Struggling to scale your ads? Spending more won’t fix the problem. Let’s figure out why your growth strategies are not working. Talk to us at https://www.tiereleven.com/apply
You’ve hired agency after agency, and no matter what they try, you can’t scale your Google Ads. You don’t have a Google problem. It’s a creative strategy problem. Until you fix demand creation, no amount of campaign optimization is going to get you unstuck.
In this episode, I break down a real client situation: a 14-year-old B2B SaaS company spending upwards of $200K a month on Google Search with no good answer for why growth has stalled. I’ll walk you through why Google is a demand-capture platform, not a demand-creation one, and why 80% of any market lives in what I call the “zone of indifference.”
We also look at why the real fix lives in creative strategy on Meta, programmatic, and connected TV, not another Google audit. If your cost of acquiring new customers keeps climbing no matter what you spend, this one’s for you.
In this episode:
- Why Google Search has a demand capture ceiling
- The difference between demand capture and demand creation channels
- Why branded search clicks cost 10-20x less than non-branded keywords
- The “zone of indifference” and why it’s 80% of your market
- Why the agency rotation trap makes Google Ads more expensive
- Why hook rate and hold rate matter more than landing page optimization
- The B2B creative mistake of writing ads for users instead of buyers
- How messaging extraction uncovers what decision-makers care about
- Three questions to ask your agency if your Google spend has stalled
Mentioned in the Episode:
Case Study on Optimizing Ad Spend: https://perpetualtraffic.com/podcast/episode-801-from-2-5m-to-4m-a-month-ad-spend-barely-changed-heres-why/
Tier 11’s Data Suite: https://www.tiereleven.com/what-we-do/data-suite
Join Ralph Burns and John Moran every Friday for The Ad Lab Live: https://www.youtube.com/@Tier11/streams
Listen to this episode on your favorite podcast channel:
Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491
Follow and listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK
Subscribe and watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1
Connect with Ralph Burns:
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
- Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
- Hire Tier 11 – https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now
Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic?
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READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
Hit the Google Ads Ceiling? Here’s the Creative Strategy That Breaks It
00:00:00:02 – 00:00:21:08
Ralph
No matter how hard you try, you can’t scale your Google Ads. You’ve hired agency after agency after agency, internal teams, experts. No matter what, you can’t scale. Well. The problem isn’t a Google Ads problem. The problem is a creative strategy problem. I’m going to show you how to fix it in this episode.
00:00:21:10 – 00:00:28:22
PT
You’re listening to Perpetual Traffic.
00:00:29:00 – 00:00:55:00
Ralph
Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of T11. And today’s show is all going to be about Google. Well, actually, it’s not about Google. It’s actually about creative strategy, because the client that we’re going to be talking about here today thinks they have a Google problem, when in fact they have a creative strategy problem, as I alluded to the start of today’s show.
00:00:55:00 – 00:01:19:11
Ralph
So just a little bit of a background of this company. And the CEO actually said it on the call. He’s like, hey, I have a board meeting tomorrow and I don’t have answers for them about how are we going to scale and get to the next level of growth. This is a B2B SaaS company and a workforce management software space fit in business for about 14 years, and they’ve got a board probably like you do.
00:01:19:12 – 00:01:45:08
Ralph
You have a boss that you have to answer to, and that boss is asking you for answers to the question, why is our growth stalled? Why is our growth stalled? Why isn’t the agency that we hired doing anything here? We’re continuing to have flat growth. If not, we’re actually losing market share or competition. So this is the exact type of problem that we deal with on a daily basis with CEOs and VP’s of marketing like yourself.
00:01:45:08 – 00:02:03:11
Ralph
And the problem that we solve, not with a Google solution. In most cases, Google is very, very effective. And John and I talk about this on our Friday ad labs, which if you haven’t tuned in to that, that’s really where a lot of the things that I’m going to be talking about today have been tested and tried before.
