Here’s the Secrets to PPC the Experts Don’t Want you to Know

Steve Trang: Welcome back to our PPC masterclass at Bateman Collective. We got Brandon Bateman here. We've been talking about why PPC, how Google works, effective bidding strategies, how to leverage or understand location, as well as budget strategies. And today, we're gonna be talking about lead quality secrets, and this is, an interesting concept. Right?

So lead quality, why is this something worth talking about here?

Brandon Bateman: Well, I I I'm trying to think of any reason it wouldn't be worth talking about lead quality. I mean, that's all like, if you could take a business Mhmm. And cut the number of leads that they get in half Mhmm. And have them do the same revenue Mhmm. I don't know anybody that wouldn't take that deal.

Steve: Well, we're talking about secrets here. So, like, what are the secrets behind it?

Brandon: Okay. Well, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. I mean, there won't be secrets anymore. But, yeah, the here's the thing with with BBC.

So most of the people that are working with some other company and they choose to work with us, they're comparing their results beforehand. Like, I just for example, we just had a we set an audit with somebody where we look at their stuff, and they're just like, I need a lower cost per lead. Mhmm. And what I basically told them is, you're not gonna get a lower cost per lead.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: But we'll get you a better return on investment.

Steve: The way way we're gonna

Brandon: do that is we're actually gonna drive your lead cost up, and we're gonna drive your lead quality up so much that it surpasses the increasing cost, and it becomes worth it Mhmm. For you to to do that. And they're like, you know what? Actually, I don't want lower lead cost. Now I want better lead quality.

Like, that's what matters to me. So lead quality obviously matters a ton. The thing is how you get it in Google Ads is so different from what people think. And because of that, because people just don't understand it because it works different from other channels

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Then it's it's just commonly it's commonly overlooked, and not a lot of people are actually optimizing really well for lead quality in this industry. Because if you look at the like, let's just say you have bad lead quality on a cold call campaign. What do you do?

Steve: Train the train the cold callers. Get better get different data sources.

Brandon: Okay. Yeah. What about, like, a direct mail campaign? What do you do?

Steve: If the lead quality is poor, then again, I look at data source, and I look at maybe the messaging on the direct mail piece.

Brandon: Okay. 100%. So those things that you just said for those other channels, I mean, it's pretty true across most of them. It's the exact thing that people try to use when they come to PPC. They say, I want different targeting Mhmm.

And I want different messaging. Mhmm. That's not the strategy that you use in PPC to get better quality, though. And and it's not like you don't do those things. Like, at the end of the day, if you do this right, you'll end up targeting better.

Mhmm. And you'll end up with like, the messaging that that kind of applies to PPC. It's more the targeting that doesn't. Mhmm. So, yeah, you do want you like, you will end up getting better messaging.

You will end up getting better targeting. But the way you get there, nobody expects. That's what throws people off so they don't expect to actually go there. So I'm gonna talk about some of the things, like, that we've implemented tons of stuff. So that I'm super proud of is taking our number of leads per contract down Mhmm.

Over time across our clients. And the way we do that is specifically through getting the best quality leads that we can. And here's the really neat thing about doing your own PPC. You can focus on what gets you contracts and what gets you deals. Mhmm.

Like, if I'm, like, a paper lead company and I'm focused on lead quality, what I'm focused on is creating leads that can't be refunded. Mhmm. Which means I hit that quality standard of, like Not refundable. Yeah. Like, they it has to be an actual house, an actual phone number.

Like, for some people, that's what lead quality is. If that's your standard of lead quality, then our leads suck a lot of the time. Like, you'll have, like, phone numbers that are wrong in there. You'll have, like, some fields in there, but not others. Because the way we do it is we'll ask for, like, minimal information at the beginning of a form, and then we ask for the rest of the information as we go along.

So we get the highest likelihood of conversion, but then we also get all the information we want for 80% of people, but not a 100%. So, like, to lead quality, but from the standpoint of, like, those things, we're actually pretty bad at.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Lead quality from the standpoint of can we get deals that turn into contracts, we're we're pretty good at. So so let's talk about some strategies that we can use there. Ad copy is a is a pretty common one. This one's actually, like, one of the most basic simple ones. Mhmm.

And you would think that everybody has it implemented, but I think the reality is, like, most people running PPC with an agency haven't even read their ad copy.

