S2 E17: If You Give Me Ads Credit

Liel: [00:00:00] Economist Paul Samuelson once said investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take eight hundred dollars and go to Las Vegas. But what happens when Vegas has shut down? And you need to get your adrenaline rush from somewhere else. Could the stock market or Google Ads be that alternative? I’m Liel Levy, co-founder of Nanato Media, and this is inCamera podcast, where we keep calm and in control of our campaigns while others lose it all for a rush of excitement.

Liel: [00:01:02] Welcome to incamera podcast, private legal marketing conversations. You’re back. It’s Grace and me here for a conversation about everything, Grace, right? Yeah. We like to talk about everything. Like, just before getting into this conversation, you and I have already been talking for a good 20 minutes just about life and things that happen in work and Grace. You know, I think we are living in, we know, unprecedented times. I mean, this 2020 years so far is being unexpected, falls short as an expression to really describe what is it that we’ve seen and experienced, but just like over the last few days Grace, right. I mean, just look at the stock market. Look at the Nasdaq yesterday hitting all record highs.

Liel: [00:01:56] And yet we are in a year where the World Bank is supposed to fall short in every other aspect. And so it’s kind of like extremes right from one stand we’re seeing how much trust and believe there is big tech out there. But on the other side, we’re seeing how, you know, mainstream economics are not in line with what is happening in the stock market.

Liel: [00:02:26] And so I’m no expert in the field, Grace. But when I hear about these things right in the midst of a pandemic, it’s very explanatory in the sense that it helps us understand. Also, why is it that we see the shifts that we see in the work that we do in marketing, in the way that we run our campaigns, in their ups and downs that we all from the sudden notice in the accounts that we manage? It’s been quite a rollercoaster. And the same as the stock market is behaving, we are seeing it in our Google Ads accounts in different markets. Things are just wild, Grace and I do have a theory up to a certain extent as to why we are seeing these massive fluctuations all over the place. And if you are interested, Grace, I’ll be happy to share it with you.

Grace: [00:03:18] Of course I’m interested. So this is, you know, part of what you’re saying, I totally get it I agree with, as we talked about before we started. Right. This is world-changing stuff for everybody. Nobody’s life is any longer the way it was before this happened. That’s just a given, right. I’d say everybody’s life has changed. Well, we can’t say anybody that hasn’t affected everyone, right? So, yes, this is definitely world-changing. And I would love to hear what your theory is on the fluctuations.

Liel: [00:03:53] So, Grace, here’s the thing. And I did not came up for it, but I’ve heard somebody that I respect, acknowledge as an authority for everything that has to do with the stock market and big enterprise marketing and such. Right. And so what this person was saying was that because of the pandemic. Right. Places like Vegas shut down. All sports shut down as well. So what did that cause is for people in the gambling world, not having a venue to go and take those risks that they much like to take as a hobby.

Liel: [00:04:41] And so they just went to the stock market and started using it as a venue to take those risks, to do those same activities that they were doing before sports now or at the casinos doing it in the stock market. Right. And he had actually mentioned that there was a study that showed that over the past few months. I don’t know if it was particularly on the month of May or since the pandemic. It doesn’t really matter.

Liel: [00:05:09] The point is that since the pandemic started, there’s been a lot of brokerage accounts opened. Right. And so in a way or another, that explains also why it could be that right now we are seeing money being put into the stock market and creating these kind of fluctuations.

Liel: [00:05:30] So, you know, I just thought I heard it today and it was just the interesting and I thought I would bring it up. Grace, but disregarding on what we’ve seen or not on the stock market, this is what I can tell you firsthand experience is that what I have seen is pretty much since the end of May, all the way until the beginning of June, up until now, Grace, the markets have gone crazy when it comes down to Google Ads, right. We really saw markets go from being very steady and stable to really becoming fierce in terms of competition. Right. You couldn’t really tell how some were being very conservative with their strategies or they completely paused all of their marketing activities, including Google Ads during the first two months of the pandemic. But oh, boy, as markets started to reopen in mid-May and towards the end of it, we saw that people just kind of like, you know, rushed into injecting money into their strategies. It’s nuts, right? It’s nuts. And we’re seeing it in all different kind of practice areas. Needless to say, always personal injury is going to be one of the most competitive, and first campaigns, no matter really which market, you know, in each market it’s going to be adjusted to the competitiveness that there is. Right. At New York, it will always be more competitive than a smaller mid-west city. Right. But at the end of the day, the point is that there is more demand. People are out there. And I have another theory as to why it could be also that people are acting this way, and this second theory is that we don’t know for how long we’re going to have this kind of, like, perception that we’re back into some sort of normality.

