Welcome to “In Camera Podcast” with your hosts, Grace and Liel! In this captivating episode, they kick things off by unraveling the latest scandal involving tech giant Google. Hold onto your seats because Google has found itself in a bit of a pickle yet again. This time, they’re being accused of miss-selling video ads, disregarding their own standards a whopping 80% of the time. Talk about a slip-up! According to a jaw-dropping Analytics study, advertisers from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies and even the U.S. Federal Government may have forked over premium prices for a service that Google allegedly failed to deliver. We’re talking billions of digital ad dollars potentially down the drain! The True View ad product, which you’ve probably seen on YouTube and third-party websites, is under fire for not living up to its promised standards, like playing audio and appearing in high-value locations. The claims are denied by Google, of course, who defends the effectiveness and viewability of their Google Video Partners network. Who will come out on top in this ad showdown?
But wait, there’s more! Grace and Liel then transition into guiding you through the intricate process of launching a new PPC search campaign in a foreign market. They’ve got some expert advice, and this time they’re putting on their law firm hats. Tune in as they share seven invaluable steps to help you conquer uncharted marketing territories like a pro. From estimating search volume and setting realistic budgets to strategically targeting local queries with regional keywords, they’ve got the inside scoop. They’ll also delve into the importance of customizing ad copy and landing pages to resonate with your new audience, checking conversion tracking and tagging to ensure accurate results, researching local competitors for bidding and messaging opportunities, and the power of integrating other channels to bolster your branding efforts. Remember, success in a new market hinges on proper planning and careful monitoring.
Ready to dive into this captivating episode? Go ahead and hit that play button now, and be sure to subscribe for more exciting episodes of “In Camera Podcast.”
Resources mentioned in our episode:
- Google TrueView may have misled dozens of advertisers and violated its own guidelines
- Adalytics TrueView Report
- 7 PPC planning tips when entering a new geographic market
Enjoy the show? Subscribe and leave us a review! Don’t forget to send us your questions and comments at ask@incamerapodcast.com.
Episode notes powered by ChatGPT
Transcript
Liel: [00:00:00] Last week, Analytics released a report revealing that numerous Trueview ads failed to meet Google’s guidelines, with some appearing in small video players being fully muted or lacking user interaction, all of which are essential for valid trueview impressions. I’m Liel Levy, co-founder of Nanato Media and author of Beyond Se Habla Español How Lawyers Win the Hispanic Market. And this is in Camera podcast where we witness Google’s repeated fall from grace. Welcome to our podcast, Private Legal Marketing Conversations. Grace Welcome back. How are you today?
Grace: [00:01:04] Good, How are you, Liel?
Liel: [00:01:05] I’m doing great. Grace Happy to hear that you had a successful presentation in Chicago last week. Tell us a little bit about that.
Grace: [00:01:13] Yeah, it was great. It was the Law Firm Leadership Conference put together by Bill Biggs and well, Vista Consulting as a whole. And my topic was on how to run a remote law firm. So it’s actually really I mean, for me, it’s something that, you know, I’ve been doing for a couple of years now, even prior to Covid. But after Covid, we essentially became a fully remote law firm. So it’s very easy for me to talk about, and I feel that it went very well. You know how I feel about presentations. It’s especially that subject matter, considering it’s something I do every day, day in, day out. So, you know, I feel and I got pretty good feedback while I was there from the lawyers that were in attendance. You know, I actually had a line of people waiting to speak to me about different remote tools we use and kind of how we run a remote law firm as a whole.
Liel: [00:02:03] Well, that’s terrific, Grace. Glad to hear. And, well, you know, it’s always good to show up at those events because, you know, just from a marketing standpoint, one of the greatest and best ways to really building up your pipeline is through these type of speaking engagements. Right. And I think it’s tremendous that in your case, the Lake law firm is kind of like doing all across conference strategy that is obviously having oftentimes boots on the ground at the Exhibitor Hall. But at the same time, you are strategizing to get onto the stage and talking about your areas of expertise. And it just completely works at a whole different level when you just kind of like get that positioning of thought leadership that in this case is of course very well deserved. But, you know, it’s just a matter of like you get on the stage, people are listening and they’re trusting you way more than if you had to, you know, kind of like try to sell your value proposition one by one on an exhibitor. Hall So, you know, it’s it’s a great approach. I’m glad for you. And I’ve heard you talk about that content. You know, I don’t know. Grace I know have we’ve done an episode about that lately. Maybe not. Maybe we do need to do now. Maybe, maybe next episode we would want you to go over, you know, your process, your method, your systems, so that those who could not attend the conference and have not had the luck of hearing you speak about it, can still get the insights.
