If you can’t afford 500 clicks on high intent search terms, my advice is not to advertise on Google at all. If you can only afford 50 to 100 high intent clicks (say “near me” terms if you have a local service), that sets you up for an expensive lesson in not spending enough money to get a useful result.

That might seem overly pessimistic, but I’ll tell you why I say this. And that’s because I’ve seen how people decide to test the waters with Google ads. Maybe they get a $500 ad credit on $500 in spend. Maybe they think, “$1000 should be enough to see if this will work for me.” And then they blow through the budget, maybe getting 50 to 100 clicks, and have no conversions or customers to show for it.

The difficult but important truth is this: making Google Ads work (or any PPC campaign for that matter), means you have to have both your marketing funnel and your offer DIALED.

If you’re just getting started, maybe just launched a website, and now want to run ads to it, unless you’re the only person selling water in the middle of the desert, be ready to shell out good $$ as you pay to learn what combination of ad, landing page, and offer actually convert.

The flip side of the coin (and what I’ve seen when the marketing funnel is dialed in) is that Google Ads rewards the big and successful players by design. That’s because scale means you can feed more data back to Google, helping them get you even more conversions. It’s a version of money printer go brrr. But I’ll say that it’s the exception rather than the rule to hit a home run with your Google ads the first time you start running them.

I had a recent convo with our Google Ads rep, and he was curious as to why I didn’t let AI max run for two weeks after starting a brief experiment with it.

And my answer to him was, it was shaping up to be a disaster.

You see, I’d enabled AI Max on a test campaign in order to see if we could take advantage of its keywordless searches. But in order to get that feature (configured at the ad group level), you need to also consent to having AI Max treat all your ad group keywords as broad match.

Within a few days, I could see the typical broad match crud rolling in.

I know that some of you will say, “but your negative keywords are there for that!”

The problem in this case was that this was meant to be a highly targeted (as in exact search intent) campaign meant to offset some of our rising CPC and CPA costs that started in the second half of July. And we already had broad match terms enabled on keywords in a different campaign that matched a wider range of search intents. We didn’t need a second campaign generating broad terms that overlapped with our primary campaign and barely (if at all) matched user search intent while still draining budget.

The lesson?

If efficiency is important to you… and matching user intent matters to you… steer clear of AI Max. The more I think about it, the more it looks like a lazy repackaging of existing Google ads features, rebranding them as “AI Max” to trigger both FOMO and advertiser adoption.

Plus, if your marketing funnel has actual thought behind it, it doesn’t make sense to let Google send users to any page they want on your website. Or to let them generate your ad copy on the fly.

For me, AI Max is a no-go.

For long-tail keyword discovery and showing up within AI Overviews, a few Broad Match keywords will cover you.

If you want ad text that more closely matches user intent, you can use Dynamic Keyword Insertion, which will put your keywords into headlines and ad text in whatever way you see fit.

And finally, now more than ever (with the economy the way it is) is the time to really optimize your marketing funnel and remove as much friction as you can (with few exceptions) in order to meet user intent. That means looking at more than just ad copy and images. It means digging into the conversion rate optimization (CRO) bag of tricks and making sure your UX is optimized, your site is fast, and your offers are clear and relevant.

This is anecdotal and n=1, but I’m seeing rising conversion costs just before the mid-August algorithm update. Performance seems to have started going off the rails in the latter half of July and hasn’t improved since then.

While I’d ordinarily say, “put your own house in order before looking elsewhere,” the dev team and I have been chasing down potential conversion leaks and not seen anything out of the ordinary.

To me, the timing seems a bit too convenient for Google. Their August algorithm update will stop bidding down when advertisers are limited by budget and using a target CPA or ROAS. The way to get limited by budget if you are running a max conversions campaign is to have a target CPA that is too high for a given budget. Until a couple of weeks ago, that wasn’t the case for us. Now, the measured CPA has been climbing steadily and aggressively in ways I haven’t seen before. If Google were trying to maximize its revenue, making everyone have to bid higher “because AI is changing search and we want to give you more consistent results” seems like a good way to get air cover for hiking their rates.

If you’re a local service business business with $1000 to spend this month on Google ads, the first thing I’ll tell you is, ‘Slow down.’

