ANDREW:
Hi, guys. It’s Andrew with Masters of E-commerce. I’m your host. And, today, we got Tor Abrams from the Sinfluence. Right? And, he’s going to talk about today some really cool things, Five Ways to Grow Your ROI. He’s going to go through that stuff. But, before that, you know, just a little bit about Tor. He is a former Strategist at Google. He is really at a large technology company.
He works with students, really great stuff here, working with aged 12-18-year-old kids to embrace them envisions. And, he’s also now looking to transition out of this full-time gig into this world of online marketing, commerce-type thing. For a while, he’s taking his knowledge from quite a few people. And now, he’s rolling out his own and now he’s here to share some really interesting insights. And then, we’re going to go through this 5 for maximizing ROI Elements. And then, we’re going to dive into one of those things to help you, guys out there. So, Tor, fire away if I miss anything on the interim.
TOR:
It’s alright. Thank you so much for introducing me to everyone. And, I used to work at Google when I started my career in a role while I was working as a Multi-Specialist, making sure I was working with small businesses, understanding their needs, what kind of things to drive outcomes, and how multichannel can help them. Some of the many skills that I created out there were really standing, the challenges, the small businesses on this phase and how they can actually get a good return on investment by not spending too much time just because I found that that was one of the common problems.
If you’re a small business, a one-man-band, or even 10 or 15. It’s very hard to be able to manage the marketing structure, as well as everything that’s going in the business. So, as you’re hitting that on the head, I start off kind of helping people locally, people that I knew in terms of helping them understand some of the things that I can be doing on my own in order to bring in more sales.
Understanding your website and understanding how they can use tools like Google Ads, or Facebook, or Twitter in able to achieve greater sales. So, really, today, in terms of the 5 things that I want to share, we’re going to focus on Google. But, Sinfluence is an organization that I launched where queue Google, Facebook, email marketing. That would be helping your optimization, Instagram, whatever it may be. But, I can’t come on to those tools yet. So, that’s okay. If I do get into the 5, is there anything specific you wanted to know from me?
ANDREW:
You know, there was one thing. When you’re working with small businesses, and this seems to be the biggest problem with most small businesses, right? There’s usually one, maybe two people in the business, not really great marketers, right? So, the challenge at their phase is, you know, how do they grow their business? I mean, what channel? Where do they put their money? And, since they’re not experts in the PNLs and taking care of everything else that goes on that. What would be that type of, you know, in your service, what would you tell small businesses? What’s the first thing that you focus on? Where should they put their priority?
TOR:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a fantastic question. I think with, so this is what we got to remember, is that it’s completely dependent on which industry you’re in. So, if I’m an e-commerce business, for example, let’s say I sell shoes online, to get some really good results is that I can just choose Google alone. I mean it’s not necessary to set up Facebook. Let’s say, for example, I sell shoes and I want to get my products in front of thousands of different people searching for shoes.
What I’ll be able to do is set up some Google shopping campaign or just a Google search campaign. What that actually do is every single person that searches on Google, I can actually place a bid on being able to get my product in front of them. So, what I mean by that is I’m willing to pay let’s say 20p for someone to actually see the shoes that I sell online when they search for shoes online and actually click on that particular product and they come straight to our webpage.
Obviously, that varies depending on the things, so you got to remember these companies have margins. They have targets. They’re trying to hit… when I come to consult with somebody, I always ask them what their targets. How much does it cost you to build the product? How much return of investment you’re looking for because that will determine which platforms are going to be best for you. Likewise, there’s going to be other platforms where it may work better not to use Google. It might be better to use Facebook, for example.
