MBA1740 Q&A Wednesday: Q&A Wednesday: Do Google Ads work for lead generation?

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Hey O welcome to the $100mb Business Insights every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my partner back in 2014 and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesday, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar100mba.net Today's question is from Craig and Craig asks, Do Google Ads work for lead generation? I'm a fairly new blogger, started my blog about six months ago and I'm trying to grow my email list. I'm experimenting with different paid marketing channels, but I haven't had much luck with my Google Ads to my landing page where I give my free guides. Any advice, any help? Really love the show. Thanks Craig. Craig, love the fact that you wrote in and asked this question because it's very specific and a lot of people have this specific question and I'll share my own experience when it comes to trying to grow my email list or trying to run lead generation ads with Google. Do they work? Do they not? What's the alternative? What's the verdict? That's what we get into in today's episode. So let's get into it.

Let's get down to business at Capella University. Learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more@capella.edu so Craig is trying to.

Build his email list and is sending traffic via Google Ads to his landing page where people give their name and email address in exchange for his guide. He's not Having much luck. And he's wondering if Google is the best channel to grow his email list. I love this question because it makes us step back and think about our marketing. When it comes to building your marketing strategy, it's very important to put yourself in the shoes of the potential customer. Whether you're advertising on Google or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or whatever it is, you really do need to imagine what it's like to be that person who comes across your ad. So let's do this experiment with Google because Google's a little bit different than Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or any other option. Why? Google search feeds people ads based on their search words, based on the keywords that they put into that search box. This is a different experience versus somebody maybe on Facebook and they're scrolling through the feed and they see your ad. They've been targeted because of their activity and who they are and their demographic, but they didn't actually search for your product or something about your product or in your case, your guide. So again, we're putting ourselves in the shoes of the potential customer. Imagine somebody on the computer and they're searching. So say for example, I am a snowboard instructor and I've created a guide that says three tips for the first day on a snowboard. Now, when it comes to search and search based ads, if your ad or your lead magnet in this example your opt in your guide doesn't match exactly what the person is actually intending to find, you're really going to not perform well. Search really works in a broader way. And I'll explain later in a moment. But first let's just run through the paces. Say for example, I wrote in the search box how to snowboard. I'm going to get a whole bunch of different results, blog posts, videos on YouTube and then if you ran an ad on that keyword, then your ad for your guide is there. Let's say I click on the guide, so you're getting clicks on the ad, but then they see a name and email box where you have to pop in and they're just not going to be interested. But again, think of the person who's searching. They're just like, I need an answer now. I want to look up what snowboarding is all about. I don't want to necessarily give my name address right away. It's just too early in the relationship. People that search on Google are looking for information. Just remember that when you're running Google search ads, people are looking for information, they want it immediately. So if you have A gate which requires them to give their name and email address to get the guide. Sometimes that's just too much friction for them and they're just going to go back, they're going to click that back button in the browser and find a blog post or find something that's going to give them information right away. Now compare this to a Facebook ad for a lead generation funnel, like a guide. Let's say Google feeds this ad to people that have already been looking and visiting different pages on Facebook about snowboards and snowboarding and watch snowboard videos and then they display that ad. They're pretty much going to be likely to take a look at this free guide. They are already primed now and Facebook's algorithm is incredibly smart. And they know exactly when to present the ad in the buying journey or in the relationship between you and that potential lead. So in my experience, I found that Google search is just not good for lead generation. It's not good for opt ins unless you are targeting specifically what their person is looking for. Like you're giving away a book on snowboarding and the keyword you're putting there says free snowboarding. If somebody wants a free snowboarding ebook and you have that name and email opt in and you show up in the ad, that's a much closer match and you're more likely to get the opt in even with very, very exact search terms, which also narrows your likelihood of finding somebody to click on your ad because there's less people, the more narrow. I found that Facebook ads do better. Now, does this mean that Google Ads are garbage? No, Google Ads are actually really good because of this idea of people are searching for information, they're looking to do research, and if you can get eyes on your product or service, then they are more likely to come back to your website and buy. Here's the thing, when anybody is looking to buy a product or service, they're going to do a little bit of shopping around. They're not going to go crazy. Most people don't go to 10 different competitors. They probably look at two or three at most. And if you show up on Google search because of your ad, again, broader term, let's say for example, you have an online snowboarding school and your keyword that your ad shows up for is online snowboarding lessons, they'll click on it. We're still within the intention. They see that your site has lessons, that you have some sample lessons, some videos and things like that. And they're like, oh cool, this is somewhere I can sign up and Be a part of this community and learn how to snowboard. Let me see if there's something else. It'll shop around a little bit. But there's something powerful about being first to mind. It's one of those laws in that book, the 22 immutable laws of marketing. First to mind is very, very strong. People remember you. You're the first interaction, the first education. They're alert, they're open, they're thinking, they're making decisions. They're like, hey, this looks pretty cool. Maybe I'll go with this one. And often people go back to their first choice because of that experience, that first interaction. I found that actually just driving traffic to your homepage with Google search is really effective. We get a lot of signups just off that method of getting people to learn more about us because we know that they're searching for a solution, in our case a webinar solution. And we get exposure to people that normally would not find us.

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To wrap up today's Q and A, Wednesday's question from Craig. Are Google Ads good for lead generation? In my experience, they are not the strongest unless you're targeting very specific keywords that match exactly what you're offering on that landing page. It doesn't really work well with broad terms because again, the expectation of the searcher doesn't is not met on your site and therefore they leave. And remember, with Google, you pay per click. Now, having said that, I've heard there are other businesses that do well with lead generation with Google. They create a lot of different lead magnets and they target very specific keywords that match those lead magnets and they run ads that way. At the end of the day, I've said this before. This is so important. You need to know how much it costs you to acquire a customer. Your CAC is an incredible metric. You need to know. You need to know that number. How much does it cost you in marketing dollars to get somebody to become a paying customer? And then how much money do you get per customer? What's the lifetime value of the customer? If you make more on the LTV of the customer, the lifetime value of the customer, than the cac, how much it costs you to acquire the customer, then you're in good shape. But you need to Track it. You need to track hey, if I get a lead from Google, does that lead convert to a customer? How many customers convert? So for every 10, let's say three convert to a customer. That means I need 3.3 leads to get one customer. How much does it cost per lead? If the conversion cost me $20 on Google, that means it cost me about $66 to acquire a customer. Is that less than my LTV? If so, we're good. But obviously you want to make sure that there's a big gap. The bigger the gap, the better. You know, if your CAC is a whole lot lower than your ltv, you're good to go. That is a formula. That's a play you can run over and over again to grow your business. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 MBA show. Thanks Craig for asking the question here on Q and A Wednesday. If you have a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over@omar00mba.net if you love this podcast, share it with your friends and family on Social right now. Let them know what you love about it. You can even do a screenshot and show them the last episode you listened to. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you're new to paid marketing, always start with a low spend. Even if it's $10, $20 a day for each campaign, do that for about a week or two. That's okay. This is allowing the system, whether it's Google, Facebook or whatever, to learn and to optimize your ads properly. Once you start seeing some conversions at a good rate, you can slowly up the ante at $5 every day and see how things perform. But start with a bit of money. Not too much, because it's easy to waste a lot of money on ads you haven't optimized yet. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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