Dr. Jeremy Weisz 19:11
Is it a software like people pay per month for it or.
Ed Goss 19:15
Oh, it’s a one time fee, I think. The agencies pay 500 us. I think that’s right. And individual advertisers, I think it’s 200. So it is surprising that it’s a one time cost. But I think part of this is that the industry changes so fast. Like performance, Max may not be a thing in two years. Right. So I think people may be hesitant to get on a subscription. But yeah, it’s a great tool. It does have limitations. But you know, as you read that article you’ll see like it does offer a lot of utility, but some things are just kind of not that helpful.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 20:02
Nice. No, I appreciate you sharing that. It’s super interesting. I know he’s been in the game for many, many years. I heard about him from Perry Marshall. I don’t know how long ago, a decade or so ago. Talk about the hiring journey a little bit, right? First it’s you. It’s you know, you’re meeting business networking groups. You’re on ELance, oDesk. Talk about some of the first key hires you put in place.
Ed Goss 20:33
Yeah. So I don’t want to say we’re unique, but we’re a little different in philosophy. So as of right now, we only work with freelancers. So what I’ve done is gone out and found Pay-per-click experts that have, you know, quite a few years under their belt and they are in the process of starting their own freelancing practice or agency, and I’m catching them at a stage where they’re going to benefit from, essentially, I want to say white labeling, but working for my agency, right, to provide services to my client. And so we do income splitting with them effectively.
So they’re going to share in whatever revenue we generate with the client. So instead of an employee where you know, they’re getting essentially their paycheck, maybe they’re getting a bonus, but you know, they’re happy if a few clients they don’t like leave because it’s less work and less hassle. A freelancer working for me is incentivized to grow the economy, grow the client account, and to take on as many clients as reasonably possible. So it kind of flips things on its head. It’s like, you know, kill what you eat.
For the clients, the benefits are, you know, that you develop a personal relationship with your Pay-per-click manager. And if you’re with a big agency, that tends to change every quarter or every six months, every year. You know, with us it’s like a multiple year cycle, if ever. Right. So we have you know, most of my people have been with me longer than five years.
And so they’ve been on accounts for multiple years at this point. So that’s really good. You know, now you can say things get stale. But we have ways to deal with that in terms of, you know, cross auditing and, and that kind of thing. But, you know, there’s something to be said for that type of relationship.
The downside of working directly with a freelancer is they tend not to have SOPs. It’s more seat of the pants. If they go to Nepal for four weeks, you’re kind of not going to be able to get a hold of them. There are these issues. So putting in the agency support system around that.
So that, you know, we have those standard procedures. We have somebody to back them up. We have, you know, these internal audits so that, you know, we’re finding mistakes and fixing those before they become a real problem. So it’s kind of marrying those two things and delivering all of those benefits to our clients. So right now we’re seven people.
It’s me. There’s five pay-per-click managers. Again, they’re all freelancers. Most are located in the US. And I have one admin assistant. So we are finally in the process of hiring the first full time staff member. And that person will be like a pay per click lead role that will kind of take over my day to day operational responsibilities to deal both with our Pay-per-click managers and to deal with the clients.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 23:39
Talk about that for a second. And, you know, kind of the structure a little bit with the clients. So how do the meetings work? Are you meeting with them, you know, in the beginning what the onboarding looks like. Then after that how does it work?
Ed Goss 23:55
Yeah. So I’m the salesman. So, you know up front discovery meetings and onboarding is with me. But there’s a transition. Once a client or a prospect turns into a client decides to work with us. They fill in our registration form. Now before that process, if we do an audit like a free audit for a prospect, then typically I try to get the pay per click manager lining up to actually do that work. So they’re already familiar with the account. But either way, once they. Once the client is signed up, that’s when everything kind of launches into.
We set up a kickoff meeting with the Pay-per-click manager. They start doing it. Competitive research, reviewing the audit, looking through the account. Doing a. Kickoff meeting. And then in parallel with that, you know at this point it’s me. Handling kind of like the back office stuff right. And my admin assistant. But the idea is that, you know, the Pay-per-click manager is client facing. They’re the main kind of contact.
So on an ongoing basis they’re the one doing all. The reporting you know, monthly meetings up front. There’s obviously more frequent meetings. But I check in with clients and I do like a check in with the Pay-per-click managers. And we go through every account every month to see where we’re at. Because, you know, again, you know, there’s ideas that I may bring to the table for strategy or what have you. If there are issues raised by the client or by the Pay-per-click manager, or something I can assist with.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 25:24
How do you structure the monthly meetings?
Ed Goss 25:29
Yeah. So we send a report typically within the first few days of the month end. And then, you know, the meeting tends to be ad hoc. It kind of depends on the client. We have clients that just don’t want to meet. So literally we send them a report, they read it or they don’t read it. And they, you know, say, you know, no meeting this month kind of thing. So, you know, it really depends on what the client wants to talk about.
