Okay. I believe we are live. Please give me a moment. I'll make sure everything is working fine and we shall get started. Okay. Everything seems to be in order and that's what I like. Hello and good afternoon to you. My name is Uzair and thanks for joining in. It is good to be back after a week. I was on my family holiday, all of last week, so I had a great time with the family and now back to work.
I hope you have been keeping safe and well and had a great and productive profitable week last week. If you are new to these livestreams, then the format is I'll go through a topic at the start of the session, and then towards the end, I'll answer any questions that have been sent in the comment box. There's a comment box on the right-hand side so please put them in the box over there and I'll try my best to answer them for you.
Hello, Emily. Thank you for joining in. Yes, it's good to be back. I did miss (it), in fact, I tried to log in from the beach! I thought I'll try the livestream app on the mobile to see if it works or not, but the internet was really bad and I just couldn't log on! It was a good thing in a way that the internet was bad!
Okay. Today we'll be talking about the machine, the Terminator and this is what we all are scared of at the moment. Lots of noise on the internet, some good, mostly bad! That's how evil this machine is, eats up all our budget, wastes our money. Doesn't give us all the results and so on. Well, you need to test it yourself.
Don't listen to anyone else. Don't listen to me. You've got to do this for yourself and see whether it works for you or not whether the machine or the algorithm or the bot, whatever you want to call it, is cleverer than us, the humans. It's getting better and better day by day. I think it will be pretty exciting next six months or so.
How Google Ads evolves lots of new stuff coming out, and we want to just make our campaigns work better for us and for our clients. What I've done is I have taken some screenshots from some of our campaigns to show you some results, and then you can make up your own mind, is it worth running smart campaigns or not, or you're good the way you are and running the campaigns manually.
But until you don't try it, you don't know what's going to happen. I was of the same opinion until six months ago that "Nah, the machine cannot beat the human and we know what we are doing. We know how to bid, which keywords to go after, how to organize the campaigns," but let's see what we get. Okay.
Hello, Mike! Yes, its good to be back as well. Hello, Sandy as well. thanks for joining in. All right, so let's get started. Before we go into the results let's have a very quick recap. The manual campaign is where you bid yourself. You have total control on your keywords ads, campaign settings, and obviously bids. Then we've got four main types of automated or smart campaigns.
One is the target CPA where you put in that cost per acquisition in your campaign setting, and Google will try and get that acquisition for you. Now that acquisition could be whatever that conversion is. It could be a signup. It could be a lead form - submit. It could be a call. It could be someone landing on a very specific page on your website.
It really depends on what you have set up. Now with every smart campaign, you must, absolute must 100% set up your conversion tracking because, without conversion tracking, this will never work. This is why most of these campaigns don't work, its because the people who are running the campaigns haven't set these up the right way. The next one, the target ROAS. return on ad spend.
How much you want the return to be on every dollar, a pound or whichever currency you are spending. You can put up 300%, 400, 500% what it was every time. What this means is you give $1 to Google and Google gives you back $4 in return then you've got a positive ROAS of 400%. Max conversions or maximize conversions is where Google will try and get you the maximum number of conversions.
Maximize conversion value is the amount of value these two are, in fact, these three could be for e-commerce. They work really well. It really depends on what you are after, what your client's goals are and what they want. Quite often, you want to get the best bang for your buck then you will go after the maximize conversion value.
Google will try and go after all the high rollers or the high spenders, who it knows that they spend more on average than the other audiences and enhance CPC, which works in conjunction with manual bidding and Google will bid up or down, depending on how the likelihood of that conversion is going to happen. In all these four smart campaigns, you don't need to worry about bidding.
Google will do all the hard work and is going to bid accordingly. Obviously, you can control the budget yourself. Let's start with the first... Now you may not be able to read it very well and unfortunately, I can't zoom in, but I'll read them out for you and see what it is. Over here, we've got two campaigns running.
One is the target CPA, and one is the CPC enhanced, right? The best strategy as you can see over here. Now we've got the impressions and both of these have got a fair amount of traffic to the campaigns. 463 clicks versus 313, CTR is 8.74, 626. The CPC over here on the target, CPA is $18.34 compared to $4.68 on the enhanced.
