Small Businesses Advertising On Google

Lewis Harrison:  Bob is the director at page search at McDougall. You know John McDougall, he’s been on the show many, many times.

Bob’s also certified by Google and manages the Google Partner’s Program, which I want to find interesting for myself. I really appreciate you calling in.

We have our people which are really almost like students in the course, the McDougall course…

[laughter]

Lewis:  …it’s Internet marketing. So, I know we will have a good half an hour together. I have a lot of questions of my own.

Of course, I’m going to ask you should you use Google to advertise, but I know you that you have a reason to goodie Google, but now let me ask you a question. I have a specific question for you because we can expand on the question.

I have a workshop happening up in the area and people don’t really know me that well, I may have a radio show but there’s a town called Oneonta about 40 miles away.

I am doing a workshop May 3rd through May 4th, so I’ve been thinking, should I pay Google advertising or Facebook advertising, so I wasn’t sure. So the first question, of course, should you use Google to advertise yourself?

I’m going to assume that in a certain situation, of course, but the question would be what would that situation be and why Google rather than Facebook?

Bob Rustici:  That’s a good question. You’re thinking should I advertise my business or even advertising an event that’s occurring within my business, right?

Lewis:  Yeah, it’s one event. It’s a weekend, that’s it.

Bob:  Either examples are really good opportunities to do that. Events, actually, are very interesting because a lot of times some businesses have tradeshows and you can actually bid off of people looking at the tradeshow and say, “Hey, don’t forget about me. Come and visit me, too.” There’s opportunities to think about events that are occurring and advertise on those.

Lewis:  You just answered a question for me. I go to BookExpo at the Javits Center every year. I get tons of email from people who have published books. Is that what you’re doing is they’re bidding on the right to send me an email?

Bob:  Well, in that case, it’s somebody’s going to be talking about what the name of the conference and your ad can actually appear when they search that conference. They’re going to be looking for more information.

Lewis:  By the way, you’re clear but not clear enough. Are you on speaker because you are clear but not clear enough for some people?

Bob:  Sorry about that. I’ll try to get a little bit louder too, then.

Lewis:  That is much better. Thank you so much.

Bob:  There are two ways, sometimes people will go to Google and search by a typical activity they’re interested in and then they’ll also search by the conference name and in both those cases, you can have ads appear, then you can promote yourself.

If you’re doing the Book Fair in the Javits Center, what’s the name of that event?

Lewis:  It’s called, “BookExpo America.”

Bob:  You actually can say when somebody searches the term “BookExpo New York.” Your ad can come up and say, “Hey, I got a booth there, meet me.” Want to get a signed copy of my book or something of that opportunity?

It’s something when you realize, hey, there’s an opportunity for them to draw traffic, not only to that event but draw traffic to me because they’re looking for directions. They’re probably trying to get more conference details and that kind of stuff. So that’s an opportunity to capitalize on that event and actually advertise.

Lewis:  Go ahead.

Bob:  The other way is just traditional. If you’re doing a workshop, it’s a marketing workshop or those kind of things, you can advertise for marketing workshops within defined regions.

If somebody’s actually saying, “I’m looking for a new business workshop,” they’ll actually find your ad again and say, “Ah, there’s a connection I can make.” Does that make sense?

Lewis:  I want to go for the questions we have here then I want to expand out of them. How do I get started with advertising in Google if I wanted to?

Bob:  One of the things you have to think about Google is, it’s obviously one of the most popular search engines out there. People are going everywhere to find stuff, products, services; they’re using search terms that are triggering your ads.

That’s the first thing to understand is that that actual search term is going to create a term impression. What Google has a lot of smarts is they’ve diagnosed those search terms.

They’ve figured out, is this person looking for a picture? Are they looking for a video? Are they looking for a product? Are they looking for a service?

Then, they serve ads up in different ways, in different formats. They also offer the opportunity of creating what they call, “banner ads,” not necessarily through the Google search engine but it’s actually on bloggers.

If you have a blog and it’s pretty popular, you can have banner ads displayed there, too. That gives you an opportunity to approach a different, couple channels with Google.

Now only through search but also banners. It’s a great opportunity. So to get started, it’s actually not a bad process they’ve set up for you.

You have to go to this thing called, “Google AdWords.” You don’t necessarily go to Google. If you want to find where it is, just search, “Google AdWords.”

Lewis:  They’re a big company, so you just type “Google,” and you’ll end up in the middle of a large column.

Bob:  [laughs] Yeah. So AdWords is Google’s money maker. This is what gets Google the billion‑dollar company. So they make money.

Lewis:  Have they made money yet, by the way?

Bob:  Oh, yeah. [laughs]

Lewis  They’ve been in the red for a really long time. They’re making money, OK.

Bob:  No, they’re making money hand over fist now. They’ve become such a powerhouse in this area. I’ve personally been out there to headquarters a couple times, invited out there. They’ve got a fabulous facility. It’s just incredible.

Lewis:  That’s when you know you’re a bad dude, when Google invites you out and pays you to come out there.

Bob:  [laughs]

Lewis:  There’s a woman named Janet Tavakoli. I don’t know if you know her or not. I’m such a loser. She was on Charlie Rose, and I kept saying, “Man, she has great legs.” Warren Buffett actually invited ‑‑ you know, people pay 10,000 bucks to have lunch with Warren Buffett. Buffett actually paid her to come out and have lunch with him.

Bob:  [laughs] Yeah, it’s definitely the legs.