But we obviously will raise any issues we see with the campaigns, you know, performance wise. And we’ll also identify opportunities for growth. Say, hey, we really recommend we try this campaign type or, you know, hey, you’re really, you know, doing well in this geographic area. So we’d like to invest more money there. But yeah, you know, it’s it’s we’re a little bit loose in that regard.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 26:22
I love hearing just people of a variety of ways of doing things, you know, as far as meetings, as far as communication. So thanks for sharing that. Diesel laptops. Talk about them for a second.
Ed Goss 26:37
Yeah. So Diesel laptops are one of our early clients. I ran into Tyler. Who’s that? The owner of the business on Reddit. And at that time he was literally moving out of his garage. He’s got a pretty big business now. I mean, it’s a small business, but it has quite a few employees. And so what they do is it’s diagnostic equipment for diesel trucks, for off highway equipment. And they have a marine division as well.
And yeah, so he was running some shopping campaigns himself at the time. We connected. And, you know, I took over his account. This is my own account. This is one that I still manage to this day. And grew it from there. And, you know, I know I’m not single handedly responsible for his growth because he’s a great marketing team and amazing products, but he’s the leader now in his industry in the US. And, you know, I like to think that I contributed something to that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 27:42
Was that strictly Google ads or were there other platforms?
Ed Goss 27:47
We do Google ads, Microsoft ads, Facebook ads for him. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 27:54
What are some of the big mistakes people make? I know you’ve probably audited a lot of your clients’ accounts before you even took them on. Talk about some big mistakes.
Ed Goss 28:05
Yes. I mean, I’ll kind of talk about what we see recently. Like over the last couple of years with the advent of automation, in particular, automated bidding. There’s a lot of people that just kind of refuse to go with the flow, and they’re still trying to do things the manual way. So that’s a big issue.
Just, you know, people are using manual bidding when they’re not leveraging this automated approach. And a lot of times they’ll come to us and they’ll say, hey, you know, we used to do great numbers with Google ads. We’re spending 20,000 a month. But, you know, over the last couple of years, you know, our conversions have gone down by 80%. We don’t understand.
It’s like, well, have you changed anything in your business? No. Okay. Well first off, you know, Google is 10% more expensive every year on average. So you know, you’re going to be losing if you’re not gaining, but you know, not adopting the newer automated opportunities, that’s a big thing.
Or just doing it wrong? Right. So you’ll have, you know, advertisers that they know, they’re spending $1,000 a month today And they get three conversions. Let’s say they’re doing lead generation. They have three conversions a month and they try to run automated bidding.
Well, that’s not enough data for the automation to actually work. Or they’ll you know, again a small ad spend, they’ll switch to broad match keywords, which essentially lets Google target almost anything it wants. Again, with not providing enough conversion data Google can start to understand what it is that you’re offering. So a lot of what we do these days is being like the janitor and cleaning up the mess and, you know, figuring out what strategies, you know, in terms of bidding and in terms of what type of keywords are appropriate in a given situation.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 30:02
What are some tools you recommend? I know you probably do a lot of research from a keyword perspective.
Ed Goss 30:08
Yeah. So with keyword research Specifically. I mean, we use Google’s built-in tools. We use SEMrush. Probably SEMrush is kind of not as important as it used to be, because you could use it like ChatGPT to scan a website and, you know, develop a rough keyword strategy.
And I do recommend that for advertisers. But whereas SEMrush science is you can shine. So let’s say you can do competitive analysis, right? So you can see what keywords your competitors are targeting. And for an agency that’s experienced where we get value in that is we might not understand all the nuances in different keyword opportunities.
So it can identify like some new keyword themes for us that we otherwise might miss. But outside of that, you know, ChatGPT or Gemini, you know, if you’re advertising for yourself and you want to pay for a tool, it’s a great way to just scan your competitor’s websites to at least get a starting point for keywords. Even scanning your own website, right? It can give you some ideas for keywords.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 31:23
Ed, you know, one of the things we were discussing before we hit record was in everyone’s, you know, talking about and thinking about AI and how is AI affecting, you know, paid search now and then. Maybe we could talk about how you think it will affect it.
Ed Goss 31:41
Yeah. So there’s kind of two aspects to AI in Google. And the first one is the search engine itself. Right. They’ve adopted an AI approach. So it hasn’t negatively impacted paid search at this point because Google has just pushed the organic results lower on the page. Right. So anybody doing SEO is definitely feeling the pinch right now. So it’s really unclear longer term like how many results are going to have links, how relevant those links will be. I expect that will happen is there’s going to be fewer paid search results for each query, but those paid search results will be more relevant, so the click through rates may be higher right?
So we’re going to end up paying a higher cost per click. But the clicks that you do get will be more relevant and will hopefully convert more. And we’ve seen this trend for a long time now, by the way, as Google has gotten better at placing the right ads in front of the right people. So that’s one thing. The second thing is the ad platform itself.
