Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee Matthew Jackson
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson. Hi and welcome to episode number 66 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is Lee, and on today’s show we welcome Bryan Lade. He is a local Google Google AdWords specialist. Met him recently and we got on like a house on fire. And I just wanted to get him on and have him share his experiences, his story, and also advice that he has for things like Google AdWords campaigns, but also Google My Business, which is a whole area that I wasn’t even aware of. So sit back, relax, and enjoy. And if you want to talk about your experiences as well, then head on over to the Facebook group on anglecrown.com /Group. And you know, if you’re old-fashioned, then fine, tap in LeeJacksonDev.com/Group. The exact same thing will happen. You will be redirected to the Facebook group. Now, on Angle Crown, if you could go and cheque out AngleCrown.com for me at any time and want to provide some feedback or just do some testing of our new site, that would be freaking awesome.
Lee Matthew Jackson
We would love to know your opinion. If you hate it, be nice. If you love it, just tell me. Enjoy the show. This week’s episode is sponsored by Drive80.com. Drive80 is an animation studio in the US, and they help companies who struggle to explain what they do by creating a 60 to 90 second video animation. You can cheque them out over on Drive80.com, or you can email my friend and your friend Mike Doyle directly on [email protected]. Hello and welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast. This is Lee, and today we’ve got Bryan Lade in the house. Mate, how you doing?
Bryan Lade
I’m good, you?
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m doing pretty good actually. Bryan, mate, you are what, 5 miles away from my office?
Bryan Lade
About that, yeah. That’s not far at all.
Lee Matthew Jackson
5 miles from my office, and we’ve just had like 10 minutes worth of sound issues. And yet I can talk to somebody in like Australia and it just seems to work. Actually, their internet’s terrible in Australia.
Bryan Lade
Technology, it’s just not quite there yet.
Lee Matthew Jackson
No, it’s not, is it, Australia? We’re sorry for you guys. We understand you’ve got really slow internet, but still, you know, I’ve had less issues in Australia than we just had, but here we are. We are now finally on and I’m just dead excited to have you on, mate, because we’re talking about a subject that I’ve very little idea about, and I know a lot of agencies and a lot of people in the group as well have chatted about Google AdWords, etc. It seems like rocket science. Does it work? Doesn’t it work? We don’t know, and I believe you’re the guy who’s going to be able to inform us of all that. But before we do, how’s about you just give us an introduction to yourself, what your favourite colour is, favourite beer, or anything like that, a little kind of back history, backstory. Not too long, obviously, not from when you were born, but just a— Just give us a general, the life of Bryan. Oh, you see what I did there? You see what I did there?
Bryan Lade
Don’t stone me.
Lee Matthew Jackson
He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy.
Bryan Lade
Yeah, I could swear there, but I won’t. Yeah, I’m 48. I’ve got 4 kids, 2 dogs, 8 fish, and a lovely wife. So all happy on that front. I started life as an engineer actually on Sea Harriers many years ago. So I’m rather pragmatic in nature. But I got into the dot-com world in 1999, actually, when a large corporate— and we were developing brand new web technology. So I’ve been involved on and off since then. But coming back to beer, actually, now you’re thinking about it, my favourite beer is Just Too Much.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Okay.
Bryan Lade
A weakness of mine. But yeah, coming back to me, basically, I was employed man and boy until last April, where I set up my own freelance marketing agency focusing in on AdWords and associated Google marketing tools, basically. So that’s how I ended up sitting here talking to you in a nutshell.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That, that is a very brief nutshell. That’s good. And what would you do? Did you say working for man and boy? What was that phrase? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that phrase.
Bryan Lade
Working for an employee. No, as an employee, man and boy. Oh, I get it.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s quite a cool way of saying it. I mean, people say like working for the man. Oh, right.
Bryan Lade
Yeah. So that’s got connotations, isn’t it? So no, not on that yet.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, not connotations I’m aware of, but I’m a very innocent I haven’t sold Bryan, so clearly you’re not. So, well, guys, I met Bryan. He actually came around to our office. That’s the beauty of having people local, and he came and chatted through what he’s up to, and I knew it would be great to get Bryan on the show. So first of all, what we’re interested in is kind of how did you get from working for the man, man and boy, whatever the phrase is, basically being employed to that eureka moment of, you know what, I think I can do this for myself. Kind of, can you walk us through that story?
Bryan Lade
Yeah, yeah, no problem. I mean, my fundamental problem is I’ve never been able to do a job for more than 3 or 4 years before I get utterly bored and disheartened. Although I’ve worked for companies in different roles over longer periods, that’s just me, I’m afraid. But yeah, they say my online love started back in 1999 when there was literally a 6-man team, secret team, setting up a large corporate website and selling stuff online for a multi-million pound company. So I did a lot of learning there, but I ended up working for a smaller— couple of smaller businesses where I had to be the practitioner rather than the strategy setter, because in the corporate world I was— I ended up being the marketing director, sat in boardrooms getting utterly bored over and over again.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s why they’re called boardrooms, isn’t it?