00:02:03:11 – 00:02:27:05
Ralph
We bring it internally into tier 11 and start using it on our client accounts. That is 230 eastern every Friday over on the 211 YouTube. I’ll leave links in the show notes for that. But the the issue is that Google is not a demand generation machine like it once was. It’s a great place for a lot of businesses, and we have tons of clients that spend more on Google than they do on meta.
00:02:27:06 – 00:02:48:01
Ralph
I’m not going to say that’s always the case. However, what we have found is that Google has a ceiling. You can only get so much traffic. You can only get so much growth out of Google keywords and Google search specifically. So if you’re an e-commerce business, you’re probably using Google Shopping as well. You’re probably using Google Search in this type of business.
00:02:48:01 – 00:03:09:07
Ralph
We are not talking about e-commerce, we’re talking about lead generation. We’re talking about increasing annual contract value or ACV. We’re talking about, you know, getting win rates higher than where they were previously to. What’s the cost to acquire a customer? What’s the cost to acquire a lead? A good, solid lead that ends up turning into a potential sale for your salespeople?
00:03:09:08 – 00:03:31:09
Ralph
This is the type of business where there is a lead generation form, and then somebody actually talks with the prospect, either for enterprise level software or individual software. So very, very common lead generation space. But what we find now in the lead generation space, just in general, whether you’re a service based business, a software business, franchises, you name it, Google is not the answer.
00:03:31:09 – 00:03:56:10
Ralph
You can tap out Google, I think probably very early on and absolutely use it. We still do. Like I said, we have plenty of clients that have an inordinate amount of like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars and spend per month on Google. So Google is still a great place to go. However, you’re going to reach a cap, you’re going to reach a point where you just can’t really scale.
00:03:56:10 – 00:04:19:21
Ralph
And the exact words of this CEO was, I have a board meeting tomorrow, and I’m like, what am I going to tell them? Because they keep asking me, do I need more money? Well, I spend $1,000 on Google and I get one lead, but $1,000 a lead in this particular case, their, you know, their annual contract value is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars so they can pay $1,000 for a good lead.
00:04:20:00 – 00:04:42:20
Ralph
But as soon as he starts putting in 10,000, all of a sudden that does not turn into ten more leaves. It turns into 2 or 3 more leads at best. And this is the problem with Google search, as you typically do cap out at a certain level. Now, having said that, is there opportunity here to optimize the Google account?
00:04:42:20 – 00:05:08:04
Ralph
For sure. It’s one of the first things that we’re doing right now for this client. So there is always opportunity. You can squeeze more juice out of the orange, so to speak, with some optimization. However, the real strategy is the creative strategy. And the creative strategy comes from other platforms. And they right now this this software company is not spending hardly any money at all on meta advertising.
00:05:08:04 – 00:05:29:01
Ralph
So that’s really where we’re going to head on this episode here today and talk about that creative strategy. Because everything on meta right now is a creative strategy. Everything on Google, really Google search. There’s not a whole lot of creative there. Yes, there’s landing page optimization. Yes, there’s you want to be able to write your ads, and yes, you want to be able to manage the campaigns as efficiently as possible.
00:05:29:01 – 00:05:56:13
Ralph
But the real scale, what we’re seeing is a lot of businesses that we’re doing this with, a lot of our businesses that we work with directly at 211 is shifting budget from Google and even Amazon. We’ve done a number of case studies just on Amazon, specifically over to meta and over to programmatic connected TV, native advertising. Those are the platforms right now, very top of funnel that are creating demand.
00:05:56:18 – 00:06:23:09
Ralph
They create demand. They just don’t capture demand. And Google captures demand. Amazon captures demand. It doesn’t typically create demand. And creative now is the key is the linchpin to that demand creation and ultimately scale. So a little bit more of a background here on their Google search campaigns, primarily the 150 to $200,000 that they’re spending per month on Google is for Google Search.
00:06:23:09 – 00:06:44:00
Ralph
There is some branded search, so there is none branded, which is keyword phrases like workforce management software. Very expensive keyword by the way, probably 50 to $100 per click if I had to guess off the top of my head. And then also some of their searches are for the name of their company and which we’re going to keep that anonymous here.