Liel: [00:07:33] Right. Because right now, the conversation is about economies reopening. It’s about people going back to work. It’s about kind of like resuming life as we knew it before with some adjustments. Right. Which we call the new reality. But for the most of it, it means for most of us that there is some level of stability that we did not have for the past two or three months. And so for a lot of people, this feels like the time that they need to leverage. Why? Because we don’t know whether there’s going to be a comeback to COVID 19 in the next few months. And with that, it’s kind of like you need to take advantage of things while they’re last, because this may very well be gone within a few weeks or within a few months. And so, you know, people are saying, well, this is the time to really go back. Market get as many clients as we can because we don’t know how the fall and in the winter of this year, are going to look like Grace. So what do you think about my little rant here? Does it make sense to you?

Grace: [00:08:42] To me, it does.

Grace: [00:08:43] So, you know, as you were speaking, I was honestly thinking about all the different words you’re using because even like, you know, stock market and, you know, I think of things in terms of verbiage. Right. So people are risk-averse. People are risk lovers. And a lot of them are in between. Right. So I think your theory is pretty spot on in terms of people want to get what they want. There’s always the people at the front. Right. That will go chase things that they’re looking for regardless of what might be going on. So as long as they’re allowed to, they’re the first ones out the door. Right. Those are I would call risk lovers. Then you got the people that kind of sit back, wait for that first wave to deal with everything, go out there, get sick or not. And deal with it. And then they’ll start, I call them the risk-averse people, they might come out. They might not. And they’ll wait. And then you have the people between. Right. Where I consider myself a little bit in between. I’m not a risk lover, but I’m not extremely risk-averse either. So the first I say the second day they allowed us to go out and do stuff I did. I went, you know, with safety and made sure I was clean and able to handle it and do that. But, so I agree with you. I think that people have this mentality with no matter what might be going on, they are still their personalities and they still have the mentality that they have. So this is just a way of handling or dealing with whatever their personalities and whatever what their lives are going and however they can with the restrictions that we all have. Right. By the CDC or whomever else. I don’t know, what do you think? You think I’m, you know?

Liel: [00:10:32] No, I totally agree with you, Grace, in that. Yes, I do. And so here is what we’ve had for the first two months of the pandemic. We had the kind of people that are consistent, that are go-getters, that believe that staying and being disciplined with their marketing is going to pay off. And so that for those which we are lucky to have, all of our clients fall under that category, they actually aw great results during the pandemic. Right. I mean, that’s the reality. And I mean, there’s no shame in admitting, they actually did well during the pandemic. And right now, they still have an advantage edge over these or their law firms that it just kind of like turned the engines again because they were not there. They were gone. So they don’t have consistent track record that we have. With particularly Google Apps right now. And therefore, they cannot be at our accounts when it comes down to impression share. And I know as a fact that we’re also getting better cost per clicks. Right. So that is the good side of having been consistent all along. That doesn’t mean, though, that the fact that they’re coming back now, it’s not painful. And so I think going back to what you’re saying, Grace, is that now we have a group of people, whether they were the spectators, oh, we’ll wait and see what happens. We’ll just wait. We’ll just, you know, be more passive now over the next few months or weeks while we see and we measure and we see how others do. And so those being there. Right. And there are people that panic. Right. Those who panic can shut everything down. And they’ve just decided, no, nothing’s going to happen during the pandemic. Right. And so we have these two categories of people which actually make the majority, like all of a sudden want to go back and rush into it all at the same time. And so not to acknowledge that that’s created a competitive environment in certain platforms would be really kind of like tricking ourselves into wanting to believe that, you know, there is no competition. The competition is there. And it’s definitely making things more challenging, if you may. Right. Yeah. But you still get to retain your market share if you’ve been consistent with your strategy.

