Are Google Ads Important – DSP 241

When looking at online marketing, Google Ads seem like an obvious choice, but are as relevant for Float Centers as they are for other businesses? The most useful thing these ads do is boost search result placement, but if the ads are to boost the ranking of a float center that is the only center in town, it’s not going to affect search results much.

Derek and Graham dissect the platform and really focus in on the uses (or lack thereof) of Google Ads for float centers and provide tools and tips for online marketing and how to make it as effective as possible.

Buy your tickets for the 2018 Float Conference!

Book hotel rooms for the Float Conference

Float Industry Survey

Float Helm

Google Adwords

Google Analytics

Listen to Just the Audio

Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: Okay, welcome everybody. Hope you liked that Ashkahn intro, because it’s the only Ashkahn you’re getting this episode. Filling in, we have-

Derek: Derek.

Graham: That’s right. Derek Wyatt, who runs the social media for pretty much all of our ventures and does just a ton of stuff behind the scenes for Float Tank Solutions as well.

And Ashkahn’s busy working on the conference and getting everything ready for August. And in the meantime, we have a question for you. And that is, “are Google ads important in marketing a float center?”

Derek: Yes and no. Wait, I already said that one time. So, I mean, the idea behind Google ads is another paid platform.

Graham: By the way, Google, if you don’t know what Google is, go Google it. Ba-zing!

Derek: Dat-da!

Graham: Okay, go on, sorry, just had to say it.

Derek: Yeah, so, I mean, just like we’ve all talked about Facebook ads. The other largest ad platform out there is Google ads. And I think-

Graham: Oh, I was gonna say the phone book. But I guess that was, you know, maybe 20 years ago.

Derek: Yeah, man. Whoo.

Graham: 30 years ago?

Derek: Phone book? That’s almost like radio ads.

Graham: Okay, go on. God, I don’t know why I’m just giddy or something. I had too much coffee.

Derek: Too much coffee? There’s no such thing. So, going back to Google ads, I don’t know. I haven’t heard a stat whether Facebook surpassed them yet as far as the largest ad platform, because everybody talks about Facebook ads. But Google ads has been a thing for 20 years plus, is going to still be a thing. People use Google to find things near them, especially small businesses.

And so, with that said, when you search for something on Google, usually 5 to 10 items show up on the first page. And I say 5 to 10 because if it’s a local item, you might have the map that pops up with 3 or 4 locations that are pinpointed near you. So that takes away from some of the other listings.

But moral of the story is, if there’s probably 5 or less float centers in your area, you better show up on the home page, or you’re doing something wrong with your SEO on your website, the search engine optimization. You should at least show up as one of those first 5 options.

Graham: Right. And I guess it is one of those interesting things about running a business that’s just a little more obscure than, say, an Italian restaurant.

Derek: Or massage therapy.

Graham: Sure. Yeah, even a more direct comparison. If someone looks up massage in a city, no matter what that city is, and you’re a massage therapist who’s just getting started, you are going to show up 20, 30, 50 down the listings.

Derek: Or not at all.

Graham: Yeah, or never.

Derek: Yeah.

Graham: Whereas if you’re looking up float tanks in most cities, there’s not a ton of float tank centers. I mean, there’s some exceptions, which we’ll probably chat about coming up. But you know, if you’re one of, again, like Derek said, five float tank centers, do you really need to pay to show up at the top of Google when you’re going to be one of the things that shows up on that map, on the Google listings, on Google places whenever you search for that and the name of your city?

Derek: If everything else is optimized and working well, maybe a little bit of money here and there. And with Google, like everything else, you can track its effectiveness.

So it could be worth the test if everything else is running well for you. But if you’re strapped for cash and just looking for another option, probably not right now. We can always talk about if there’s more than five float centers in a town, should you be running Google ads? Because really, what Google ads do is that search result we just talked about? It just puts the first two to three results are ads or paid results that show up above everything else, above that map, above the other listings.

So basically, most people don’t want to dig too far into Google. They want an instant gratification response. Floating in Portland, where to float in Portland. They just, oh, top option, right there. Or top couple options, I’ll consider. So if you want to be guaranteed one of the top couple options, try Google ads.

Graham: I would almost say, if I had Let’s just say, you know, $1000 – $2000 that I was looking to invest in Google ads, I’d probably invest in trying to figure out how to get my Google reviews up instead for my places page. You know, figuring out how to get 50 to 100 extra reviews and spending some money on campaigns or, you know, just signage in shop to be like, “Hey, leave us a review afterwards.” Or really just running some experiments on upping that review count. Feels like such a better investment, you know, because that controls the perception.

It’s just like, whoever’s highest rated, you know, if you have 300 reviews and you’re rated 4.7 stars on Google, I mean, that to me is how you win the listings, not by paying $1000 – $2000 for just ad space. Which then will go away when you stop paying for ads, whereas reviews stick around.

Derek: I was about to say that. You know, and it’s one of those things like investing, and again, the foundation of your marketing skills, things that will help you regardless of if you stop paying it or not are probably wiser investments.