Now, if you’re something like a massage product, for example, and you just want people to kind of see these visual aspects of what you do, you can get your Facebook Ads up in front of them. So, again, it can really be business-to-business. But, obviously, you say they’re very small. So, it’s going to be about time management, which is one of the reasons why I always say that outsourcing it rather than insourcing it is probably the best idea to do. So, almost getting someone to manage your campaigns for you makes a lot more sense than trying to manage all yourself. So many people fall that trap
ANDREW:
Yeah, yeah. And, I think that the key… One of the key things that, you know, I’m sure, when you do this consulting with them is to know what their goals are then what you know what their goals are, you know, what the metrics are, and what they’re going for. So, like, say, it’s kind of a business, the North Star, right? What is the one thing that they want? Is it registrations? Is it sales? Is it new user accesses, getting people onto their email, or Facebook, messenger list, you know what I mean, Facebook Messenger so they can retarget to them like, you know, whatever that goal is. I’m guessing is when you have a conversation with them.
TOR:
Yeah, yeah, exactly that. So, like I say, always start from the goals when you turn up with this kind of service. And then, work your way down from there, figuring it out, going forward.
ANDREW:
Sure, cool, awesome. Yeah, let’s run through these things and then, we’ll hit one of these points and we’ll talk a little deeper about them.
TOR:
Yeah, sure. Just kind of to take you into a little bit more as I say, these are all strictly related to Google Ads. And, they’re meant to be for people to have never used Google Ads before or someone who’s used it but not seen necessarily the best results in terms of driving ROI. So, one of the first things that I always advise people are when you set up Google Ads, you’re initially going to be tasked with deciding whether you want to go with the search campaign or with the display campaign or both.
Now, a search campaign is the thing similar to what I described a little bit earlier. So, someone’s going to type in a set of words, maybe saying I want to buy shoes in London. At which point, there’s going to be a whole lot of things that will come up from Google, you know. Some of them are going to be paid for ads. They’re going to appear at the top of the screen and slightly below those organic searches that just come up and nobody actually has to pay for those.
Now, the paid for ads are what’s known as a search campaign. When you set up Google search campaign, you’re paying to be at number one when people search for particular things. I’ll come on display a little bit later on. It’s just one of the things that I mentioned based on the five things. But, actually, when you’re setting up the search campaign, the mistake that a lot of people make is they’re looking to bid on search queries or keywords that are going to be too expensive. So, let’s say, for example, let’s use the shoe example again.
I’m a shoe company to sell shoes in London. And, I’m now competing with any other company in London that sell shoes that’s also advertising on Google. If I bid on a keyword that’s shoes in London, it’s going to be so expensive for me to be able to appear at number one because I’m bidding against hundreds of thousands of other businesses at once that it actually doesn’t make sense for you to go with that particular keyword. It makes more sense for me to go something for a little bit more specific like “shoes company London” and then put my post code so wherever that may be, North West, South East, or whatever there is. That whittles it down further. Or, if I could be even more specific from that, I could do something like “shoes company London that specializes in trainers.”
These are just examples. These are just different ways to kind of extend out the key phrase. Extend that key phrase that will make it a little bit easier for you to be more relevant. Now, when you’re more relevant, you’re showing to more relevant people, so it kills that over that stone. But, at the same time, you’re also actually showing to people for a cheaper price because you’re competing with less people when you’re bidding. I know that can get a little bit convoluted but if there are questions, Andrew, from your side, please let me know.
ANDREW:
So, yeah. So, it’s building on the key words. So, we’re talking about the shoes. It’s basically the red shoe. You don’t want to do just red shoe because it’s just too generic. The longer the keyword phrase, “red shoe London Nike.” So, “Nike red shoe London” that might be something building on. And then, the longer the keyword phrase, the three to four-word-type of thing, the more, you know, things. Then, from there, do you make them, I mean, well this is kind of go a little more complex. But, you can do them sort of broad or a matched or, you know, kind of type target an exact match type of things. Right? Like that? So, there’s way to suit, I guess, to build that around.
When you’re doing these kinds of things of campaigns, do you feel that, you know, having hundreds and thousands of keywords are just, you know, maybe a hundred keywords, fifty keywords, things like that?
TOR:
I think there are ways to be smart about it, right? So, I’ve seen accounts where people have got hundreds of keywords, thousands of keywords like you described. At the end of the day, not every single of those keywords… It’s never going to be the case. The wise thing to do is start out with a nice selection of keywords. So, I usually, advise that you have… let’s say you’ve got one campaign setup and you’ve got a couple of ad groups in that campaign. The ad groups are literally just groups of keywords that your ads are going to show for.