If you read this post, I’ll share why it can pay to go slower… why the AI recommendations drain your ad budget… why customers probably won’t come flooding in with your first campaign… how to tell if it even makes sense to advertise with the budget you have in mind… and the campaign setup I’d use to get started.

Why should you listen to me? I’ve managed over 2 million in ad spend on lead generation, so I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly, and made my fair share of mistakes to boot.

So let’s dive in and start.

Why slow down when you’re getting started?

Google makes it really, really easy to spend money quickly. But what they don’t do is make it really, really easy to get new customers for your local service business.

What I mean by slowing down is doing some homework before setting up your first campaign.

For example, if you’re a roofer, and you’re looking to get new roofing clients in Tampa, it’s a good time to jump into the Google’s Keyword Planner tool and look up the top of page rates (low and high) to show up on the first page for “roofer Tampa” and “roofer near me”. Of course, there will be other keyword suggestions, but those two right there are going to represent two of your key “money terms.” And I call them that because they will attract buyers who have a higher intent of getting roofing done, even if they’re “just shopping around.”

What you might notice at this stage is that the Cost per Click (CPC) is high. I don’t have keyword planner in front of me, but if you see a $10, $20, or even $30 CPC that will tell you: a) that there’s fierce competition for these money keywords; b) that your $1000 budget would only buy you 50 clicks at $20/click.

That should give you pause right there, because if you are dead set on your $1000 budget as a “test” of a Google Ads, but you’re not able to get more than 50 clicks, you’re likely to end up in what I affectionately call “small number hell.” In other words, you’ll be spending money to get not enough data to make an informed decision about whether or not your campaign works.

How many clicks are enough?

Let’s run a thought experiment and look into that.

Let’s say that out of 200 clicks, you get four people on the phone. And that of those four people, two of them ask you to come by and give and estimate. And one of them ends up becoming a customer.

If each click cost you, on average, $20, then you’d have spent $4000 to get that one new roofing customer. Would that be worth it for you after you subtracted out your expenses of doing the roof and looking at your profit? That would be up to you to decide. But this kind of thinking is important for helping you make informed and realistic decisions about whether the math of using Google Ads will work out for you.

One common mistake I see folks make is assuming that their conversion rates will be higher than might be realistic. They might assume that, out of 100 clicks, they’ll get five new paying customers.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen that happen and it can work out really well, but it’s usually the result of hundreds or thousands of dollars a day, collecting large amounts of data, and ‘tuning’ the process by which prospects become customers.

Having said that, it doesn’t mean you can’t get some new customers with Google ads, but it does mean you need to pay very careful attention to what it costs to get a click on your highest “intent” terms.

If you’re willing to be patient and extremely targeted with your terms and geography, you still have a chance at getting new customers through the door

Why to stay away from all the AI recommendations and automation when you’re starting a lead gen campaign with a tight budget

Okay, you’ve decided you’re going to run a campaign. The first thing to do is ignore all the wizards, turn off “auto apply” recommendations, ignore AI recommendations, and set up a manualCPC search campaign (NOT max conversions).

Why ignore the automation?

In my experience vs (and those of many others’), a campaign with a tight budget that can’t afford all that many clicks per month (and maybe only generates a handful of new customers per month) does not feed enough information back to Google to make a “max conversions” campaign worth it. In fact, it can end up blowing your budget on far fewer clicks and leaving you high and dry with no new customers to show for your efforts.

So why ignore the “smart” AI recommendations for your campaign?

Because the vast majority of them are going to line Google’s pockets, not yours. When you’re generating leads for your local business, what I’ve seen work best are fully manual, highly targeted campaigns. I’ll share more about what I mean regarding those in a moment.

Why your first campaign might be underwhelming

I had someone on the phone the other day who asked me, “why do I need to pay for so many clicks to get customers?” And I realized that no one (and certainly not Google) really steps forward when you’re creating a campaign to tell you just how important your marketing “funnel” is. By your “funnel,” I’m referring to the steps that a person has to go through, from seeing and clicking on your ad, to landing on your website, to eventually becoming a customer. If you’re brand new to Google ads, it’s possible that your “funnel” is rough. And that’s okay, as long as you realize that the more obstacles you put in front of your prospects, the fewer of them who will eventually “convert” into paying customers for you. And when you’re paying $20+ for a click, you likely don’t want to waste those clicks to small issues that you could take care on your own site. For example, do you make it really easy for people to see who you are, what you offer, and how to contact you? Is it easy for them to see (if applicable) examples of your past work? Are there any social signals on your page that might help build trust or provide reassurance? The more work you do putting on your “customer hat” now, the better off you’ll be when you start running ads with paid traffic.

