E13: What You Need To Do BEFORE Running Paid Ads
Are you thinking about running paid ads for your local service business? Hold up—you might be skipping some crucial steps.
Too many small businesses rush into doing paid ads without making sure that their sales funnel is properly built, filled, and optimized.
I’m breaking down what local service businesses need to do before they hit 'go' on those ad campaigns. Learn the must-do prep work that could boost your ROI and convert traffic into paying customers.
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Sean Garner is a marketing consultant and Certified StoryBrand guide dedicated to helping small business owners grow and dominate their industries. He created the Marketing Domination podcast to teach people how to combine storytelling with strategic marketing to help businesses connect with customers and stand out online.
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MARKETING DOMINATION PODCAST
EPISODE 13 TRANSCRIPTION
Introduction
[00:00:00] Sean Garner: Are you considering paid ads for your local service business? Well, before you jump into doing that, I want to give you the things you need to have in place before you start running paid ads. And what I believe is the proper sequence to start running paid traffic to fill your sales funnel. Welcome to Marketing Domination.
Importance of a Well-Structured Sales Funnel
[00:00:19] Sean Garner: Okay. So overall, I will tell you, I think too many small businesses rush into doing paid ads without making sure that They have a proper sales funnel filled, created and built out. Remember, we're going through the marketing domination system, which is all about building a funnel. Then right now we're filling that funnel.
[00:00:39] Sean Garner: And then the next series we go into is going to be about optimizing that funnel. And one of the ways to fill your funnel is with paid traffic. And I think people often assume that this is going to be like printing money. They're just going to turn on ads. And all of a sudden customers are going to start flooding to them and they're going to be making all this money.
[00:00:56] Sean Garner: And it's going to be amazing. Well, that's the goal with it, but too often small business owners are rushing into getting them started without making sure they have the foundations in place. One of the foundations that you need to have in place before you start running your paid ads is what we've been discussing. You need a sales funnel.
[00:01:11] Sean Garner: Don't just think because you have a website where you have some type of online presence, you're going to be able to turn on ads and start printing money for your business. That is not the case. If you're going to be spending money to send people to your website and through your marketing funnel, that is not the case.
[00:01:25] Sean Garner: Make sure you don't have any holes in your bucket. You wouldn't spend money for water, right? You wouldn't go to the grocery store and get some purified water and then pour it in a bucket with all these holes for it and then walk home with it. Like, no, it's going to spill all over the place and you're going to be wasting money for paying for something.
Common Mistakes Before Launching Paid Ads
[00:01:43] Sean Garner: The other analogy that I always tell people before they rush into paid ads is it’s oftentimes like paying for food that's in your refrigerator. You've already done the work, gone shopping, put all the food in there. So why would you pay to get the food back out? You wouldn't. And it's the same thing with your audience and with your business.
[00:02:01] Sean Garner: Too often, I think, small business owners will use paid as an excuse or almost like a cop-out for having to do anything organic. And I don't think that's a wise use of your resources because oftentimes if you just put things out organically and you made sure that your content strategy was set up, you actually had this marketing funnel and you're doing best practices for local SEO, you would get those customers without having to pay for them to see your stuff.
[00:02:27] Sean Garner: So that's my overall foundation. Make sure that you're not using it for one of those excuses. You're not just trying to get out of having to do organic and you're not thinking that this is going to be like an accelerant because although it could be. It wouldn't be consistent because if you don't know what's working with your funnel organically, you are just going to be testing by spending money.
Basics of an Effective Sales Funnel
[00:02:50] Sean Garner: It's a lot easier to make sure, or a lot wiser with your resources to make sure that your funnel is actually properly converting organically before you start putting money in it. So again, overview, what's a sales funnel? You need to make sure you have a clear brand message because again, it all starts with the foundation of your messaging. If your message isn't clear, well, once you start running paid ads, what messaging are you going to use to send people to, if you don't have a clear, consistent brand message, you might be using different words on the landing page versus the followup versus the ad set. And so people are going to be confused and it's not going to convert.
[00:03:20] Sean Garner: Well, you’ve got to have a really good, clear brand message. Second thing is just overall visual branding. When people see your ad and they go to the website, does it look disconnected or does it look like a congruent experience? We want to make sure that everything visually represents our brand and the professionalism of the level of service.
[00:03:36] Sean Garner: Oftentimes, especially with some of the local service businesses that I own. Or that I work with, it looks like the owner made the website because unfortunately, most of the time they did, they were just bootstrapping this business getting started. And so their business, now that it's grown, doesn't represent the quality of service and the level of expertise and professionalism that they actually provide.