Within each of those, you may want to start with 20 keywords, not too much to handle, not too heavy. And then, after a couple of minutes of reviewing that, you may see that some keywords about, you know, traffic, it’s all… So, what you’re going to do is you say, “I’m going to scrap these keywords completely. I’m just going to focus on the two or three that are actually bringing me business.”
ANDREW:
Okay, so that makes total sense. Here’s the other thing, I think, that business might not understand is the 8020 rules of your inventory, right? So, if you know you’ve got sellers that are bringing you 80% of your revenue and 20% of your products give you 80% of your revenue. You are only going to want to probably drive traffic to those 20% of those products?
TOR:
Yeah, makes sense.
ANDREW:
I think businesses tend to think, “Well, we’ll put everything on there.” But, if they don’t know their… what their revenue is per item or, you know, their sales on a particular item, do you think it’s just a waste of their time to scout and dump a thousand keywords into just every single product?
TOR:
Yes. So, that’s the nice thing about Google and all the online platforms, you can advertise one. So, the way that it’s going to spit out is you can specifically set up a group of keywords, focus on one particular product. Be your best-selling shoes, your bestselling Nike trainer, whatever it is. You may want to direct more traffic to that than anything else. So, you can actually setup those groups of keywords and put a budget into all of those higher than anything else because you know it’s going to bring you the best return. I think that’s a pretty cool way of kind of managing that. But, like you say, a lot of business owners start to realize that they think it’s just going to be 100 keywords, some work, some don’t.
ANDREW:
And then, additional to that, I mean, we kind of not touched on it but, you know, it’s also the ad copy that place a big factor, right, I mean in terms of getting people into cooking, and then, coming over. And then, from that ad copy, that landing page needs to really tell the story of what it is. Right?
TOR:
Yeah, a hundred percent. So, being able to have the right message, the right person, the right time, that is insanely important when it comes to this kind of thing. Right, 50 percent of the job is figure out the keywords and what’s good, what’s going to work, and then the other 50% is figuring out what do they want to see when they put in front of… Because until they click on that ad, it’s the only image of your brand that they have so that has to be something that’s appealing, right?
ANDREW:
Right. Right. So, in terms of landing pages and things like that, do you want to find a need, I mean, if you talk local, then, you know, they can buy local and then have that stuff shipped to them. Do you find like a lot of the local stores, you know, are creating their online presence so where people don’t even if, they’re maybe two miles or three miles from their house, they’d rather order online and just have a box shipped to them, right? The product is shipped rather than having its hop on 3 miles or 5 miles to get down to the place.
TOR:
Oh yeah. That’s kind of the era we’re living. When people know everything’s a click of a button away, as opposed to 10 or 15 years ago, we actually have walk outside and go in Pratt’s, and you get it. I think it’s really good now to have a really well-defined landing page that shows you do offer a shipping service because a lot of businesses do especially for e-commerce or other things as well like putting on display the fact that you’ve got a number that you can call if your service type. Different things like that are all going to be quite useful when it comes to building your landing page and kind of bringing people in.
ANDREW:
Right. Yeah because that was one of my things is that, like, it’s something that we do kind of in Jumper is that, you know, we feel that like it’s almost better not to have the whole e-commerce site, right? It’s more of just a landing page. So, like, if we’re talking shoes, maybe the store owner knows that they built specific pages that are really tailored like sort of niche-capture type pages in a sense, right?
You could talk a little bit more about the shoe. Build in that brand of that shoe. Maybe there’s a video, maybe there’s not. And then, there’s this buy button, right, that commit? But they, you know, they sold the sizzle with some decent copy or I guess people have also done, you know, just under complete research, you know going on Amazon, going wherever. And then, they just want to buy. Have you found like when you were doing these types of things, what types of, you know, copy to landing page to either e-commerce page or a fuller more detailed page works better?