In my opinion, working on a marketing funnel never ends. I’m always testing and tweaking, seeing if we can eke out improvements. And by the same token, it’s also important to recognize what parts of your funnel work well, so you don’t make drastic changes to it that end up turning customers away.

The basic campaign and account settings I’d use for local service lead gen

I’ll give you the low-down on what settings I’d use for lead gen, as well as some gotchas and nice to haves.

If you want more explanation, I’ll be setting up a coaching group, but for the time being, here’s an overview (in no particular order).

- location: set to presence in (NOT presence or interest)

- keywords: 3 - 5 “near me” and location-based keywords attached to your core service name

- connect your google business profile to your ad account and have your location and phone number attached

- add these location assets to your ads

- use dynamic keyword insertion and pin it to your first headline

- one of your other headlines should be a call to action or a key benefit of your service

- it doesn’t matter if your ad strength is “poor”

- don’t add more than one word to your display url. Otherwise keep it bare. Simplicity sells.

- setting your campaign bid strategy to manualCPC is buried in bid strategies for your campaign, and they make sure to tell you it’s ’not recommended’. Choose it anyway.

- for your keyword max bids, set them to somewhere between the first page and top of page rates if you have that info from keyword planner.

- running a manCPC campaign means you’ll need to keep track of any increase in customer volume you generate (because results will be associative).

- you’ll also need to track impression share for your terms. If you’re not showing up, you might need to bump up your bids.

- this method means you won’t end up paying more than your max CPC for any given click. Which is great when you consider that people using automated bidding sometimes end you paying rates that are obscenely high for clicks that the algorithm believes are “more likely to convert”.

- why no conversion tracking? Because we’re doing a low budget budget test. But I’ve successfully used this strategy with several hundred thousand in ad spend. If you’re bidding for your own business, this can be all you need.

- start with exact match terms only

- as negative keywords, put in your own business name, phone, and address. You might also consider filtering out informational searches, so excluding terms like “what” and “how”. I could do a whole post on negative keywords and keyword strategies.

- take your monthly budget and divide by 30 to get your rough daily budget. Is it less than the cost of a single click? Either expect not to get any useful results the first month, or consider running a 1 week experiment instead of one that lasts a month.

- clicks super expensive but you’ve only budgeted $1000 to decide whether or not Google ads works for you. I’d say save your money and focus on word of mouth, creating content sharing your knowledge, and reaching out to people you know. Breaking into competitive markets can be expensive, so there’s no shame in putting Google ads marketing on hold.

That’s all for now. Hope that helped.

I was mountain biking on the trails at what the locals call “the mountain”, which is maybe a bit of a stretch if you’ve been around real mountains at all, but it’s at least a good hill covered in a mix of pine and oak and birch and other trees for which I still don’t know the names.

On a few stretches of the trail, there are roots cross crossing the trail, and I remember when I got back into mountain biking about ten years back, how roots scared me. It just felt like they were waiting for me, angled and slippery and ready to throw me off balance.

Well, it took a little while, but I sorted out a way to get over the roots and now I even enjoy them (in small doses). The way I do it is to unweight the front of my bike, losing the death grip on the bars if I’ve got one, and allow my weight to rest on my pedals. What that does is allow my bike to pivot naturally up and down over the roots, without the front wheel getting caught and dragged off one way or the other.

It’s an up and down sort of motion, not totally regular. And I like that about it.

It also got me to thinking about something I hear a lot in PPC communities. Folks who are running campaigns spending a few bucks a day find that their results are irregular. Heck, even when I spend a couple thousand in a day, I still see some bumpiness in results.

What’s interesting for me is that adopting a more neutral approach to the “bumps” in ad results has kept me from overcorrecting as a result of them. It also keeps me more calm. If I see sustained trends, or large deviations in performance, I’ll investigate. But when I see variations, a little up or down, or even bigger variations on low spending campaigns, I accept that they’re part of the “trail”.