Bryan Lade
Exactly, exactly. Never want to do that again, thank you very much. But working for small businesses, I know I had to be a practitioner as well as deciding what we would do in marketing terms. I started with AdWords about 10 years ago now. I didn’t have a clue what it was, just kind of knew what a lot of people think, that, well, that’s how Google makes all its money and it’s all a big con. But I started playing with AdWords, was introduced to it by an agency we were working with, and we had some early successes getting leads for the business I worked at the time, which provided outsourced technical writing services. So if you wanted to use a manual written, you would look on Google, find the company I work for, and send us an online inquiry, mostly by AdWords. And it quickly became apparent to me that it’s— for the right businesses, it’s really cool, and it does work, and it’s self-sustaining inasmuch as, you know, you develop the AdWords, they need managing, but they’re there all the time working for you. You’re not having to make the telesales calls and necessarily send the e-marketing out or whatever it is, and being active trying to ‘Go and find it.’ People just come to you and say, ‘Can you help?’ So from that point of view, it’s ideal.
Bryan Lade
I mean, obviously it does cost money, but then so does all good marketing. So it then evolved, and I had a couple of instances where very large corporates found us, and we were quite a small company, because they were having a particular pain trying to find the right skills. And we ended up with a couple of multimillion-pound contracts through AdWords, which I just found incredible at the time. That’s amazing, isn’t it?
Lee Matthew Jackson
It is.
Bryan Lade
And ever since then, I’ve been a total advocate, as you can understand. The company I was working for then tripled in size. It’s a privately held company, so I can’t mention revenue figures, but we tripled it in size on the basis of being good with AdWords, basically. I then— we had quite a complex AdWords setup, and I kind of had a feeling that although I was doing a good job, I probably wasn’t the expert. So I actually employed a consultant to help us out, having veered away from many marketing agencies who promised a monthly sheep dip of which I wasn’t keen. This is what we do for everybody and this is what we’ll do for you. So I worked with a consultant and really honed my own skills in terms of the finer points of AdWords and how you really make it work, generate leads for yourself. Hence, I decided to set up on my own nearly a year ago. That’s been my main selling point basically, is working with SMEs and getting them to do AdWords and getting them new leads alongside the other Google tools which are also successful that we can come back to later.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s so cool. I love the sheep dip comment you make. It’s so true. I’ve seen many kind of SEO agencies and AdWords agencies essentially saying, you know, this is what we do for you. We’re going to give you a list of keywords and you’re going to give us £2,000 a month and you’ll never hear from us again for 12 months.
Bryan Lade
Exactly. And then they send you a written report in a PDF and it means nothing to you. So no, that’s something I don’t do. I like to have face-to-face or Skype meetings or GoToMeeting so that we can discuss things and evolve things. But, you know, having little Johnny, the marketing executive, trying to tell you what you should be doing, just kind of, it’s wrong. Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It’s something, I mean, and that’s not to say that all companies that have this sort of setup are terrible because there are some companies that do have, you know, little Johnny actually is an expert and does work with them. Unfortunately, you know, in yours and my experience, I think we’ve both had those clients, sorry, those suppliers who have worked with our clients doing that exact thing of really just creating some sort of cash cow where they’re doing either SEO or Google AdWords for a monthly fee and not much thought is really going into it. It’s not really a consultancy, it’s more of a— almost feels like a way to print money, doesn’t it? And it seems like it can sometimes.
Bryan Lade
[Speaker:TREVOR BURRUS] The problem is with that kind of setup, the company I was working for at the time was a very complex and hard to understand company. You know, and we were trying to trigger adverts off keywords like FAQs, online help, help writing content. And unless you’ve got a business brain and you understand you understand that client’s business and what it’s trying to do and its USPs and how it sells its services and what have you, you can never really tailor something like AdWords or SEO properly for that particular business because AdWords doesn’t work for everyone. Talk to some agencies and they’ll certainly try and sell you that it can work for everyone.