[00:03:56] Sean Garner: So that's the next thing that we want to have on our sales funnel is we want to have a really good, solid, clean website that walks customers through the problems that they're dealing with and positions our product and services as the guide to get them to solve those problems. It helps us to look like the expert guide for them.
Preparing Your Digital Front for Paid Traffic
[00:04:11] Sean Garner: So whenever they see all the choices that they have online, we are the ones that stand out as the clear industry leader. Because of our clarity in our messaging, we're connecting with them. Our sales page follows that structure that we talked about, but if people come to the website and they're not ready to buy, we're going to have something on our website that captures their information, plugs them into a followup sequence so we can stay connected with them.
[00:04:31] Sean Garner: So when they are top of mind, they think of us. We need that before we even start considering running paid traffic. Then after we have that, I would want to make sure test, because again, I tell people, our clients all the time, we don't make decisions based upon personal preference or emotion. We're making decisions based off data.
[00:04:50] Sean Garner: We have so many data tools available to us, especially in the digital marketing world. Let's see how things are performing organically before we start running paid ads and start putting money towards certain AdWords and, and things like that. So I would want to do that with obviously on page SEO content.
[00:05:06] Sean Garner: So that's going to be making sure we're using the keywords and they're probably like site titles, meta descriptions, headings, and throughout the paragraph, you know, Body copy. I'm going to make sure that we're, we have some type of local SEO presence with our Google map listing. It is set up and it is optimized.
[00:05:20] Sean Garner: It's rocking and rolling. There are no missing gaps. I've been trying to get quality five star reviews. I've got all of those things in place to make sure my Google business listings optimized. And then we're also going to make sure that we're adding fresh and new relevant content to the website on a consistent basis.
[00:05:34] Sean Garner: I want that stuff in place before I run paid ads, then the next thing I want in place before I do paid ads is especially if you're considering paid social ads, remember, you're going to be paying money to put something in front of somebody. Well, I tell clients often, you're not that special. What I mean is how you interact and use social media is the exact same way that your customers or potential customers are going to interact and use social media.
[00:05:57] Sean Garner: So I don't know about you, but whenever I see an ad. I typically will click on it and go to the profile. If they don't have a ton of content or they haven't been posting things on a consistent basis, I know it's just an ad set and an account that was created just to run paid ads, probably not going to really engage that product service for that brand.
[00:06:15] Sean Garner: But if I go, if I see an ad click on it and I say, wow, they're very active on social, um, they've posted a lot of things consistently. They, they seem like they're a pretty legitimate business. Then I'm much more apt to. Keep going down their funnel rabbit hole and seeing how they can help me solve the problems that hooked me from the outset.
[00:06:31] Sean Garner: So as you're doing that, don't think that if you're throwing these ads out on, you know, Facebook ads, IG ads, uh, YouTube video ads and stuff, people are going to click on and they're going to go to your profile. So again, as part of thinking about that foundation of that marketing funnel, that digital store front, it's not social media for you.
Setting Up Google Local Service Ads (LSAs)
[00:06:46] Sean Garner: It's business media. If somebody comes onto that profile, if they're looking at an ad, is that going to represent the professionalism and the level of service that you provide? So again, All of these things should be in place before you start running paid ads. That's my personal viewpoint and disclaimer.
[00:07:01] Sean Garner: I know there's people in the digital marketing world. They completely disagree with that. They think, Oh no, you want to test with paid. So that way you can accelerate things. That's great if you have a lot of extra money to burn. And I don't know about you guys, but so many small business owners that are coming to us right now are coming to us because they are running out of cash.
[00:07:19] Sean Garner: You know, sales are down. And so that's why they're coming to us for help with our marketing agency. So we don't want to just waste their resources. I want to be a wise steward with all that I'm given. And one of the things that I'm given is my clients. And so I just don't want to rush them into paid ads until we have this stuff done.
[00:07:35] Sean Garner: That is my rant disclaimer on paid ads. Now that I talked kind of bad about them, now I want to talk about when you should do them and my belief of how you should go about attacking paid ads with your local service business. So the very first thing is this one I'm actually super excited about is I think one of the best.
[00:07:55] Sean Garner: Paid ad opportunities for a local service business is a paid ad. That is called a Google LSA ad or a Google local service ad. This to me is an amazing opportunity where you get the best return on your investment for any type of lead or conversion stats. So this is what a Google, how a Google LSA ad works is you just go to ads.
