Welcome back to Incorporating SuperPowers. This is going to be another great episode. I’m your host Justin Recla, and today we’re talking to a gentleman who’s really cracked the code on some things. My guest today is David Rothwell, and we’re going to be talking about how to be confident with Google AdWords. I know that this is a topic that scares the bejeezus out of so many business owners trying to crack the code of Google AdWords, because every time you think you get it figured out, Google goes and changes something, and now you’re having to start all over again.
We’re going to be talking about how do you get confident with Google AdWords and what that looks like.
David, thank you so much for being on the show today.
My pleasure Justin. Thanks for having me.
Okay, I’ve already called it out a little bit, but what’s the biggest problem that you see in the whole AdWord Google space right now? What is it? Paint the picture for me, because I know it can get ugly.
Okay. Well, so 20 years ago, nobody had really even heard of Google, but in 20 years they’ve gone from nothing to be one of the world’s wealthiest brands, and the reason for that is because they make nearly all of the money from paid advertising.
In 2018 last year, they made 116.3 billion dollars out of 200 billions
How much?
116.3 billion dollars.
That’s a lot.
You can look that up. That’s public information. That’s their earnings, and that’s from advertising. They’re making an absolutely extraordinary amount of money out of their advertising system, and many, many businesses, I’ve been doing this for 15 years, but even now today, many businesses spend money on Google Ads, and made Google very wealthy, but they have no clue whether or not they’re actually making any money in return, and this is the biggest, biggest problem for everybody out there, is really understanding the relationship between what they spent, and what they earn.
It’s really very simple, because when you spend money in your business, you expect to get more money back. We spend money in business for a lot of reasons. We buy websites. We pay subscriptions. We might be buying Google Ad clicks, but the whole point of it is to get more money back then you spend.
It’s that simple, because this stuff is all actually digital and you can join it all up. It’s not terribly difficult to build machinery that this can work for. It’s taken me a lot of years, really to completely get my head around that, and some businesses it works. Some types of businesses it works more easily for, but essentially what you’re trying to do is measure the money that comes back once you have bought clicks, and got somebody to your website, and invited them to your business, and get them involved with it.
You’re trying to sell them something. There’s much more to Google Ads than just the campaigns. So many people just go off and buy clicks, and they’re not ready. They need all this sort of stuff done before they do that.
Okay. So let’s dive into that a little bit is what are some of the things that people can be doing to get a little bit more confident with the Google AdWords? What are some things that they should be doing before they even get to the place of doing that?
Yeah. Well, you need to understand: There’s this quite straightforward math behind it all. You’ve got to know things like what’s your average order value, when you sell something, how much do you get paid for it? If you’ve got a variety of things, let’s start with some averages to begin with.
What’s your customer lifetime value? How many times are people going to pay you? When somebody comes as a result of an ad click, what is the actual value of that to you? Some businesses collect leads, professional services typically collect leads. What’s the value of that lead? When you get that lead, how much is it going to convert to the actual payoff to you?
How long does that take and how many steps are there involved in it. What does that actually mean in terms of you getting paid? How much is that, and these are the economics of the thing that you’ve got to understand before you go off and start buying clicks, because if you don’t know the money numbers for your business, and every business is different and unique, then you know you’re getting ahead of yourself spending money on clicks when you don’t know those kinds of numbers.
I won’t spend my client’s money unless I know how it all joins up and how we could turn that money that we spend into more money coming back.
Yeah, people go to Google AdWords thinking that it’s going to solve everything for them. They do a little bit of this, and they do a little bit of that, and we’ve seen this happen before with people in some clients that we worked with that they’re doing Google ads, but they’re spending so much money, and the amount of money that they’re putting out doesn’t necessarily match up with what they’re getting back.
It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. How are you disrupting that entire industry? How are you helping your clients shift into looking at things differently?
Well, I insist with businesses that I work with that we are able to track the money coming back from the campaign. I won’t spend my client’s money unless I know how it all joins up and how we could turn that money that we spend into more money coming back. I just take the responsibility of spending clients money very seriously.
Other organizations that do the kind of work that I do, managing campaigns for people, they’ll just take the money and spend it, and then they’ll charge you to spend the money that they spend for you as well as you having to pay your clicks. You have to pay them as well, and they still haven’t necessarily spent showing you any money back in return.
I’ve got a case study after case study after case study of how this stuff can all work successfully, and where it all goes wrong in many cases, because businesses often just don’t know their business properly. They don’t know the sales process properly. You don’t ask an agency. There aren’t questions.
I’ve got a good hypnotherapist who sent me an email. “My agency left me broke.” I’ve spoken to lots of people who’ve worked with agencies and paid a lot of money and they haven’t got anything to show for it, and it’s just that they don’t know the right questions to ask.
Well, one I love that, and first and foremost, people, if you’re listening to the show here, you can go take a look at David’s profile inside the Clear Business Directory. He does operate a transparent business. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have him on the show here. I met David in person at a CEO Space Forum late last year. We really connected in a, in a very unique space.
I love the personalized approach that you do, David, and what you said was, was so important: “I’m going to spend my client’s money wisely and I’m not just going to go out there and spend it, because they told me they had an $8,000 budget, so I just went and blew through the $8,000 budget,” which I’ve seen it happen. I’ve known people that have done that and it’s irresponsible.
It seems to be what the industry standard is. In my opinion, one of the reasons why things like SEO and web advertising and the people that are in that industry have gotten a bad rap is because they don’t stop and ask the questions. They just take your money and they run with it, and it leaves a bad taste in people’s mouth.
I love the fact that you’re taking that relationship approach to business. If you’ve been listening, we’re talking to David Rothwell, he’s a Google expert. He’s been in the media business for quite some time.
We’re talking about how to be confident with Google AdWords, and David, before we go on break, where can people go find more information about you?
Just look me up on Davidrothwell.com, or I’m published on Amazon as well, so you can find me there.
Fantastic, and those will be in the show notes as well, so stay tuned. When we get back, we’re going to dive into this a little bit further, because I want to learn a little bit more about what David’s superpowers are, so stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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