00:06:44:02 – 00:07:18:04
Ralph
But naming the company name of your product. So there’s Google non branded search which is those high value keywords. And then there’s a Google branded search. In an ideal world we really like to spend as little as possible on Google branded search. Those clicks for the Google brand, the name of the brand, the name of the software is typically is 10 to 20 times less cost per click than some of those higher value, higher intent based keyword phrases, which in the software space here in the workforce CRM space very expensive keywords.
00:07:18:04 – 00:07:38:08
Ralph
So to the CEO’s point, if they’re throwing more money into their Google campaigns, what oftentimes happens is that you just run out to demand and you’re competing against competitors who maybe can outspend you, who maybe have a higher ACV or annual contract value than you do. So it’s really sort of a race to the bottom at a certain point in time.
00:07:38:08 – 00:08:01:21
Ralph
So yes, we can squeeze some more out of it or already doing that. However, the point is, is like the real shift here is over on the creative side, here’s one of the other big points that we talked about and we’re discussing right now with them, is that Google search only captures that 10 to 20%, depending on what the market is, of people who are in market actively searching for a workforce management software.
00:08:01:22 – 00:08:24:12
Ralph
If you go to Google and you type that in, you’re either researching it or you’re in the early stages of your buying journey, but you definitely have intent. However, CEOs like me, I’m not looking for workforce management software, and this is actually what I explained to them in our first couple of calls. I said the vast majority of folks don’t realize CEOs like me probably don’t realize I actually have a workforce management problem.
00:08:24:12 – 00:08:45:18
Ralph
So those individuals are what we call they’re in the zone of indifference. It might be 80 to 90% of your market. Just for argument’s sake, let’s say that’s 80% of the market, 10% are actually looking and 10% have no interest in what you’re offering whatsoever. So Google search captures that 10%, that 10% of people that are actively searching.
00:08:45:18 – 00:09:10:00
Ralph
And this is why those keyword phrases are so expensive and why you can’t scale. So that zone of indifference is where you have to create a creative strategy around what it is that you do differently. What makes your product or service different than the competition? We’ve got a number of software companies. You can very easily do this through creative diversification, which we’ve talked about here in the show, and especially by leveraging the meta.
00:09:10:00 – 00:09:39:11
Ralph
And now with most of our clients were migrating them in addition to after they scale as far as they feel like they can go and maybe want some diversity as far as the platforms are concerned, we then push them towards programmatic native advertising, which is to blue and out brain as well as connected TV. So another reason why you really can’t scale Google in a linear way is because Google knows which prospects are the highest value to you, and it charges you accordingly.
00:09:39:11 – 00:10:09:21
Ralph
This is something John and I talk about all the time. Google knows who’s in the market, and as soon as you start giving Google more budget, you’re going to pay more to acquire those customers. It’s just it’s pure math. It’s how the algorithm works. So the real goal is to ultimately educate your potential buyer on other platforms and then have them Google search for your name, your company name, your software specific name, and you get that on the other platforms, namely meta programmatic like the Yahoo!
00:10:09:21 – 00:10:27:00
Ralph
DSP is one of the ones that we use quite a bit and actually have our programmatic IO here on on show very shortly, as well as native advertising, which is Tupelo now brain. And of course there’s connected TV, which we all see with connected TVs. I see ads from my clients on my TV in the other room behind me.
00:10:27:00 – 00:10:46:19
Ralph
So Google understands who is your potential buyer and wants to charge as much as possible for you to get that buyer into your application and ultimately talk to your salesperson. So another thing that this CEO mentioned to me is that they have, and this is probably a case with you as well, is that they have what we refer to as the agency rotation trap.
00:10:46:22 – 00:11:07:21
Ralph
So most brands respond to this by if they’re not getting results, they switch agencies. So we’re very proud of the fact that the average time that folks spend with us here at 11 is anywhere between 3 and 5 years, which is one of the hallmarks of a good agency. However, the new agency that comes in will just disrupt what the old agency did.