Liel: [00:03:37] So enough about us talking about what we are planning on doing sometime in the future. Let’s talk about the here and now Grace. And this week we have some interesting developments. And I’d like to start here with some news that broke yesterday. By the way, we were recording this on Thursday, June 29th. And here is the headline, Grace Google accused of mis selling ads on third party websites for years. Grace okay, so what is this all about? Well, it looks like advertisers of all kinds shapes geographical locations. Fortune 500 companies, even the US government, have been impacted by what seems to be some misleading practices of Google when on their product of Google Trueview ads, they were actually placing them in sites that were not as relevant. A lot of the Trueview product main selling point is the access to YouTube. Right? But what really made Trueview kind of like a standout product and it’s very important here to specify that Trueview is a very it’s out of like all the types of advertising that you can do in video. It’s probably the most expensive. One has the highest CPM. And here is why. Because when it’s supposed to be playing on third party sites, the placements can be sometimes in YouTube, but sometimes Google says like according to Google, 80% of of your time of the times, your ads are going to be showing on YouTube. But if you’d like to also go into our video partners sites, these are going to be high quality sites. Okay. Now the ads.
Liel: [00:05:18] So that was one of the criteria. It had to be a high quality site. Youtube included ads will play before pages, main video content begins. So basically kind of like saying the message, the reason why people are in the page is because they’re actually wanting to watch a video in your video is going to be the pre-roll to that main video. Okay. And the ads will play only with audio on. So this is not the type of ad that, for instance, you could be on a news or a blog article and you just have video playing somewhere in the screen and it’s muted and you have to go to go and interact with for the video to actually start playing audio. This is the type of pre-roll that has to have the audio on for it to actually count as a trueview and the. They will only pay for ads that aren’t skipped. Right. That’s the other thing that it has. It has to be it has to meet at least 30s of playtime or as long as the ad lasts in case it’s longer, it’s shorter than 20 than 30s. So these are very, very, very, very, very meaningful qualifiers. And obviously kind of like, wow, like this is a this is the best impression that you can get, right? Like this is really, really good value for money because not only it’s a highly targeted audience at the same time, but you’re also kind of like really putting up some very important aspects that need to be met that almost kind of like guarantee engagement.
Liel: [00:06:50] Okay, now. What’s been happening. Okay, Um, it turns out, Grace, that and I’d like to quote here the source that run the analysis and actually kind of like released a report saying, hey, we’ve we’ve run a report on this and these ads are not happening where they’re supposed to be, and that company is analytics. Okay. Now. Google has already responded and said, hey, this isn’t accurate. This isn’t accurate. First of all, the source athletics conducted a very questionable investigation on this, which doesn’t really seems to be backed up by data that we would consider valid. They still defend the fact that most of their trueview campaigns are actually showing up on YouTube and it’s just a tiny, small percentage that goes into other sites. And they also say that, you know, users can opt out if they don’t want to be on Google video partner sites as well. So they’re actually, you know, saying saying a lot of reasons that they do not believe that this is true. And they’re also defending Google Video partners. They’re not saying that their shitty sites are not. But so what is what is in reality been happening? Okay, so these were the qualifiers. Analytics says this is not what’s happening and Google is saying not quite true. We do not agree. But then what is analytics saying is actually the problem that is happening? Well, it looks like that a significant amount of ads are not showing up in YouTube. Right. That almost half of them are not even showing on YouTube.
Liel: [00:08:34] And rather than high quality ads where the video is the main center point and the audio is on and that it looks like a lot of these trueview impressions that are getting charged at a very, very, you know, at top dollar, they’re actually little previews of videos grays that show up on the corner. I don’t know if you’ve ever or you can recall a time that you’ve been on a website and there’s like a little kind of like picture on Picture Square on the bottom right corner of the screen playing some sort of video and that it’s muted. Well, that is what analytics is blaming Google for doing this, saying that’s where your ad is, That’s where people are actually seeing the impression. So obviously, it’s a very, very, very low quality. Now, what is at stake here? Well, the situation here is that it’s very likely that Google, you know, is going to have to to a certain extent, if, you know, this goes further, maybe to court, maybe to a hearing, maybe some sort of class action is created here. This could very well put Google in a in a billions loss of repaying advertisers for ad spend that was not efficient. So, Grace, I want to stop there for a second. Just hear your overall thoughts on this. I hope I explained it well enough for those that still feel that I left things out or you’d like to get a little bit more of information. We’ll put links to sources in the episode notes, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Grace: [00:10:07] Grace Yeah, think so. You know, just going back to a very minimal explanation, the true view is different, guys. So, you know, just like Liel said, it is slightly different in that you’re getting charged for the actual video playing, right? So it’s if automatically starts playing and running the audio, it’s charging you without the person clicking on it to listen. So that is the it’s a significant difference. And I just want to make sure to emphasize that between that and like a bumper ad that, you know, you just want impressions on as an example. So it’s super important to understand that this is a separate item. True view is what we’re talking about here. So with that being said, I do know exactly what you’re talking about. I have seen those ads kind of pop up and just start playing. Honestly, it bothers me and it always has bothered me. So to know that it’s their way of getting a charge on someone that’s doing advertising that’s really messed up if it comes out to be true. So, you know, I would say this is something I tell everybody and anybody that I speak to, and I’m sure you do as well. Check your ads. Right? Like you should always check where your ads are, where they’re placed and go through the actual user experience. Because honestly, if you don’t know where your ads are being placed, if these things are happening, you don’t track everything that you’re spending money on, This could be millions for you over time that you lost because you didn’t know about it. So somebody obviously was tracking it. Somebody obviously saw that they were getting charged or more than somebody. It might have been a big group of people. Right. That that is found out that this is happening. And the only way you find out is something like this is happening is by checking your ads, checking the phone numbers, checking everything that you’re doing needs to be confirmed, checked and verified every single time, because otherwise you’re just throwing good money after bad and you’re losing advertising dollars.