Steve: Really?

Brandon: They don't know what they're saying most likely. And marketers are looking at the wrong things. So here's what happens, like, in a traditional agency. I am a marketer. I write a bunch of stuff for my ad copy.

I try to write the things that I think people are gonna wanna click on.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: That seems to make sense. Right? And then I see which ones are getting the most leads, and then I just focus most on those ads. And I probably AB test some. I get rid of the bad ones.

Or if I'm not doing that, Google does that. Mhmm. Because they have something called a responsive search ad where you put in a bunch of headlines and it just dynamically optimizes towards the best headlines. So so that's, like, how it would typically work. And it seem seems fine.

Right? Here's the thing. What if one of your ads says, we'll pay more for your house than anybody else, and your other ad says, we buy houses in any condition. Mhmm. What's different about the person that clicks one of those versus the person who clicks One

Steve: wants a dollar. One wants my household now.

Brandon: Yep. So the kind of ad copy you put out there attracts the type of person that ends up coming to your ad.

Steve: Attracts and repels.

Brandon: And repels. Yeah. That that's a great point. So a lot of people are just focused on, can I get something that attracts all the right people? And then if it also attracts other people, they're not that concerned about it.

They're like because the the person who is really motivated, they would also click on the it's not like they wouldn't click on the one that says that they will get the most money because they also want that.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: But the difference is the one that doesn't say that they'll get the most money, only the right person clicks that, not the wrong person.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: We have to remember, we're doing pay per click marketing.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: So every time someone clicks that's not the right person, that's costing us money. So

Steve: Costing us money and reducing, our our quality if they're not filling out the form.

Brandon: Yeah. Or even if they are filling out the form, maybe we're getting the wrong kinds of leads Right.

Steve: That are

Brandon: really motivated by something. So you'd be surprised how many people I talk to that are like, oh, my I'm so frustrated with my PPC. All I can get is retail sellers. Meanwhile, I see an ad in their PPC account that's just, like, screaming to retail sellers. Like, hey.

If you want full value market price for your home, please come here. And I'm not saying you should have you should write ads that say, like,

Steve: that's been coming up more and more. I'm gonna all my sales training calls. I might need to ask them, hey. Go look at your campaigns.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. And and and the truth of it is, like, you can't get upset at people for wanting full market value for their house. Like like, no matter what you do, you're gonna get those people. But this is all about percentages

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: And, like, how you steer away from that. Mhmm. And, like, you don't wanna, like, intentionally be going down that route, and it's it's a super common thing. So the, but the the thing is, this is this is why this happens all the time. Because the PPC ad managers in there and they're like, oh, this ad's killing

Steve: it.

Brandon: Mhmm. Look at my click through rate. Mhmm. Look at my conversion rate. And meanwhile, it's just not best Right.

Steve: Or

Brandon: it's not best for the company. So when you when you write an ad, you want it to do two things. You want it to qualify and convert. Mhmm. Most people focus on making it convert, but they don't care about if it qualifies or not.

Mhmm. The same thing's true for, like, your landing page. So this is all messaging that you have. If I have a landing page that says, like, get a cash offer with a click of a button, what do you think that does to the people who fill it?

Steve: Expecting a cash offer.

Brandon: Yeah. And then I'm gonna call them, and they're probably gonna say, oh, sorry. I was I thought you guys were, like, CarMax for houses, basically.

Steve: Yeah. Or it's gonna be really relentless with what's your offer.

Brandon: Yeah. Exactly. And so that's those kinds of things where it's like a little thing, and then it just, like, the the the mistake gets kinda hidden amongst a bunch of things.

Steve: Or is it the, crap always rolls downhill. Right? Like, it's just it's That's funny. Yeah. So if if if the message is wrong in the beginning Yeah.

You're setting up your team for failure throughout the rest of the process.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. So you want your landing page to attract the right kind of person. You want your ad to attract the right kind of person. Mhmm.

So the way we do this is we have different themes. They're called ad groups of different things that people could be searching, and all of them have a really different form of intent. And then we write ads for each one of those that's really specific to their intent. Because let's just say let's just say I type in we buy houses fast on Google. That's just an example.