Lee Matthew Jackson
[Speaker:TYRONE] I think— well, that’s a question I’ve got coming up next because I noticed you mentioned that it works for some. Not all, and you mentioned that earlier. But on the thing as well, like keywords, etc. So you just pointed out that it takes a business brain to understand a business and what would be the keywords. But I assume, and correct me if I’m wrong, but the keywords that work now for the next 2 months may not be the keywords that I need to be applying in 3 months’ time. I don’t know. I’m guessing my keywords, my targets are all going to evolve as I evolve, or am I just Generally speaking, the keywords—
Bryan Lade
so if we were to start doing AdWords for your business today, we would sit down and work out what we think the keywords are, and we’ll be pretty accurate, but they will evolve and they will change, especially in the early months. Well, AdWords is a living, breathing thing. It’s like bringing up a child. You have to teach it and they have to learn from it. So yes, the keywords do evolve, Lee, you’re quite right, but you get to a level of maturity where it’s— and that could be several months seen, even 4 years in my case for my first business when I started to do this, where you understand what’s working and it’s more about managing the success versus cost. So, I certainly got to a point where AdWords, we were spending around £500 a month and we were getting around 20 leads a month, but that was for high-value business and contract services. But then the issue became really, well, can we spend less to get the same amount of return and we were successful in that. We managed to bring the spend down to £300 by having an expert deal with their AdWords which I wasn’t at that point because we really had the keyword breadth and depth covered by that point.
Lee Matthew Jackson
[Speaker:TOM BILLYE] I think though what you’re talking about and I mean that’s 4 years, that’s quite a long time but it just kind of highlights as well doesn’t it that just even if you’re not getting an agency involved and you’re going to do your own keyword list right up from the very beginning, it’s not necessarily a great idea to come up with a chunk of keywords, pop them in, and then just let it run for the next 2 years and not monitor it.
Bryan Lade
Absolutely.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Not do something proper, properly with the data or get an expert involved. And I got to confess, I’ve done that. And it didn’t work for me. That’s why I didn’t like Google AdWords. And I was really intrigued. I was like, let’s get Bryan on.
Bryan Lade
I see this all the time.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah.
Bryan Lade
I see this all the time. And my clients abroad, fall in one of two camps. One, A, they’ve never really heard of it or understood it, or B, they’ve tried it and been bitten by it. So actually, I have a meeting this afternoon with a guy who’s set up some very in-depth AdWords and got loads of click-throughs, spent lots of money, and didn’t get hardly any return for his business. His approach was basically wrong and uninformed, not his fault at all, but AdWords is very easy to get wrong and spend money. And that’s not good. And so I do pick up a lot of business through people who’ve been through that experience, and I help them kind of focus back in and change what you did before so that it is effective.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Now, something you said earlier was you said AdWords is something that will work for many, not all. So can you unpack that? You know, who are the ones that an AdWords campaign would work for, and who would actually be a good example an example of someone who AdWords would not work for as well, just to kind of help visualise it to people listening?
Bryan Lade
Sure. I will actually retract my statement that AdWords doesn’t work for everybody. At a level, it actually does work for everybody at a business level. And by that I mean Google offers a whole various number of services to businesses, and the fact is if you undertake these services with Google, Google loves you. For every one you do, Google loves you a little bit more, and it will help push you up the search engine mechanisms it’s got out there. So I know of at least 3 businesses where I’ve set up AdWords for them, small businesses. One’s my wife’s actually, who’s Speedy Audio Typing. Let’s get a quick plug in there. And her keywords were basically surveyor audio typing. She sits there typing up surveyors’ reports that they’ve spoken into their dictaphones, basically. She was on page 3 a year ago of natural Google search engine. We set up AdWords for her business, and within a week she was on page 1. But the AdWords we set up for her business were very much what I call bolted down, so there were lots of controls on them, lots of spend limits, exact matching on the phrases, so that we— I knew from day one that she would get very few click-throughs.
Bryan Lade
And in fact, you know, she spent literally tens of pounds over the last 6 months on AdWords just really being in the game, if you like. She does get some leads from it, but very few because her leads come from other sources. But just by having a Google AdWords account actually does you a lot of favours in terms of Google loving you that little bit more. So at a basic level, I’d recommend it, but it may not generate the leads for you. Where it does work very well is typically higher-ticket services or products. So the business I used to work for, as I say, we provided contract services essentially, so the average order value was in the thousands of pounds. So we only had to get— no, we had— and you get high number of click-throughs and only one lead, and that would lead to order of thousands of pounds. So there’s an equation for every business that, that you work out by doing AdWords, which is how many visitors, how many clicks, what’s the cost, and on what’s the, what’s the investment that comes through leads that you can convert. That changes for every business.
Bryan Lade
Where it doesn’t work so well, in my opinion, is more consumable type products. So I have worked with another company that sells health products, and we’ve been pretty unsuccessful so far in terms of actually getting sales because the number of click-throughs that we’re having to generate to get the low-value sale, essentially, when an item is only selling for £30, £40. Having said that, AdWords gets traffic. At the basic level, AdWords gets traffic to your website. It’s what you do with those people on your website that counts. I’m currently working with that client to improve how we portray the products and the value of them to try and entice people through to that purchase rather than dropping off.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s interesting, isn’t it? It’s that whole element of conversion. You could get millions of people coming through, all this footfall as it were, eyeballs on screen fine, but if you’ve not also put some extra work into that particular page you’re driving people to that’s going to prompt a desired reaction, i.e., fill in a form, subscribe to a mailing list, or even purchase a product, all that traffic could in theory be wasted to— Obviously, you said there are other impacts. It’s great obviously to get traffic. It’s going to boost you as well in Google, etc., but it is hard to get to get that conversion. Carry on, sorry.