Liel: [00:12:13] Yeah, I think I think everything you’re saying there is great. I mean, all of these insights are available to you and. You know, I for once, I actually like. In generally speaking, both Google video partners and in some instances for some campaigns, search network partners and Google, because I’ll tell you what. Oftentimes they provide great value in terms of the visibility that it gets you and the cost per conversions that they can bring in. But on a video campaign is a little bit different, right, Because you’re not really getting conversions out of it. You’re just really hoping and praying for the impression to be impactful. And so I would 100% recommend if the budget is limited or the market is not too narrow and you have no real need of expanding through video partners, then just stick to placement on YouTube, right? And opt out of that. So just kind of like, you know, not an easy solution and stuff and stuff. I think the real problem in what’s at stake here and and the bigger conversation that just goes beyond this as well. Grace is just the overall general disappointment sentiment that there is around Google over the past few months or I would say maybe even since the beginning of the year. And it starts with Google having failed to really lead into AI opportunities, then you have the disappointment that exists around the quality of the search results page about the quality of websites that are ranking. That has created a lot of frustration. And then finally, we also have now advertisers just feeling that they’re being ripped off by some of Google’s practices. And so this certainly is not helping Google really retain their position, I think.
Liel: [00:14:27] Right now they’re still in and enjoying, you know, a massive advantage over their competitors. But it does start. Making you wonder, right, for how much longer and really, like what’s going to be the future of Google they’re going to. Take up for 180 turn and start really adapting to times and really better keep their advertisers. Now, with that being said, with that being said, they still and you probably heard also a lot about what’s going on in Europe with everything in terms of both Google and Facebook being tried to be held accountable for monopolizing the ad space advertising. So, I mean, they have a massive advantage. But I think moves like this are going to make markets more, more susceptible. And who’s going to win here? I think in in many times I think it’s going to be other media platforms. I think Facebook’s been winning left, right and center lately with all the backlash that’s been with TikTok, with all the backlash that’s been on Google. So like, where do you go and advertise? Well, go to Facebook, go to Facebook and Instagram because they’re still very strong and they’re actually their products continue to gain popularity, particularly reels. And Instagram’s really kind of like gain a lot, a lot of attention. And then and then traditional media queries. I mean, traditional media, I think people are not that skeptical about traditional media anymore. I think for a while we were all in a bubble of like, digital has changed the world and we should never turn back and do traditional. But I think that is a that is a completely changing. They still they still hold a very powerful place.
Grace: [00:16:27] Yeah, And it’s funny because right before we started talking, I was talking about using traditional media, right? Like a a book that’s actually printed and handing that out. Right. So, yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I feel like people are kind of we go in cycles, right? I think media marketing as a whole goes in cycles. Right? People kind of go, we went all digital and everything’s got to be on your phone, everything’s got to be digital, everything’s got to be online. No more print. I don’t want a printed book ever again. I don’t want to ever see that. That’s when the Kindles and all those things came out at that time. And then we went back to, Oh, but I like paper. I like to know that there’s something real about this. I want to see a person in person. And then Covid hit. And so it went back. Everything digital, everything remote. Everyone needs to go remote. Everyone has to. I don’t want a piece of paper because then I’m going to spray my box down with Lysol, right? So it was to that extent. Now people are at the point where I want to see people, I want to see things.
Grace: [00:17:30] I want to know that these people are real, that they’re not just pop ups that exist in the ether, you know, in the universe of digital and aren’t real people or real companies or scammers. So I think the physical meeting of people, the physical, traditional media gives people a sense of comfort, reminds them of of good old times. While it might have been good or not, what do we remember in our memories? Usually the better, not the worse. Right? So it is working and we use postcards. We went back to postcards. In some cases we went back to books in some cases, and even mailing out welcome packets to clients. Yeah. Why? Because it makes sense. People like getting something that says, Thank you for becoming a client of ours. We care enough about you to spend some money on physical items to put it in the mail and send it to you. That’s what it means to them. So, yes, I agree with you. I think traditional media has made a huge comeback and it’s going to keep doing that every decade or so. Just the life cycle of marketing.
Liel: [00:18:37] Yeah. Yeah. I, um. You cannot be siloed into just one channel or one type of marketing. You just have to be everywhere your clients are. And the reality is that these places are still important pockets where a big part of your market may be there. Right? And that is not to say that cable TV has more viewers and TikTok has doesn’t. But it’s not to say that the viewers that are on cable are not still valuable to you and that you can get a lot of value from being present there. Okay. And that is assuming that you already present on digital and you’re already trying to also get attention through these other platforms. All right, great. So let’s now shift into another conversation that I just came up across an article that I like because it’s been a while since we’ve actually talked about tips and insights when trying to do something marketing related. And here is a great opportunity to go over one article that gives you seven pay per click, pay per click planning tips. When entering a new geographic market. And I think this is great because a lot of times lawyers may be considering they may not be new in the market, but they may be new to pay per click and they may be wondering, well, should I try it right? Is there an opportunity for me? And I think these seven tips are going to be very valuable because they’re kind of like give you a little bit of a map. Of what are some of the things that you need to consider during the process of potentially setting up? Well, first, deciding to set up a campaign or not.