Liel: [00:12:56] And that’s I mean, I think everyone who does professionally, Google Apps will agree that that’s what they can tell and the difference that they can potentially also see themselves between accounts that got turned off for a few months and then reactivated against those that have stayed consistently, providing, of course, that everything else in the management of the accounts has been done properly. Right. I mean, it’s not just about having accounts on and then everything works out itself, which is actually another thing and probably something that we can talk in greater detail on another occasion, which is how you’re running your campaigns. Right. Because I hear a lot of people that follow just one particular methodology. Right. Whether it’s manual, whether it’s smart beating and the realities that you can no longer trust one or the other strictly. And you need to be fast and you need to know when to shift and you need to monitor very well your results so you can actually understand when to take which action. And that’s the behavior that we’re seeing right now in the market. It’s causing that kind of volatility or all of a sudden if you had smart-bidding setup in some complaints. Well, smart bidding is no longer cutting the trick. You need to potentially change some of these campaigns and change the strategy, whether it’s going to be to cost per acquisition, whether you want to do some manual bidding, you need to know when.

Liel: [00:14:16] And it’s not a rule of thumb. Every single market is going to be different. Right. And so you need to have very dynamic people. You need to know very well what are you doing in order to really be able to stand your ground during this new market reality in which we are and Grace, so the reason why I was also bringing up this whole thing about the stock market and the volatility that it has experienced. Yes. Yesterday it hit a record high. But then today, massive drop again. And so I think that same thing, we’re seeing it in platforms like Google Ads. Right?

Grace: [00:14:54] Yes.

Liel: [00:14:54] Like just I can totally see Grace people going. Let’s just put up. X thousands of dollars today or this week and then next week, how much we generated? Now nothing. Shut it down and then I definitely know that those characters exist out there. Right. And we, you know, their behavior has an impact on the overall market. And so that’s why I’m saying you need to be very available and ready to adapt and adjust and not take anything for granted. Anyone who’s running lights in this reality as set it and forget it thing they’re lost, lost Grace.

Grace: [00:15:33] That’s right. So it’s all about consistency, right? I mean, I think you and I have talked about this a million times till we’re blue in the face. It’s about being consistent, but agile. You need to be able to pivot based on the marketplace. That is as simple as that. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. If you’re not pivoting with the marketplace, you are left behind in dust or you close, those are the only two options. Right. And we saw that with I mean, everything between the Google update, the pandemic, the riots, everything that’s going on from the beginning of this year, 2020, has been pretty volatile. It’s the perfect term that you used. And to be agile enough to handle these types of changes. It’s the only way to survive. And if you didn’t have that already in place or you didn’t think that you needed something like that until the pandemic hit. Well, hopefully, you decided at that moment when we told you to at the beginning of January that you have all these tools to help you if you decided at that moment to do something about it. Great. Hopefully you did, because you’d be. You are in a better place today than you were in January if you did what we asked you to do or told you to do. Because him and I Liel and I, our companies, the companies we work with and for and the things we do, they’re always consistent. And I’m not saying we’re perfect, but we need to be agile. We understand that. I think implicitly Liel. No? Wouldn’t you say that that’s like part of the nature of our business is having to be agile and watching every penny?

Liel: [00:17:08] Yes, Grace. Absolutely. We do not take for granted anything. Right. I must admit, it’s been stressful. Like, you know, I don’t think over the past three months we’ve encountered a moment where we’ve felt like, you know what? We’ve found some stability. I think we can just sit down a little bit and just be a little bit off guard right now, Grace. It’s keeping us at the edge the entire time. But at the same time, it also gives you a lot of gratification when you see yourself being able to produce and moving forward while you can see others staying behind. Right. And so is it taking a toll? It certainly is, Grace. But at the same time, it’s very rewarding. Right. And that’s what we do because there’s nothing more gratifying than listening to the calls and matching out people who are in despair with lawyers that can help them. That’s at the end of the day, the goal. Right. It’s the way in which we also help and make our world a better place. Right. And so there is a purpose behind all of it.