You have to think as an advertiser, what do you know about me? The only thing you know about me is that I probably wanna sell a house fast. Mhmm. So what's a good ad to put in front of me? Probably something about speed, convenience.

Steve: Cash as little as seven days.

Brandon: Whatever. Yeah. So you write an ad probably like that. And then I'm gonna come to some landing page. And what do you probably wanna say on the landing page?

Well, you probably wanna talk about speed and convenience and how you get your offer, etcetera. Right? So what happens is, like, people are searching on Google for oranges, and then you show them an ad that's an apple. Mhmm. And then you show them on a landing page, like, hey.

You can get an apple. And then meanwhile, the sales team's calling them, and they're like, these people don't want oranges. It's not the right people.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: Right? So it's it's all about creating this cohesive funnel. So we actually will have we'll have different landing pages per thing that someone searches on Google grouped out into different groups, and we'll even split test those.

Steve: Do you have any pages per ad group? Yep. Man, that's awesome. And then

Brandon: multiple per ad group that that are tested against each other. Usually, it's like a similar design, but the words are changed. Mhmm. So we'll do it, like, dynamically with URL parameters. So the, yes, you do that which creates really coherence through it.

So now to get, like, high conversion rates and high click through rates and stuff, you're not saying the evil thing of, like, we'll just give you market value for your house. You're saying you search for this. We have exactly that Mhmm. That you wanted, and you're attracting the right kind of people through the whole process. That's that's the best thing that you can do.

Yeah.

Steve: I can't remember if it was, like, Perry, Marshall or or Perry Belcher, where they talk about breadcrumbs, which is, like, your ad this is not Google. Right? But there's, like, you there's an ad maybe a Google display ad. Right? You got, like, a purple sweater and blue font.

And you click on that ad, and the landing page has green sweaters and orange font. And you just given this client massive cognitive dissonance. Like, am I on the right page? I don't know if I'm on the right page. Right?

I clicked on this ad for a purple sweater, and I'm over here looking at green sweaters. Like, what happened here?

Brandon: Yeah. And and and sometimes as marketers, we, like, we way overestimate the cognitive resources that people are gonna bring Mhmm. To our websites. Right. I I had a situation.

This was outside of real estate where, like, we were doing the same thing where this is back in the day. We're trying to, like, match the landing page to the thing. And and I tried, like, just matching it, but, like, making it what I thought was a better landing page headline. Mhmm. And then I split tested that against one that was, like it literally just said the same thing the ad said on the landing page, like, word for word.

And it sounded way more dumb because ad headlines don't translate to landing page headlines super well, and that one worked better. Right. Because they didn't have to think to realize it was the same thing. Mhmm. It was just like simple continuation.

For sure. So it's yeah. It's like if someone uses the word fast, you probably wanna use the word fast, not the word quick. Mhmm. Even though it means the same thing.

It's like it's easier for them. You have to picture every person surfing the Internet like a toddler just bumping into stuff and not really thinking things down.

Steve: Have short, short attention spans. And I think they're saying, like, at this point where our attention spans are competitive with Goldfish, which is, like, horrifying. Right?

Brandon: Yeah. That is that is extremely, extremely horrifying.

Steve: So you have to but you have to design your marketing pieces to reflect that.

Brandon: Yeah. And so lowest common denominator of the people who could who could be I'm not saying that nobody's gonna, like, think it through, but Yeah.

Steve: There's gonna

Brandon: be a lot of people who don't. And that's that's what's really important. The same reason we prioritize, like, landing page load speeds really heavily because, like, if your landing page load speed is slow, then you will lose people before the page even loads.

Steve: Yeah. They're gonna swipe back or hit the back button.

Brandon: Yeah. And then Google hates you. Well, it's actually people don't realize how bad that is because on one hand, like, yes, you lost that person. And it's pay per click marketing. So you literally just paid for a click, and then the next action that was supposed to happen was them seeing your page, and that didn't even happen.

Mhmm. Like, that's like it's like it's like you're delivering direct mail to to the people, but it goes to the wrong mailbox or something. Like, it's useless. Mhmm. The other thing is it'll lower your quality score.

Google will actually make you pay more

Steve: Right.

Brandon: For similar clicks because you're not actually adding value to their ecosystem in the way that they want you to add value to their ecosystem. So that's, yeah, that's that's pretty bad. So, anyways, ad ad copy landing page copy, just coherent, simple message is is really important. This next one is when we get a little bit more technical. Mhmm.