Liel: [00:20:20] And then if you decide to do set up a campaign, then throughout that process of setting it up and launching it. And I will say that this conversation may seem a little bit advanced for someone who is just starting up or never actually dealt or played around with Google ads. But with that being said, I think like everything that we do in this podcast is not really for you to be able to kind of like follow our conversation as a guide, as guidelines of what exactly you need to go and do. Like a step by step guide is more kind of like giving you a general understanding. So whenever you’re actually sitting at a table with a conversation of someone who can actually perform the research for you or set up the campaign for you, you can ask the right questions and you can make sure that you are at that certain very strategic elements are being considered when your strategy is being created. And so that is kind of like the purpose of this. So, Grace, I’m going to start here. Point number one is just seven steps, very, very straightforward. And the first one is estimate search volume. I think this is super important, right? And it’s actually easy and free. You can just create a Google ads account and go to keyword planner and determine your area, whether it’s your city, your DMA, you want to go for the whole state.
Liel: [00:21:47] But, you know, let’s assume that you’re going to be focusing on the city in which you are, right? So you go down, write down the city, you can go by counties as well. If you’re actually servicing multiple counties, write them down, all of those, and then write the keywords that you’re going after. Now, how to select the keywords. It shouldn’t really be that hard for what you are really trying to determine here, which is more or less how many people are actually searching for your services and you just go and write down their personal injury. Attorney, Family law attorney, Criminal defense attorney, DUI Attorney Just think about your service area or your practice area and then add the keyword attorney or lawyer to it. Right. And you hit enter. And then Google is going to tell you over the last 12 months, by default, I think it’s 12 months. But you can see as far as 24 months, what’s been the search volume. Right. How many times those search queries are actually coming through the market? Is it 100? Is it 1000? Is it 5000? And you can see that what’s even better is you can actually see what’s the average cost per click on this. It actually doesn’t give you average cost per click. It gives you at the low end cost per click and at the high end cost per click. And so you can then more or less understand the average.
Liel: [00:23:02] Sometimes there is a big margin, sometimes it’s high on both ends. That’s a sign of a very competitive market and I think that’s a great step. This step there because it can tell you actually how much demand you are likely to come through there. Now, a few things and I’m probably this is the area where we’re going to stop the most because this is probably where people can get the most information out of it. Beyond this, everything, it’s a little bit more technical. Okay. Um. You need to understand that 1000 search queries on those keywords are not keywords that are these are not search terms or search queries that are going to end up always clicking on an ad, right? It is estimated when we’re looking at the general market that about 15% of total clicks go to ads. The other 85% go to different areas. They go to the local park, they go to organic search results, and they may go to other search features inside the search results page. But only 15% of ads, generally speaking, go to the ad section. And so if you’re looking at let’s keep it at a thousand search queries, only 150 are likely to actually go to the ads. So that’s important that you keep that in mind. So you’re not thinking, wow, a thousand people are likely to click on my ad, right? Not very common. However, if you’re targeting or completing this search study for the Hispanic market, there you can see probably a much higher click through rate that can be as high as 2,530% in some practice areas.
Liel: [00:24:41] Okay. But let’s leave that aside, Grace. I’m going to just move on here and you’ll just you just jump right at me whenever you want to say something, please. So there is ad regional keywords I’m going to say here, this is a this is a distraction, right? Unless you’re really running a multi-state campaign, you don’t really need to do this if you are just focused in a market by default, okay? Because you don’t want to use broad match as a modifier, but you will probably be using phrase match and phrase match by default is going to add the cities where you are at. So, you know, keep it plain, keep it simple. Don’t over complicate with this. This is something that whomever is running your campaign will know about, hopefully will that would be a sign that they know what they’re doing and just, you know, make sure that the targeting area that you are, the geographical area that you’re targeting is relevant and then that you have a very strong negative keyword list so that other cities or other areas that are being searched even from within your area, are not triggering your ad because they’re not going to be of your interest. Okay. Now, I like the third point, Grace, which is customize assets. Okay. Now what? Customize assets is saying us here is for instance, you can add something like location insertion so that whenever somebody is searching for something in the area that you’re actually targeting, right automatically, let’s just say personal injury attorney, you can put up the location insertion and so that will show on the ad, on the on on the blue link, right? It will also include the name of the city from where the person is searching from.