Bryan Lade
It is, it is. I’ll give you an example and actually while I’ve got web developers here, I’d like to make a plea during this as well. Another example of where AdWords is working well but didn’t start out that way. So the company I’m working with is called Top Dog Turf, believe it or not. They sell artificial grass for dogs. I won’t tell you the ins and outs of why you need that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Because grass goes yellow if your dog keeps chewing on it. It smells, yeah.
Bryan Lade
The normal latex artificial grass smells. When the dog wee doesn’t drain away basically, so Top Dog Turf solves that problem. But the lady who’s running that, she set up AdWords on her own, but her web developer after about 2 weeks of her trying said, well, I think you need to get some help with that, and called me in. And she’d done an okay job but wasn’t particularly great, so we redeveloped the AdWords basically, and they started working. We started getting quite a number of click-throughs to her website. but she wasn’t getting any leads. The website is a very nice-looking website.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It’s got a peeing dog on it, by the way.
Bryan Lade
It’s got a peeing dog on it, topdogturf.co.uk.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Animated, yeah, animated peeing dog.
Bryan Lade
Absolutely, it’s worth a look just for that. We started to get quite a lot of click-throughs, and this is only 6 weeks or so ago, but she wasn’t getting any leads. We then started to look at analytics. Definitely subscribe to analytics and learn from it. It can tell you an awful lot of good stuff. When we looked at the traffic flow through the site, she had a 98% drop-off rate on the landing page, which in this case happened to be the homepage. 98%, and it was like, wow, that’s bonkers. Why aren’t we getting leads? Well, I think I now know. So we had a fresh look at the homepage, and it was a lovely design, but as you look at it today, you see 4 lovely buttons which give you lots of rich information on what they do, why they do it, why they’re the best, why choose them, but the homepage at the time was was just one big graphic. Okay, you didn’t get to the key information very quickly. The graphic you see now was twice the size, twice the length, and you had to scroll past it to get to any good information.
Bryan Lade
So what was happening is people were coming to the site, they weren’t being compelled by anything on there and just dropping off again. So we made that graphic a lot shorter and put the buttons that you see there now, About Us and Why Choose Us and what have you, and the drop-off rate has now fallen to 40%.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s pretty impressive.
Bryan Lade
Yeah, and she’s starting to get a lot of leads, funnily enough. So just a plea, and I know a lot of designers out there keep saying to me, oh no, people scroll, it’s fine, that’s what they do these days. They don’t, they really don’t. A lot of people don’t scroll. So please put the call to actions easy view of your landing page.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Guys, let’s, uh, let’s talk about this. It’s leejacksondev.com/group. That will forward you to the Facebook group. Do you agree with Bryan? Are you going to have a big argument with him? Do we want to post dog peeing pictures? No, don’t do that. Please don’t do that. Only cat pictures in the group. But it’s leejacksondev.com/group. Let’s have a conversation. It’s a good point. I’ve heard many clients saying they want a massive graphic and then they think that people will scroll down. What is your experience on that scroll down thing? Do you also have any storeys yourselves of really high bounce rates and what you guys have done to fix that? So again, leejacksondev.com/group. Bryan, you jump in the group as well so that you can kind of get involved in that conversation as well, because that sounds like it’s going to be a really good one. What we’ll do is we’ll pin that conversation in the Facebook group when this episode goes live, because that is a good one. I’ve never really had a good answer for that, but you’ve got some good stats here. And I like, I mean, one of the examples here is there’s a fake versus real button.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So fake grass versus real grass. Hey, what the hell? That’s going to pique my interest. You know, I’ve, I’m potentially going to buy some of this turf and I’m clicking on that. I’ve got the information. And there’s also, you’ve got the call to action everywhere, you know, for people to get more information, etc. Actually, one quick piece of feedback I would say is you do actually need an inquiry on that. Oh no, there’s a find out more button. Oh, that goes off to another page. Okay, so you do have the call to action just there. Might be nice to have the form on the same page as well.
Bryan Lade
Yeah, funnily enough, the web developers, that’s in their action plan this week.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Brilliant. Yeah, so that I could, if I’m super lazy and I don’t want to click one more time, I can go ahead. So, but anyway, guys, go cheque that one out. It’s topdogturf.co.uk. If you’ve got a dog, might be handy, but just go and cheque out those buttons along the bottom and obviously the animated GIF of a peeing dog. This, this, this podcast is just descending, isn’t it, into vulgarity?