So there's in Google, there's something called conversion tracking. A conversion is kind of exactly what it sounds like. People ask, is a conversion a lead? Is a conversion a deal? It's like a conversion is whatever you make it.

Right? It's just it's but you're telling Google, like, I want this thing. So you could think of it like you're just running ad campaigns, and every time somebody does a certain action, then you give Google a high five. Mhmm. You say, good job, Google.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: And then Google learns from that. Right? So so what happens is, the way that 99% of marketers do this is a conversion is the submission of a lead form.

Steve: Yeah. Opt in.

Brandon: Yep. Usually, it's gonna be like they fill out the form. After that, they go to the next page. When they're on the next page, we fire the conversion action. Mhmm.

Right? So I have people coming to me all the time that are, like, for example, getting tons of listed leads. Mhmm. Because that's a problem with PPC because there will be people searching for, like, sell my house fast because it's on the market and not selling. I

Steve: spent eight days on the market, Brandon. Don't you understand?

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. Or it happens a lot when, like, the market just cools off a little bit. Like so their realtor, when they talk to them, was like, oh, yeah. We'll get offers, like, the first weekend.

And then, you know, by the time they actually get it listed, that's not the circumstance that we're in anymore. Right. So, yeah, that that happens all the time. Right? And then every time they get one of those leads, they're basically, like, high fiving Google saying, give me more of these.

And then they're coming to me saying, I'm so frustrated. I have so many listed leads. And I'm like, you're high fiving Google every time you get a list of lead. Right. Why are you doing this?

So, like, how you, how you felt how you report your conversions is really important. There's something called lead sculpting. This is another one of those things. I don't know if I made it up or if I stole it from someone else. I'm pretty sure we coined this term.

I don't know for sure that we did. So Well,

Steve: I heard it from you. So

Brandon: I'll take credit.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: So the the idea of lead sculpting is that you don't you, like, sculpt out some leads that are not just the type that you're looking for Mhmm. To give Google a little bit more relevant of a feedback signal that you are getting what you're wanting.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: So the, the idea is, like, instead of just when someone fills out the form, we report the conversion, what we would do, like, tell you exactly how our lead sculpting works now. We'd ask them a few questions, and based on how they answer those questions, we would choose to report the conversion or not. Like, one of those being, is your property listed on the market? And if the answer is no, then that could be a conversion. If it's yes, then it won't.

We also, like, scrub the phone number against a database of phone numbers to to see, is it a legitimate phone number? If it's not a legitimate phone number, we don't report a conversion. We also check, like, the IP address. If it's an out of country IP address, then we don't report it as a conversion because it's more likely to be spam.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: So there's all these, like, different things that we do and we filter it. So at the end of the day, we report less conversions. You know what I actually found out recently is we've started to gain a reputation in the industry amongst other agencies as, like, the agency that has really poor converting landing pages. Because other agencies will look at our stuff. Mhmm.

And they'll be like, oh, they're only only they only have, like, a 10% conversion rate. Their landing page must suck. Mhmm. Meanwhile, the way they would measure conversion rate as, like, all leads, we'd be hitting, like, 25%. Mhmm.

But we're just cutting out a lot of those, not counting all those conversions. And it makes it look ugly in platform. You're like, I'm paying so much money for these conversions, but you're they're more qualified. And what that does is that trains Google on how to find more and more of those people that you're looking for, and and it makes us so you're not giving Google, like, these irrelevant quality signals. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. So, basically, it's, we're filtering out, I'm trying to think I I can't think of an appropriate example. So I'm trying to, like, give some more thought here.

Brandon: Yeah.

Steve: Alright. But you're you're basically, you're going shopping. Right? You're going shopping here. And, yours, you're only bringing back exactly like, hey.

I would say, I wanna get a sandwich. You say, oh, what kind of sandwich? I was like, well, you know, I want roast beef, you know, mayo, whatever. Right? You go out and you bring me back roast beef sandwich

Brandon: with

Steve: mayo on it. This other guy is just bringing back sandwiches.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: And and those instances, he's feeling pretty good because he brought me more sandwiches.

Brandon: Yeah.

Steve: But you brought me back exactly what I wanted.