We've tried to do a bit of experiment to see what happens with the low bid, whether we get any traffic or not because we are getting a fair amount of clicks at this $18 range. Now, whether it is expensive or not, I'm not going to go into that debate because if it is working well for the client and we are able to scale the campaigns then there's no point in trying to reduce the CPC and cut the campaign impressions, clicks, and the conversions down.
You spend about eight and a half thousand on the target CPA campaign and about 1500 over here. What this shows us is that we are getting traffic because the impressions are pretty much the same. There are fewer clicks, but the click-through rate is a little bit less on here, but there's a huge difference in the average cost, right?
Four is a quarter of what we are bidding over there. Why should we run an expensive campaign? Because what I see is, straight away somebody is going to go in there and shut off this campaign because, "Oh, it's too expensive." They only look at this cost per click. What you need to look at is the whole picture and not just one number.
We spent eight and a half thousand over here compared to the 1400 conversion rate. Now here's the difference. 3 times more conversions on the target CPA compared the manual one. This should be an eye-opener that, "Okay, the cheaper clicks don't convert as well as the expensive clicks." This is what I come to that conclusion and this is why certain keywords are expensive and certain keywords are cheaper because those expensive keywords are converting very well.
I've got 59, 60, almost 60 conversions there, 13 conversions, 13 and a half there. Cost per conversion 141 compared to 108. Now, as you can see over here... and those of you who have followed me for a while, we have a naming convention where we put in what the campaign is. Search, text campaign, mobile device, and the target CPA is one $56 for this campaign and we are getting the conversions at 141.76.
Google is giving us these results way under our target cost per acquisition, and here, although it is even cheaper, what we did was we are trying to optimize for $75, but what we've found is it's not scalable. As you can see that is "Okay, you got cheaper clicks, big deal," but you got lesser conversions and obviously you've got a steeper cost per conversion as well.
Which one would you rather have? The top one or bottom one? I know which one I would have, the top one. That's why we spent almost seven, eight times more than on the cheaper one. What we are seeing here is you don't want to go first of all, for the cheap clicks and secondly, don't try to squeeze the target CPA so low that you start to lose out on the traffic and you'll suffer because your campaigns will not be scalable.
It's man nil, machine one. Let's see what happens. it's a best of five, right?, and see where we end up. Okay. in this account, all three of them are target CPA. We have switched off all the manual ones because they were not working or were too expensive. When campaigns are not working, what you want to do is to just shut them off.
Don't try to think, "Oh, I'm going to lose this many clicks," or "I'm going to lose conversions." If those conversions are expensive and over-and-beyond the target cost per acquisition, no point in bidding or getting those conversions, if they are making you and your client a loss. Let's see what we have got in here. We're bidding on here, text ads at £90, average CPC is £5.76.
We've spent almost 9,800. 118 conversions at the cost per conversion of £83.26. I'm bidding for optimizing for £90, and I'm getting the CPA at £83.26, very well within my target CPA. Conversion rate is that. Now, as long as the conversion rate, in fact, as long as the cost per conversion stays at this number, then what I can do is I can go a bit more aggressive and try to bid up.
Instead of 90, I will go to less than 95 or a hundred and give Google a bit more breathing space to get more conversions because as the conversions are increasing, then at the same or similar rate, your CPA is going to stay the same or go down even more. This is working for us. This is a call ad.
This is why it is expensive, £17. Call ads will always be expensive than the text ads, but we're not getting a huge number. Most of the people are submitting the form, which I believe it is for this campaign. The call campaign we were optimizing for £150, but at the moment we are getting it for £184.98. It's a little bit more over our cost per acquisition, but the conversion rate is almost 50% more than the text ads.
The last one is the text ads on the computer that was on the mobile. We've got 27 conversions at £84.31. Again, well within the £90 CPA. As you can see all three of these are working well for us. the score goes to man nil, machine 2. If you have got any experience or have got good results good or bad, any results with smart campaign, then do put them in the comment box.
I'll come to that at the end of this presentation and see what kind of results you are getting compared to what we are getting over here. This one is as you can see a variety of campaigns, three shopping campaigns, one display, and one search campaign. Let's start with the search one. Nothing much is happening over here. Display, we usually run it for branding and brand awareness.
We're not looking at the conversions as such compared to the shopping or the search campaigns. We've got three shopping campaigns. Running one is maximize conversion value. Two of these are on enhanced CPC. You've got almost 2 million impressions here. 16,000 clicks, £4,700 is the cost, conversion (is) 346, ROAS is 316 and the conversion value is 14,900, almost 15,000 pounds.
