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I manage 6 figures a year of profitable Google Ads spend, and while this article isn't bad, it's a bit vague. Its strongest point is "don't hire an agency to sc

I manage 6 figures a year of profitable Google Ads spend, and while this article isn't bad, it's a bit vague. Its strongest point is "don't hire an agency to scale." Its second strongest point should have been keyword selection, but that's buried at the bottom of the article. Specifically, the things that have gotten us to profitable ad spend in the 6 figure range are: -- VERY tight campaigns going to tight landing pages. The more specific campaigns you can run, the better. The keywords on your ads AND landing pages need to match the keywords people type in. Most common mistake is driving traffic to a vague landing page. We have 200+ landing pages, all matched to specific keywords. I built out an entire custom framework on top of WordPress to manage this for our company. -- Manage negative keywords. Every 2-3 days, I log in and add negative keywords. Good ones to start out with: free, diy...I have hundreds now. Maybe thousands. It takes a while to scroll through them. -- Track sales back and add more negative keywords. There were some items we were getting a lot of clicks on, but didn't make any sales with. I blacklisted a common keyword on one of our campaigns thanks to this insight. Google's recommendation algorithm complained that by blacklisting this keyword, I was getting fewer clicks. YUP. Tracked it for a month, 3-4 clicks per day and 1 sale that entire month. Negative keyword! -- Start out with 3 ads per ad group minimum. Every week, log in and pause any ad that's not getting good CTR and add a new one. Repeat. After several weeks, you'll be in the "holy ____ I didn't think that was possible" range of CTRs. It takes a LOT of effort to get to the point where we are now (highly optimized keywords, 12-20% CTR, half the price of most of our competitors.) Still, every couple days I log in and tweak even more things. And I hired a consultant on an hourly basis to get us even better. Totally worth the $ to hire him for a few hours just to see where I could improve! If you are technical and think you can outsource this to an agency, DON'T. Consistency is key. One of our partners decided to take the campaigns I'd written and send them to an agency. Their sales dropped 30%. They fired the agency and went back to me. And I'm the business owner, not an agency. No one cares about your money more than you do. And, being technical, you can do fun things like customizing landing pages based on keywords entered (something most agencies can't or won't do, even though it boosts sales.)