Liel: [00:18:29] It’s not just the marketing side of things, but actually the results that you are able to generate by having an impact on people’s lives. Right. And so at least from our end, from our agency, we put a lot of focus in that. And we take great pride in seeing those daily victories when people who are in need of help find the assistance that they need.

Liel: [00:18:56] And that’s always a positive thing. Grace, enough talking about Google taking away our money and making us live hard by running ads in their platform. Let’s talk about Google giving us money back. How about that for a change? You like that?

Grace: [00:19:15] I do.

Liel: [00:19:16] I also like it when Google tells me it’s gonna give me more money back Grace. And I do want to share with everyone who doesn’t know yet is that Google did pledge back in March just at the beginning of this whole COVID thing, that it will give three hundred and forty million dollars back to Google Ads advertisers, you know, in a way of credits as a way of assistance. Right. And so that’s what they announced back in March. Very, few details. Not a lot of information. But now we know that since the last week of May, Google has started rolling out these credits. Now, the bad news is that they did not start with the credits give away here in the United States, yet they started in New Zealand first and it looks like they’ve chosen a more controlled and smaller market as a way of testing out the process of rolling out so much credits to, you know, potentially a lot of clients. Right. And so initially they started doing it in New Zealand. And we anticipate that sometime over the next few months we’ll start seeing those credits being rolled out here in the US. Now, who can qualify for these Grace? Because it’s very important that, you know, as opposed us to the Facebook grant, for instance, that was also pledged back somewhere around March where Facebook said that they were going to give one hundred million dollars to small businesses and such. Google Ads did not gave an opportunity for account holders or users of Google to apply for it. They’ve just said that they were going to give them out. Right. Facebook did require an application. So just kind of to differentiate that. But I do want to point out that Facebook grants applications have already closed down. I think they closed at the beginning of May, first week of May. So for those who applied, great, probably already heard of secondary e-mail that went out, which required further action. But I don’t think they’ve started yet handing out those grants neither. But with regards to the Google one. You cannot apply for it. You just need to wait and see if Google chooses you to be one of their beneficiaries. OK. Did I say that right?

Grace: [00:21:41] Yes, you did. Beneficiary’s correct.

Liel: [00:21:44] Excellent. So, yes. So going back to it. How much money can you potentially get? Well, depends. We don’t know yet exactly how much businesses will get. But it’s going to be a maximum of 1000 dollars. Now, Grace. I know. Yeah. You see, you’re in a big law firm. 1000 dollars in Google Ads, not necessarily seem like a lot. Right.

Grace: [00:22:07] No, but that’s great.

Liel: [00:22:07] It’s good. Listen, every little help, right?

Grace: [00:22:11] You can run a couple of tests.

Liel: [00:22:11] I totally get it. People rolling their eyes right now in Houston and saying that’s a couple of clicks, like literally two clicks.

Grace: [00:22:22] Yeah, right. Especially in Texas.

Liel: [00:22:23] But at the same time, it could also be a really good opportunity to use money to do things that you did not try yet with Google.

Liel: [00:22:37] So that’s my advice. That’s what I would tell people that are going to get this grant rather than just injecting these 1000 dollars and, you know, letting them get lost in your existing campaign. Why don’t you try to give yourself an opportunity to try something that you haven’t tried before and use those 1000 dollars for. So here are some ideas.

Grace: [00:23:02] Phenomenal. Yeah.

Liel: [00:23:04] Because, I mean, when you have your budget for running your campaigns, you don’t want to. And I get it like people want to try to get the most out of what they already know that works with the money that they have or they may think that, you know, experimenting with something else is not worth the investment.