TOR:
Yeah, again, it’s a good question. The best thing to do when it comes to ad copy is to test multiple different types. It’s something in digital marketing. It’s known as A/B testing. Rather than we have one ad copy that I’m going to set out across to every single person, I’ll do two or three different types of that copy, four or five different types of that copy. And then, see which one actually performs better than the others. So, that’s one of the things that’s really important with all of these kinds of things. It’s to test different things that work in different industries. It starts a question. It can be very different in terms of that copy.
Some industries, that copy needs to be directed to the point. Some industries they like to see a little bit more creativity in that ad copy. One of the things that should always be in ad copy is a call to action a hundred person. So, at the end of every single ad, you need to say something like, “Call now. Learn more. Click through,” to be able to get a discount, something like that. They’re just going to get someone to the website. Give them some action to do it at the end of that. But, aside from that, it’s really about testing for getting things out.
ANDREW:
Have you found that when you put scarcity into an ad like only three or four works better?
TOR:
Always. Yeah. Generally speaking, it really does tend away. If you put scarcity in an ad, and it’s still not working, the chances are that your services aren’t that high-demand. When the demand is down, people see that the product is running out. It’s simple economics, right? The supply is decreasing but the demand is there. So, surely, those people are going to have to try and snap it up quickly.
ANDREW:
Right. Right. And, what about like testing? So, you’re thinking about bringing in a new product. You’re not sure of what that is. Could you run Google ads to kind of test like your user base. Say, “Hey, we’ve got this new product coming in. The first 50 people who would give us a review will get X amount of a discount.”
TOR:
Could do something like that. In terms of doing that and having that as a strategy to bring in long-term customers because at the end of the day, you want to bring in people who can be a life-time customer for most us, for most services. That is a bit of a tricky one. You don’t want to start off on the foot of almost bringing in people that are trying to get things for free or for discount. You want to let people avail products and services that have got a value assigned to them. That’s the value you want to keep because those people are just going to drop off as customers. Retention is really important in this kind of space.
ANDREW:
And, so, you’ve driven those people from a Google ad to your landing page, they don’t decide to make that purchase right then and there, right? So, what do we do next?
TOR:
So, if someone constantly Google site to a landing page, don’t make a purchase there and then. Actually, it’s really good because you’re going to have some information about that person, right? So, whenever anybody enters a website now, that website is able to do something track you and able to say, “Oh well, you know what, Tor visited the website on this date, and you know what, he looked at a particular pair of shoes, but he didn’t buy.
Now, when I leave that website, my interaction with our website may be done. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you, as the website owner, will let go. It doesn’t mean that that’s all. Essentially, what’s happened now is you’re able to track me and understand a bit more about my preferences, what things I’m interested in, what I’ve done in your sign up. So, what you can essentially do is say, “Actually, for every person like Tor, that’s come to my website and looked at his pair of shoes. I want to be able to bring those to people back again later because you know what, people who look at this pair of shoes, generally speaking, tend to buy them. I know this about my product. So, I don’t want to lose that person. I want to actually be able to pay to go out and get that person to come back to my website in some way, shape, or form.
That’s a really awesome strategy that you can use on Google called remarketing. And, essentially, it’s probably the best thing in terms of actually driving good value leads with good ROI simply because these people are warm. They’ve been to the site before and they know you. They recognize your brand. They’ve now left. But, if ever they come back in the market, if ever they’re searching again, you want to be the person that they return to. That’s how that works. That’s a really awesome method too. So, we bring in more sales.
ANDREW:
And, in terms of like retargeting aspect, I mean, what kinds of conversion rates you typically seeing from, you know, in cost savings? I mean, obviously, it’s all over the board. But, I mean, from an initial, you know, you pay maybe a buck to a retargeting. He maybe pays 50 cents to a conversion. Like, what is that funnel kind of look like?
TOR:
I see. Yeah, so, in terms of what the funnel looks like again as you say, it’s always going to vary right? I think e-commerce is the easiest example to use because e-commerce is here unless you get as much out. So, I think, when you look at e-commerce, typically, e-commerce conversion rates may vary from around about one to two percent of clicks. So, for every hundred people that take click on your ad, maybe two percent of them convert. Now, I’m speaking just based on my experience. It may vary for some people that are watching this.