Bryan Lade
Well, I would show you some of the keywords that we trigger the advert on, which involve words like poo, urine, and excrement, but I won’t. Well, you just did.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m sorry.
Bryan Lade
Edit that out. Edit that out. No, I won’t. Don’t worry.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Worry, we’ll just do lots of beeps. No, we won’t. It’s totally fine. So that’s fascinating. You’ve been able to just make some kind of minor adjustments, as it were, 4 buttons, and you’ve dropped that bounce rate from 98% to what was it, 45%?
Bryan Lade
40%.
Lee Matthew Jackson
40%, which is incredible. And I assume, I mean, you see bounce rates all the time. What’s kind of a healthy bounce rate? Because you can’t get get zero. That’s just nuts.
Bryan Lade
But no, you can’t. And, um, the nature— unfortunately, the nature of AdWords and the web in general, to be honest, people will just click through without reading what they’re really going to click through to. So that’s just the nature of the beast, obviously. But 40% is not actually too bad in my experience. Um, 50 to 60% tends to be more than normal, um, say from my experiences. So, um, if you can get it down to 40, and I think you’re in a pretty good place.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s good. Alright, so what we’ve understood from you so far is that Google Analytics will work for most businesses, if not all, when it comes to things like at least helping you push you up and get you a little bit more exposure through Google. It’s definitely going to work for those higher-ticket purchases which are going to convert, you know, which you can then convert. So if I’m spending £300 to £500, but I’m— then I’m getting 20 leads, and one of those leads is going to worth be worth 10 grand, then obviously that’s definitely going to be worth it to me to invest in Google Analytics. We’ve also learned as well of the importance of when you drive traffic to a page, you actually have to think about what’s on that page as well, because they’ve clicked through that, through that ad, that Google AdWords, and they’re landing on something where you then need to take them through the process of that desired action. The undesired action is them closing the page. The desired action is maybe they click on that frequently asked questions or that installation process button button or the real versus fake button and then are then compelled to inquire.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I, uh, it produces a link. Now let’s go. So that’s all good, I’m convinced, mate. You know, that sounds brilliant. Now can you, without giving obviously away too many keys to the cupboard, or obviously, um, you know, but also you’ve got years of experience, I don’t think it’s ever replaceable, but can you just walk us through an example process of how the hell do you actually formulate a list of keywords? Because right now I’m thinking lick my finger, stick it up in the air, and try and imagine some keywords.
Bryan Lade
Sure, sure.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I don’t know, how do I even start?
Bryan Lade
Okay, so there’s a general, there is a general process I follow which I’ve developed, and it’s my own way basically. So the first thing is, is when I’m working for a client, they’ve got a business, they understand it best. So the first thing is to sit down with them and extract for them what they believe people would search for looking for their product or service. Quite often actually, they have a very narrow view of what people think they’re looking for. So one of the— from my business experience, I can often embellish that and create new ideas that they agree with. There’s also within the ad— when you set up an AdWords account, there’s a tool called the Google Keyword Planner, which basically that allows you to put in any potential search term and Google will show you how many people searched on that in the UK last month and what it believes the associated searches to be, which can be useful, can be not so useful. So, just trying to think of an example. So, I’m working with another company which fit windows and doors, basically. So, you know, we had keywords around “window installer,” “window supplier,” but actually what we found, it a really useful different angle which has been very successful with people searching on repairs to their windows and doors and conservatories.
Bryan Lade
I hadn’t thought of that, but between us looking at the data and having those discussions, we came up with the concept of that. We then had some— by using the Keyword Planner, you can see real data from Google which kind of gives you a warm feeling, if you like, that people are searching for those kind of things. So we created a page for them which was all about window, door, and conservatory repairs. Repairs, replacing gaskets and handles and locks and seals and what have you. And they’re doing AdWords there and the repair advert is doing far better than their kind of standard installing windows and door adverts and is leading to a lot of new clients contacting them. So that’s an example of how sometimes just by exploring ideas and not just going with what you think people are looking for can be of real value. Value. What happens then once you’ve set up the AdWords, often Google will start to suggest new keyword combinations. It sees where people are clicking through and what people are searching for, and it says basically, have you thought about adding these keywords and phrases to your campaigns? And again, everything with Google, some of those you just want to steer clear of, especially when they kind of put the words free because they see people searching for a free widget or whatever it is.