Liel: [00:23:24] But here you have a great opportunity where you don’t necessarily need to give up on something that you’re investing on. Google is giving you a credit and then you can allocate that to try something different. So with that being said, I do have some ideas, okay, that people can experiment with. So, number one, if you recently integrated a new practice area for your law firm that you’ve never marketed for because it’s not the main or primary practice area that you’re trying to generate clients for, or potentially because it doesn’t generate the most revenue-generating kind of cases, you should still see and test your market and see whether you find good value in advertising through Google Ads for those secondary or maybe even third practice areas. Right. I know a lot of personal injury lawyers Grace, that also take immigration cases and they also do criminal law. Right. But they’ve been always only advertising for personal injury. They don’t advertise for immigration. They don’t advertise for criminal law. Right. Because, you know, they have other strategists set up in place for that that sometimes do not have anything to do with digital platforms and such. And so they kind of like disregard them. They say no, you know, I want to use my money for digital marketing to really generate personal injury leads. That’s what I want to use my money for. Right. But there could be a great opportunity right there. Now, if you have the capability, for instance, to do bankruptcy law. And again, you’ve never really paid a lot of attention to marketing for that practice area, maybe this is a good opportunity to do so. Why? Because we also know that there is going to be at some point an increase in demand in that right. Unfortunately. But things point out that it may very well be the case, if not already the case in some markets. Right. We’re starting to hear with all the news happening right now. Right. You know, a lot of the economic suffering that some are going through doesn’t really make Take-Over the headlines, as we would expect. But the reality is that there is a lot of foreclosures and people are starting to have to file for bankruptcy. It’s the reality, right? What’s the unemployment rate right now? 20 million. I mean, it’s sad. Yeah. I mean, you don’t need to be an eight figures CEO future predictor to understand that potentially things are going to get nasty at some point. Right. So put yourself in that role of seeing beyond what’s just happening right now and see what campaigns your law firm may need in the future. Not right now. Right. So that’s one way of seeing it. But as I’ve said, think about those other practice areas that you can actually handle cases, handle legal work for and try to test those out in your campaigns. So that’s one Grace. Here’s another one. Right. Again, many times law firms would go after a search network campaign, very highly targeted on keywords of high intent. But sometimes what they do is that they forget their brand. Right. And they either leave it unprotected or they’re not doing any branding at all in Google Ads, right. And so there is there’s a few things here that you need to consider a. Number one, if you don’t have a branding campaign in place, you should probably get one. Right. Particularly if you’re doing Google Ads or if you’re doing any other digital marketing activities in general. The bottom line is that you are every single day taking steps towards building a brand online. And if you don’t start protecting it from the very early days, you’re going to encounter yourself in trouble where you’re going to see other people at some point starting to show ads under your brand name and for you being in a very bad place to get caught up in competing against them. Right. And consequently, losing potential clients that were looking for you to your competitors were showing outs of all for you. So that’s the branding campaign. And you use these funds to make it an introduction for you. If you’re not a big name law firm in your market. A thousand dollars from branding should last you for quite some time. Right. But if you are a big shot law firm in your market, a thousand dollars are going to last you for five days or less.

Grace: [00:27:58] Yeah. OK. It’s literally a short test if you’re lucky.

Liel: [00:28:02] Yes, absolutely. But certainly something you can not ignore. Grace, you have to. You have to. We’ve talked about it so much here in this podcast, like the importance of protecting your brand. Now, let’s suppose that you have already your branding campaign set up there on the Google search network. You’re protecting your brand. You’re showing up ads also for your brand keywords. Fantastic. Now, the next thing you should do is consider how can you promote your brand through platforms like the display network or video, YouTube.

Liel: [00:28:33] Right. And it’s very affordable. Very, very affordable. And again, you can really do highly targeted campaigns. So you’re not just promoting your brand to random people or to kids using apps on their phones. Right.

Liel: [00:28:50] You can actually promote yourself to people who, again, have completed search queries that are high intent that relate very specifically to what you do and stay in front of them through banners across the Internet. Right. Especially now in the day and age that we are Grace, like how many times a day are you on news sites a day, Grace? Like, how many times do you end up yours? Like if you had to count how many times a day you’re actually reading an article, whether it’s from, you know, a local newspaper or one of the major newspapers in the Nation or a network like how many times you’re actually reading or looking at the content from any of these platforms a day?