And those are little things that Graham was mentioning that helps your SEO, your search engine optimization, the amount of reviews and the ratings you get helps Google consider whether I show you or the competing business that has two reviews and they were both three stars.

So Google also uses third party validation and testimonials to say, “Hey, which one of these is the legit business?” I know people can trick Google and black hat SEO, but these are reviews from the people, which one should we go ahead and show the user?

Graham: And especially, I say reviews because it’s a lot easier on Google to get more reviews written than it is on Yelp, for example. At least for the time being, they just don’t screen nearly as many as Yelp does. So again, doubling down some investment in that, I would do over ads.

And it’s interesting, so for Float On, just to say historically, we really have not played too much with Google ads. I think there’s-

Derek: If we have, I don’t think I’ve been a part of it.

Graham: No, I think I did when we first opened up sometime ago before you joined. So this is, you know, we’re going back quite a while now. And I think it was only, you know, a few hundred dollars worth of kind of tests. And this is back when it was us.

Derek: Yeah.

Graham: And that’s it. And I really quickly came to the same conclusion, which is why my advertising for nothing. I mean, essentially what we would do is go and advertise for other wellness things. So if you’re looking up massage, you have a chance to find floating as well.

And then no one knew what floating was. Then you had to, in a short ad, convince them that they should click on this thing to explain what the heck floating is, and then why they should do it besides a massage. Anyway, it never worked out or made sense, really.

Derek: You’re competing with really competitive keywords at that point on Google ads, which gets really expensive. So if you were trying to like, “meditation in Portland,” or some kind of like, “Buddhist temples in Portland,” because you wanted to try and pull some audience from that, because you’ve got this meditation device in your building, you’re probably gonna be paying a lot more trying to compete for keywords that aren’t directly relevant to your website.

So Google also knows, is this keyword relevant to the actual page we’re directing people towards? And so you can’t go too fringe. You can’t start taking out ads for the word Pepsi just because you bought-

Graham: Without paying, yeah, without shoveling out more cash for it, yeah.

Derek: Right. Just because you’re like, “Oh. If somebody searches Pepsi in Portland, I want them to find my float center, because they might go, ‘What’s this float thing?’ Because it’s out of the ordinary.” You know. So you have to be pretty strategic about it.

And again, if you have some foundational things set, and you know, there’s enough centers in your town where you could get pushed to fourth or fifth in a search result, give Google ads a try.

Graham: And we do Google ads for other businesses that we run, too. We just don’t do them for our float centers. So it’s not that we don’t see the value of Google ads, or we just haven’t played around with it. Float Tank Solutions, for example, what’s our budget for Float Tank Solutions?

Derek: I would say we probably spend two to three times more money on Google ads for Float Tank Solutions than Facebook ads.

Graham: Mm-hmm.

Derek: Because when people find out about floating, and want to find out floating near them, or how to start one of these things, they’re gonna pull up an ad for Float Tank Solutions.

Graham: Yeah.

Derek: So versus me forcing a Facebook ad, again, like the problem you described, now I have to convince this cold audience what floating is in a small ad and because I forced myself in front of them. People are searching for something, be in the top of that search, pay for a Google ad.

Graham: Yep. And so for us, that makes sense. Again, because that’s where you want to hit people as they found out about floating, they’re wondering what it would take to start one of these up. And we can target those keywords really well.

And otherwise, it is kind of a mishmash, you know, if people are just looking up starting a float tank center, they’re gonna hit a lot of manufacturer websites because it’s not a location-specific type of search. You’re gonna just pull up, you know, again, we might be the first result on there. Or we might be the fifth, or we might be the sixth, just depending on exactly what words they used.

That’s why for that one, Google ads makes sense for us. But again, despite that being valuable in some circumstances, yeah, I guess unless you really do have a dozen float centers, or an overabundance of float centers in your area, Google ads kind of don’t make sense for me.

So yeah, what do you think about that? If there is this kind of large contingent of float centers in a city, like for instance, in Vancouver, BC?

Derek: So I did a quick Google search, and I couldn’t pull up any ads for float centers in Vancouver, BC, which was out of the ordinary. You think, if I search for flotation therapy or floating in Vancouver, BC, I should be shown one of the dozen plus float centers up there. I didn’t see anything.

And so if I was a float center up there, hurry, run. Jump on this. Put out some Google ads. And when, let’s say, you’re showing up on the second page of Google, or not even showing up at all, you’ll at least get up there in some traffic to at least show, “Hey, this center is closer to me than the one that actually did show up first.”

Graham: So that is actually kind of in my mind, too, but that is the scenario where you think Google ads are worth it is when-

Derek: Yeah. Heavily saturated. When just the natural search results aren’t in your favor, pay for them to help push you up.

Graham: And then, you know, you know, it can be a big range, too. But what do you think is a healthy amount to be investing in Google ads for a center, just ballpark?

Derek: If I remember the numbers right, we talked about last time, 50, 500, 5000, 50000, 500 million. Callback to an old episode about Facebook ads.