When I’ve used, remarketing for search, I mean I’ve seen people use marketing, search, and use it properly. We’re looking at 3 or 4 times that in terms of conversion rates. I’m saying you’re going to be taking a two percent conversion rate to an 8 or 10% conversion rate. Those are what you should be aiming for all the people that are returning.
Now, the flip side of that, you’ve got to remember of course that there was the point that, say someone comes to a website once, through an ad you’ve paid to get in there. But then, if you do remarket for search or remarketing for display is another thing. You could have paid to get them back again. Now, the thing with that is it’s not a loss simply because if you’re paying to bring them back to see one of your high-value products, you’re going to be getting a massive return on investment on that.
Plus, actually, you don’t necessarily need to have bought them through ad the first time. When they come to your site, it doesn’t matter how they get there, once they’ve been on the site, all the information is available to you, you can remarket them. So, not only these people are going to have paid for twice, once that you pay for twice because the conversion rates are good. You should have a good ROI on that.
ANDREW:
Do you have that kind of offer, any kind of discount to them, or just say, “Hey, I left you a basket.” What have you seen that works really well?
TOR:
It depends. I’ve seen people that do discounts and that does work very well. I’m going to give discounts to someone that’s warm. It’s going back to an earlier point about discounting. When someone’s entirely new, it’s a bit risky but when they’re warm, it’s a bit different. Usually, with remarketing, with Google, you can do remarketing for search. The way you’ve got to think about it is like this, so this person has been to your site before and was clearly interested in the product. But, they may not have bought for whatever reason. Maybe they didn’t have… they haven’t been paid yet for month.
If they now search again for a similar product, and you appear at number one, that means they’re still interested in buying that product. That means they’ve never lost the incentive to buy, They just didn’t have the means to buy previously. If we now bid on them again, the likelihood is that they now actually have the possibility of buying, or else they wouldn’t be searching again. So, actually, when you going to bring them back, you don’t necessarily need to have a discount, you’ll just bring them back because you know that this person couldn’t buy on day one but now, on day 30, they’re now able to buy.
That’s the premise behind it. So, really, it’s just about making sure that you’re there for them as opposed to thinking that I have to be creative what I have to do. People do like to change the ad copy for search ads that are remarketing as opposed to normal search ad just in case he needs that thing before and don’t want to kind of come across as we’re just going to keep ads. It’s cool. But, I don’t think that having to give a discount to bring them in is necessary.
ANDREW:
And, have you seen things where… I haven’t tried this but where you already have your audience, they’ve come in, they purchased, and then, you kind of run a remarketing campaign towards the people who purchase with “Thanks for shopping. And, here’s 10% off your next purchase kind of stuff.” Like, they’ve already been that customer. Have you seen or run anything like that?
TOR:
Yeah, yeah. So, those kinds of things are pretty good. So, those ones are already a low customer and you give them a discount. Similar to any company does, right? I don’t know if it’s a good example. In the UK, some people in the UK like Nando’s, I don’t know if you guys have that over there.
ANDREW:
Which one?
TOR:
Nando’s, it’s a fast food restaurant. Essentially, it’s a real popular restaurant that does grilled chicken and what they do is they give you this loyalty card. On that loyalty card, every single time you come there, you get a stamp and when you get a certain number of stamps, you’re able to get a free chicken. Very similar thing will go to any online business. If you’re trying to bring in customer loyalty. You’ve got to build advocacy with the customers. The way to do that is by offering them things because they’re loyal to you. So, it’s almost any kind of exchange. And, I think that whole thing of kind of someone’s made a purchase, you can then retarget them with new ads.
That kind of say, “You know, you made your first purchase on a pair of shoes. How about you get a nice pair of jeans to go with that and you know, we’ll get you ten quid off the price just because you bought before.” So, I think that whole method is really, really good in the real way of building continuous ongoing cells over time.