mmastrac 8y ago
Adding my +1 to the above advice. I ran a high five-digit spend for a product/service I was working on and did exactly the same stuff (although I could have been better with landing pages). I was amazed at how the biggest RoR was on ads/keywords and not how pretty my site was. Negative keywords were key (free was a big one for me as well) to reducing spend and making ads more efficient. I was averaging around $3-5 to acquire a customer for a $15 product in a pretty competitive space and it really just took a weekly look at ad metrics to maintain. Ads aren't going to magically invent demand for your product, but rather magnify it. The smaller the demand for your product, the tougher it's going to be to address the exact segment of people you need to attract to your page, and you may find that more creative solutions are WAY more effective.
- josefresco 8y ago
  > Negative keywords were key Aren't you using [exact match] making negative keywords not an issue? Or is part of your campaign running both phrase, and broad as well?
  - ericabiz 8y ago
    For our campaigns, I started with broad match. And then I found that our target market can’t spell. There are also a lot of “ok google” type of keywords in there—not surprising since our market is heavily mobile. This is going to vary by market, but contrary to articles I’ve read, I’ve found better results from broad match + lots of negative keywords, with an understanding that some small % of ad spend will be wasted.
    - josefresco 8y ago
      Interesting. I usually start with broad, then when I feel I've maxed out inventory, I'll expand to "phrase". Typically my clients don't graduate beyond that given how expensive even exact match keywords are.
    - igordebatur 8y ago
      we used a combination of Exact Match/Modified Broad Match/Negative Keywords. We'll run some tests using Broad Match + Negative Keywords and see how it goes. Thanks for pointing this out
jtchang 8y ago
Wow this advice is spot on. Thanks for sharing it. What are your thoughts on outsourcing this if you don't have time to manage it? Is it worth it? Have you ever worked with any agencies that do a fantastic job or is it just really hard to find one?
- igordebatur 8y ago
  +1 to this question, I wonder if you can think of an agency that works as both Product Consultant and SEM
gscott 8y ago
Negative keywords are the big thing for me. I manage a six figure campaign for an insurance company and have 3,500 negative keywords. Each ppc click costs around $20 to $40. I would expect a professional SEM company to spend some time generating a reasonable negative keyword list first but the good news is 50k of spend is probably going to have 30k at least of wasted spend to derive negative keywords from!
- lpcvoid 8y ago
  Wait, 20 to 40 dollars per click of an ad on google search results? Am I understanding that correctly? If so, that seems insanely expensive even for the guarantee that you're getting a potential customer.
  - secabeen 8y ago
    Yeah, in some industries, that's the cost. Anywhere where lead generation is a thing, you will see high CPC. Insurance is the #1 highest CPC.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    When I was at Google [mesothelioma] was the top-earning keyword and it cost something like $40/click. It makes a lot of sense when you consider that mesothelioma is a type of lung cancer caused by asbestos, is legally actionable, and that there is a whole industry of lawyers who specialize in litigating asbestos cases. The LTV of a customer who goes to trial in an asbestos case can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Spending $40 for a possible lead is insanely profitable for these lawyers.
- igordebatur 8y ago
  :) a nice one, we should've probably named it "How we spend $50K on Google Search Ads to derive a good list of negative keywords." Aware of our LTV, I would say a $40 click would still be fine if it brings a customer. As a SaaS, we're A-OK with a CPL of $100 and currently target our search ads hypotheses to $15 or less.
creativityland 8y ago
Thanks for sharing! Did you automate the landing page creations to match the campaign keywords? If so, how?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
igordebatur 8y ago
Glad to see you on the thread. Would you mind us updating the article with some of your points? I really like how you laid these things out: — Tight campaigns going to tight landing pages where keywords match what folks entered. — No one cares about your money more than you do. — It's your job to customize landing pages based on keywords entered, SEM agencies simply can't or won't do it.
- igordebatur 8y ago
  Reflecting on that, we didn't have enough resources to craft a bunch of landing pages. However, we'll automate the process.
SnowingXIV 8y ago
Also adding my +1 here. I've been managing upper 5 figures for a few years on some of the most competitive keywords. My process is pretty similar except I basically swear by BMM (broad-match-modified: +car +accident +lawsuit) keywords only and then the ones that perform exceptionally well I might convert or add an exact match but I can typically fly solely by an entire mix of BMM + negative keywords. This keeps it much tighter and less likely to trip up on wasted spend as all search terms will be close. Bidding strategy is also incredibly important, as good as Google is getting their recommendation on overall strategy isn't great. Manual CPC (enhanced) has yielded much better conversions and cost per conversion compared to any other strategy. Manually adjusting each keyword, admittingly this does take some time but you set an overall max CPC and then increment where needed. Of course, this can be industry-specific and dependent on your goals. There are also a few scripts I run to automate some tedious things but that's less important. Like ericabiz I also tried hiring on a few consultants hourly and it's been hit or miss but there were some insights I missed, so potentially worth it. Do not outsource to an agency, they are not worth the money. You need to groom your campaigns over-time and be dedicated. Use that extra cash on bidding for the ads themselves not the overhead of an agency. You don't know what you don't know. Always be A/B testing.
- igordebatur 8y ago
  Great that you joined the thread. Thanks for sharing your experience. See, the thing is we're getting a bit of quite the opposite opinions. Say, on our IH thread you can find opinions that SEM agencies would actually challenge your models, sets, LPs, etc. https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/6ca52123e7?commentId=-LWH69Jy9RMY_HolPCja https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/6ca52123e7?commentId=-LWH...

mmastrac 8y ago

Adding my +1 to the above advice. I ran a high five-digit spend for a product/service I was working on and did exactly the same stuff (although I could have been better with landing pages). I was amazed at how the biggest RoR was on ads/keywords and not how pretty my site was. Negative keywords were key (free was a big one for me as well) to reducing spend and making ads more efficient. I was averaging around $3-5 to acquire a customer for a $15 product in a pretty competitive space and it really just took a weekly look at ad metrics to maintain. Ads aren't going to magically invent demand for your product, but rather magnify it. The smaller the demand for your product, the tougher it's going to be to address the exact segment of people you need to attract to your page, and you may find that more creative solutions are WAY more effective.