Lewis:  She called the financial collapse about six months before she happened. She nailed it totally, so she’s smart to boot. Enough about her legs. We’ll get back to advertising and Google.

Bob:  You go to this AdWords portal and you sign up there. That’s the first step. But before you start spending money, you want to actually go through a couple things to think about, what you’re going to be advertising.

If you’re a small local business, even a little pizzeria, you want to make sure you define your region. Obviously nobody’s going to drive an hour, unless you’re really, really good, to come to your restaurant. So you’re going to say, “OK, I’m going to go half an hour out in the region.” You kind of think, “OK. Where do I want to advertise, what do I want to say, is there a special I want to promote or is there some sort of event I’m trying to look for? What are the things?” And then you have to start to understand the terms that are going to generate that ad for you.

Lewis:  Keywords, essentially.

Bob:  Basically, it’s keywords. And Google provides the tools for you to do this analysis. They’re actually making it a lot easier. You obviously have to have a website that you want to push to. That’s a next important thing. The thing I always recommend is, there are really three factors that you need to think about in your advertising.

One is that they’re going to charge you for those keywords. That’s what we call in the business “cost for click.” That’s going to be how much it’s going to cost you. Those costs can vary to 25 cents to, we were just talking about right now one lawyer, they’re paying $560 a click. That means just one person to come into your website. They didn’t do anything. They just come to your website. That’s how Google got to be this billion‑dollar business, because it’s an auction‑based system, and people pay lots of money sometimes to Google just to get people to come to their website.

Lewis:  Now, does Facebook use pay‑per‑click also? You pay a flat fee there.

Bob:  You do, but Facebook’s got a different model, because you don’t have a search term. You actually have a demographic profile.

Lewis:  Got it. And by the way, as you do this, I’m going to want to take about 15 or 16 minutes on my specific situation, because it’s a real situation.

Bob:  [laughs] Not a problem.

Lewis:  I can be your guinea pig, if you will.

Bob:  The first thing you’re thinking about is CPC. That’s the cost, because you want to understand what that is. And then the next thing is your volume. That’s kind of where that “do I advertise just within a certain region? Is it going to be a couple miles?”

You just think of how many people are searching that. Again, Google will tell you how many people are actually searching that. When you have those numbers, you start figuring out your budget a little bit. You say, “OK, this is how much it’s going to cost me to advertise.”

And the last factor you think about is, “What does it cost me to get a sale or an action? What am I willing to pay?” It could be anything from, if you’re selling a product, you say, “OK, if it’s a $10 product, I don’t want to pay more than $2 to sell a product, because then it gets kind of ridiculous.” Or in some cases, again with these lawyers, they’re willing to pay $1,000 just for a lead.

They’re OK with that, because they know what’s coming afterwards in terms of a sale. So you want to think of what is often referred to as the CPA, which is your cost per acquisition, or cost per sale. How much are you willing to do that?

Have those three factors in play, because then you can really figure out whether advertising makes sense for you or not. Sometimes people put a lot of money into this area and get very little return. Google doesn’t care. They’re going to take your money. They’re happy to do that.

Lewis:  How can I save money and do this myself?

Bob:  That’s always the hard part for small businesses: “Can I do this myself? Is it easy enough to do? I know what I want to say and how to sell it and who to go to. Why don’t I just do it there?” The answer is “Yes.” I always say that with a guarded reply, because it is designed for self‑service. They do make some neat tools.

They have this keyword planner tool that you the pricing, tells you the geography and all that kind of stuff. It’s a little techy, but it’s not terribly techy. A lot of people can get in there and start doing it themselves, not a problem.

Where often people stumble is not thinking about, what are they trying to do? If they don’t go back and say, “What’s my message? Who am I trying to target and what am I trying to motivate them to?” They lose it in that area.

The complexity gets in there is that Google provides a lot of stuff. That’s why I’m this professional certified person by Google, I go through tests and I have years of experience. They give you a lot of extra little tools that you can tweak and make things work.

Sometimes it’s not a bad thing to start it out yourself, see if you’ve had some modest success into it. Then at some point say, “You know what, it seems to be working, but I probably can get something better out of that.” Then you start looking for some more experts to come in and help you out and bring you to the next level.

Lewis:  Thank you. By the way, this is Bob Rustici, everybody. He’s director of paid search at McDougall Interactive. He’s certified by Google and manages the Google Partners Program there at McDougall Interactive. He’s an expert on marketing agent and marketing structure and optimization.

I want to do about a minute or two more on this. We’re going to stay with this, but I want to get more personal, if I can. Any last things you want to add on this particular segment before we go into taking everything you’ve said and apply it to my personal project?

Bob:  Sure. This probably sounds like a commercial for Google, but I’ve had a lot of people…

Lewis:  That’s all right.

Bob:  …always ask me “Should I do, advertise with Google?”

Lewis:  Let’s call it an underwriter’s announcement for Google, since we’re a noncommercial radio.

Bob:  [laughs] I don’t work for Google, so I can say with honesty. The truth is, yes, you’d be missing an opportunity as a business not to do a little bit. The great thing about it is you can spend as little as $100 a month, up to $100,000 a month.

It doesn’t really matter. It’s all going to be based on this one thing at the end of the day, and it’s called ROI. If I put $10 in, do I get at least $100 back or $200 back? Whatever you’ve defined as your ROI, whatever you get that on return, you should get it.

Once you’re there, you’re good. It’s a great platform for that.