I would start off slow. I think I’m giving the same answer as last time. To at least get your training wheels off, right? Get a feel for how these things work. There’s something out there called AdWords Express, don’t do that.

AdWords Express basically is a, “Hey, let Google put some ads up for you. Just say where’s your geographic location, drop in your URL. We’ll take care of the rest.” It’s like giving Google your credit card and saying, “$300, please.” And who knows what they’re gonna do with it? I know they’re gonna do their best to try and get relevant results for both user side, search users want to find things, ads that are relevant. And they also don’t want to piss you off by showing zero efforts. So they are gonna try and do their best.

But just taking the next step and opening up a full AdWords account will actually give you all the control over age, gender, geographic location, specific keywords tied to specific ads you’re trying to run. Everything can be a lot more targeted, which is gonna help your targeting budget a lot better. So.

Graham: Yeah, that makes sense.

Derek: I hate to put a number on it. But $50 is a good one, $100 is a good one. You gotta think cost per thousand is probably gonna be around the 10 to 15, $20 range. So to reach even 1000 people might cost you $20. So if you want to reach 2000 people, that search for a related keyword that we’re showing you ad, is gonna cost you $40.

So these tests can eat up really quickly. And I say 1000 or 2000 people, it sounds like a lot, it goes by really quick.

Graham: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Derek: There’s so many Google searches nowadays just for related things. So again, when you pick your keyword targeting, that’s gonna help drag your dollar out a little bit more. And only get shown to people. Don’t be so generic, don’t be like, “Meditation in Portland. Meditation is the keyword I’m going after.” Because people might be searching meditation all over the place. Or yoga, don’t Google ad, try to pull traffic from yoga. Stick to, especially in those heavily populated, dense areas, keywords like sensory deprivation, flotation therapy, float therapy, spelt a couple of different ways. Stuff like that, that will also help.

Graham: Yeah, with the a, without the a. Ongoing, ongoing heated debate in the industry for that one.

Derek: Oh, there’s even tricky ones out there that sometimes work, sometimes don’t, like keyword your competitor’s name. Right?

Graham: Sure. Yeah.

Derek: So if there was XYZ float center and you wanted, any time somebody typed in XYZ float center, your float center ad popped up, yeah. That’s doable.

Graham: Yeah, for a while, we had, I think one or two manufacturers that would pop up when we’d do the search for Float Tank Solutions.

Derek: Yeah, yeah.

Graham: Riding on the name there.

Derek: Still does.

Graham: Nice, yeah. Cool, yeah, I was gonna say the same, I mean, for starting out, I was gonna say 50 to $100 for early tests. You know, that’s over the course of a couple weeks or a month.

And then if you’re spending more than-

Derek: Bonus tip, bonus tip. Make sure it’s tied into your Google analytics, so you can actually start seeing where these people go on your website. So yeah, they click through, and they’re both Google, but it’s not gonna be 100% intuitive. You actually do have to tie the two together. But when you do, you can see, okay, clicked on ad, landed on home page or whatever landing page, it doesn’t have to be your home page. And then what did they do after that? the visualization of the path they took is gonna help you understand where your money’s really going.

Graham: Yeah. And if you’re spending over $300 a month on Google ads, be sure that you have that tied in, you know, what your return on investment is from people actually making purchases.

Derek: Absolutely.

Graham: And if that’s not where you want it to be or anything, maybe think about scaling it back, or you know, just giving up on Google ads altogether at that point. You know, or just tweaking things until you get the right return that you want.

Derek: If you want to get really super technical nerdy, which you know, maybe you don’t want to, but if you’re going to hire a marketer, make sure they understand how to tie whatever booking software you’re using to the eCommerce side of Google analytics to see, okay, this ad actually did generate me $75.

Graham: Yeah. And if you’re listening, and you’re on the Helm, it can do that just by easily copying and pasting any code for both Facebook and Google. So tracking on that, at least, is really easy.

Derek: What is that called, cross-domain tracking?

Graham: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Cool, well, this ended up being a little bit of a long episode for, are Google ads important, for the basic answer being, no, in 99% of cases. But maybe yes.

Derek: And if you fall into yes, play around, or hire an expert to actually take care of it for you.

Graham: Yeah. But again, you know, for the most part, without knowing where you are, what market you’re in, my guess is, no. Google ads are not that important. And I’d take whatever money you were going to invest in that, and either invest it in some community building, or just throw it into Facebook ads if you’re looking for ads to spend it on.

You can even see this in the industry report. If you look at that, and I’ve said it many times now on the program, but it always goes word of mouth, then Facebook ads, and then everything else, like a couple notches below that. So apparently, for not just us, but other float centers, Facebook really has been the place to invest your money rather than Google.

Derek: It’s more interruption marketing, whereas Google is actually people having intent for that topic already.

Graham: Yep. Yep. All right. Thank you everybody, and if you have questions of your own, head on over to FloatTankSolutions.com/podcast.

Derek: Bye, everybody.

Graham: Bye bye.

Latest Blog Posts