Whereas over here, we have got a lot better ROAS or conversion value. You can see the cost per conversion is down. The ROAS which is for e-commerce, especially 746% and 574% compared to 316. Now, the reason why this is 316 is I know for a fact that this campaign we've been tweaking, changing, experimenting, few different things and not letting it settle down and when you are making changes, it goes into the learning mode, as you can see over here.
When you see this status, you don't want to touch it. You just let it run and let it run and see what happens when it does change the status to eligible and it's going to take up really well. Even though it is in the learning stage, the ROAS is really good because we were running at a minimum ROAS of 300%, which our client needs to have to be profitable.
We're right now at 316 so I would say that this is only going to improve. This campaign was running at about 400, 450 before, or when it was eligible. Don't be scared of tweaking or making changes to see what happens if you were to do anything different. You can run experiments as well, but we had to change a couple of things in there.
Now it is in the learning mode which is fine, as long as we are not making a loss and the client is happy to test it out as well. Secondly, this is not a huge amount of money. I know 4,700 is quite a bit, but it hasn't been in learning mode all the way through so it's working pretty well.
Over here, these 2, although it's giving us a great ROAS, can't scale it. It just won't scale and as soon as we started to run this campaign, it will start to take over these two and take off all the impressions as you can see from here, and we'll start to get a really good return on ad spend.
It's 3 - nil to the machine so far out of 5! The game pretty much is all up, but let's see if we, us the humans can score a couple back in return. On this account, we've got all of the setups as target CPA. As you can see, we are running a manual campaign as well, but this is working really, really well because we've got 16 different campaigns and we've got various cost per acquisition for each one of these campaigns.
Pretty much all of them are below what we are targeting. $110 is the target. We getting conversion at 97, 94, 93, 90, 88. It's consistent all throughout the campaigns. as you can see, that all of these campaigns have also spent a fair amount of money. it's not just by chance that one or two, are working and some of them are not working or some of them performing.
All of them are performing pretty well. I forgot to add the screenshot for the non-TCPA campaign. I'll make another video on that and add to that as well, but you can see the trend now. It looks like it's going to be a complete whitewash and see what happens in the next one. We've got two campaigns running at the target CPA.
We would probably have switched off the manual ones because these are working pretty well for us. The target CPA is 50. The one campaign is on mobile, one is on the computer so I separate them out so each one of them has its own budget. CTR is pretty good. Average CPC, £2.03 compared to £1.66, not a huge difference.
This one, I spent 21,000, this one, I spent 16,000. The conversion rate 3.23 on the mobile and 2.49 on the computer. Again, pretty similar, but here is where we are seeing a huge difference where the mobile, the cost per acquisition or conversion is £51.51 and over here, it is £81.47. This is working out expensive compared to the mobile one.
Until you don't target, you don't know what's happening. Now, the overall acquisition is £61 and we are bidding at £50. Now, if I was getting that number throughout all the campaigns, and the average will be higher, I would shut it off, but the client is happy with £61 because they are profitable and they're getting more conversions and more market share.
Let it go, otherwise, you are not to spend 61,000 or 16,000 at a higher CPA of almost about 40% more than what you're bidding. That would be quite a lot. I'm afraid. It's man nil, machine 5. A clean sweep, I should say, a complete whitewash. Is it game over for us humans? I don't think so because these results, as you can see, are consistent right across these various accounts and campaigns.
It's not by fluke, that there is one campaign working and other smart campaign is not working. That the trend is the same because there is a system to the madness, I should say, and you feed the right data into the computer or to the machine, you're going to get some great results. You don't feed, you know, like humans, if we eat good and healthy food, we will stay healthy.
What goes in and what comes out, you know, if you go put healthy food in you're going to stay well! You're not going to get ill or put on a lot of weight or get, you know, all sorts of diseases and so on. What I'm trying to say to you is you got to feed the right data into the machine, and you will find that all the heavy lifting is done by Google.
You can then focus more on the other end, which is conversion rate optimization on the landing page, the copy, headlines, images, call to action, lots of other things, which don't get paid any attention, because we are so busy trying to optimize all the campaigns in our Google Ads. Let the machine take over then you can optimize at the backend and not at the front end.