Grace: [00:29:37] Almost maybe once or twice an hour.

Liel: [00:29:39] OK. Well, there you go. All of those Web sites, right, are part of the Google Partners Network, which means that you can get your ads in there. Right. And you know it because you’re actually seeing other companies’ ads as you’re going along. Right. So there’s going to be some placements that are actually handled by the actual network. Right. And those you may not be able to access through the display network, but they usually have other opportunities where you can show your banners and your ads in newspapers. Grace, it’s great, it’s a really powerful way of building a brand. Right. And a lot of people disregard it because of the fact that it doesn’t necessarily generate as many conversions as the search network or the conversions that it generates tend not to have the quality that the search network has. Right. But we’ve spoken about it many times before. There’s not such a thing as an unqualified lead. Right. You just may not be able to qualify them right there and then for taking them as a client. But they can potentially become a client down the road. So that’s the vision that you need to have when you’re doing this kind of things.

Liel: [00:30:54] Grace, I have another idea right, which is, you know, something that we at our agency specialize in. We always want to raise awareness for people who have not yet tried to establish Spanish campaigns for their practice area in their market.

Liel: [00:31:15] And Grace, as I’ve said many times before. Primarily, you know, on offline conversations that you and I had; many times people ignore the potential that there is in this market. Of course, we know that there are markets across the nation, that there are very well established for Hispanics and they are actually fairly competitive. But the reality is that any city right now in the US, it’s a good market for Hispanic marketing and there is a great opportunity there to actually generate qualified and good quality leads at a fraction of the cost that you are potentially paying for the same kind of lead in your English strategists

Liel: [00:32:00] So without really going very deep into details here, I would certainly recommend for people to take time to explore establishing a Spanish digital strategy for their practice area, no matter the market where they are.

Liel: [00:32:17] Ok. And that’s really my recommendations as to how to allocate this free money that Google is going to be adding to your accounts, hopefully within the next month. So now that, you know, not that you have a little bit of time to prepare for it, just get working and set up some plans so you can be ready for when that money hits your Google Apps account, you’re ready to run. Grace, what do you think?

Grace: [00:32:43] No, I agree with you completely. As you were talking about it, actually, I was thinking the same thing. You know use it for brand awareness. Use it for things that make sense. Do experiments. You know, I’m constantly  A/B testing everything all the time. So with a thousand bucks, that gives you leverage to trial things you never would have tried out before. Just like you said, you know, like do a click to call campaign. You know, you can spend a thousand dollars on that one practice area that you just created like you said, and then, you know, or split it up. You know, if you have three three hundred dollar test campaigns, Google lets you do test campaigns and it will let you see kind of what the numbers will look like at the end of that test campaign. So, you know, maybe you can do three test campaigns. Who knows exactly how much you’re able to spend on each of these until you go in and look and see what you can do with it. There’s a ton of things that you can do. But I would use it just like you said, Liel, as experimental money or brand awareness money. You know, you always need brand awareness. It’s something that should never be on the back burner in terms of like if you don’t have it, you need it. But if you already have it going, then it can be not on the back burner, but just something that’s part of your process and part of your marketing in general. But if you’re not doing it, use this money, use it for brand awareness. Your brand name, your brand in general is the most important thing for lawyers, isn’t it? I mean, to me, your name is who you are and it’s the reputation of the firm. So if you don’t use something that brand awareness, you’re going to be left in the dust again.