Liel: [00:26:26] And that mean that increases click through rate tremendously and gives a lot a lot of relevancy. Right. And so these are kind of like the nice features that we use to talk about kind of like Google Automation, Google AI, this is it, right? Google is kind of like doing the work of making the ad extra relevant without you having to write multiple different ads for every single city or county or village around your market so that whenever those things are actually specifically search, that particular ad can come up. That was. Ten years ago. Now it’s just much easier to do that. Grace So I want to stop there. And there’s many more assets, like a call asset that will allow the user to actually initiate a phone call from the ad itself. Right? I mean, there’s wonderful things that you can do adding call outs and other things as assets. And then also including in your landing pages, you can also add assets that will further customize the page for when the user gets there. But as I’ve said, let’s not get into the very technical part of the conversation and just let’s keep it more high level. What else would you add?
Grace: [00:27:36] Grace So I think it’s important, you know, for anybody going into this is to set up the step by step, just like you went through, right? Because I think a lot of people get confused sometimes by like the regional aspect versus this aspect versus this filter versus those keywords. What am I looking for? You need to go into it with the goal in mind your demographics, the states and really the concept of the advertising and who you’re trying to reach. So just have that first before you start going and playing with the keyword planner, because I think a lot of people just kind of go into it without an ultimate goal, right? And so they end up getting confused kind of along the way. On that kind of third aspect that you were saying, right? Figure out this part, figure out this part, request the keywords, look at the costs minimum highest, and then work from there. But this is presupposing that they know what their goal is. And I think that a lot of law firms, while they may have a digital marketing team, they may not be providing the digital marketing team the correct parameters, right? Something simple like this is what I’m trying to achieve and not make it this pie in the sky goal. Like, Oh, I just want to increase brand awareness. Yeah, that’s not what you’re trying to achieve with this particular. Yeah. Process.
Liel: [00:28:56] If you’re so and it’s true, if you’re working with a specialized marketing agency that is familiar with the legal industry and particularly with your practice area, chances are that they are being very proactive and they’re actually asking and gathering all of this information upfront. But if you’re working, for instance, with a pay per click manager, that is a freelance, right, and you know, is doing your campaign as part of many others that they run among other industries, you’re probably want to be a little bit more active in making sure that, you know, what are the search terms for which your ads are showing up, what are the keywords that are being targeted as well as, you know, having a very good understanding of what’s the ad copy that’s going up there in your ads? And then once the campaigns launch, obviously understand what’s your impressions, share, what’s the click through rate so that there is some accountability and you’re not just kind of like measuring the performance of your campaign out of numbers of clicks and metrics that don’t really matter. Okay. Grace Now let’s look at some other things that says here. So that is they say number four, check conversions, tracking and tagging mean I’m going to keep this very, very simple. Very, very simple. If you are a law firm, you have to do lead tracking, right? It’s the most basic and essential thing that you need to do. And I’m going to make it very easy for you here in making a decision with regards to that. Just use coal rail. There is no better tool out there that’s actually going to allow you to add a tracking code into your website or into your landing pages.
Liel: [00:30:36] That’s just going to get you get you the information of the phone calls that are coming through your site, the form submissions that are coming to your site, get you all that information centralized in one dashboard where you can see very granularly. Where are the calls, where are the where are the calls, the forms are coming from? What actually is bringing them to your website, which campaigns add points? You can even see which keywords mean It’s fantastic and it’s easy and it doesn’t cost much and it’s really a necessity. And it actually helps you also understand if the user journey has multiple touch points, know in how many different places the user has actually ended up interacting with your website or with your landing page. And that’s another very, very valuable piece of information to have. So, you know, sure, there’s other tracking elements that you can have in there. You can have conversions tracked by Google, ads by analytics, and all of those things are great backups to that. But I think, you know, when it comes down to tracking your conversions, you want to make it easy and efficient. You don’t want to overcomplicate it too much. And I think this is a tremendous solution that for most, most, most law firms, it’s actually kind of like fit like a glove. Now, this one is a little bit controversial, but you know what? Just let. Stuart. Okay. Target your competitors. Okay. And I will start here by saying I’m not going to. I’m not going to I’m not going to say I’m not going to talk about the morals or ethics about this.
Liel: [00:32:10] I know very well what’s my stand on this. I make very specific recommendations to our clients when it comes down to this. And so I’m not going to get into that now. But if you are going to do it, here are a few things that you want to take into consideration. Number one, do not run this as part of your general practice area campaign set. Set it apart. Otherwise it can cannibalize your budget and particularly if you are in the personal injury space, these clicks can actually get very expensive. Your competitor clicks can can get very expensive. Now the other thing is if you’re actually going to be running this campaign, then be a little bit clever about it, right? Write copy that is not just going to be about you telling about you. Right? Play to the disadvantages of your competitor and actually put them there on the copy. So when your competitor is actually getting searched, they actually see the user actually sees an ad that is addressing a weakness point of your competitor without mentioning the name of the competitor. Be very careful. Be very, very careful. You cannot use the name of your competitor. Otherwise you’re going to be on a trademark infringement and that can get your Google ads account suspended. So you can go something around like don’t hire them, hire us. Right. That’s that’s that’s a good tagline for that. And then talk about, you know, your results and, you know, your your availability and home visits or whatever that is. So that’s a way of going after that.