00:11:07:21 – 00:11:29:14
Ralph
So any traction that the old agency was getting now is disrupted by the new agency. And so they’ve done this three or 4 or 5 times, and Google will take advantage of this. They will charge you more as a result of sort of their stupidity, taxes, what John and I call it, at the end of the day, that no amount of Google optimization is going to be able to expand a market size.
00:11:29:17 – 00:12:01:22
Ralph
You only can do that by expanding your market size and going out after that zone of indifference, that 80%, by going into the interruption platforms like I mentioned before, meta being the largest one of those. So why is creative strategy the solution here? Well, if you really think about how humans by think about the last time that you bought and I use this as a, there’s a men’s face cream that I bought only because I saw Instagram ads and I saw seven or 8 or 9 of them.
00:12:01:22 – 00:12:16:19
Ralph
I was very, very careful. I really didn’t want to buy it. And it ended up getting me was one of their affiliate ads for a 40% off, and I ended up buying three bottles of the stuff instead of just one bottle. The point is, is I had no idea I was not in the market for that particular skin cream.
00:12:16:19 – 00:12:42:00
Ralph
So I was in that zone of indifference that was that 80%. However, all of my education around the product happened on Instagram. That’s my preferred social platform. I didn’t see any LinkedIn, as I do spend a fair amount of time over on LinkedIn. You probably do as well. But then it ended with a Google search of checking out the company, seeing if they’re legit, making sure that there weren’t some scam artists because that has happened before.
00:12:42:00 – 00:12:58:21
Ralph
So there was a Google search sort of in there, but I ultimately bought from an Instagram ad that offered a 40% discount, which I don’t even know if I actually really got, but I bought it anyway. If you think about it this way, the awareness for that brand and the awareness for this software company needs to happen through creative diversification.
00:12:58:21 – 00:13:18:08
Ralph
Lots of different types of creative, you know, what’s their founder story, how do they differ versus some of the other workplace softwares that’s out there? What’s the biggest benefit of what they do versus everyone else? We have a software company right now that one of their big benefits is they charge one third of what the big guys charge, and they’re all American there.
00:13:18:08 – 00:13:43:01
Ralph
Everyone is in the United States. So like, those are the things that we’re going to be highlighting in their advertising through creative diversification. And in most cases, this is going to be video creative. Very, very rarely is it just image ads. In fact, what John and I have figured out is probably about nine out of ten ads that you put in meta should be video ads in one way, shape or form.
00:13:43:01 – 00:14:03:20
Ralph
They can be short AI videos, they can be even flash sort of videos, like almost gift style videos. Or they can be 1 to 3 minutes. Usually three minutes is about as long as we go here. But this highlights all the different aspects of your business and what makes you great. And once they have that awareness, then this is where Google comes in.
00:14:03:21 – 00:14:33:07
Ralph
This is where your Google expansion happens, because that awareness then prompts a Google search, just like I did with that men’s face cream. But that Google search, instead of paying 20 to $50 or maybe even more, probably about $100 for some of the non branded terms that this company is bidding on. Some of these searches for your keywords that are include your brand or your product name might be 1 to $2, maybe less than $10.
00:14:33:07 – 00:15:00:05
Ralph
Even in the personal injury law space, the the largest advertisers that we have in the personal injury law space, their branded keywords are 10 to $20 versus 100 to $200, even upwards of $800 for personal injury lawyer Detroit, for example, or car accident lawyer Michigan. Those types of keyword phrases. So you don’t want to be reliant on those very, very expensive keywords.
00:15:00:05 – 00:15:18:20
Ralph
What you want to do is create the awareness on the other platforms and then have people Google search your brand name and only pay a couple of dollars a click, as opposed to many multiples of that. So another big part of this is that meta advertising has never been better than it is right now. It’s just I’ve never seen it as good as it currently is.