josefresco 8y ago
> Negative keywords were key Aren't you using [exact match] making negative keywords not an issue? Or is part of your campaign running both phrase, and broad as well?
- ericabiz 8y ago
  For our campaigns, I started with broad match. And then I found that our target market can’t spell. There are also a lot of “ok google” type of keywords in there—not surprising since our market is heavily mobile. This is going to vary by market, but contrary to articles I’ve read, I’ve found better results from broad match + lots of negative keywords, with an understanding that some small % of ad spend will be wasted.
  - josefresco 8y ago
    Interesting. I usually start with broad, then when I feel I've maxed out inventory, I'll expand to "phrase". Typically my clients don't graduate beyond that given how expensive even exact match keywords are.
  - igordebatur 8y ago
    we used a combination of Exact Match/Modified Broad Match/Negative Keywords. We'll run some tests using Broad Match + Negative Keywords and see how it goes. Thanks for pointing this out

jtchang 8y ago

Wow this advice is spot on. Thanks for sharing it. What are your thoughts on outsourcing this if you don't have time to manage it? Is it worth it? Have you ever worked with any agencies that do a fantastic job or is it just really hard to find one?

igordebatur 8y ago
+1 to this question, I wonder if you can think of an agency that works as both Product Consultant and SEM

gscott 8y ago

Negative keywords are the big thing for me. I manage a six figure campaign for an insurance company and have 3,500 negative keywords. Each ppc click costs around $20 to $40. I would expect a professional SEM company to spend some time generating a reasonable negative keyword list first but the good news is 50k of spend is probably going to have 30k at least of wasted spend to derive negative keywords from!

lpcvoid 8y ago
Wait, 20 to 40 dollars per click of an ad on google search results? Am I understanding that correctly? If so, that seems insanely expensive even for the guarantee that you're getting a potential customer.
- secabeen 8y ago
  Yeah, in some industries, that's the cost. Anywhere where lead generation is a thing, you will see high CPC. Insurance is the #1 highest CPC.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  When I was at Google [mesothelioma] was the top-earning keyword and it cost something like $40/click. It makes a lot of sense when you consider that mesothelioma is a type of lung cancer caused by asbestos, is legally actionable, and that there is a whole industry of lawyers who specialize in litigating asbestos cases. The LTV of a customer who goes to trial in an asbestos case can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Spending $40 for a possible lead is insanely profitable for these lawyers.
igordebatur 8y ago
:) a nice one, we should've probably named it "How we spend $50K on Google Search Ads to derive a good list of negative keywords." Aware of our LTV, I would say a $40 click would still be fine if it brings a customer. As a SaaS, we're A-OK with a CPL of $100 and currently target our search ads hypotheses to $15 or less.

creativityland 8y ago

Thanks for sharing! Did you automate the landing page creations to match the campaign keywords? If so, how?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

igordebatur 8y ago

Glad to see you on the thread. Would you mind us updating the article with some of your points? I really like how you laid these things out: — Tight campaigns going to tight landing pages where keywords match what folks entered. — No one cares about your money more than you do. — It's your job to customize landing pages based on keywords entered, SEM agencies simply can't or won't do it.

igordebatur 8y ago
Reflecting on that, we didn't have enough resources to craft a bunch of landing pages. However, we'll automate the process.

SnowingXIV 8y ago

Also adding my +1 here. I've been managing upper 5 figures for a few years on some of the most competitive keywords. My process is pretty similar except I basically swear by BMM (broad-match-modified: +car +accident +lawsuit) keywords only and then the ones that perform exceptionally well I might convert or add an exact match but I can typically fly solely by an entire mix of BMM + negative keywords. This keeps it much tighter and less likely to trip up on wasted spend as all search terms will be close. Bidding strategy is also incredibly important, as good as Google is getting their recommendation on overall strategy isn't great. Manual CPC (enhanced) has yielded much better conversions and cost per conversion compared to any other strategy. Manually adjusting each keyword, admittingly this does take some time but you set an overall max CPC and then increment where needed. Of course, this can be industry-specific and dependent on your goals. There are also a few scripts I run to automate some tedious things but that's less important. Like ericabiz I also tried hiring on a few consultants hourly and it's been hit or miss but there were some insights I missed, so potentially worth it. Do not outsource to an agency, they are not worth the money. You need to groom your campaigns over-time and be dedicated. Use that extra cash on bidding for the ads themselves not the overhead of an agency. You don't know what you don't know. Always be A/B testing.

igordebatur 8y ago
Great that you joined the thread. Thanks for sharing your experience. See, the thing is we're getting a bit of quite the opposite opinions. Say, on our IH thread you can find opinions that SEM agencies would actually challenge your models, sets, LPs, etc. https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/6ca52123e7?commentId=-LWH69Jy9RMY_HolPCja https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/6ca52123e7?commentId=-LWH...