Liel: [00:33:38] Now you are wondering, well, how can I know? What are the weaknesses of my competitor? How do I know what to put up in there? Well, just go and read the reviews and check the ones that are complaining about stuff. And that’s how you can find out what are their biggest opportunities in case you don’t already know them. And you know a little bit, what are some things that they are lagging in or that you have that they don’t have and whatnot? Okay. But the most important thing in here is, A, do not username B, do not run in target these keywords as part of your main practice area campaign. Otherwise it’s going to completely throw off your campaign performance. Um, great. Now. But. But. But. But. But. But. But you have to be very very careful also with the match type of your keywords because if by any chance you have broad in either of your campaigns, then you can have these campaigns competing with each other. Okay. As I’ve said, we’re not going to get too technical in here. Okay. Let’s talk about the last two points, which is support search with other channels. Great. What were we just saying a minute ago about marketing in general? Right. Do you just go out to one particular platform, advertise there and just hope for everything to go perfectly well so that, you know, you can grow your brand as much as you can? Or do you actually think about all the multiple places where you can meet your next potential client and go and be present in those?
Grace: [00:35:09] So I think the answer is in the question, which is we always tell people you need to diversify where you are. And of course, back to that first topic that we were talking about, the true view. You know, just do it where it makes sense. Do it where you’re not just trying to get impressions per se. You want true conversions, right? So I would say you need to. Expands your reach into the other potential outside of the search network. But where it makes sense only and that’s that’s a very important point, only where it makes sense, right? So don’t just spray and pray because that never works and nobody has the money to do that. So, you know, pick and choose which ones that you want to be in, but do expand it. Don’t just throw all your eggs in one basket into the search network only.
Liel: [00:35:56] Yeah. And I love that. Grace Right. Because, you know, it’s very comfortable for us sitting here at a podcast saying go and advertise everywhere, do radio, do TV, go out, do speaking engagements, get into digital everywhere. And the reality is that you have to even let’s just suppose that you had all of the resources and you can do that to orchestrate that. It’s not easy, right? You really need to have a very capable team supporting you and all that. And often times it’s not one team. Oftentimes you need to work with multiple parties to make that happen. So please by no means feel like we are undermining the amount of work that it takes to really have a proper multi-channel or omnichannel strategy. It’s hard, but what I think you’re addressing here, Grace very well, is like set priorities right. You don’t have to be everywhere from day one. You need to really understand where is the majority of your consumers and start there and then start moving on to the next channels in that priority list that you’ve identified. Right. And that’s the importance of creating client personas or avatars, is that it actually allows you to very specifically understand their profile, their lifestyle habits and determine do they actually have cable TV in their homes or not? Because if they do not have cable TV in their homes, why are you even thinking that you need to be on cable TV? Right. If the majority of them are using their mobile devices for consuming infotainment, why do you need so much to be in TV in general? Right.
Liel: [00:37:39] So you just need to really understand those consumer habits so that you can make some good decisions about that. But I think for the sake of this article, what they’re saying is like if you’re already advertising in Google ads, don’t just limit yourself to Google ads. Google ads gives you visibility in other areas as well, right? Whether that’s the display network, whether that’s YouTube. Right. Discovery ads as well. I mean, it’s not really meant for services, but could also be some sort of solution performance, Max. So I wouldn’t say necessarily like these are your top priorities to do. I think YouTube is fantastic despite what we’ve just mentioned. Now, I think the visibility on YouTube is very, very, very powerful. I think the amount of consumption that is happening on YouTube justifies the need of being there. But I would just jump into other platforms like I was just saying a moment ago, I still think that being in Meta, both Facebook and Instagram is extremely valuable for having that multi-channel impact and at the same time just being present where your clients are. Okay. And by all means, yes, go and post on TikTok as well. Now, Grace, the final point, which I think is kind of like where you wanted us to get is set realistic expectations. And I you know. That’s the point. Set realistic expectations. Please elaborate.
Grace: [00:39:01] Yeah. So think. I think a lot of us go into something expecting a certain result, but they’re not necessarily looking at the context of what the goal ultimate goal is to be, Right. And so when you go into these planners and you’re planning a campaign, you just have to have your goal very clear from the very beginning so that when you go into it, you understand, okay, this is what the parameters are, this is how much it’s going to potentially cost me at the lowest range and at the highest range. And then from there you can decide, this is where I want to go, meaning search network. Plus, if I have the funds, I have the capability and I’m not working with an agency that can essentially handle all of that for me, because a lot of the firms that I think I’ve worked with and that I listen to are smaller in a lot of cases. So they don’t even work with agencies. Many of them. They have one person that’s doing their digital media or digital marketing, and they do a lot of spray and pray. And I think it’s coming from a misunderstanding of how to get to the point where, what am I trying to achieve? Well, if I want more motor vehicle accident cases and I’m a Alabama attorney in this city, you can do that. But you have to know that that’s what you want. You specify this is the location, this is the place.