00:15:18:20 – 00:15:42:23
Ralph
I’ve been doing this since meta advertising really started, I mean, back in 2010. That’s a very, very long time ago. Actually, I was before that was 2009, 2010 with right hand rail ads. And the algorithm was great back then. But most of the beauty of meta advertising at that point in time was Facebook advertising was around targeting. Great targeting the creative is almost secondary.
00:15:43:01 – 00:16:01:06
Ralph
So we could put image as in the right hand rail and get clicks all day long for our products. And I was an affiliate for dating apps for, you know, for e-cigarettes, for work at home products. A lot of that sort of stuff got a lot of ad accounts, obviously banned did so over on the Facebook side as well.
00:16:01:07 – 00:16:29:12
Ralph
The point is, is all of that is completely shifted. So for this brand we will do targeting no behavioral targeting, no interest targeting and will probably leave the the age ranges and gender completely wide open. So male female going from probably 25 all the way up to 65 plus. So the targeting itself is largely irrelevant on the platform.
00:16:29:12 – 00:17:00:15
Ralph
It’s all about it’s the creative. So and the brands that are really winning right now are the ones that produce volumes, great volumes of distinct, excellent top of funnel, middle of funnel, creative, different concepts, different hooks, different offers, different formats, even all tested and sort of thrown into one campaign. And then we see how meta responds to all of those individual creatives.
00:17:00:16 – 00:17:34:17
Ralph
The large majority of all those are video, like I said, and hook rate and hold rate, as well as link click rate or link click through rate are the three metrics that we look at more so than anything else. So hook rate especially. And you want to have a hook rate well over 25% higher the better. And you want to have a hold rate which is the amount of time like people actually stay on to watch the entire video past three seconds, we typically will look at a minimum of 10%, but an ideal world, it’s 20 to 30%.
00:17:34:17 – 00:17:55:11
Ralph
So you want to look at all these metrics once you start running meta ads. And what we’ll do is we’ll just create 30 different concepts, 30 different videos, maybe 20 different videos and ten statics. And then we’ll put them into one campaign and we’ll see how meta responds. And obviously we’ll optimize for in this particular case a lead.
00:17:55:12 – 00:18:20:08
Ralph
So this is a cost per lead. But really that’s the format you’re testing air quoting the creative but really meta is doing the testing for you. So gone are the days of having a sandbox campaign or a separate testing campaign. We will usually just put everything into one campaign, as long as the video content is good and the creative diversification is diverse, we usually see winners very, very quickly.
00:18:20:10 – 00:18:55:02
Ralph
Meta will self-select out the winners and losers. There’s another problem. I think a lot of B2B companies this is a BB company obviously is the B2B creative problem specifically, a lot of B2B brands are running feature lead adds to the practitioners, the users of the software itself. So think about it from your standpoint. The person who’s actually going to buy the software isn’t necessarily the user of the software, the CEO or the CMO or the CEO is the buyer.
00:18:55:02 – 00:19:19:05
Ralph
And what they care about is different than what the user cares about. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t have feature benefit types of ads, how you’re different than everyone else. I said this earlier in the episode, you absolutely should. But when you have B2B ads specifically and specifically on meta and programmatic for that matter as well, it’s the CEO who you’re trying to talk to is the CEO who you’re trying to connect with.
00:19:19:05 – 00:19:53:11
Ralph
So the most effective B2B creative strategy means building content that speaks to the outcome that the decision maker cares about. So predictable pipeline, you know, maybe board ready metrics, competitive advantage, not necessarily product features. So think about who the buyer of your software is. And when we do this we call this whole process messaging extraction. And what we do is we actually interview the people that are interacting with the buyer.
00:19:53:11 – 00:20:13:16
Ralph
What is the buyer or the patient. So this is a very important distinction. When you’re doing message extraction, you want to talk to the people that are actually buying the software, not the ones who are necessarily using it. You do want to talk about features, sure, but especially with B2B, I see this trap happen all the time, and it’s one that a lot of big companies do fall into.
