Sarah Gerardo and Johnny Winslow from ServiceTitan walk through Google Ads basics for trades businesses. Only 5-10% of searchers click paid ads, and costs can run $90 per click. Start with a couple thousand dollars a month, track conversions, and optimize your bids and landing pages.
Questions this video answers
Pay per click advertising.
Approximately 5 to 10%.
He said he has seen clicks as high as $90.
A couple thousand dollars per month.
Google LSA (Local Service Ads).
Happy Monday Marketing Pros. This is Sarah Gerardo, your marketer in the trades and this week we are going to be talking about pay per click advertising ppc. And as we know Google and Bing does offer this product to to the world but also we utilize this a lot in the trades and sometimes this is our trigger where we can pull things on and off based off our capacity and seasonality. And so what we really want to learn is the basics of PPC. So PPC 1, 2, 3 and then we'll progress forward throughout the week as to how we can set this up in inside of our Service Titan accounts and how can we actively measure the marketed expense to revenue by really breaking down the data that's within side of Service Titan. So our first guest is Johnny Winslow and Johnny works with me here at ServiceTitan but he used to work for an agency running PPC campaigns specifically for the trades and he is smart. He came to Service Titan to help build more Marketing Pro products for for PPC in general and for other ad products as well. So let's hear what Johnny has to say about ppc. And you know he does look very hot in his blazer. And by hot I mean in Canada they're going through a heat wave so I'm not sure why he's wearing a blazer. Here's Johnny.
Hi. Thanks for that Sarah. I definitely heard what you said because this is not pre recorded. This is happening right now with what you're doing. All right, so we're going to talk about ppc. Kind of the basics of it really. PPC is pay per click advertising. It's called that because you show an ad, someone clicks on it online and you pay Google kind of for that ad. Real estate. So this is what it looks like is there are a lot of people in your market. I'm here in Calgary, Canada. That's what I'm seeing who are searching for what you have to offer. So it could be H vac, electrical, plumbing, whatever it might be. They're searching for that. I need a company to come come help me. So this is the user saying what they are, the searcher saying what they're looking for. You as a company now have the opportunity to show up for them right here with PPC ads. These top ones are Google LSA ads. So local service GLS ads, best bang for your buck in advertising right now. So if you haven't done that you should get on it. But right below that and above the maps and the organic results are these paid ads. Now do people actually click these. Actually 5 to 10% of all searchers tend to click on these ads. So there's a decent amount of volume. Even if you yourself skip down and look here, a lot of people don't, they click on these ads. So should you be using them? I think so, because they're pretty easy to use and in most markets they can be profitable if you know what you're doing. So the way it works is you write an ad that you want to show up for a person searching for a certain something that goes to a website or a landing page, your website probably where they have the opportunity to now engage with your business. And you can see there's a different businesses on here. The one at the top probably is indicated that they're willing to pay more for that click. Google tends to like money and therefore if you're willing to pay more, they'll give you better real estate. As opposed to these other ones, they're probably paying a bit less. It's not always the best to be number one because these clicks can be up to 40, 50. I've seen it get as high as $90 for one of these clicks, which there's no way that's profitable in the long run. So what you end up doing is trying to look at all of the data. You kind of put your ad out there in the world. I want to show this ad for this keyword and this geo and then you see what happens. And maybe you're getting a lot of expensive clicks. Okay, this is too expensive. I can't afford this. Let's try and lower our bid, as they say, down to let's try the third slot. Maybe I can still get some clicks here for less expensive and it starts to be profitable. And so it's a bit of a game of trying to find a sweet spot of the right messaging to get the right person to come to your site, to convert or call or fill out a form and become your customer. There's a lot of nuances to it, which is why I recommend if you're going to do it yourself, you really need to figure it out. Take the time to learn the nuances, to follow the blogs, to do Google's certification or Bing, or if there's another platform that you're wanting to use outside of Google to really understand it. Otherwise you should definitely use an expert who lives and breathes this stuff. You can learn it on your own. It's easy to teach yourself, but it does take a time commitment. And with that expert, they're going to be doing things like making sure you're as profitable as possible, trying different versions of your ad, trying different landing page variations to try and get that to convert higher, making sure that you're spending enough. So managing your budget. There's a lot of little kind of features and nuances that go into this, so I definitely recommend doing some version of ppc, at least trying it. If it ends up being that the clicks are too expensive or your website's not converting, it's just not profitable for you, then you can maybe try a different channel. But in my experience, if you get the right person doing it, you put enough time and you put enough budget behind it, then it's worth it. What is enough budget? If you're spending less than a couple thousand for an H Vac, a couple thousand a month for an H Vac company, what that means is when you see these clicks come in and you're trying to look at the data to determine is it working, is it not? It's not really enough data to tell. So usually I recommend a couple thousand a month on it, but if all you have is a couple hundred and you just want to try it out, just type in very specific keywords that are very relevant to your business, see if you can get a positive ROI on those. And as that happens, you can maybe grow and try new keywords, new channels to really beef up your marketing. So hopefully you try it. The most successful companies do it and hopefully you find the right person, whether it's yourself or someone else to handle it for you. Good luck.