Liel: [00:34:15] Yeah, absolutely, Grace. I mean, branding and Google Ads need to be hand-in-hand, right? You cannot 100 percent think and rely on your SEO strategy and say, oh, no, I do good SEO. Whenever my brand is being searched, I always come on top of the page. My Google my business is they are very prominent. The reality is that you know, advertisers will always come up on top of your brand name, particularly if you are a well-established and have been doing digital marketing or any other kind of marketing consistently. Chances are that there are already ads being shown on top of your brand name. And as you’ve just said right now, greats like click to call ads like those ones. It’s very hard to tell who is the actual advertiser and people get misguided and think that, oh, I add this is the person I’m you know, I’ve just searched for the Johnson and Johnson law firm and this Tel. came at the very top of the list. That has to be them. Right. And the next thing you know is you’re calling them and you’re asking, am I calling the Johnson and Johnson law firm? And they say you’re calling the personal injury law firm and we can help you. And you know what people think, OK? Personal injury. That’s what I was looking for. Let’s get started. Right. And poor Johnson and Johnson just lost potential six or seven figure settlement, whatever.

Grace: [00:35:37] And it’s worse than that. So because not only diet is that, but they lost the money they spent on getting that placement.

Liel: [00:35:45] Yeah, absolutely Grace. And that’s what we say. You need to think about how much. Like what did it take for that person to decide to search for that particular brand law firm and not to search just for generic search query like personal injury lawyer, like the user went and searched for a specific lawyer…

Grace: [00:36:08] And he’s not coming up.

Liel: [00:36:10] Right. And so that just getting them to that point or heard the user to that point of wanting to search specifically for a law firm that cost money to the law firm for sure. Granted, like it cannot be otherwise. And that’s right. That’s the loss. That’s an actual monetary loss. Right. Not just from the potential revenue, but from the actual already made investment in other marketing channels.

Liel: [00:36:41] And I’m glad that you framed it that way as well, Grace because sometimes we fail to also look at how much loss there is in that way, the full cost.

Grace: [00:36:53] The full opportunity costs.

Liel: [00:36:55] Yeah. So, Grace, I just want to finalize here by talking about another thing that fits really well into these whole experimenting and trying things conversation that we’re having in Google Ads. And that’s Google local services ads, Grace. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of them, but you’ve probably seen them. Right. So Google local services ads are very well established already in most of the U.S. for service providers. For instance, if you think about locksmiths or if you think about plumbers, electricians, I think H.V. AC technicians like all of these home services providers. I think even home cleaning services, they’re all already using and leveraging what Google calls the local services ads. Right. And so basically what Google wanted it to create is a new version of ads for people who have a Google My Business listing thing, but don’t necessarily have a Web site and offer services that are very, very local.

Liel: [00:38:05] Right. These are strictly tied to a particular geographical area. And so Google wanted to say, you know, there’s a great opportunity there to capture a market that needs to get clients and we can make it way easier for them to get in front of high infant people. Right. And so they created the Google local services ads. This was back already, I think, in 2018. It’s been going on for quite some time now.

Liel: [00:38:29] What we know is that it has been and continues to be tested on the legal industry, but it hasn’t necessarily yet established itself as a type of ad that it’s available for everyone. So let’s start with where and for whom it’s available as we speak right now, Grace. It’s only available in Houston, in San Diego, where the only practice is that you can create these kind of ads is gonna be for estate law and for immigration law. Right. In these two cities. Right. Not states. Cities. Now, Grace, it’s weird because they’ve been testing it out on these two cities, on these two practice areas for more than a year. I believe now. Right. And for some reason, they haven’t rolled it out yet to the entire nation into more practice areas.

Liel: [00:39:23] Now, Grace, before we kind of like judge, why do we think they haven’t rolled it out to all practice areas in more markets, let’s look at the facts. The facts are these. OK.

Liel: [00:39:35] In order to be able to list yourself and be showing as local service ads, you need to first go through a verification where we will pretty much run some background check on you and just finds out that you’re a legitimate law firm. Right. I want to know that you’re licensed and that everything about your business looks kosher, right? Fair enough. Now, the next step once you’re vetted. OK, and now you’re ready to open up and start showing ads, first of all, where do these ads show? And that’s probably where the value of this campaign lies, is that for search queries that actually are applicable for this kind of ads to come up, right. For instance, 24 hours plumber near me just, you know, very specific search query. If I was to type that in Google. At the very top of the search page results, I will see a little carousel. OK, with businesses listed, right. You know, when you see shopping ads Grace, that you have that little carousel showing you pictures of the different products?