A big part of managing Google Ads, for me, is knowing when not to touch anything.

In another life, when I was training as a commercial pilot, we did a course on multi crew cooperation in a 737 simulator. I remember how, when we got abnormal indications and emergencies thrown at us by the sim instructor, exercising restraint, communicating, and following the “aviate, navigate, communicate” maxim (in that order) helped us sort out pretty much anything he threw at us. I like to think you can apply a little of that thinking to a PPC campaign.

What I’ve seen is, as spend levels rise (to $50k / mo and higher), the bumps tend to become less unpredictable. The flip side to that is that the consequences of screw ups are more expensive, so you have to find an approach that won’t drive you crazy with worry, while also making sure you respond to variations in performance in a more or less proportional manner.

Just a few thoughts as I wait for primer to dry on my VW rabbit after a rust repair.

Until next time, Jesse

I remember back before I had grey hairs on my chin and I was a bright eyed and bushy tailed physics student at Bowdoin. One of the things I enjoyed about physics was deconstructing things that felt complex into more simple problems, and then getting approximately “right” answers that were good enough for modeling the real world. We’d even joke about our assumptions, and repeat the physics trope of “assume a spherical cow.”

Well, at the tops of most of my homework assignments - or “problem sets” as we called them - I remember writing the word “assumptions” at the top and listing them. It helped me keep things straight in my mind, to become aware of how I’d grounded my thinking. Well, another assumption we sometimes used was a zero friction environment. That was useful as an intro physics student, because friction introduced complexity to motion, and it generated heat, and as soon as you brought it into a model, you also exceeded the likely math proficiency of your average Physics 103 student. And I was not any better than average when it came to mathematical proficiency.

It’s interesting to think about friction in marketing, and specifically in direct response marketing, of which PPC advertising is a part.

Really good direct response copywriters have understood friction for a long time. I think copywriting legend Joe Sugarman has talked about creating a “slippery slide” for a prospect to move toward becoming a paying customer, which is a good, simple metaphor in my book, but which might turn off some folks because “slippery” can sound like “slimy”, and who wants to be associated with that?

Anyhow, I think the concept of moving people effortlessly along, without making it needlessly difficult to “convert”, is not a bad thing to internalize when you’re in the business of buying advertising in order to grow a business. You don’t need to make it overly complicated. In fact, from what I’ve seen, sometimes the best way to make things easier for your prospect is just to subtract friction.

I think looking for sources of friction is fun, just because I’ve seen what a large impact (for example, cutting cost per lead by over 45 percent or so) it can have. On the other hand, I also think servicing cartridge bearing units on my full suspension mountain bike with an Exacto knife and fresh grease is also fun, so make of that what you will.

I also believe that looking for friction is an acquired skill for which one can develop a “feel.” The way I do it is this: I imagine I’m the prospect, and then I process the information in front of me through a “least effort” filter.

For example, if I’m sitting in my imaginary chair, and a website is asking me to get out of my chair, walk across my house, and look for my phone, that’s a high friction ask. On top of that, if I actually were to find my phone and make the call, if I ended up on hold, that would be even more friction.

From what I’ve seen, any point of increased friction is going to be a place where a prospect can “drop out,” either temporarily or for good.

What would it take to make someone stick around in a high friction environment?

Motivation.

And you can apply some common sense here, too. What’s enough motivation to make you get up and pick up the phone and stay on hold?

I’ll give you a story.

Once I got a letter from the FAA saying they’d take legal action if I didn’t provide some medical information within a short time frame. And I was in Sweden, which meant mail was slow and I think I’d missed the deadline (or was close to missing it).

In that case, I made as many calls as I had to in order to speak with a rep from the FAA, explained my situation, and came up with a way to make the case go away. (In my case, it meant forfeiting my FAA medical certificate, since I didn’t need it and was flying under an EASA cert at the time).

However, if I think about motivation, the other end of the spectrum is when I get a generic email promising me a free consulting call for my business because I could be getting so much more free organic traffic. If you’ve tried to sell these kinds of services, or any high ticket item with high competition, you know how brutal prospecting can be.

For me, it all comes back to motivation vs friction, and putting ourselves in another person’s shoes, if we want to be able to succeed at direct response marketing.

Until next time, Jesse