Grace: [00:40:26] This is essentially the demographic knowing from the cases you currently have, what you what converts best, and then you go for it and then you can expand from there. And that’s what I mean by realistic expectations, is, you know, don’t expect that most likely at the very beginning. Yes. Okay. You can go into the search network and if you have the money, you should go into and expand to the other ones that make sense. But again, realistic expectations are going to state that if I don’t have the money to expand beyond the search network or I don’t have the money to be in all these places, where am I going to get the most bang for my buck? If it’s Google, then that’s what you’re going to do. If it’s a traditional media platform, then that’s what you should do. That’s kind of realistic expectations and setting your own priorities for where you want to maximize what the monies that you do have is the best goal to use, and that’s how you set up expectations for you as an as a firm. And if you’re the digital marketing manager in-house at that firm, that’s the easiest way to set expectations for your stakeholders, right? It’s for the owner, for the founder is saying, Hey, what am I trying to achieve? I want more of certain cases. Do I want to increase brand awareness? What do you want from this campaign? And then go from there.
Liel: [00:41:44] Measure your numbers in the way that they actually make sense for you? And you know what? I what I like a lot that this article does point out here is that the fact that there is search volume and the fact that cost per clicks costs this much and such, that doesn’t mean that every single click that’s going to click into your ad is going to be someone that’s going to be ready to call you. Right. And a lot of factors are going to come into play in here. Well, number one, do you have a great landing page? Do you have great copies? Your messaging compelling enough? But probably more important than that is do people even know who you are because you don’t know who the other advertisers are? Well, you can research that a little bit if you are local, if you are around, if you can complete some search queries and see who’s around you. But until you’re not actually launching a campaign and you’re not have action insights, you don’t really know who your ads are going to be showing up against with and you don’t know how well positioned they are in the market. I mean, ideally, you would want to know those things because ultimately, you know, even though it’s a generic search query, right. It’s a commoditized search query or personal injury lawyer.
Liel: [00:42:54] Right. They’re not searching for a brand. They’re searching for any. But when they get to the search results page and different brands come up, those who’ve actually been seen before by the user, like if they’ve been seen on billboards, if they’ve been seen on other digital channels, if they’ve been seen on the heard on the radio, if they’ve been seen, if they’ve got letters from them on direct mail or any of those things, then you know, that will play some sort of influence over them because they’re just going to feel like, I don’t know, they’re they’re bigger, they’re more capable. They’ve been around for longer, They’re local, Whatever is what that voice is telling them. But don’t don’t forget this. This these decisions are made up to a certain extent with emotion and and that sense of familiarity or of something being familiar is very powerful when that comes to play. So that’s why setting up realistic expectations is important. The fact that you’re on a search network is certainly a great starting point. What if you do not have brand recognition? Then you should expect for higher cost per acquisitions and slightly higher ROAs as well. Right. Because you’re not going to be able to generate conversions at the rates that the big advertisers that are everywhere are going to be able to, because those are probably already driving a lot of conversions just by people searching their brand name.
Liel: [00:44:22] So that’s how the power of a brand comes to manifest itself when you are looking at metrics of a strategy. Now, Grace, this is good. This was very thorough. I hope you know, it’s given some ideas, insights, answered some questions to some who are maybe running pay per click campaigns and not seeing the results that they want, but now they understand. Why could that be or maybe are considering starting a pay per click campaign and this has given them a good idea of, okay, well, I’m going to call my digital marketing consultant or expert or the person I have, right? Because everyone has like their digital marketing person. And so ask these questions and make sure that we can get some projections as to what potentially we can be generating out of that. But as you’ve said, just just be realistic, right, with those projections. Right. Don’t don’t wishful thinking on them, because the reality is that, you know, you can you can underestimate really the costs that these campaigns can end up having. All right. Now it’s time for takeaways and. Nobody does them as good as you do. Great. So please.
Grace: [00:45:40] So I say, you know, my first takeaway. Well, we talked about something first, I want to kind of go on back on the second one that we talked about, and that is, you know, besides setting realistic expectations is know your brand and know where it sits in the market, because that in and of itself is going to make a huge difference as to how much money you’re going to end up spending, particularly when if you’re only doing digital and you have not diversified anything because you feel like that, maybe that’s the cheapest way to do it, that’s great. But know that they’re not being exposed to your brand any other way through traditional methods or other ways because you haven’t invested in that. So know in the back of your mind that whatever you do, besides the realistic expectations, is understanding where your brand sits in the market. And I can give you a perfect example, and that is New York has the five boroughs and I don’t care how great you are, almost nobody will go from Long Island to Brooklyn. When I have a motor vehicle accident. It is a geographic specific location thing and it has to do with the way New York is set up. So anybody that’s been to New York knows New York or knows anything about the five boroughs, they are very borough loyal in most cases. And that holds true with the lawyers. So know where your brand is, know your location, know your people, and know exactly where you sit in the market. And if people even know who you are. Because if they don’t, you’re going to end up spending a heck of a lot more money than someone local to you that they know their name.
