Signals and soundbites to diagnose and solve for budget issues in google ads, Microsoft advertising, and Facebook.

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Time to Grow: Signals &
Soundbites for Growth
By: Navah Hopkins

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I am a bounty hunter of happiness and profit
(& a Star Wars nerd)

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• Am focused on the business
metrics of my stakeholders (clients).
• Know when to invest and when to
hold back.
• Live for the thrill of winning for my
stakeholders.
This means I:

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Talking Money is Hard – Talking Profit is
Easy

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By the end of this session, each of you will have
the tools to be a fellow bounty hunter of
happiness and profit

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What We’ll Be Covering
➔ Baseline/Questions to Ask
➔ Poor Performance Caused by
Lack of Budget
➔ Can’t Spend the Budget
➔ Account is Winning
➔ Casestudy
Navah Hopkins
Services Innovation
Strategist

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Baseline/Questions to Ask

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Before We Can Begin Hunting, We Need to Do
Some Reconnaissance

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Are All Parts of the Business Equal, or Are Some
Worth More?

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Are There Hubs of High-Value Customers, or Are
They Truly Spread Out?

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Are Phone and Website Leads Equal? Do
Conversion Rates and Auction Prices Align?

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• Impression Share
• Auction Price
• Conversion Rate/Value
Three Trails Good
Hunters Follow:

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Most Advertisers Struggle to Achieve 50%+ of
Available Impressions
Based on
2973
accounts
with at least
$.01 in
search
spend
Average
impression
share is 47%

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Search Auction Prices
Vary by Industry – don’t
bring a blaster to a
lightsaber duel

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If You Know You Have An Easier Time Winning on
Mobile/Desktop, Don’t Be Afraid to Focus There
Mobile:
4.39% CTR
$34.79 CPA

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✓Location Targets
✓Duplicate Keywords
✓Structure of the Campaign
✓Match-types of keywords
✓Bidding strategies
Raising Budget is a
Last Resort – Check the
Following First:

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Poor Performance Caused by Lack of
Budget

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Wasted Spend is the Enemy

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If there’s a hint of wasted spend, it
can be hard to convince clients to
open up budget.

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Here’s the problem: a budget that isn’t aligned
with the structure it’s asked to support will always
be wasted spend

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Can your budget support 10 “top of page clicks”?

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Here’s what,
“Top of
Page” looks
like:

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If Not, Assess if You Can Get The Traffic With
Different Search Ideas
Based on $369
spend between
October 25th and
November 23rd 2017

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Check The Search Terms For The Real Heroes!
3% cheaper
& perfect
conversion
rate!

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Broad Keywords Can Drag Your Budget into
Unintended Auctions
162%
More
Than
Average

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If they’re all too high, find out if clients can live
without that Traffic

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• Use extensions to communicate
valuable ideas without paying a
premium.
• Bid adjustments can focus the
budget.
• Lumping strategic initiatives
together can cause all to fail.
Not all profit centers
are equal:

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Daily Budgets Needed For AT LEAST One Lead
Based on 2018 Average CPC
Monthly
budget will be
30.4 X daily
budget

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Bing’s Auction
Prices Can Be More
Forgiving

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Starting Bing Is As Easy As Setting Up An Auto-
Import

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• Be transparent about industry costs
and whether budget expectations
are realistic.
• Offer options that work within the
requested budget.
• Give realistic timelines for growth
When crafting marketing
budgets/assessing clients:

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Can’t Spend the Budget

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It can be intimidating to ask for more budget,
when you’re struggling to spend existing budget.