Bryan Lade
You don’t want to be triggering adverts to any— trying to sell something on the word free or cheap or sample even. So, yeah, Google kind of helps you along once you’re up and running and does come up with some pretty good suggestions that are certainly worth considering and I certainly use on a regular basis.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s brilliant. I was just thinking through what I did in the past is I think I would just went for generic terms like web design Northamptonshire and stuff like that or web development Development Northamptonshire. But you’re talking about the idea of someone saying, you know, how to fix a problem with their windows and doors. I could have been doing stuff like how to fix a problem with a WordPress website. Yeah, why did I not think of that? I made a page all about it and got traffic there, and then people have said, oh, this is too hard to do myself. I presume that’s what’s happening. People are looking at that thinking, oh man, I’ve got to do all this with my window? Sod this, I’m going to call this company and get them to do to do it. And the same could be for what I could have done with my Google AdWords campaign.
Bryan Lade
[Speaker:DOMINICK] Yeah, absolutely. I kind of work with this thing I call the second or third search concept. AdWords costs money, that’s for sure. Typically £1, £2 a click. I’ve seen it as low as 26p. I’ve seen it as high as £30. Don’t do those ones. But basically, if you develop keywords and phrases that trigger your campaign in the high search bracket, market and you’ve got lots of competition where all the big boys are spending thousands and millions of pounds every day with Google, you’re in a noisy place in terms of your advert and it’s going to cost you a lot of money. So what people typically do on the web, and people do understand this when I talk about it, is they naturally use search engines and Google to refine what they’re looking for. They might search for, I’m looking for a car, so used cars, and they see loads of stuff and they think, okay, no, actually, you know what, I’m thinking I’m probably wanting a Ford and probably a Ford Focus used car. And then they go, you know what, I actually want a diesel. And so they’re naturally refining it in their head and then replaying that in Google as they get the search results that they’re looking for.
Bryan Lade
It’s often at those second or third level searches where AdWords is more effective, where you’re picking up on a much tighter set of keywords so that you know whatever you’re advertising is a much closer match to what that person is looking for. And then AdWords tends to work a lot better. The click-throughs are more relevant. As long as your landing page is good, obviously that person is probably in the game for contacting you to discuss buying your product or service, hopefully.
Lee Matthew Jackson
[Speaker:TREVOR BURRUS] There you go. Now on Google AdWords then, is there— this could be a dumb question, but I know if I tap in, say, web design, and there’s like 4 ads at the top of that page, which must cost a fortune. If you then go further down into those results, is there— I mean, there’s also the same Google— I mean, there are Google AdWords there. Can you pay to be on a different page of results, etc., or is it the same guys appear on every single page?
Bryan Lade
[Speaker:TYRONE] Yeah, this is a double-edged sword of AdWords. Basically, if you’ve got a big enough wallet, you can pay to get towards the top, or if not the top. Obviously, with the big corporates out there, that’s a big wallet. It’s incredibly difficult for small businesses. The trick around AdWords is more about getting your keyword matching absolutely nailed. The way Google AdWords works best is you decide on a phrase, so it could be WordPress web developer. That needs to be replayed in the advert and absolutely needs to be on the landing page that they come in on. What you don’t want to do is have lots of phrases and then just one advert, because if Google measures the quality of all of the adverts against the keyword matching across the search, the advert, the metadata and the landing page. So having lots of small campaigns around specific things is often the best way to go ahead. However, there’s a lot more to AdWords in terms of having a building block which works well with Google. So Google is also looking at your website, is it mobile responsive? So it’s looking at the user experience. If I’m going to pass someone to this website, what kind of experience am I going to give them?
Bryan Lade
Because that’s their bottom line, is they want to be number one forever and ever and carry on ruling the world. So they don’t particularly want to send someone to a bad page, a slow page, that’s not mobile responsive. But if you pay them enough money, they will actually. So kind of, you know, two sides of a coin there. But certainly make sure that technically your website’s well built. It’s not all about how nice it looks anymore. If you Google— and most developers will know this hopefully— but if you Google Developer Insights, that’s an automated bot which basically you can point at any website and it tells you under the bonnet how good that website is in terms of scripting, caching, image optimisation, so forth, so forth. If you’re getting a good score on there, Google’s going to naturally prefer your website as a potential landing page for the AdWords themselves. So it’s not just about creating AdWords and going off that tomorrow, it’s about having the foundations on which to do AdWords so that they’re successful and Google likes you.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Now then, talk to me about Google Places, because one of the things I’ve noticed after updating my Google Places information after your good kind advice when you came to see me was that if I tap in web design into Google, my company appears top of the list for the local area. So I think Google changed along, maybe a year or two ago, where a lot of the results now are very localised. So me tapping in web design doesn’t show web designers in the entire UK. It actually shows the first page of results appears to be lots of local web design companies. And also the Google Maps widget or whatever you want to call it or Places widget appears within the results and there’s Lee Jackson Limited just there with me and my 5-star rating. That looked pretty damn good. So did I charge for that? You didn’t. You just told me about it. I mean, I already had it. I just hadn’t done anything with it and I’m like, oh, there it is because I’ve got a web designer and all that sort of stuff. So tell us, what tricks are people missing by not having a Google Places thing?
