
We wasted $50K on Google Search Ads and the insights we got on the way - igordebatur
https://www.indiehackers.com/@AntonElfimov/we-wasted-50k-on-google-ads-so-you-don-t-have-to-af688095de
======
gk1
Surprised that keyword selection wasn't mentioned. Any time you're dealing
with programming-related keywords, you're going to catch A LOT of people who
just want free answers or code samples to copy-paste.

They're going to click on the first search result automatically, and if that
happens to be your ad, then you just wasted $0.50-$5.00.

Another issue is keyword match types. If you used the keywords exactly as in
the spreadsheet, without any modifiers, then you're giving Google way too much
leeway in how they interpret and match search queries to your target keywords.
For example, your keyword might be UPLOADCARE REVIEW but your ad will show for
the search "uploading review" (I'm just guessing).

You might think "well even if our ad shows for an irrelevant keyword, surely
the user would see the difference and not click on it!" Wrong. People click
the first X results automatically.

Case in point: A data science platform company I consult once targeted python
programmers. Instead they were getting tons of clicks from snake enthusiasts,
before I got involved. Oops.

Another company was selling monitoring software for mobile apps but was paying
Google (inadvertently) for searchers of free mobile apps. Oops.[1]

Anyway, the other lessons mentioned are still valid, but I feel the biggest
lesson (mistake?) was overlooked.

[1] Quick tip if you're running Google Ads now: Go to your Keywords Report and
click on the Search Terms tab. You'll see the actual search terms people used
before they saw your ad. If they vary wildly from your target keywords, you
need to fix your keyword targeting.

PS - More fun "Oops" stories about Google Ads:
[https://www.gkogan.co/blog/selling-software-snake-
charmers/](https://www.gkogan.co/blog/selling-software-snake-charmers/)

~~~
dhimes
There's a subtle point here that I want to emphasize, as it's counter to their
"Lesson #2: Focus on page quality and CTR when doing paid tests."

The best way I found to _qualify_ leads was, for things I was charging money
for, to put in the price. That way people didn't click if they were looking
for free. This actually worked pretty well.

The problem was that this means my ads were showing and not getting clicked.
This _reduced_ my quality score (although, in my mind, it provided a better
experience for the user because they weren't wasting time going to a site that
they did not want).

So Google's Quality Score is "quality" as measured from _their_ point of view
(high click/view), not yours nor necessarily your customers.

~~~
nostrademons
It's [supposed to be] quality as measured from their _users '_ point of view,
which may be a large superset of your customers. If the user wanted a free
code snippet to copy & paste and they get an ad with a price in it, that's a
bad result, even if they never click on it; that space on the page could've
been devoted to a link that they would actually visit. It's _good_ (from the
users' POV) for that ad to never get shown again on that query, because it
makes their results more relevant.

The right solution here is to refine your target market segmentation &
keywords so that you're buying ads on searches that only people in your target
market make. Then you get a good CTR & quality score _and_ a good conversion
rate. Optimize the funnel all the way down to the searcher.

~~~
dhimes
That might be the idea, but my quality score goes up if the user clicks, even
if it's not what they want- and Google gets paid. My quality score goes down
if I am forthcoming and pre-qualify the clicks. (There are probably more ways
to do this than price.)

If the user doesn't use the word "free" in the search then there's no way to
know a priori that they wanted free. By me putting a price in my ad, I am
making the user's experience of the search page better by not leading them
astray.

Here's an example: Suppose somebody searched "fix my carburetor." The likely
return will have services that fix carburetor for you, youtube videos showing
you how, and for-pay pdf instructions. Let's say I'm selling the for-pay pdf
instructions. How am I supposed to exclude my page? I could limit my keywords
to "fix my carburetor pdf for sale" and hope someone types it into the search
box, but I find that unreasonable.

Maybe you can walk me through how I'm wrong. But I submit that Google is
working on the hypothesis that more clicks = better user experience, and I
believe that hypothesis is false.

~~~
exclusiv
I agree with you. I always try to disqualify traffic with price.

Many people optimize for CTR but that's not usually good when you're doing
leads and/or sales.

It's easy to write ads that get higher CTR. Then your CPC will usually go down
but that doesn't mean you'll get a higher ROI.

