TOP Rule: Master Google Ads & Dominate Your Market

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of #AskEvan. This is my first post of the year for TELUS Talks Business, and we're starting a new series. It's called the Challenge Series. We're going to be answering the questions of entrepreneurs and giving you some ideas to help you grow your business. So in our first post today, the question comes in from Jennifer Ripple, who has a company out west called White A Coccoli, which creates eco-friendly tableware for kids. And her question is, what is the most productive form of advertising for a small business? To answer this question, I'd first look at where most of your customers are coming from right now. Especially in the early days of a business, it's important to ask each of your clients how they found out about you. Once you know more about how they found you, it's worth looking into advertising to see if there's a way you can market yourself so more people come to you. You want to be where your potential customers are, otherwise you're wasting your time in your money. For example, let's say you're getting a lot of young moms buying from you, and they're telling each other about your products. Can you ramp up sales by joining young moms groups, partnering with other businesses that market to them, sponsor an event or newsletter for them, join their Facebook pages and get involved, engage with community leaders and bloggers, and so on? There's no one best way for every business, you have to find what works for you. That being said, the most cost-effective way for most entrepreneurs is to go online. It costs less, you get real-time data, and you can change your messaging on the fly. Here are 3 suggestions for you. Number 1: Google AdWords. With Google AdWords, you pick keywords you think will drive sales, and your advertisement will show up when people search for those words. You can use their Google Keyword Tool, which is free, to help you determine what kind of volume each keyword generates and how much you can expect to pay to advertise. For example, a search for "eco-friendly tableware" produces this result. The competition is medium, globally it's searched 5 it's searched 590 times per month, in Canada it's searched 36 times per month, and you can expect to pay $1.20 each time someone clicks on your ad. From here you can expand your search to find more keywords with a higher volume and less competition. As with all your marketing, you must test to see what's working. Google AdWords will also give you a tracking code which you can put on your website to measure conversions. Since you can handle e-commerce, you'll be able to see not just how much revenue AdWords generates, but specifically which keywords generate the most revenue. Once you know the keywords that are performing well, you can optimize your campaign to bring on new related keywords, as well as potentially increase your budget for the selected keywords since you know they're working. #2 Facebook Advertising. I always prefer search to social media when you're trying to sell a product or service. When someone is searching for eco-friendly tableware or something similar, they're looking for a solution to a problem they're having. If you can help them solve their pain, they'll buy from you. On social media sites, people have a much greater tendency to browse instead of buy. They weren't looking for eco-friendly tableware, but they were on Facebook chatting and catching up with their friends when they saw your ad, so they clicked through. Through. Because the pain isn't there, the conversion rates go down, but you can still make it work. Facebook is my favorite social media advertisement platform because you can set specific criteria over who will see your ad. Your first step here is to create a profile of your target ideal customer. For example, it could be women between the ages of 25 and 45 and also live in Canada or within 100 miles of your location. You can then pick specific interests that they might have. For example, you can target people who like children's books, or even people who follow brands like Abercrombie Kids. You can get as detailed as you want, and only those people will see your ad. The pain isn't as strong, but the specific targeting is much better. So if you have an ideal customer profile in mind, it's worth testing out Facebook advertising. You set a budget limit, and Facebook will also give you recommended pricing depending on your campaign. Finally, you can also run split tests, so you can have multiple ads competing against each other and you can stick with the one that performs the best. As with any advertising, start small and measure to see if it converts to sales before spending a lot of money on it. It's easy to ramp up if you know it's profitable for you. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This isn't officially a form of advertising, but it costs resources and competes with the money you have available to spend on ad campaigns. SEO is one of the most effective ways to drive new business for entrepreneurs. It's like Google AdWords, but only more effective. Think about your own browsing experience. When you use Google, are you more likely to click on the links or the ads? AdWords is great because it gives you an immediate inflow of traffic. You push the button and prospects are landing on your website. SEO takes a lot more time. My favorite model is to combine them. Start with AdWords. You get instant traffic and, more importantly, you get data on which keywords are working or not. Make sure you set up your tracking. Once you know which keywords generate sales, you can then create an SEO campaign around them. Because SEO takes time and resources, you want to make sure that the keywords you pick are going to deliver for you. Planning a campaign around underperforming keywords is just a waste of time and money, and you can't really tell which ones are— will work until you test. If the keywords are working in AdWords, then they'll work for you with SEO. Once your SEO efforts take off, it doesn't mean you have to cancel your AdWords campaign. Again, testing and measuring will tell you what is working. As long as each method is working for you, keep using it. If it's working very well, look at ways to expand it. And if it's not working well, cancel it. Have lots of small starts and build up the ones that generate conversions. Thank you for joining me for another edition of Ask Evan. If you like the video, you want to see more, please give it a thumbs up below. I'd also love to hear what you have to think. If you want to leave a comment under the video. And if you'd like to be featured in one of our challenge videos and get your questions answered, feel free to leave it in the comments below and we'll consider you for the next video. So thank you and we'll see you soon.