Grace: [00:40:40] Always like seeing that, very visual.

Liel: [00:40:42] Yes, exactly. Well, it’s exactly the same experience. Now, the only difference is that instead of seeing the picture of the product, you’re seeing a brief overview of the business, including star rating. Right? That’s how it looks. Now, here’s why it’s powerful. Because it comes at the very top of the page. OK, above the search ads, above the local pack. OK, so very, very prominent position, right? Now, here is the other aspect of it.

Liel: [00:41:11] You don’t have to configure anything. You don’t have to perform anything from Google. That’s itself. Right. And the only thing that you basically have to do is sign up for it, set up a budget, and then Google takes care of it at all. Now, we’ve mentioned at some point you don’t even need to have a Web site. Google will show up your ads whenever they feel that a search query that is relevant to the services that you offer has been typed. Your ad will show up. And then if the user clicks on your ad or actually converts by scheduling an appointment or sending you a message. Right. Only then you actually pay. So now if they caller, or the message doesn’t turn out to be a qualified client for you, you cannot sign it up, you still end up paying. OK, and Grace, this is where I’ve found that this kind of ad format has not really worked for some of the law firms that have been part of the test group on it.

Liel: [00:42:17] I’ve talked with an immigration lawyer in Houston recently, and what I’ve heard was that the quality of the leads don’t necessarily match the services that his law firm is offering. And therefore, a lot of the leads that are getting to him are not lead study. He can actually retain clients. And so that lack of customization and that lack of ability of being able to choose, particularly for which search terms you want to show your ads, is, I think, One of the main factors, why this is still something that is only on a Beta test and has not rolled out at the Nation level. But, you know, as we do here in this podcast, we talk about all kinds of marketing opportunities, particularly when it’s digital marketing. And this is something that’s been on the pipeline for quite some time and potentially will get released. But to be very honest, I don’t see a lot of potential to these kind of ads as it stands right now. However, I do know for sure that Google wants to shift into a model where they get to make most of their conversions happen as much as possible from inside the search results page. And so whether it’s going to be true, these Google local service ads or with a different format of ads is yet to be seen. Right. But the goal here is to keep users as much as possible on the search results page. And so for that thing, we do need to be ready. Well, Grace, I think we’ve covered quite a bit in this conversation. Right. Just to recap a little bit. Stay consistent with your marketing. Right. We’re seeing now that those who are actually being consistent, half kind of like an upper hand, despite the volatility of all kinds of marketing shifts that we’ve seen in the world. Yeah. Second, Grace, I think, always seek for opportunity to experiment and to find ways to improve your current marketing efforts. We’ve talked about a Google Ads grant that potentially is going to be hitting many people who’ve been advertising with Google over the past few years. Right. And so use that grant to do something creative. Use that grant to do something that you wouldn’t have done otherwise with your own ads budget. Okay. And last but not least, Grace is understand where Google is heading to when it comes down to their ads efforts like it’s very clear to all of us now that Google wants to keep users as much as possible in the search results page. We see that through the enhancements that you’re making to the local pack. We see that through the snippets that are being shown now on the search results page. And certainly the local services ads is another move towards trying to keep users from leaving the search results pages and empowering them to complete full transactions from inside Google. Right. And so we need to be mindful of that and be ready and prepare our digital marketing strategies are able to adapt and shift to any potential changes that may come along the way. Grace, do you have anything to add?

Grace: [00:45:48] Not really. I mean, adapt, shift and be agile. You know, be consistent, but adapt and be agile. I think that is the key to this entire conversation.

Liel: [00:45:57] I couldn’t agree with you more, Grace. Thank you again for your time. And I’m looking forward to chatting again with you next week. All right. Grace.

Liel: [00:46:05] Take care. Have a lovely. Have a lovely evening.

Grace: [00:46:07] You, too. Great talking to you as always Liel.

Liel: [00:46:13] If you like our show. Make sure you subscribe. Tell your co-workers. Leave us a review and send us your questions at ask@incamerapodcast.com. We’ll see you next week.