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Your Campaign is Likely Losing Impression Share
to Rank

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• Too many targets
• Bids and auction prices not aligned
• Search volume isn’t there for
“important” keywords
Here are the most
common culprits:

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There’s only
so many
signals a
budget can
accommodate

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Targeting 5+ locations without bid adjustments
can cause budget allocation issues

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Different Locations Have Different Auction
Prices, Search Patterns, & Time Zones

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Number of ad groups can also choke a budget: 5-7
is the golden ratio!
60% of
impressions
Budget
will only
go to
“winners”
instead of
everything

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Bid to budget ratio is only
part of the equation: if the
bids are too low, you won’t
even enter the auction

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While it is true Google can up to double your
budget, you can’t bank on it delivering premium
volume if you’re consistently under bidding

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Search volume is an important mechanic in
account health

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Google’s not going to
waste its time or your
money on pages that
lack transactional value

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But those pages may be important to clients

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• Turn important low volume
keywords into site links/callouts
• Make a low budget “experiment”
campaign to house these ideas
• Ask the client if they’d be open to
content marketing being
responsible for those ideas.
Here are three easy
solutions:

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Account is Winning

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Congratulations! You’ve vanquished your enemies
and achieved profit!

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But we’re bounty hunters of profit and
happiness…there’s always more to be had

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• Can your client handle more leads
or are they at capacity?
• Is this seasonal – should we invest
now, or hold for next season?
• Should the budget go to existing
initiatives, or would you rather
expand to new platforms/parts of
the business?
Before we continue:

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Here is what I look for in a winning campaign
Consistently
above 75%
impression
share!
Campaign live for at least three months

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Important: Never dump large amounts of money
into a winning campaign all at once!

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Gradually increase budget by 10-15% each week
over a month

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A great way to expand is to layer in display!
In-market display
ad with affinity
content!

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Display Average CPC’s Are Cheaper – Build Your
Perfect Audience to Be Picked Up By Search
Remarketing
10%
conversion
rate vs 4%
conversion
rate

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Display Can Bring Users Your Branded and
Remarketing Search Campaigns are Poised to
Pick-up
$496
Monthly
Budget
168550
Monthly
Impressions
701
Monthly
Clicks
*Average monthly budget, impressions and clicks across
4000 accounts (no budget over $50 and no budget under
$1)

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Don’t Forget About Facebook!
26% Of Clicks Result In A
Conversion (Spark Central)

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• Average CPC is $1.72, but this is
determined by how many folks
click on your ad!
• Budgets can be ad set or
campaign level – choose the level
of control that suits you!
• 19% of time spent on mobile is
on Facebook.
Facebook Budgets

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By running campaigns on other networks, you can
expand your Google market:

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New Campaigns Are Expensive – the
first 1-2 months of a campaign will be
about data acquisition

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Client Story: Koru K9

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Budget conversations are a game of transforming
“cost” into “investment”

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• CTR
• Quality Score
• Impression Share
• Extensions
• Match-types
Clients won’t care
about:

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• Quality of leads
• Return on ad spend
• Volume of leads (as long as quality
isn’t impacted)
• Year over year growth
• Growing the value of a customer
Clients will care about:

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If we want to grow the budget, we need to speak
their language

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Meet Koru K9:

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Koru K9 Grew Through Online Marketing!
Benchmark (November 2015)
➔ Spend: $1,295.75(AdWords)
➔ Impressions: 30,570
➔ Clicks: 368
➔ Average CPC: $3.85
➔ Conversions: 23
➔ Conversion Rate: 6.25%
➔ CPA: $56.34
Post Optimizations (March 2019)
➔ Spend: $6,100 (Google
Ads/Bing/Facebook)
➔ Impressions: 59,000
➔ Clicks: 2,000
➔ Average CPC: $2.69
➔ Conversions: 225
➔ Conversion Rate: 9.6%
➔ CPA: $27.07

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• Built trust by identifying and
eliminating wasted spend brought
in by broad terms and tangential
searches.
• Focused budgets by geos served
and replicated winning structure
across those areas.
• Layered in display to educate
markets on why their approach to
training works.
How did we achieve
victory?

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For Profit!

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Build trust
through
transparency
about budgets
and timelines.

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Use extensions
to promote
expensive ideas
when your
budget cannot.

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Honor thy bid
to budget ratio
and conversion
rates

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Check for
alternative
ways to achieve
expensive
traffic, but if the
ROI is there,
invest!

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Acquisition
costs go down
with increased
exposure to
brands –
Display brings
the audience!

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Thanks! Questions?
nhopkins@wordstream.com
@navahf