But, Where Are Le People???

Goooooodddd dayyyyyy! I have some fun things to report this delightful Friday!

Things that include—ready for it????—numbers. Which obviously I have a love/hate relationship with, because as a writer I’m naturally averse to numerical items, but as a business person I LOVE ‘em. (Especially when they’re working in my favor.)

So today, I wanted to tell you about some important num-bahs that are helping to drive my new venture, Meat & Hair, and hopefully help YOU understand a few things about num-bahs, too. 🙂

Let me ask you this: have you ever tried running any ads?

Specifically, have you ever tried running any Google ads?

A lot of people think of Google for location-based businesses like “restaurants near me” kind of things, but I happen to have a mad, passionate love affair with Google Ads over any other type of ad, and here’s WHY:

Users are actively searching for your thing, in that very moment, with a specific intent in mind.

This is w-a-a-a-a-a-y different than interrupting someone’s Instagram scroll and hoping they happen to take an interest while they’re waiting outside a restaurant for their friend. Things like IG ads are awesome for exposure because you can keep hammering the visual into your target audience’s mind, but Google Ads reign for quicker conversions: and that’s because the people you’re paying to reach are already looking for what you’re offering. It’s the difference between selling your chocolate chip cookies to a line already waiting around the block (Google), or yelling at people passing by on the highway to stop and try your chocolate chip cookies (Instagram, FB, Twitter). The first one is the low-hanging fruit, so this is where I start. As the saying goes, “Don’t try to sell nuts to dolphins.” Google makes sure you’re selling nuts to squirrels.

That said, make no mistake: if you saw the same sign for kittens on the same highway every single day on your way to work, and eventually you need a kitten, you’re going to know exactly where to go. The constant exposure will leak into your brain in the best way. (At least, from an advertiser’s perspective!) So I like to think of IG ads as “an investment for future business” and Google ads as “an investment in now.” Both are useful, and both lead to business, but we’ve all got to start somewhere, so I start with Google.

You know what I’m talking about, right? Whenever you Google anything, the first page results are a mix of both ads and the top organic results. Ads are at the top, because they’re paying to be there, and organic results are the people who have invested a looooot of time into creating relevant content that’s going to feed Google. (This is what your content on your website should do, FYI.)

So, of course, YES: if you invest a year in creating amazing content that answers the questions your target market is typing into Google, you’re going to start getting organic traffic. This is ideal! This is seriously the holy grail. (Note: this is what your on-site content should focus on: what questions people are typing into Google.)

But in the meantime, you might need to buy some of that traffic—especially if you’re testing out your offers. You’ll never know if your offer is strong if you don’t have anyone on your email list, right?

I’m lucky because I have a built-in audience at The Middle Finger Project, so every time I start something new there’s a good chance that the folks there will want to check it out, too. So that’s why I usually offer a killer deal if they want to help me beta test: they get to try stuff at a super reduced rate, while I get the awesome benefit of their feedback. (Both express and indirect, through the actions they take.)

Most people don’t have this (admittedly humblingly-awesome) luxury. If you’re starting something new, you likely won’t have an existing audience of people who are pumped to come hang out with you and try your new thing. So if that’s you, you’ll still need to pay for ads to drive some initial traffic and test to see how it goes. But that’s not always bad: the benefit is that you’re getting 100% cold traffic, which means that those people don’t know you from Adam…so if they convert?

It’s because your offer is strong. And that?

Is worth its weight in gold.

Selling to people who already know you is way different than selling to people who do not know you—and it’s important to understand the dynamics of the latter. Your family will always buy your Girl Scout chocolate bars, but will anybody else? That’s essentially the question we’re trying to answer when we talk about “cold traffic,” i.e. people who have no idea who you are.

For me, what I did was sent warm traffic to Meat & Hair from The Middle Finger Project…but then I set up a referral program where each subscriber gets a unique referral link to share. When they share, they get instant access to bonus upgrades. So what does this mean?

It means that when they share, cold traffic signs up—people who do not know me—and then I’m able to watch what they do. Do they engage? Do they stay subscribed? And, do they buy? This way, I’m able to test the strength of the offer...without any prior brand loyalty coming into play.