00:20:13:20 – 00:20:41:10
Ralph
But you can remedy this by talking with your front line salespeople. So salespeople and customer service people are some of the best people to do this. Messaging extraction. This messaging extraction is then captured into a document. And then we use Claude, or you can use ChatGPT, you can use Google Gemini, whatever happens to be. And then you can actually create your messaging and your pillar content based upon those conversations with the end user.
00:20:41:10 – 00:21:13:00
Ralph
So we have a large mental health center with multiple centers. And for this messaging extraction exercise to create the creative, we interviewed the counselors. Councilors are the ones who are dealing with the patients on a day to day basis. And some of these councilors were actually were former patients, believe it or not. So very, very, very good interaction that we captured it all, captured everything using AI and then created copy and and messaging based around those interactions.
00:21:13:00 – 00:21:29:10
Ralph
And we have a Claude skill that we use for this specifically. Obviously it’s double checks through humans, but this is the way that we’re using one of the many ways that we’re using AI. But messaging extraction is really, really important because people always ask me is like, well, what kind of creative should I create? Well, what does your buyer want?
00:21:29:16 – 00:21:49:21
Ralph
You know what? What does your, you know, or your patient or your prospect or who is it? Talk to the person that’s face to face with them, belly to belly or with them. Might be your salespeople, might be your customer service people. It all depends. My guess is the messaging instruction for this is probably going to come from their customer service folks and not from their marketing manager.
00:21:49:23 – 00:22:25:00
Ralph
Particularly, the marketing manager is usually the last one that we talk to. We get ideas from them, of course. Absolutely. And larger scale goals, etc. but some of the best stuff for messaging extraction, which then turns into great creative and video creative specifically happens from your front line people. So one more thing about creative is volume. Creative is really, really important to have diversity of creative, different backgrounds, different looks, maybe some animation, maybe some UGC, maybe some testimonials different.
00:22:25:00 – 00:22:46:06
Ralph
So it doesn’t all look the same. So for example, you’re watching this over on our YouTube channel. Most of our YouTube videos look largely the same, same background, me talking, that kind of thing. So what you want is you want a diversity of creative. You want some where you’re actually walking and talking. You want some that are, you know, completely different settings, completely different people.
00:22:46:06 – 00:23:07:14
Ralph
If it’s the same person over and over again, just talking to you straight on, like I’m doing here too. It’s not the best creative diversification. You can use that as part of your creative diversification strategy, but it needs to be very, very diverse and very, very different. And we usually will see this with just 25 to 30 or so creatives, depending on what the budget is every single month.
00:23:07:14 – 00:23:27:09
Ralph
And the vast majority of those creatives, like I said, are probably two thirds, maybe even three quarters our video content, our video content. So in that you’re testing concepts, you’re testing your hooks, you’re testing different ways in which to present your offer. And what you’re doing is you’re just really feeding the algorithm all kinds of different data points.
00:23:27:09 – 00:23:51:19
Ralph
And it’s figuring out, you know, which video and which spokesperson and which combination of the ads actually leads to them filling out the application and firing that lead generation event, which is then tells the algorithm, go find more of those people and do more of that and show them this sequence of these seven different video ads before they actually fill out the application.
00:23:51:19 – 00:24:10:14
Ralph
So this is really how the algorithm works in a basic way. It’s called Andromeda update, gem update or Lattice update. And the reason is, is that it’s so excellent with being able to piece together all the different ways in which you present your your product or service to your potential prospect and then shows them the right out of the act moment.
00:24:10:15 – 00:24:32:05
Ralph
So how this works in practice, we mentioned this just earlier, is the testing framework really. It’s sort of a high level is very, very specific. And it is the concept what the ad is all about. And then it’s the hook, which is what stops the scroll within the first 2 to 3 seconds. And then it’s the offer, what you’re asking the viewer specifically to do.
00:24:32:06 – 00:24:55:22
Ralph
In most cases when we’re testing, we hold two of those constant and we change one. That’s how you isolate really what’s working, what the scale and what to iterate. The biggest metric is that we look at, and the metric that really matters in the advertising is hook rate. Hook rate, which should be well above 25%, tells you which creative which video is actually stopping the scroll.