So best to focus on CPA not CTR.

~~~
igordebatur
Good point, we now have the target CPL we use to qualify paid ads hypotheses.

------
ericabiz
I manage 6 figures a year of profitable Google Ads spend, and while this
article isn't bad, it's a bit vague. Its strongest point is "don't hire an
agency to scale." Its second strongest point should have been keyword
selection, but that's buried at the bottom of the article.

Specifically, the things that have gotten us to profitable ad spend in the 6
figure range are:

\-- VERY tight campaigns going to tight landing pages. The more specific
campaigns you can run, the better. The keywords on your ads AND landing pages
need to match the keywords people type in. Most common mistake is driving
traffic to a vague landing page. We have 200+ landing pages, all matched to
specific keywords. I built out an entire custom framework on top of WordPress
to manage this for our company.

\-- Manage negative keywords. Every 2-3 days, I log in and add negative
keywords. Good ones to start out with: free, diy...I have hundreds now. Maybe
thousands. It takes a while to scroll through them.

\-- Track sales back and add more negative keywords. There were some items we
were getting a lot of clicks on, but didn't make any sales with. I blacklisted
a common keyword on one of our campaigns thanks to this insight. Google's
recommendation algorithm complained that by blacklisting this keyword, I was
getting fewer clicks. YUP. Tracked it for a month, 3-4 clicks per day and 1
sale that entire month. Negative keyword!

\-- Start out with 3 ads per ad group minimum. Every week, log in and pause
any ad that's not getting good CTR and add a new one. Repeat. After several
weeks, you'll be in the "holy ____ I didn't think that was possible" range of
CTRs.

It takes a LOT of effort to get to the point where we are now (highly
optimized keywords, 12-20% CTR, half the price of most of our competitors.)
Still, every couple days I log in and tweak even more things. And I hired a
consultant on an hourly basis to get us even better. Totally worth the $ to
hire him for a few hours just to see where I could improve!

If you are technical and think you can outsource this to an agency, DON'T.
Consistency is key.

One of our partners decided to take the campaigns I'd written and send them to
an agency. Their sales dropped 30%. They fired the agency and went back to me.
And I'm the business owner, not an agency. No one cares about your money more
than you do.

And, being technical, you can do fun things like customizing landing pages
based on keywords entered (something most agencies can't or won't do, even
though it boosts sales.)

~~~
gscott
Negative keywords are the big thing for me. I manage a six figure campaign for
an insurance company and have 3,500 negative keywords. Each ppc click costs
around $20 to $40.

I would expect a professional SEM company to spend some time generating a
reasonable negative keyword list first but the good news is 50k of spend is
probably going to have 30k at least of wasted spend to derive negative
keywords from!

~~~
lpcvoid
Wait, 20 to 40 dollars per click of an ad on google search results? Am I
understanding that correctly? If so, that seems insanely expensive even for
the guarantee that you're getting a potential customer.

~~~
nostrademons
When I was at Google [mesothelioma] was the top-earning keyword and it cost
something like $40/click.

It makes a lot of sense when you consider that mesothelioma is a type of lung
cancer caused by asbestos, is legally actionable, and that there is a whole
industry of lawyers who specialize in litigating asbestos cases. The LTV of a
customer who goes to trial in an asbestos case can be in the hundreds of
thousands of dollars. Spending $40 for a possible lead is insanely profitable
for these lawyers.

------
onpedrof
This article's title and intro makes it look like it's mainly Google Ads'
fault, but then actually it was more due to the landing page design + user
journey (awareness ladder) + working with an agency that scaled the execution
and the costs. Nonetheless, interesting insights, worth reading for any B2B
advertising manager.

~~~
sumoboy
Traffic from Google, Bing, and Facebook is easy to buy, the failure is the
company for not understanding how PPC works and letting some agency run wild.
A hundred things can go wrong after the ad click yet this is trying to save
face by saying we should have started small and scaled and limited keywords.
That's all yada yada yada, internally they didn't ask the right questions to
the agency after week 1, 2, 3, 4 and analyzing the funnel. Then stop the ads,
rebuild LP's, restart ppc. If the agency doesn't want to play along, fire
them. Poor planning from to start to end.

~~~
igordebatur
Agree on the bad planning issue. We should've planned for the long wait we
would need to see the actual funnel changes. The issue is about our purchase
cycle. It's a long one: on average, it takes users about 182 days to become
paid, while the median is 23 days.

------
bambax
> _Uploadcare is an established SaaS product, so we’ve been harvesting the
> low-hanging fruit from organic and direct traffic for a while now. If you’re
> in a similar situation, you’ve probably reached the same conclusion: running
> paid ads is the next logical growth step for customer acquisition._

I'm no expert but this strikes me as strange. Organic and direct traffic is
not a low-hanging fruit, it's the result of a product well adjusted to its
target market. One would think advertising _is_ the low-hanging fruit
(relatively speaking); it's what you do when your offer doesn't show up
naturally at the top of the results page.

If you're already winning on SEO it's probably harder to improve traffic with
ads than when you have nowhere else to go but up.

~~~
igordebatur
SEO is a black box, we definitely try to get predictable results from it and
scale it further. Our goal was to find a profitable acquisition channel, so we
focused on Google Search Ads testing and failed at target market keywords
segmentation. Even, we didn't have the resources needed to craft landing pages
rapidly. Will focus on automating the process.

------
tedmcory77
Some key things they didn't mention doing:

-Retargeting/Remarketing - Some of your best ROI campaigns will come from these

-Discount Ladders - for customers to nudge over the edge great to use in combination with the retargeting campaigns.

-Abandoned cart email follow ups - No mention of these here. Again, these backend flows will really help profitability.

Ideally you'll break even on those leading awareness/acquisition campaigns
using the things others here have said and the retargeting campaigns will be
nothing but gravy.