Brandon: 100%. That that's exactly how it works. Or, like, there's a pretty simple parallel here with cold calling that a lot of people would understand. Like, let's just say a cold caller gives you a bad lead Mhmm. And then you go and message them and say, that was amazing.

Thank you. Mhmm. What's probably going to happen?

Steve: Seeing more of those bad leads.

Brandon: You're gonna probably see more of those bad leads. And Google works just the same way. So, like, people try to make Google evil for giving them bad leads. Meanwhile, they're the ones positively affirming Google for the leads that Google's giving them.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: And this is where you have to be careful because if you were like some people say just optimize for deals. If you're just, like, feed deals as conversion actions, there's not nearly enough data points. Mhmm. Like, Google has tens of thousands of predictive features, and we're, like, putting that together with two deals a month, and it's supposed to learn, like, what's predictive. It's not enough data.

Right?

Steve: It's gonna take way longer to get the right data.

Brandon: Yeah. And and and still it needs recency of data too. So Google needs usually at least about 30 actions on the conversion per month, just to give you a little bit of an idea. So you should be getting one of whatever you optimize for per day. Mhmm.

We have some ways around that that we can talk about. But that's that's, like, for for normal people, that's that's what you want. So the, yeah. So that that's a simple thing that you could do. And it's it's it all happens on the landing page and all just happens with the form software.

Mhmm. And it makes your metrics in the platform look really bad. Right. But it changes your quality of your leads. Maybe use that to fix some pretty major issues with clients.

Steve: So then you have lower do you have lower quality score, as far as Google keywords goes? Do you have a lower quality score because you're, quote, unquote, converting less? Or can you or can you send can you submit multiple goals on your campaign?

Brandon: You can submit multiple goals, but not as primary actions.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: So it actually converts towards them. But Google doesn't use your conversion rate to mean anything because conversion rate could be measured differently by different people. Because if that were true, then I could set a conversion as, like, a page load.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And I'd be like, I've seen it happen in accounts before where I log in. I'm like, okay. This account has 500 clicks, 630 conversions.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: A 130 conversion rate. Like, this doesn't look like it.

Steve: It's phenomenal.

Brandon: Yeah. That marketer knows something, but I just don't know.

Steve: Right? Yeah.

Brandon: So, like, I don't think Google really uses that conversion data. Google does use, like, data from on your website to to give you quality score. But it's things like how much time do people spend on the page, and do they interact with it in any way and, like, that kind of stuff Yeah. Which is yeah. Which those things wouldn't change.

You're just changing your your report to Google. And for the leads themselves, you're not changing their experience. Mhmm. So people are thinking like, oh, maybe I'm filtering the lead out for this reason. I'm not filtering the lead out.

Like, if listed on market, I'll still give it to the client. Like, they can see what they can do with it. If they can't do anything, then fine. But I'm not like, if we already paid for it, like, sure. We'll send it along.

But the difference is we're still gonna take it, but we're not gonna try to make more of those.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: So that's where, like, a lot of people are like, well, you just increase your lead quality by just filtering out leads that aren't gonna close. Like, that's not actually that helpful. We don't actually do that. We don't filter out. We it's it's all so the only reason you do this is because it changes your targeting.

Right? So Well,

Steve: it goes back to the automated and then the tens of thousands of data points.

Brandon: Yes.

Steve: So Google knows more as, like, Brandon likes these people. Brandon doesn't like these other people.

Brandon: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And, because to Google, someone listed on the market versus not, they might look the same.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: Until you give it enough data for it to recognize a pattern there, and then it starts to learn these people are good, those people are bad.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: Just like it's trying to learn these people convert, those people don't convert.

Steve: Yeah. Google's basically the bouncer here. You're like, hey. If they look like this, let them in. If they look like that, don't let them in.

Brandon: 100%. And and just like any machine learning algorithm, like, you can make an AI bouncer. Mhmm. You just show it, like, a thousand pictures of people who should be let in, a thousand pictures of people who shouldn't be let in Yeah. And then it would learn how to do one versus the other.

Yeah. But the problem is if you're giving it mixed feedback and you're kinda going back and forth, then it's not as useful. So so that's lead sculpting. It's a super, super valuable strategy. The the one more that gets even a little bit deeper into this is called offline conversion tracking.