ANDREW:
I think that the remarketing is pretty powerful when you do it through Facebook. But, what I think, almost Google’s better because they have to live a buyer intent, where the other one is more like “Yes, you can get them.” Sure, they like, you know, say in the States, we have tech companies, right? So, I will stay with the theme. I think, you know, the shoe brands that are here in the States and you got the online purchasers and this is like through Facebook kind of thing, right? And then, there’s these brand stores, right? But, you don’t know if they’re really intent for looking for that pair of sneakers where at least, you know, I guess, in doing with Google Ads, you kind of know that they’re looking for red shoes, and Nike, and whatever. They don’t buy but then, they’re going because it’s what they’re searching for, I guess, right?
TOR:
Yeah, yeah. So, that’s the difference you say. The buyer intent is in Google. That’s why I love Google so much.
ANDREW:
And free lunch
TOR:
I think the buyer intent is very important. When it comes to any buying process, you want to have warmer leads as opposed to completely cold leads. For instance, fantastic photography, that’s where I’ll say it’s definitely going to get one over Google. You can target people down to how much income they earn or their various relationship, or divorced, or whatever. I think that’s incredible. But, Google will always have that intent, which is the reason why Google is such a good search engine for some businesses as well. I think that’s quite one.
ANDREW:
Right. I guess it’s something, in a sense, I mean if you’re… I guess it’s worth knowing where your audience is. I guess you could possibly run Facebook ads, get them into a landing page, and then run double remarketing campaigns. I guess, one for Google, one for Facebook. I mean, right? I guess it’s typically they see it everywhere. Alright! I’m going to buy these tours they’re putting in front of me. I don’t like Nike but I’m going to buy it anyhow.
TOR:
Yeah, that’s the thing, right? So, when it gets down to one of these kinds of things there… And this is w what I say to business owners, sometimes it’s easier to outsource. I think if you’re really skilled with this stuff, you can make it work fantastically well. And, you’ve got time, small business owners focus on what you’re really good at which is maybe sourcing the shoes, the products, or closing the deals when they come in, or closing the leads when they come in. Let someone else manage that whole funnel process of setting up an ad that can bring people to the site and then market all the way back round.
ANDREW:
No, no, go ahead. Continue on.
TOR:
Yeah, yeah, because I think, for me, it took you years of practice to learn all these things and use to understand how these things work. A lot of business owners won’t have the time so they’re going to do a half party job or waste a lot of money. I think that’s…
ANDREW:
So, in terms of a budget like what would you say for an advertiser would be a good, sort of, they don’t have $10,000 to spend, like what would you say to start out with the test, things like that?
TOR:
I usually advise a test budget of $100 on one platform. Only reason I say $100 is simply because I know that’s manageable for most business owners and enough that you’re able to do a decent amount of testing. Now, the reason I say $100 for a test is because the first couple of weeks of managing a cool campaign, a face of campaign, it’s going to be a test drive because you don’t know a hundred percent if it’s going to work.
He may be no worse but, in the past, I’ve got loads of examples of what’s worked in the past and I apply that to everyone. I go work who’s going forwards. But, again, you know, it could just be a bad, bad weather conditions at the time. So, you never know what could be affecting it. So, that $!00 is going to be used as an initial test budget and then from there, you’re going to know well. You know what, of that $100 you spent, $10 went on this particular key term and that really drove loads of business for us. So, let’s funnel $200 into that next month.
TOR:
…that really drove loads of business for us. So, let’s funnel $200 into that next month or let’s funnel $300 into its next month depending on what the returns you’re looking to get are. I think once you’ve done that initial couple of weeks testing, you already know that statistics and kind of outcomes you’re going to probably get if you upscale to spend. So, I just advise $100 to start as a test and then work your way up from there.
ANDREW:
Very cool awesome. I know we covered two of these things. I know we’re kind of running towards our end of our time. What are the other three things that we can, you know, that are there? Well, you know, they can find that post, I guess, on your site but just like, let’s quickly run through those three other things that’d be great.