~~~
reaperducer
_Abandoned cart email follow ups - No mention of these here. Again, these
backend flows will really help profitability._

I know this helps you, but it doesn't help me, as a customer.

If I abandoned your cart, there's a reason for it. Hounding me after I've
already decided to take my business elsewhere is only going to make me think
even more negatively about your company.

What I would like to see if one of these abandoned cart e-mails genuinely ask
me _why_ I abandoned the cart. Did I take my business to a specific
competitor? Were the prices not competitive? Did I just get too busy and I'll
finish later?

Show a little concern for your customers. Pestering them isn't good long-term
business.

~~~
igordebatur
We have a drip campaign running where we ask users why they didn't activate,
etc. The reply rates are pretty low on those. Any idea of a higher-reply-rate
channel to ask folks why they didn't sign up/activate/purchase?

~~~
reaperducer
You're using the wrong metric. Think quality of data, not quantity.

People who don't reply are already done with your brand. People who do reply
are willing to give you a second chance, and are 100x more valuable than any
reply rate would indicate.

~~~
igordebatur
I mean, we do process those requests individually. I just thought you might
have some hints to get higher quantities.

------
bdefore
May want to rename to the article headline of 'We wasted $50K on Google Ads so
you don’t have to'. As it is, the lack of a comma implies that the insights
were also wasted.

~~~
hcnews
If the title of the original webpage wasn't what you suggested another
alternative would be to use the oxford comma:

"We wasted $50K on Google Search Ads, and the insights we got on the way"

~~~
ameister14
That's not the Oxford comma, and since there isn't a series here it wouldn't
really be appropriate.

------
simplecomplex
Some key lessons:

\- Measure ad effectiveness before continuing to pour money into it (denial is
a helluva drug).

\- Market to your customers, and know who they are. Make sure keywords are
targeting the right audience before optimizing click-through.

\- All steps in the funnel are affected by the first. If you're bringing in
the wrong audience, it won't matter how much traffic you drive and how many
ads you place.

~~~
igordebatur
Definitely, what you say is correct. However, our point was "even if it seems
you're doing everything right, there always are mine traps to avoid." For
instance, measuring the effectiveness for us funnel-based would mean waiting
for 182 on average and 23 days median.

------
jxub
Still better than the high-schooler guy from my school in Spain (it was news
around 2 years ago) who managed to blow up 100k€ or his parents money on
youtube ads, and the only lesson there was, was to not give any bank account
details to a kid.

------
vxNsr
fascinating that an ad campaign worked for them. They appear to be selling a
dev product, I always assumed all dev's first install was ublock. In facts it
was natively installed on all the computers at my university.

~~~
reaperducer
Not all developers are averse to advertising. Some understand that the web
isn't a free lunch, and without advertising or subscriptions there would be
little web content.

~~~
nightski
Commercial content

I seem to remember the internet being a pretty fascinating place in the 90s
before advertising became mainstream (or Google Adwords was a thing). But then
it was user generated content and communities.

------
8bitsrule
Maybe they should have considered this:

Most people who do searches are probably tightly focussed on the answers. Ads
are pretty much unwanted distractions in such an environment.

~~~
igordebatur
yeah, that's also the case. another insight that we got is we should craft
more content answering specific questions rather than advertising our landing
page at every step of the Awareness Ladder

------
paulpauper
Google ads are tough. Very steep learning curve. They work for big brands with
deep pockets and want to raise awareness, such as movie studios.

------
davidwihl
tl;dr: before spending $50k, spend a few hours learning how to manage
campaigns[1] and follow the recommendations

[1] [https://support.google.com/google-
ads/answer/7539883?hl=en](https://support.google.com/google-
ads/answer/7539883?hl=en)

~~~
igordebatur
We hired an SEM agency to set up and manage campaigns. Judging by what I read
in the thread, they did a good job on that.

------
cm2012
Facebook ads with strong sales follow up would probably work better for them.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Did you look at what their service is selling. I've found people are more
interested in personal ads when browsing Facebook and don't regularly follow
the funnel to make major purchasing decisions for the business they work at
while browsing Facebook unless its a small business/entrepreneur where they
are ALWAYS in business mode.

My guess is this is because people go to browse Facebook for a short break
from work. Or they browse FB in off hours and making a purchase of a product
like this would definitely feel like I was in work mode so I would never do it
on nights/weekend.

~~~
cm2012
I specialize in B2B FB ads in my consulting career, they work really well. You
collect the lead on FB and nurture it by email and phone during work hours.

~~~
wayoverthecloud
When you collect leads on FB, do you use a landing page as your lead magnet or
a piece of content?

~~~
igordebatur
+1 to the question, would you use an Awareness Ladder to match purchase stages
to content? Like, what's the flow?