Lee Matthew Jackson
Doodle.
Bryan Lade
Don’t call it Google Places for a start. That actually went out about 3 or 4 years ago.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh, whatever. Just because I don’t know the latest lingo.
Bryan Lade
I’m not a Google expert. The important phrase is Google My Business.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Google My Business. That’s what I said. I can edit this now and I could have said anything. I could even make you say other things. Just do an impression of your voice in post-editing. No, I won’t. Carry on, mate.
Bryan Lade
Google My Business is fantastic and has a lot of value, especially for local businesses who kind of rely on the locality of client base. Um, it’s worked really well for a number of clients I’m working with, and it’s absolutely free to do. Um, so absolutely make sure you get on to this quickly, um, for your web developers, and tell your clients about it because they’ll love you for a free bit of advice. Device. But if you want someone to set it up for me, then give me a call, no problem. But basically, about 2-3 years ago, in my view, Google started changing how it displayed search results because of the mobile revolution. And Google Maps is a key part of that. So when you’re out and about and you’re looking for pizza or cinema or whatever, and you’re not familiar with the area, you just Google Maps, and it will show you all the services and products relevant to what you just searched for. The foundation of the information on there is Google My Business, which is basically the modern version of Yellow Pages, if you want to be kind of simple about it. Those are old enough to remember the big yellow block that every household used to have many years ago now.
Bryan Lade
But Google will go out there right now spidering for business information, and it will take a business address and what it does and try and create a business listing if you haven’t done it yourself, basically. So quite often you’ll see on Google Maps, and that’s where it’s displayed often, and businesses on there, and it has a little option called Claim My Business or Claim This Business, because actually Google doesn’t know what that business is, who works there, or how legitimate it is. So you have to claim the business, and they send you a little postcard with a confirmation code, so to prove that you basically work there. So you don’t get people setting up in Kensington High Street, for instance, um, just to pull the wool over people’s eyes. And that, that Google Business listing, you can then embellish it with different categories of business. So the windows and doors company I’m working you’re working with. There’s a category for window installer, door supplier, conservatory builder, so forth, so forth. So you appear under a number of categories, and you need to add lots of nice information in there about what your business does, your opening hours, website links naturally, and also photographs.
Bryan Lade
Google actually measures how many quality and quantity of photos you put against your Google Business Listing and compares it to the other businesses in your locality in that category, and therefore it’s a natural preference for Google to put your, your business listing above others who aren’t doing quite so well. The other thing that you need to get done in there is using the positive reviews. So much like Amazon, which is more broadly understood product reviews, Google is very keen now on business reviews. And if you can get some positive business reviews in there, that’s going to really help push you up in the, in the business listing search, which is often in Maps, but also does appear on the main search page as well. As well. So please do Google your business today.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So that’s not Google Places, that’s Google My Business. Top tip from Bryan Lade today. Go and get some images on there, get some good clients to put in some lovely reviews, get your business registered if you haven’t already, or if you have and you’ve just neglected it like I was, then go and do something with it. I actually have to go and upload some pictures I think now, because that’s the one thing I forgot to do. I remember you mentioned that.
Bryan Lade
So also, when you, when you log into Google My Business, you just need a Gmail account or, well, no, another Google email address. It gives you some really interesting information now in a kind of, in a little area called Insights. So it shows you how many people are looking at your business listing, whether it’s on Maps or main search, and whether they search direct or whether they browse to you or typed in the direct of your URL of your website or what company name, for instance. And it’s saying how many people clicked on directions or call button, obviously very relevant to mobile phones. And it’s giving you lots of information basically about how your, how your listing’s being used out there in the real world. So that’s really, really useful stuff to know.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m actually having a quick look at mine already. I’ve had 157 views as a result in the last 30 days. That’s not bad going really, is it?
Bryan Lade
Well, my windows and doors company had over 1,100 in the last 30 days, Lee. So you must do, must do better.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s not the competition. Okay. Uh, uh, oh, no phone calls though. Oh, that’s cool. But I’ve had plenty of photo views as well. The last 30 days, 94 photo views. I need to put more photographs up. Businesses like me, other ones have had 513 views in an average 30 days. So I got some work to do. Damn it. It’s like another social media platform I’ve got to go and fill in.
Bryan Lade
Absolutely.
Lee Matthew Jackson
No, that’s awesome. Well, Bryan, you’ve been epic. You’ve given us 40 minutes of amazing value. I just know people are going to want to connect with you. So first of all, guys, go cheque out Bryan’s website. That’s Ladebare.co.uk, and that’s L-A-D-E-B-A-R-E.co.uk. We’ll put a link in the show notes. But mate, what other avenues, channels can people connect with you?