TOR:
Yeah, yeah. Sure. I think I started off by kind of discussing the keywords aspect so making sure you’re using keywords that aren’t too generic. And you can kind of be a bit more targeted and relevant with them. Another thing to focus on in regard to that is when you’re bidding on these keywords doesn’t always bid to be number one. A lot of people think the best marketing strategy is to try and outbid all of the opposition every single time. That is a sure-fire way for you to be able to drive your revenue all the way down to zero. Well, not your revenue rather but drive your profit way down to zero because when you’re competing with that many people especially in a country like UK or the US, it’s going to be tough right? So, you’re going to have to take some situations where you’re not going to be number one. You’re going to be number two. You’re going to be number three. The goal is just to make sure that you’re spending enough on the keywords that are most profitable. And then on the keywords that aren’t profitable, feel free to actually knock the budget down slightly. Knock the bids down a little bit because it’s better that you appear lower on keywords that aren’t driving the profit and maintain the same level of profit at the time as opposed to just bidding everything. So, that’s another very key thing.
We touched on of course the whole remarketing piece, so it would have been point three. But then, another thing that would be really good is looking at the Google Display site and usually when I start off for businesses, I don’t actually encourage them to use Google Display because this pays more for brand awareness tour as opposed to a Lee Gentle. But, there is one particular way that I have seen it drive leads in a good fashion. And that’s when you target competitors’ sites with Display. So, a couple of different ways you could do that. A display ad is simply just to ensure an image on somebody on the Internet’s website and you’ve seen that before. Let’s say again your pair of shoes comes off on someone else’s website. Now, one of the things you could do is you could actually set up a list of websites that you want your ad to appear on and then bid to appear on those. And you could put one of the competitors in there, only the ones on the list. This means whenever someone’s in your competitor’s site and they’re looking at shoes, they’re already got a buyer intent, now they come down and they see your ad in the middle of the page and they think, you know what, these shoes look really nice. Let me check out these ones. You’ve now hooked them in the competitor’s site. So, it’s a nice tactic that comes. The other way you can do it is you can set up audiences that you define based on people’s preferences. So, remember before I said that when someone visits your site, websites can track you and figure out what you’re interested in, what kind of things you like doing. You can actually, on Google, put in the name of your competitor’s website as an interest and that means that anyone who Google knows from its complex algorithm and all that. Anyone that Google knows would have an interest in the competitor site or has been in your competitor’s site, they’ll join that list on the audience. Then, you can go and target that audience with your Display ads. So, that’s another way of doing it.
Both of those are quite effective for the Display but like I say I don’t usually encourage Display to start because Search is going to do better for you, generally speaking. And then that’s point four. The final point is actually looking at the different ways in Google that you can adjust bidding right. So, one of the things people don’t realize is when you get Google you have a bid for when someone’s searching on a desktop. You have a bid for when someone’s searching on a tablet and you have a bid for when someone’s searching on the mobile. You also have a bid for different locations and time of the day. There’re even more things than that you can bid in but these ones are the core main ones. So, one of the things that people don’t really realize is that more people make Google searches now on mobile than they used to on desktop. And it’s crazy to think. A lot of people will then say actually do you know what, I’m so used to using desktop, let me keep all my bids the same on everything but actually you’re forgetting that more people are going to be searching on mobile and it makes more sense to me to actually bid higher on there because there’s more people over there. Plus, because not every advertiser has picked up on this and this is a cheeky tip for anyone that’s watching this at the moment. A lot of people don’t know that mobile is doing better than desktop right now so that means that mobile is actually cheaper to bid on because less people are bidding on that.
ANDREW:
Interesting. That’s a cool tip. Yeah, I know the bidding strategies with Google, I mean it’s massive. I mean it’s just like, you know, you really do need to know that system pretty well because, I mean you get into that interface. It’s pretty complex. So, for a business owner, you know, you could be blowing your budget on things that you’re like, oh man I just put this thing and, you know, it didn’t notice stop it. And then, you know, that’s why I think it’s best that you hire a professional to kind of do it even though there’s a little setup fee. And then they take a percentage of you spend. It’s, you know, peace of mind if the campaigns are working and they’re driving your money. What does it matter to you, right? Like if you’re making money and there’s an ROI on this stuff, what does it care? Like you’ll spend twenty thousand, fifty, a hundred thousand dollars. If you know the campaigns are working and you’re making a million, you know, nine, two hundred thousand, and three hundred thousand. On your hundred thousand dollars, you’re spending; I mean it doesn’t really matter, right? So, that’s why I think it’s key that you know people hire, you know, guys like you and stuff.