So, that’s precisely what I did: I segmented subscribers who came through on referral ONLY, have no prior relationship with me, waited 30 days so they’d warm up via free content, and then pitched them the offer for a paid Creative Writing Class.

Result? MASSIVE.

I have a 10% conversion rate from cold leads on the Meat & Hair email list to paid conversions to the creative writing class.

This is—to my joy and delight—really, really good.

Like, really good.

I attribute that entirely to two things:

1. Subscribers don’t get pitched until the 30-day mark. This gives them time to engage with the free content and start to build a relationship with me, Ash, the person behind the thing. So effectively what’s happening is I’m taking cold leads and turning them into warm leads. This is precisely the entire point of your newsletter. If you’re doing it well, you will move cold leads to warm leads, so then you can say, “Hey, I also have this other thing! It will help you a ton. Here’s how much it costs.” And then they become paying customers. 😍
2. Once they do get pitched, it’s not just a quick email mentioning it on the peripheral: there are thirteen emails designed to get folks excited, present the offer, and then close sales on a deadline. The point is, I give the sale its own spotlight: I don’t try to hide it in the corner, at the bottom of an email, as an afterthought. One of the concepts I preach is the power in believing in what you are actually selling. If you believe in what you’re selling, you will have no problem shouting it all over the world. This makes it easy to put YOUR THING in the spotlight. On the other hand, when you’re insecure about what you’re selling & you haven’t really given it your best effort, then you’re always going to feel that hesitation…and that hesitation is reflected in your sales numbers.

BUT!

None of this can happen if you can’t get anyone on your email list in the first place. And that’s where ads come in: you have to be able to convert there, first. Otherwise, everything else is in vain.

(Which, by the way, happens to be my philosophy about EVERYTHING. I start at the very top of the funnel and think about the conversions there, first. If that ain’t happening, nothing’s happenin’.)

So, let’s talk about Google Ads!

Now that I’ve tested the offer and ensured it was strong, I feel confident spending more money to send traffic into the funnel and—eventually—to the offer. Now it makes sense to do so, because I know the offer is converting on cold traffic. If I had spent a bunch of money on ads before I had tested the offer, I might have spent a ton and had it all go to waste. And who wants that??

According to Google Economic Impact report, “businesses generate an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they invest in Google Ads.” Whatttt! That’s wild, right? And that’s the AVERAGE.

Imagine businesses who are great at writing ad copy?

This is a no-brainer.

For me, I have three ground rules with Google Ads:

1. No banner ads, just text. Banner ads are images that display along the side of a website, for example, but no one clicks on those. Even Google themselves admit really poor conversion rates on those. I stick to text ads only.
2. I come up with a minimum of 5 ad sets. Because here’s the deal: when people are getting on Google, they have different reasons for searching. Right? One person might be searching for “best wedding photography” because they are looking for a wedding photographer whereas another person might be searching for “best wedding photography” because they write a wedding column and are looking for inspiration. So it’s important to think through the different groups of people who might be searching for your thing, and what their intent might be. The closer you can match their intent with your copy, the more conversions happen.
3. I make dedicated landing pages for each of the ad sets. So if someone sees your beautifully catered ad that spoke to them directly—great job!—but then they click and it takes them to a generic landing page that says something totally different, they’re going to leave. It’s going to hurt your conversions, big time. People in a modern internet world need things to feel PERFECTLY ALIGNED. They expect it to. This is a part of what it means to foster a modern online experience. So, each ad set gets its own landing page that mirrors the same copy from the ad.

The key is understanding what your customers’ search intent is—and then playing a matching game. That’s all this is!

Once you’re setting it up in Google ads, another thing they’ll ask you is whether or not you want your keywords to be “broad match,” “phrase match,” or “exact match.” Broad match means that Google will show your ad to anyone who they believe is looking for something related, even if the keyword they type in isn’t an exact match. Phrase match means they’ll show your ads to anyone who is searching for the exact meaning of your keywords, even if they aren’t exactly the same. And exact match means exactly how it sounds: they’ll only serve your ads to people who type in those exact keywords, exactly as you’ve written them.