Mhmm. So, like, people ask what offline means. I'll try to, like, simplify it. So let's just say you're looking at online versus offline. Online is like a click, an impression, a view of the landing page, submission of a form, maybe even calling a phone number from the landing page.

That's all stuff that happens online. Offline is stuff that doesn't happen online, like stuff that happens in my CRM, or maybe it's still on the phone, but it's, like, outside of, like, the page and stuff like that. So if you look at, like, your funnel, your your whole marketing and sales funnel, it starts with things that happen online. We paid our ad spend online, and we got impressions, and we got clicks, then we got conversions or leads. Mhmm.

All that happens online, and then the whole bottom of the funnel gets offline. The thing is, like, in the bottom of the funnel being, like, how many of those leads are net leads, and how many of those are opportunities, and how many of those are contracts, and how many contracts fall out, and how many are deals, and how many dollars do we make from those deals. Like, those are those are the offline actions. So it's funny. As you go through this as you go through this whole funnel, the deeper you get into the funnel, the more relevant those things are to our business goals.

However, the less data we have of them Right. And the more difficult they are to track for Google. So Google knows things that happen online. It doesn't know things that happen offline. So tracking and optimizing based on offline actions is something that we've seen be very, very valuable.

And it happens in a few different ways. Like, it's and we do it different for different clients depending on how much volume they have and stuff like that. Like, you can at times, like, optimize for a specific offline action, like, as the conversion goal. Mhmm. You need more volume to do that.

There's even cases where we use that offline data to just tweak parameters within Google. Like, certain things like we have a a certain ad group. Our best lead quality ad group right now, homebuyers, believe it or not. 11.7 leads per contract if someone searches for homebuyers on Google, which isn't what a lot of people would say is, like, the best keyword. Right.

But it is. That's why you use data, not just, like, your own feelings. Mhmm. We have yeah. I could I could show you all the data.

There's a lot of it that you'd be surprised. Like, I'm surprised that performs as well as it does. Mhmm. Or, like, did you know that on computers, the average number of leads per contract is about 20.4 versus on mobile phones, it's just over 14 leads per contract. How do you know that?

Offline data.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: Yeah. So there's a lot of, like, stuff like that. So you can tweak these parameters. Like, I can tell Google, well, if it's a lead from a computer, I don't wanna pay that much money for it because the leads from computers are more likely to be out of area because they don't have GPS technology, and they're, actually slightly less likely to be retail. Mhmm.

How do I know that? I'll find data. Right? So it's it's super, super valuable. And it can also help paint a picture for Google, like, which kind of person you're looking for and which one you're not.

The thing is it like, if you're working with an agency and you don't have a specific process for giving them data, a feedback on, like, an individual lead basis about what's happening with it, then your process is broken because, like, you use all these marketing dollars to generate all these leads and you know exactly which dollars produce which leads. Mhmm.

Steve: And then

Brandon: you know that all these leads turned into all these deals. You know exactly which leads turned into which deals, but you don't connect which deals come from which marketing dollars. Most people have, like, that first part, and then they have that second part, but they don't they don't put those things together to understand, like, the whole funnel and what's happening. Because the reality is a PPC campaign that gets a five x return usually has, like, half of its spend on something that has a 10 x return and half of its spend on something that has a zero x return. Right?

So this is how you optimize. It's how you actually make things better.

Steve: How how do you report that back to Google?

Brandon: So the way it works is if somebody fills so every click that happens on Google has something called the click ID. Mhmm. And that's, like, so many characters. I wanna say it's, like, I'm just guessing, like, a 100 characters of, like, numbers and letters and sometimes even, like I think there might be some, like, symbols in there. I don't I don't know for sure.

I'd have to look at a few of them, but, like, it's because you imagine how many clicks come from Google. They've gotta have, like, the stream be long enough so that they can have a unique ID for every single one of those. So so they have that. And then what happens is it goes into a URL parameter. So this is like like, in our circumstance, we have, our landing page batemancollective.com/disruptors.

I could add a parameter on that, like a little question mark, and then I could say, GCL ID, Google click ID equals, and then this query. Mhmm. And that's a way that you, like, send additional information. So Google will append that when it goes there. You have to program on your landing page a way to pull that information out of the URL into the form, and then you end up reporting to Google a list of those click IDs and then additional data of what happened with those people.