Liel: [00:47:20] Yeah, I like that, Grace. I always, always, always make that recommendation. You know, the fact that there is demand across many different markets doesn’t mean that you’re going to be the best solution in all of those. So play to your strengths, focus on where you’re going to be most valued. So, you know, and I think that goes for everything, not just for pay per click search, but generally speaking. Yeah, wonderful. Take away Grace. Guess what I would say here is bringing back a little bit this you this whole true view fiasco on Google ads and such. Um, you know I think it’s this going to destroy Google. No it won’t. Is this going to destroy digital advertising or it’s going to downplay the the effectiveness of advertising in YouTube? Look, it’s probably not great. And I have no doubt that this is just probably a scratch over the surface of our own efficiencies that there are because let’s not lie to ourselves. It’s a very unknown mystery. It’s completely unregulated. We don’t know how many spam clicks are we getting, how many bot clicks our ads are getting, especially when you’re in the display network and that sort of places. It’s a flawed, um. Structure in many ways, but it’s a very powerful one in many others. So I’m just going to kind of like merge two things like Google ads and managing your expectations. Like, you know that you’re getting into this up to a certain extent. And I hate to admit it, but yes, I mean, you need to understand up front that some of your ad budget is going to end up going to waste on impressions that are of low quality or that have, you know, filtered through the spam blockers.
Liel: [00:49:11] And as disappointing as it is, I do genuinely feel I really do that. Google is working towards improving both the user and the advertisers experience. I don’t think that Google’s strategy on the long run is like how they can screw over advertisers and kind of like get more, you know, 25% additional ad spend on low impressions with low quality conversions because they know us, they know we’re measuring and paying attention to everything. So we’re going to push them to do a better job. Now, are we cutting up with them at times? Are we actually kind of like being able to see under the blanket every once in a while and actually see what’s happening and call out on them? Yeah, I actually wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of what these analytics report says is actually true, but does that invalidate the effectiveness of being in the platform as a whole? By no means no it doesn’t. So, you know, just have a little bit of perspective. Don’t be demotivated by it, probably. I mean, obviously here we’re talking about millions and millions and millions of dollars spent by very, very, very, very, very large corporations to ascend to a certain extent. If you’re doing this type of marketing, you’re probably also going to be impacted by it a little bit. But I don’t necessarily think that it’s strong enough of a reason for you to just say, I’m going to remove myself from this. And you know what? Just just don’t run through few ads. If you’re really concerned about it, go for target frequency. Do that. Right. So that’s my takeaway with regards to that. What’s your your final takeaway?
Grace: [00:50:59] So you like the YouTube target frequency is one of your favorite ones. Yes. All right. Just telling everybody on here so that you heard that because I lean on the L for that stuff.
Liel: [00:51:10] And I’ll tell you why. Target frequency. I think it’s a great campaign because I do not believe that people go to YouTube, particularly for buying services, and especially if you’re a personal injury law firm or just a law firm in general, not necessarily just personal injury, you’re going to drive a conversion right off from YouTube. So what is the best thing that you can do is just have repetition so that the impact that you’re having in the platform is strong enough. So if you can get in front of the same user, say you three times or four times in a week in the same platform, that’s really a statement of how much of a presence you have in the market. And so that’s why I feel that target frequency while it’s not actually going after conversions, right, because everybody may like always targeting conversions may seem like the best thing to do. But in reality, it’s like for you to be searching for conversions where conversions are not likely to come is a little bit kind of like shooting yourself in the foot because even if you get a conversion, it’s probably going to be a very low quality one. So that’s why go after that. Yeah.
Grace: [00:52:17] No, I love that. Thank you for that explanation because honestly, that’s why I asked specifically why you liked it. Because, yes, repetition. So many people here don’t know this about me, but I used to be a tutor and I tutored somebody who actually special needs kids. This one was in college. I’m sorry. She was in high school and she had short term memory loss. She was actually an honors student and everything, so she could commit to long term memory. Memory is only through repetition and association. So the fact that you like the target frequency because they’re repeating something and that sticks in their mind. I love that. And so for me, that would be my third takeaway is think about these different goals and the different parameters that you want. But when you execute, execute on the platform, that’s going to get you to the goal using things like target frequency because repetition of your brand and like Leo said before, when they see you here, here and here, and then all of a sudden they see an ad pop up in Google, who are they going to click on? The one that they saw here, here and here, and the ad or the one that they only saw? The ad, I can guarantee you it’s going to be here, here, here. And the ad, because I recognize it, whether it’s. Consciously or consciously. I recognize that name and I’ve seen it more than one place. And you have to have no like, trust before they’ll buy. It’s that simple. So if they don’t know who you are, they don’t like who you are because they haven’t seen you in different places that they’re comfortable with or used to seeing. They certainly will not trust you enough to convert or even get to want to know you.
Liel: [00:53:58] I love that Grace. That’s a tremendous takeaway and I think a great close for our conversation today. And we’ll be back a couple of weeks from now. And I’m looking forward to that.
Grace: [00:54:12] Same. Thank you, Liel. Take care. Bye bye.
Liel: [00:54:19] If you like our show, make sure you subscribe.
Liel: [00:54:21] Tell your coworkers. Leave us a review and send us your questions at: ask@incamerapodcast.com. We’ll see you next week.
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