00:24:55:23 – 00:25:13:13
Ralph
Think about your prospect. Is this that you want them to stop right there? Hold right tells you if the message is actually holding their attention. You can actually look at this as a chart inside meta ads. And we do this all the time. We show this like if it has a really bad drop off and almost like a steep slope to begin with.
00:25:13:14 – 00:25:32:13
Ralph
That’s a very bad ad. That means you didn’t really capture their attention and you didn’t hold your attention. So those are the two things that really look, we look at, and those are leading indicators as to how many leads and how many sales you’re actually going to make. So those are the two biggies right there. Then link click rate or link.
00:25:32:13 – 00:25:58:05
Ralph
Click through rate or CTR link CTR. Technically, as long as you are tracking that through a very reputable first party attribution software, we obviously use the tier level data suite, which captures nearly 100% of those clicks not modeled clicks. They capture all of those clicks, and then we connect that back and then shoot that data back into meta so that it goes out and finds more people who are hooking, holding and clicking ultimately.
00:25:58:05 – 00:26:23:16
Ralph
So one of the things that a lot of people ask me is, well, how about what about the landing page, the page that you’re actually sending traffic to? We don’t care about that quite as much. We want to see how much we can capture people’s attention in the news feed. If I say that in the platform itself, because very, very large portion of your persuasion is happening in the news feed.
00:26:23:17 – 00:26:57:21
Ralph
Think about it. If you’ve got a 3% conversion rate on one of your ads, or a 3% click through rate on one of your ads, let’s say a 3% click through rate and a 1% conversion rate, you have 97% of people that still aren’t convinced. So focus on that 97%. Those are the people that you want to find that that those people that are in the zone of indifference, that aren’t actively looking for your solution, just don’t know that you exist quite yet and don’t know that there’s a better solution for the problem that they didn’t really realize that they had.
00:26:57:23 – 00:27:17:15
Ralph
That’s where you should focus your attention. Yes, we do do. Crowe. We have a great Crowe division inside tier 11, but it’s a secondary metric that we look at after the fact. It’s really it’s the hook rate and the whole rate and the click through rate, and then the conversion rate after the click is really sort of a secondary thing that we can, you know, double and triple conversion rates after the click.
00:27:17:15 – 00:27:40:12
Ralph
But we want to do all the heavy lifting, all the convincing and all the persuasion in the newsfeed, in the ads, in the creative. So if you’re a B2B brand that’s spending $50,000 plus per month on Google, like these guys are spending almost a quarter of a million, I think about 200, some odd thousand, and your pipeline stalling, like your average contract value is declining.
00:27:40:12 – 00:28:07:07
Ralph
Your win rate is declining because the more you spend the worst your quality of leads become. You do not have a Google problem. You have a creative problem. And the question that you really need to ask is, how do you not necessarily optimize your Google campaigns, but how do you diversify your channels to target that 80% of your market that doesn’t even know that you exist yet, and don’t realize that you have a better solution than what they’re currently using?
00:28:07:07 – 00:28:37:15
Ralph
The key phrase here is meta, and the top of the funnel and middle of the funnel platforms are demand generation machines. Google search is a demand capture machine. It cannot create more and more volume from you past a certain point in every business is different. And like I said, you can be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on Google, but you’re going to reach a point where you’re capped unless you start in new markets, go international, go into completely different markets.
00:28:37:15 – 00:28:58:16
Ralph
If you’re running Google search ads in the US, there is a finite number of people that are searching for your particular product or your keyword at any given moment. So what you have to do is you have to create that top of funnel awareness on the other platforms, because Google is demand capture, meta and programmatic, connected TV and native advertising are demand creation.
00:28:58:16 – 00:29:23:06
Ralph
So this is a problem that you’re having. You should ask your agency or your internal team three things. First, what percentage of my total addressable market is actually searching for the category that we sell in right now? And is there a ceiling that we’re bumping up against? Even if you are a mediocre Google Ads buyer, you can get success on Google.