Mhmm. So, yeah, you basically capture it when you collect the lead, and then you later report it.

Steve: And you said that these these people sold?

Brandon: Yeah. I mean, we report all kinds of different actions, like, like, how deep they get in the funnel. Because that that's the thing with, like, funnel optimization. You wanna kinda go as deep in the funnel as you can, but not too deep. Mhmm.

Because just sold is too deep for most companies because there's not that much data there. If you try to optimize Google based on that action, they'll just be getting so little feedback that it's not super useful. It's like

Steve: So appointment scheduled, perhaps?

Brandon: That would be a a mid funnel action that you could optimize for. Gotcha. Exactly. So we would do all of them and then just dynamically, like, use them based on how much data we have. But, yeah, that's that's exactly that's exactly the point.

It's, like, optimizing based on the whole funnel. And like I said, if you're not doing that like, if if you don't have some type of connection between Google Ads and your CRM or, like, you're giving your agency feedback on individual leads, like, you can't be doing that. Here's the thing. The agency needs to hold their team accountable to your results. If they don't know what your results are, how can they hold their team accountable to that?

Like Impossible. Yeah. That that's, like, the biggest change I ever made in my company was holding people internally accountable to the results that we wanted for our clients.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And then all these problems that were problems, you know, like, trying to make this happen, trying to make that happen, they just they go away because

Steve: They're incentivized.

Brandon: Because everybody's incentivized and they're trying to make it happen. But if I don't have that data, then how can I even do that?

Steve: Right.

Brandon: It's it's not possible. So

Steve: guys now on the same team.

Brandon: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The the last thing I'd say is as you introduce some of these, like, deeper funnel optimization tactics, you're going to create some issues with, like, trying to optimize for an event that just doesn't have that many that many, actions. I'm going to show I'll actually show one thing.

If we can just blur out the name of the account or something on this in the final post production.

Steve: Yeah. Not

Brandon: trying to show, like, a lot of personal data here. But for for anybody watching on YouTube, I I will, like, show this as an example. So I'm pulling up an account here. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look in this account at how much or how long and how much money we spent on a particular campaign. So I can see here in this account, we spent a $171,000 on this campaign.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: So remember when we talked about, like, bid strategy? We talked about automated manual bid strategies, how there's different types. Well, in this case, we're using an automated bid strategy, which, like I said, we did a lot of the manual bid strategies before, and we just haven't been able to make them more because as well as the automated ones. This This one's called target CPA where you kinda optimize for a certain cost per whatever action you're looking for. So that you can think of, like, the data I'm looking at here is sort of, like, the history of how much data is fueling the algorithm.

There's actually a bid strategy report that I can click on here, and this tells me, like, what data is Google using to optimize this campaign. So you can see here, like, for examples of things that the algorithm's learning that are a little bit benign that Google's comfortable sharing.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Not like there's gonna be other things that are a lot deeper. But, like, mobile phones are doing really well on weekdays from 10AM to 6PM. Like, that's a signal that Google's learning about conversion. The state of Washington from weekend on weekends from 9AM to 5PM is going really well. New Jersey, not doing so hot.

We buy ugly houses converts higher. Homebuyers converts higher. Open door converts higher. Desktop devices are converting higher right now here. We have specific list that we're targeting.

Right? So the these are examples of signals. So remember, it was like a 160,000 or something like that spent in this campaign. Mhmm. Yeah.

If I look at the total data fuel in this bid strategy, it's about $15,300,000 worth of ad spend. So how is this possible? This is possible because this is a special type of strategy called the portfolio bid strategy Mhmm. In Google Ads. And the way a portfolio bid strategy works is it goes across like, in this case, this is a cross account portfolio based strategy.

It goes across many accounts. Mhmm. So we could have a lot of different, accounts that are sharing this data together. Because here's here's the relationship. Like, people assume that you need a lot of money spent on Google PPC to win.

Mhmm. And that's kinda true. So here's here's the relationship. You spend a lot of money on Google PPC. You get better results.

Is that true? Yes. It's technically true. But people get mistaken why. They think, like, if I spend a ton of money, then Google likes me more.

Google favors me. They're I'm a bigger client for them, whatever. That's not true. What happens is you spend more money, then you'll have more data. Mhmm.