So, cool, awesome. Well, that was a really great deep dive into stuff. That was fun. So, I want to ask you a couple things. One is like, what are your three top tools of choice that you use on a daily basis?
TOR:
I mean when you say tools of choice, you mean in terms of just ad platform?
ANDREW:
Yeah, for ad and things like, what helps you, you know, if you’re working and you’re looking to run say ads and things like that, is there certain tools that you use on that type of thing?
TOR:
Yeah. I think with Google, Facebook, they both have large editor systems. So, Facebook, you’ve got the single power editor. On Google, you’ve got Google Editor. What those are really useful if you’re making bulk changes in those systems. But those are only really important if you’re, you know, you’re a really big advertising. You’ve got loads of different kind of accounts to manage. I find Google because I’ve been doing it for so long, for so many years. I find that tool itself fine. Google Ads is absolutely fine to just use myself. Facebook is similar thing. Facebook Ads is really easy to use, and I’d be completely honest with you that itself is probably, you don’t really need to do more than that. It’s very easy to use. It’s the strategies and the things around it that made me add the complicated bit because you won’t know what’s worked for others. And what you see, and I think one final tool, and this is going to be a bit of a weird one. That a lot of people don’t realize is if you’re a small business owner, you don’t have much time to be able to figure these things out, but you want to give it a try yourself. YouTube is going to be your biggest friend when it comes to all of these things. Those like the one you’ve just made here. I’ve seen hundreds of thousands of other people who are trying to do the same kind of thing. And just get information out there and tell people how to use stuff including walkthroughs and demos, going YouTube and all. And that’s maybe a bit about skinning myself.
ANDREW:
Well… And is there like a book or a blog or something that you stay current with that you like to read daily or every week?
TOR:
Yeah. I think, similar to what you said I follow a few YouTubers. If you update a lot, so you’ve got people like Gary Vaynerchuk, Tai Lopez. Some people who are very advancing this area, a lot of them are coming out of the US. And I’m hoping if you will come out of the UK, I may have to be the person that comes back. And yeah, because I just find if people are digestible or something, I could put in the background to listen to while I’m doing other things. In terms of books and blogs, GSuite’s fantastic. They’ve got an absolutely amazing blog. You’ve kind of put me on the spot here. I’m trying to figure out a few more.
ANDREW:
Sorry, I should have asked you this earlier. It is pretty calm. I’m going to ask you these things, but I like to do this kind of stuff because it’s like, okay what would you use? But yeah, well, that’s good. I mean that that’s awesome. I mean that I don’t, you know, that’s perfect. So, how do people find out about you? How do they get in touch with you when they want to use your services? What’s the best way to communicate with you?
TOR:
Yeah, yeah, sure. Website’s up at the moment. It’s www.sinfluence.co.uk. So, it’s actually influence with an ‘S’ on the front. And then my actual email address is just my first name Tor – tor@sinfluence.co.uk. That’s the easiest way to reach me at the moment. I’m currently; I’m working on putting together a few more different resources in order to reach me to my YouTube. But if you search for my name on LinkedIn, it will come up at the top. I’m actually available to be contacted through there as well.
ANDREW:
Cool, awesome. Well, this has been fantastic. I really do appreciate the time taking out to do this. Learned a ton and I hope to see you again on our show.
TOR:
Yeah, no worries. I’m sure next time you see me, I’ll be in a nice fancy office somewhere.
ANDREW:
I like the palm in the back, you know.
TOR:
Yeah, yeah.
ANDREW:
Very tropical. Cool. Alright but I’ll talk to you. Thanks.
TOR:
Thanks, Andrew. Have a good one.