00:29:23:06 – 00:29:49:07
Ralph
Especially, Google tends to circle the wagons on your warmest traffic. People who are aware of who you are, who have been to your website, maybe have bought from you before so you can get a certain amount of productivity out of Google. However, at a certain point you are going to reach a ceiling just like this company did. And number two, do I have a creative strategy in place that speaks to the actual decision maker who signs the contract, the one who’s actually doing the buying?
00:29:49:07 – 00:30:13:21
Ralph
And this is a B2B problem. Oftentimes it’s not all about just before and after photos and testimonials and, and UGC content and and us versus them style of content, all of which we use. But it’s really it’s what is the buyer really want? Who is the decision maker you’re trying to sell. And it might be different than the user of your product.
00:30:13:21 – 00:30:35:11
Ralph
So this is a B2B trap that you got to watch out for and definitely ask your agency that question. And last but not least, can you actually connect your creative spend? Can you connect that top of funnel, middle of funnel spend through a system where you’re actually capturing upwards of 100% of every single click, so you can track exactly what’s going on?
00:30:35:12 – 00:30:56:04
Ralph
You don’t have an attribute in software that does that, and there’s a lot of them out there that claim that they can do it. But remember, most of those platforms, especially Google Analytics, is the absolute worst because it just ignores probably 5,060% of traffic. A lot of the other attribution softwares that are out there, all the data that you see is modeled data.
00:30:56:05 – 00:31:18:06
Ralph
Basically, they’re capturing maybe two out of five clicks, and they’re modeling the other three based upon what happened with the first two. I don’t know about you. I want to capture all of those other clicks, and that’s probably the right percentage. Out of ten clicks, they’re capturing maybe 4 or 5 the most. The other six or so are being modeled, which is not a great way to run a business because you’re really flying blind.
00:31:18:08 – 00:31:40:05
Ralph
If your Google spend is stalling and you can’t seem to scale, the Google is not your problem here, and it’s almost always the same thing. You’ve hit a demand capture ceiling, and no amount of optimization is ever going to break through to that. You’re going to have to look at other demand creation platforms. And like I said, meta is the best one for that.
00:31:40:05 – 00:32:05:10
Ralph
And then we oftentimes will sprinkle in either right from the get go or within a few months of success on meta, all the other platforms, which I had mentioned here before. Not to mention the some platforms right now, like we have a fishing company that is a tremendous amount of scale opportunity on TikTok, not really a great candidate for programmatic based upon the fact that they’re more regionalized.
00:32:05:11 – 00:32:32:04
Ralph
However, if you’re a national and international brand, your next level of scale really should be metaphors. YouTube obviously is a huge and a great platform for awareness and consideration. But then also consider the programmatic levels, which is native advertising, connected TV and Yahoo DSP. So of course, if you need help with any of this stuff, you can head on over to tier 11 four or just check us out over at tier 11.
00:32:32:04 – 00:33:00:10
Ralph
And I’ll give you an update on how we do with this client here. We’re in the process of their Google optimization right now, and putting together the larger plan for creative diversification for meta. And really excited to see how this ends up, because we know we can absolutely crush it for them, because we’ve done it with 30 or 40 other ad accounts at this point, spending about $25 million of our own money, just testing all of this sort of stuff out.
00:33:00:10 – 00:33:16:12
Ralph
So whenever we talk about this on perpetual traffic, it’s because we’ve spent it. It’s not because we’re just making this up. We’ve actually spent it on our test accounts, our own individual businesses before we actually do it. And hopefully you’re the beneficiary of that and you can do it on your own, or you can hire us to do it over it to your com.
00:33:16:12 – 00:33:36:20
Ralph
So all the links, all the things that I mentioned here in today’s show are over at Perpetual Traffic. If you want to see the video version of this, be sure to check us out over at Perpetual Traffic YouTube. Subscribe there. Check us out and hope you enjoyed today’s show. Till next show! See ya!
00:33:36:22 – 00:33:39:09
PT
You’ve been listening to Perpetual Traffic.