[00:08:14] Sean Garner: google. com. You can look on the solutions page and scroll to the bottom and it's called Google local service ads or Google LSA ads. And on this, what it does is it allows you to create an. Ad set based upon the location of the service area that you serve and where your people searching for you are looking for that service in.
[00:08:34] Sean Garner: So if you are a, you know, electrician in Oklahoma city, Oklahoma, well, people that are searching for that in Oklahoma city, you're not competing against big national brands that might be trying to sell, you know, electrical parts or anything like that, that might be targeting the same keywords for paper, click ads, you're targeting somebody that's looking for a specific service.
[00:08:54] Sean Garner: In the service area of your business. I love these ads because you don't pay for impressions. And you probably have seen this. If you just Google any service in your area, like no real estate agent, Dallas or plumbers in Miami, Florida, you're going to see this section pull up at the very top of the search results that says Google guaranteed how they got there is they are running.
[00:09:17] Sean Garner: Google local service ads. So in order to set these up, you have to typically they're, they're only available for service based businesses. There is a setup process that you have to go through. It's a very, very easy, but it's only available for certain services. So make sure you go and you check and see if your business is eligible for it.
[00:09:33] Sean Garner: If it is, I would very much recommend doing this because I think that is the greatest return on your investment. This is why. You only actually pay for the lead. So you're not paying for impressions when people are seeing your ad or your, your business name come up with that service. You're only paying if they click on the message you button, or if they click on it, call you, that's it.
Optimizing Google Business Profile for LSAs
[00:09:54] Sean Garner: So they could see your, you know, Bob's plumbing in Miami that it showed up on the Luke local service ads and they go to your website or they like, Oh, it looks like a Bob and they just type in your name and Google your name. You don't pay for that. You don't pay for the impression. You only pay if they click to call you or to send you a message.
[00:10:10] Sean Garner: So I love that because you're not just wasting money on clicks like you can for some of these ads and you can be getting bad leads. You are getting leads from people that have specifically searched for your service. They are located in your service area and they're looking for work in your service area.
[00:10:24] Sean Garner: So it's an amazing thing. You do pay higher for it, but you're also getting a much higher quality lead for that. The rates for this depend on your market, how many other people are running LSA ads in your area and the industry that you're in. So get that set up. You can do a bidding process for it to show how you, how much you want to invest in it.
[00:10:42] Sean Garner: You can set a budget and everything, but I definitely would recommend that. But again, Going back to what we said earlier, you don't want to do that until you have your organic funnel optimized. Reason being LSA or local service ads are connected to your Google business profile. So if your Google business profile is not completely filled out, doesn't have a ton of reviews on there and it doesn't look very good.
[00:11:04] Sean Garner: Well, you are going to be paying money to have that ad possibly be clicked for leads and you could have just taken the time to optimize it to rank higher. One of the ranking factors that determines where you're at on the local service ads is the strength of your Google business profile. So we want to make sure that it's fully optimized.
[00:11:22] Sean Garner: It's fully built out and you, you're constantly getting reviews and you're getting more reviews than your customers in order to have that LSA ad rank higher. So if you're a local service business and you are eligible for LSA ads, and you've got a complete marketing funnel, very much, we recommend getting started with LSA ads.
Introduction to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads
[00:11:39] Sean Garner: Then after you have that, the next type of paid traffic that I would recommend someone doing is Google PPC ads or pay per click ads. Why I like these is it's very similar to SEO and you can use this in a lot of ways, honestly, to accelerate SEO and to test SEO. So if you've done all your keyword research using an awesome tool, like we do with our agency, SEMrush, you've done your amazing keyword research, you know, the type of search volume, you know, where you're ranking on everything.
[00:12:05] Sean Garner: Well, SEMrush will actually even give you the keywords that you should be attaching. They've got a really cool paid ad tool where you can see what keywords you should be adding to your pay per click ad set. Those are the type of ads. Again, if you're looking for a specific service that says, you know, let's say, IV therapy lounge.
[00:12:24] Sean Garner: Owasso, for example, those are the ones that are going to show up as sponsored, and it's going to look more like a website URL and search results, or there are different placings that you can do. You can do them on YouTube and even in an email and everything, but I like just the pay per click Google search ones as my second option to get started.
[00:12:43] Sean Garner: Because again, if your website and your funnel are optimized as you're doing that, you're only going to be targeting the keywords that are associated with the service that you provide in the key markets that you do. But with that, you do pay per click. So you are paying when somebody clicks on it, local service ads, you're paying more, but you're paying for the lead.