If you do want to get consistent results like these, you know, I can certainly help and I've helped lots of people get some great results. You want to book in a free consultation with me by all means, send me an email at info@sfdigital.co.uk., and then we can have a chat as to what you are doing and what are your goals.
I'm going to go to the comments now and if you have any questions now is the chance to put them in. First of all, hello to everyone. Good to see you back again over here. Okay. Sandy entertainments, "If we have low conversion rates, should we pay higher than others for the same keyword?" Lower conversion rate means that you are getting the click on to your landing page and they are not converting.
If you feel or find that these keywords are the most relevant ones: someone sees your ad; they like what they see on your ad; they click on the ad; they come through to your website, and this could be the problem of a low conversion rate. This is what I just said earlier on. You let the machine optimize and let it run and then you focus on optimizing the landing pages and the website and try to increase that conversion rate.
This is how you would do that. (Sandy,) "The new tradition podcast came in digital marketing. Can you please...?" Okay. Sandy, what I gathered from your comment is you're asking about the podcast and how it can help with your personal branding. Yeah. The podcast is another channel. It's an audio format. This is in video and obviously audio, but I don't do the podcast because my work is fairly visual.
As you can see, we need to go into Google Ads interface and show you certain things. If I want to talk about strategies and overall how to take your business to the next level, then yes, I can create podcasts without the visual bit or the video bit. You can try with the podcast as well and just stick to one thing and do it properly and you'll start to get results.
You've seen me, you know, I've been consistent over here on YouTube and I'm getting the results which I was looking for, getting leads, I'm getting customers and I'm making great friends like yourselves! Watching online either as live or as a recording. The good thing which I like about video and not too much about the podcast bit is, video is far better at building up that trust because people can see you.
One day, the camera wasn't working very well and it was just a screen. I had like quite a few comments on here saying, "Oh, we can't see you." Now they expect to see me in person show up. When I do get on a call with a new client or a new lead, it feels like they know me and they have known me for a long time because they have watched my videos, they have followed me for a certain time and they know that, you know, personal things, like I was a photographer, I love cricket and what I've been up to.
They follow me around the internet and to sell to them is very, very easy. Try the podcast as well, if it works for you and let me know. Machine wins and until you don't try it, you don't know what's going to happen. I always say this to everyone. You know, people ask me all the time, "Which is the best strategy?
Which are the best ads?" Whether video ads or search ads or display ads are going to work, well, you got to try it for yourself. Until you don't try it, you don't know because just taking my word for it, I don't want you to just spoil your campaign, waste money. It's not wasting money as well. You got to spend some money to buy that artificial intelligence and the data from Google if you don't have it in your account.
We spent £500 and we did not get any conversions is because we learned. You got to learn from it. Why didn't it work? How we can improve going forward? If this was so easy, right? That you switch on a campaign, put it on TCPA, or TROAS and let it run. The whole world will be doing it right?
But that's not the case because most of the people on the internet would say the same thing. Facebook is a scam. Google eats up all our money and we get zero results, but you do this right, you do this properly and you are going to get great results. Paramjit, "Google Ads is getting too much expensive day by day for lead generation.
How much FB is effective for lead generation?" Well, you got to make sure that your cost per acquisition or the target cost per acquisition is at the right amount. Sometimes we try to squeeze Google too much down. You will not get any results. In fact, you will not be able to scale it and I've shown you right now.
Look, you know, I'm prepared to pay three or four times more than on the click, but I'm getting better results at the backend. There is a premium auction, and there is an auction where all the cheap clicks happen. If you want to go on the cheap ones, by all means, you'll get loads of traffic, but your conversion rates will be low.
Your cost per conversions will be high. Whereas you spend money on the expensive clicks, you will find that you are getting better results, greater conversion rate, and more conversions. Sandy. Can I do a video on Facebook marketing one day? No, I'm not because I'm just focusing on Google Ads and that's what I want to focus on and Youtube video.
There's enough over here to do it. We do Facebook ads as well, but I wouldn't want to be teaching Facebook. It's just, it changes too much. Even Google changes so much that it's hard to keep up with it. I believe I've covered all the comments and the questions. Thank you guys for being here with me today. It's good to be back.
It'll be business as usual from tomorrow at five o'clock UK time. I'll be here. I hope you can join me as well until then stay safe and goodbye.
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