For this test, I designated “phrase match” only. This means that, I’m cool if they didn’t type in the exact same keywords, but I want to keep it focused on their intent: not people searching for creative writing for fiction, for example. THIS IS IMPORTANT. You don’t want to spend money serving ads to people who aren’t actually looking for what you have. Do not think that “the more, the merrier,” and start including keywords that “might” relate in the misguided hope that those people miiiiiiight be interested, once they see your stuff. Ignore this urge! This is a giant waste of money.

To this point, you can (and should) also include what are called “negative keywords.” Negative keywords are keywords you can include, simply by putting a minus sign in front of the keyword (-) that you don’t want to target. Again, really important so you don’t spend money to target the wrong people! Especially on Google, because again: the folks searching there are looking for something specific.

So, for example, with the Meat & Hair ads, I included one big, fat negative keyword in particular:

-fiction

Meaning, do not show this ad to anyone who is looking for “creative writing fiction.” Because Meat & Hair isn’t for fiction writers: it’s for marketers and content creators. So this is hella important.

For Meat & Hair, the 5 different ad sets I created focused on the following 5 groups:

• Creative writing
• Content writing
• How to content writing
• Creative entrepreneurs
• Best of examples

And this means that I created five different ad sets, too! Each ad should speak a little differently to the user to align with their search intent. (So long as their intent matches your product.)

Here’s a look at a sampling of ads from each set. You can see how the headlines are tweaked slightly to appeal to different search intents:

For creative writing:

Write More Creatively | 1 Minute a Day

Every morning you’ll get 5 examples of content that’s funny and brave. It’s 100% free.

For content writing:

How to Write Creative Content | Bloggers & Creators

It’ll help you be more witty, stylish, and original with anything you write—and it’s free!

For creative entrepreneurs:

Boring Writing Doesn’t Sell (Not Even if You’re a Babe)

For examples:

Funny AF Copy Examples | Creative Businesses

Get the free daily newsletter that sends you 5 witty, funny copy examples every morning.

Subscribe now and watch the magic happen—it’s free!

And then, like I said, each one of those leads to a dedicated landing page that mirrors the exact same language, so it feels like a 100% perfect match.

All of these ads were approved, which is half of the challenge: there are certain rules you have to follow, including no weird punctuation and no CAPS, and no foul language, and, of course, you have to keep it within a certain character count. (That’s probably the hardest part.)

And, my darling, here were the results of this super simple, super basic Google Ads campaign:

Click through rate: 7.72%
Average click through rate across all industries: 5.06%

^^^Woo! This means the intent is matching.

Cost per click: .28 cents
Average cost per click: $2.41

^^^This means that my keywords are specific enough that I’m not competing in big oceans—which is good. It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond and dominate, rather than be a small fish in a big pond.

Ad conversion rate: 11.31% - that puts me in the top 25% of companies advertising on Google
Average conversion rate for Google Ads: 3.75%

^^^This is all about having great copy. While that’s an entire lifetime course in its own right, what I can tell you is that it’s all about making someone feel like you GET IT.

So, all of my tests have passed with flying colors!

And this means only one thing: now it’s time to pummel money into ads that are proven to be effective, in order to get them into a funnel that’s proven to be effective.

That is how you kick some ass.

You don’t have to know what you’re doing, but you do have to be willing to experiment.

Go! Leap! Try! Test! Play! Experiment! See what works, and what doesn’t!

And don’t be afraid of failure. Failure is a fool’s game. That ain’t you. You don’t have time for that nonsense. Winning is all about trial & error. Winning is all about throwing yourself into the ring and sitting back to see what happens.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO FEEL CONFIDENT.

In fact, if you wait until you feel confident, you’re never going to do anything.

Do it un-confident. Take the risk. Try it out. Do something you haven’t done. And see how it goes.

I didn’t come out of Scranton knowing this stuff. It’s all cultivated knowledge. And the only way I’ve gained it?

Is not by asking, but by doing.

Go, go, go. Try, try, try. See what happens! Nothing is a failure if you’re gathering information along the way.

As always, I hope this was helpful for you. Have a great weekend!

-Ash