There’s been a large adoption of AI. I mean, Google’s been at it for a long time before we even called automation AI, right? In fact, we just changed the name. But Google has added a lot of these tools in platforms. We talked about Performance Max a little bit, and that’s their biggest AI revolution. It kind of automates much of the campaign management, but they’re also using automated creative generation.
This is a tool we have not adopted at my agency yet, and not only can it generate the ads for you, that you can then review and edit, it will generate new creative in the background if you let it and it will create, sorry, it will generate creative on the fly. When somebody inputs a query that you will not even be able to see as an advertiser. So that’s a little bit more scary, because if it’s automated creative that’s generated in the platform and you can at least later, you can periodically check to see, oh, this is a really bad headline and you can stop it from running, but Google’s taking it to the level. We don’t even know what creativity is running. And that’s I mean in a lot of industries you just can’t do that.
Medical devices where there’s, you know, regulations, but most advertisers want to have confidence that they know what’s being said about their products. So that’s a big thing, that it’s a hurdle that most advertisers and agencies haven’t adopted yet. I think it will get better in time and we will start to adopt it. But yeah, navigating that is a challenge. All these changes that are coming.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 34:27
You know, you were mentioning obviously there’s mistakes with keywords, mistakes with bidding. What about with creativity? What mistakes do people make with the creative side?
Ed Goss 34:39
Yeah. So too many to mention. There’s you know, just probably the biggest thing we see is advertisers just like saying the same thing over and over again. Part of the reason for that is Google came up with a new creative called Responsive Search Ads a number of years ago. And instead of having like a well-defined ad with, you know, two headlines and one description, now we output three headlines and up to two descriptions.
Plus, you can put 25 headlines in an ad, and then Google will mix and match those. So you have to be very thoughtful in your approach. And so what we do see in a lot of accounts that we audit is that the advertiser just puts like the same thing, like their main offer over and over and over and over again, saying it the same way. And when the ad comes up, it’s like saying the same thing three times in a row. In the ad, instead of offering additional features and benefits that may be relevant to your target audience. So that’s a big thing, just like missing those opportunities.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 35:50
I want to thank you. I have one last question before I ask it. I want to point people to check out TenThousandFootView.com to learn more and check out more episodes of the podcast. Just thanks for sharing your lessons, journey and a lot of these helpful tips here. My last question is just any particular, you know, mentors that you’ve had throughout your business journey life journey that would be and maybe some advice that they’ve given you.
Ed Goss 36:24
Yeah, that’s a tough one. And my answer, oddly, is going to be no. Which I know doesn’t make a lot of sense. So there’s certainly been people that I have learned from along the way and kind of followed online, but I haven’t, haven’t ever really had that mentor relationship in my life. And part of that, you know, my father passed away when I was quite young, and I think I’ve always had the attitude of doing things for myself. And I know that’s a personal failing as well as an ability that I have.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 37:01
How young were you? I’m sorry to hear that.
Ed Goss 37:03
But, I mean, this is life, right? I mean, the important thing is to understand our own limitations, and I do get that limitation in myself. But, yeah, I have trouble asking for help in certain ways. So in business, not so much. Personally, it’s a much bigger limitation for me. But to my credit, I mean, I’ve kind of turned that into a strength that when I need to learn how to do something, I just figure it out for myself.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 37:29
How young were you?
Ed Goss 37:31
I was ten.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 37:33
Wow. Yeah. I guess it turns into a strength over time because you’re forced to do it yourself.
Ed Goss 37:39
Yeah. Living on the streets. Right. It was nothing like that, but. But. Yeah, you know, we all go through different life experiences and challenges, and that definitely develops our character and how we see and we interact with the world. And so, so yeah. And I mean, I, you know, I think again, understanding yourself and your limitations is really important to your own success.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 38:05
Yeah. So we’ll change the question to life experience that changed you. And that was one. Was there a positive I mean that’s like a negative one that had a positive effect I guess. But is there a positive life experience or another life experience of that kind? Like who you are?
Ed Goss 38:22
Yeah. Well, I mean, starting this business has been one of the most positive things in my life because it’s something I aspired to from, you know, my early 20s starting working. I thought, this is not for me. And I stuck it out for many years, but starting as a business.
And I think by the middle of the second year, I had a, you know, kind of a milestone, a personal milestone that I had to earn the same amount of money I had been earning previously in a full time job. And when I hit that number, because when I started the business, I thought if I hit this number I can make that much money until I die. It’s enough that I can kind of control my own destiny when I want to work. That would be a big success. And hitting that was a big thing. And then doubling that up the next year was also, yeah, a big milestone for me.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 39:26
Love it. And thank you so much everyone. Check out more episodes of the podcast. Check out TenThousandFootView.com and we’ll see everyone next time. And thanks Ed.
Ed Goss 39:37
Thank you.