Bryan Lade
I guess there’s a Facebook page and there is a Twitter account, but I’m not a Twitterer. I just—
Lee Matthew Jackson
that’s a technical phrase, that is, Twitter.
Bryan Lade
For me, yeah, for me, I just, I can’t, don’t get Twitter. Well, I do get it, I just don’t get on with it.
Lee Matthew Jackson
But, um, because Donald Trump, so, uh, yes, Facebook or LinkedIn, I’m all over those.
Bryan Lade
So yeah, do connect with me, peeps. It’ll be great.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So, and well, if you email me those links, I will get those links as well in the show notes as well so that you can connect with Bryan on there. He’s a super friendly guy. I just know he’ll be super nice to you. And if you got any questions about how to get started, etc., or you even want to commission him because he’s a really nice guy to work with, then I do recommend you, you cheque it, sorry, connect connect with our Bryan, whom I believe we’re probably going to end up bumping into each other again soon at local networking meetings as well.
Bryan Lade
I’m sure we will.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m sure we will share a coffee and a full English breakfast because that’s what we do.
Bryan Lade
Indeed.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Locally. And that’s actually a whole other episode really, isn’t it? The benefits of networking and local networking. Oh yes. There’s Google AdWords, but there’s also being out and about physically meeting people, and we actually get quite a bit of business through through networking.
Bryan Lade
Definitely.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So do I. Maybe we should get together, do another podcast, talk about our experiences at some point.
Bryan Lade
Yeah, absolutely.
Lee Matthew Jackson
But until then, mate, have a wonderful day and thanks very much for being on the show.
Bryan Lade
It’s been a pleasure. Hopefully it’s been useful to a number of people and yeah, have a good day all.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Very useful to me, so I’m pretty sure it’s been useful to everyone else, mate.
Bryan Lade
Fantastic.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Have a good one.
Bryan Lade
Okay, cheers. Bye. Bye.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So there you have it. End of episode number 66, and I’m sure you learned a lot from what Bryan Lade down there. Oh, did you see what I did? I’m the only person in the office today, so I’m kind of laughing at my own jokes, which officially means that age 34, 35 soon, um, that was a dad joke. So if you are guilty of this, head on over to the Facebook group, anglecrown.com/group, share your best dad joke moments. Let’s have some dad jokes going on as well as cat pictures. Actually, sod the cat pictures, let’s have a week of dad jokes and mum jokes. You’re just as guilty of it, gals. So in next week’s episode, we have Bryan Hogg, and to try and describe what he does, uh, would probably take an entire episode. But, you know, just as a highlight, one of the most exciting things that I learned from him was this course that he’s got going for people who want to develop and sell premium WordPress plugins. So if that’s an idea that’s been on your mind, then guys, next week is going to be an exciting episode. But also, if you’re not in the premium plugin game, you’re not going to make your own, there’s still a whole tonne of advice that Bryan has, um, in a whole wide range of WordPress slash agency slash business related areas.
Lee Matthew Jackson
The guy is just a genius. It was such a good call. So guys, I wish I could launch everything all in one go after I’ve recorded them all, but you know, this is a weekly show and we do have the benefit of listening to a great episode, applying what we’ve learned for that week, and then looking forward to the next. I think if I hit you all with everything all in one go, we’d probably get nothing done. So guys, next week, great episode. I can’t wait to share it. Don’t forget it as well. In just a couple of days, our new YouTube channel is going to be launching. So, you know, I thought I had a face just for podcasting, but apparently people actually want to see this ugly mush on a screen talking about things that I’m passionate about. The channel is going to be predominantly around agency life. So if you are running an agency or you’re going to be launching or you’re evolving into an agency, a lot of the topics we’re going to be covering are things like that. So at some point I’ll be talking about that elusive contract, uh, discussion.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’ll be sharing thoughts, advice on that, etc. But also one of the very soon to launch episodes, we’ll be talking all about creating a good website specification. I’ve already blogged on it in the Facebook group as well. I’ve already shared a preview, like the first take, which is not going to be the final take, but still it’s full of value in there. So I go crown.com/group, there’s already a preview in there for you guys in there. But it’s going to be a great experiment. I’m going to do about 25 episodes initially that are all planned, and they’ll be drip-fed either on a weekly or biweekly basis. I’m not sure because there’s a lot of work and actually a lot more work that goes into trying to produce a 5-minute video than there is in an hour’s podcast. So watch this space. Go on to anglecrown.com/vlog. You’ll see a pretty countdown and a nice video on there. Also, don’t forget the Facebook group. There’s a cool video in there as well. Alright guys, have a freaking awesome week.
Bryan Lade
Love you.