[00:13:01] Sean Garner: Someone is actually giving you their information. That's when they sent you a message to where you can follow up with them or you have their phone number. So you pay less for paid per click, but then you're sending them to your website. So you want to make sure that website is doing kind of what the goal of the LSA ad is, where it's either getting them to book a call assessment, whatever your main call to action is.
[00:13:19] Sean Garner: And if not, then you've got some type of lead capture tool for them so you can follow back up. So that would be my second way to start paid ads. So number one is LSA two is I would do pay per click three is then I would start to consider paid social ads, but I would not do cold traffic. I would do retargeting ads.
Strategic Use of Retargeting Ads
[00:13:40] Sean Garner: So I would only want to be showing my social ads like Instagram, Facebook, even YouTube. So I would do that. To people that have been to my website already, and I'm following back up with them that way. They're already familiar with my product service and my brand. So when they see my ads and everything on social, they are going to be much more familiar with it.
[00:13:59] Sean Garner: I don't have to educate them already on who I am. I know that they have gone to my website already because I'm only showing the ads and the ad set. To those people. So if I was doing a start doing paid social ads, I would start with retargeting ads, and I'm only going to show my ads to people that have come to my website.
[00:14:18] Sean Garner: After I have all of this stuff done in this order, where I've got my complete marketing funnel. I'm doing an organic strategy on social and on SEO. I started running LSA ads. I've got pay per click ads going. Then I also have started doing retargeting ads on social. And only then would I consider doing paid ads on social to cold traffic to people that don't know me.
[00:14:43] Sean Garner: Those are going to be the most expensive ads that you're going to run from the volume amount. So you're going to have to spend a lot more money to get the people in versus like an LSA ad, you're going to spend more money per lead, but it's going to be a higher quality lead. Social ads to cold traffic.
[00:14:58] Sean Garner: Those are going to be a ton of testing, trying out different messages. And so if I've already done all that work organically with LSA, then with pay per click, and then with retargeting social, I'm going to have tested lots of different ad sets, lots of different messages, and I'm going to know what's working a lot better and my funnel by then will have had a lot of traffic organically and through paid come in to where I've looked at the data and I've optimized it to where now.
[00:15:22] Sean Garner: As I start running paid social ads to cold traffic or sending and sending cold traffic to the website, I know I've done a lot more due diligence of optimizing everything before I just start throwing ads on Facebook because maybe I bought a course or something like that. And I'm trying to get people to see my product or service.
[00:15:42] Sean Garner: That's how I would attack doing paid ads and starting the paid ad process. If I was a local service business, make sure you have that funnel in place. You want the branding consistently with your messaging, visual branding. You want to have a really good, solid, clean website that on the header section, very quickly articulates.
[00:15:59] Sean Garner: What do you do? How you help them and make their life better. And what do they need to do to get it? And it follows that 10 step framework that we talked about in our earlier episode of what makes a really good website. You've got a lead generator on there in some way to capture information if they're not ready to buy and a followup process in place with that.
[00:16:14] Sean Garner: So it's going to be sending them through a series of emails or texts to stay on top of mind. So when they are ready to buy, they think of you, you've got all that stuff in place. You started doing organic social content, using your brand script, your brand messaging to connect with your customers, and position yourself as the proper guide for them.
Comprehensive Approach to Paid Advertising
[00:16:28] Sean Garner: So when they're ready to buy again, they think of you. You've done your SEO. You've got that set up. Your Google business profile is optimizing. You are rocking and rolling with a good quality sales funnel. Then you started running LSA ads and you've gotten in the process of having those people come through your sales funnel and testing that workflow with that.
[00:16:46] Sean Garner: You started doing pay per click ads and driving more people to your website. People who didn't know your brand, but knew your service and you're tweaking the messaging and the funnel to increase conversions on that. Then you started following up with people on social with retargeting ads and got that process working well. It gets people to click and convert.
[00:17:03] Sean Garner: After that, you started doing cold traffic to social. And by then you've got everything pretty much well optimized. So you're not going to waste your resources. You're going to have higher conversions and you will truly be the industry dominator.
[00:17:17] Sean Garner: Hope this episode helps guys and gives you some more clarity on how you should attack paid ads when you're ready. Make sure that funnel's done first, before you jump into this. If you need help building your website or marketing funnel, that's exactly what we do at Sean Garner Consulting. Go to https://www.seangarner.co/ or click that link down in the description below, book a call. Let's see if it's the right fit and how we can best serve you guys. Talk to you on the next episode and have an awesome day.
