet, and rather working on that process, improve the process before you move across.
But if everything is set, there’s no reason why people shouldn’t be pushing into these campaigns, but it is a work in progress. You do have to put effort in to see the results. So if you can see paid ads as both traffic generation and lead generation with a feedback loop, you will see good results, and the more the feedback loop comes in you’ll learn what people are searching for, you’ll learn what messages are working you’ll learn what’s d- generating most of the demand alongside the AI.
And you can do the human side of it, and you can say, “Yes, that’s right. That isn’t right. This is working. We like this. We don’t like that.” and that’ll help you drive the quality as quick as possible, get your campaigns working as quick as possible and you’ll start to see the results and start believing in the AI as quick as possible.
But it all requires a lot of time, energy, and effort. So I don’t want it to sound like it’s just AI set and forget. There’s a lot that does need to go in from a human perspective to make that all work as best as possible.
Ok, who’s gonna try Google Ads!?
Paid Advertising Using Meta Ads
Let’s move over to Meta Ads. Meta Ads is Instagram and Facebook. For this, we’ll hear from Allison Harpole-Coley who has been running Meta ads for nine years.
One of the most important questions I had for her was what do you actually need to have in place before you start.
Allison: You need a solid funnel infrastructure, is what I tell people. Like, I want to know that your funnel works. If I send someone to your funnel with an ad, they need to be able to go through it successfully, and your offer also needs to be proven. I wanna make sure that it’s going to sell.
Because the thing is about ads, and this is where people get it messed up a lot, is that ads are an accelerator.
I also asked her about boosting posts versus going into the Ads Manager. Because boosting is where most of us start. It’s soooo much simpler than using the damn ads manager. And you’re gonna find out why you won’t want to do that for long.
Allison: The way that I think of boosting is it’s kind of like riding a bike with training wheels.
So it gets you started and I think that’s perfectly fine, but when you really want to progress and you wanna really learn how to ride that bike, that’s when you need to actually advance into the Ads Manager. It is more complex, and it just, it’s overwhelming. That’s why most business owners hesitate jumping into the Ads Manager, ’cause they simply don’t know what they look at when they get in there.
But there’s a lot more control once you get in the Ads Manager, so your money goes further, and you can actually strategize to make sure you’ve got the right ads designed to meet the end goal that you wanna reach. If you just keep boosting posts, odds are what you’re doing is you’re just, you’re just getting eyeballs on your ads, which has a purpose, it does, but it’s usually not the end result that’s going to meet success for a business owner.
Last bit here from Allison… What you select as your campaign objective tells Meta what result to go get for you. Uber important.
Allison: So Meta’s gonna do its job actually. It’s gonna get you more eyeballs on that ad, but you’re gonna say, “But that’s not what I wanted. I actually wanted people to get to actually purchase what I’m selling.”
So you have to make sure you choose the right objective, and so you would need to go in Ads Manager and select a purchase objective.
Paid Advertising Using Display Ads
Display ads are the ones that follow you around the internet. You looked at a pair of shoes one time and now they’re everywhere you go. That’s display.
For service businesses, display is less about a purchase of a product and more about staying visible to people who have already been to your website. It’s called retargeting, and it’s probably the most practical use of display for us.
You can run display ads through Google’s network, but there are also other ad networks out there that place ads across different websites and apps. You know those recipe websites? Those ads are display ads. Google’s is just the biggest and most commonly used.
Question two from our question list, about tracking your method all the way to a sale, applies here too. If you can’t track whether someone who saw your display ad eventually became a client, it’s a hard spend to justify.
Paid Advertising Using Newsletters
Have you heard of newsletter advertising? It’s exactly what it sounds like. You pay to have your business mentioned or featured inside someone else’s newsletter.
But there’s another angle to it that I want to share from my own experience. I advertised on a newsletter directory website. Basically a place where people go to find newsletters to subscribe to. Because the audience there is specifically people who like newsletters, I consistently got sign-ups to my own newsletter from it.
If you’re considering newsletter advertising, think about where your people are already paying attention. Is there a newsletter in your industry or your niche that your ideal clients are reading? Start there. Use that newsletter directory to find newsletters. They match up sponsorship opportunities. It’s called Inbox Reads.
Tracking is straightforward here compared to some other channels. You can use a custom URL or a promo code, or you can simply ask new subscribers or clients how they found you. Wondering how much it costs generally? Like most channels, it varies widely. I’ve seen the range from $40 an issue all the way up to $5k. Not kidding. For some people, this is their business and their revenue model.
Paid Advertising Using Podcasts
I’ve got one more paid advertising option I’d like share and that’s podcast advertising. Since you’re a podcast listener, you’ve probably heard them. They run in various areas of an episode, sometimes too many and too long in my opinion but sa la vie.
To track this one, you’ll need a special promo code or special URL. It’s kind of like TV commercials in that way. The thing to most consider here is the timeliness of your message. You’ll get more bang for your buck if your advertisement is evergreen in nature, meaning it isn’t time sensitive.
Podcasts are one of those long-term channels so you’re advertisement could be heard for years.
Once you know that, you can decide on whether you want the host to read it in their voice or supply the audio (or probably AI it now) and let it be dynamically inserted in various shows. The latter method is a lower cost. for either it’s anywhere between $10 and $100 per thousand downloads.
🌟
The questions from episode 106 about whether people are actively searching for you and about your profit margin fit well with paid advertising.
If people are actively searching for your service, Google Ads makes a lot of sense because you’re showing up at the moment someone is already looking. If the answer is more like, people don’t really know to search for what I do, then Meta or podcast advertising might be a better fit because you’re getting in front of them before the search happens.
Knowing your profit margin matters more than people think when it comes to paid. If your margin is healthy, you have more runway to let a campaign learn and build data before it starts converting. If your margin is thin, you need faster signals, which means you want a channel where tracking is really dialed in and the feedback loop is shorter.
The simplest starting point is to pick one channel that calls to you. Give it what it needs, watch the data, and adjust. You’re not married to it so if it isn’t working after a reasonable amount of time and you’ve been feeding it the right information, you move on and try something else.
Here’s The Takeaway
Paid advertising can work as a short term experiment or long term intentional website traffic channel.
Pick one channel, give it time.
If your offer is clear and your tracking is set up, paid can be the fastest way to more website traffic.
If those things aren’t in place, spending money will end up showing you where there’s room for improvement in your website marketing strategy.
About This Show
The Get More Website Traffic Podcast covers the strategies, tools, and tactics that help small business owners get more people to their website and turn that traffic into leads. Host Barb Davids breaks it down in plain language every week, with bonus episodes featuring other business owners sharing their expertise on topics that matter to running a small business. Produced by Compass Digital Strategies.