If you have more data, you'll have better results.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: That's the exact relationship. So what we did is we found a way to share data across accounts. Mhmm. So our accounts collectively are Google's biggest client in this industry, and we have the most data. So you spend small amount of money,

Steve: and then you have

Brandon: the most data Mhmm. And then you get the best results. Right? So you don't have to spend all the money to get all the data to have the best results. And even for people like this, just say you're spending a $100 a month on PPC.

Well, now it's over 1,000,000 a month instead of a $100 a month. Like, there's no circumstance where more data doesn't help you a ton on Google Ads. Does that make sense a little bit as a strategy?

Steve: Yeah. Well, it's we're we're we're we're sharing the data for the ad groups, ad sets, the keyword group inside the ad group, the landing pages.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: We're feeding a lot of data. And, ultimately, like, data is not the funnest thing in the world to think about, but that's how Google makes its decisions.

Brandon: I agree with you, except that data is not the funnest thing in the world to think about. About. Mhmm. I think it is. But, yeah, not for everybody.

Steve: Yeah. But

Brandon: it's yeah. 100%. It's it's it's super powerful. So yeah. And a lot of people think with that because there's there's kind of, like, two types of PPC agencies.

There's the kind that, like, let you own your account Mhmm.

Steve: And the

Brandon: kind that don't let you own your account. Are you familiar with this, like Yeah. Dichotomy that exists? Because, like, when you're running Google Ads, if they let you own your account, then you're better off if you ever were to leave them versus people use it as, like, a way to, like Host hostage. Yeah.

You're basically held hostage if the agency owns your account. And it's like it's like the yeah. It, like, it, like, breaks my heart when people because, like, when they sign the contract with the agency, they don't realize that's what happens. And so one

Steve: of my first questions with you.

Brandon: Yes. Do I own the account or do I not? Mhmm. Because if you don't own the account and you work with the agent like, for me, that's a really fucking even if the agency is performing fantastic, like, I would run I would run really fast from that relationship because it may like, as soon as an agency crosses the line of, like, we're now retaining clients by force, not by serving them really well, it's just a bad line to cross. You know?

Like, I'm gonna do something that's not in the best interest of the client to retain them. That's just it's an ugly path to start going down.

Steve: It's probably something that works when you're small as an agency. Yeah. When you're larger, you have to probably be on Madison Avenue in order to get away with that.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. Likely. Or you just work with people that don't know any better, which is is pretty common. But, so a lot of people think, like, because we, like basically, what I'm super proud of is we found a way to use data from other clients.

Because all these agencies that say, like, you have to use our accounts, like, it's because it's our proprietary data and whatever, which is just not Yeah. At all. Like like, that's not how it works. Yeah.

Steve: I would say of all the things we've talked about, that's probably the number one question. First question you should ask is who owns the data?

Brandon: Yeah. I'm I'm surprised it even took this long to come up because that's, yeah, that's super important. And sometimes I forget those agencies still exist, but they do. Mhmm. There still are agencies doing that.

But the, I I I guess my my point with this is, like, we found a way to make it so you can own your account Mhmm. But you can also leverage our data. Yeah. That's like the best of both worlds. Right.

Because you're using data cross account. Mhmm. But it's, but your account is yours, and you have that data, that transparency. So, like, one day when we really screwed something up in your account, like, you'll be able to see that we did that, and we're not gonna, like, try to hide it from you. Or if, if you need to part ways, we're not gonna make it so you have to start over somewhere else.

Right. Or if you want a third party to look at our what we're doing in the account and verify that we're doing a good job, like, you can do that.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: Like, those I just think that's really important.

Steve: Well, transparency, I think, is absolutely key.

Brandon: Yeah.

Steve: Right? Like, if you're if you're doing good work because, like, here's the thing. Here's the reason why I've left some of the agencies I've worked with in the past. They definitely had to set it and forget a strategy.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: And I can tell because I can log in. And I can see the activity in there. Right? Like, it's not like the activity is not tracked. The activity is tracked inside the account.

Brandon: It's true.

Steve: Right? So There

Brandon: is a lot of transparency in there. It's always a fun it's always a fun conversation. And there's also, like I've seen I've worked I've seen agencies before I audit it. I'm like, they're, like, way too busy in here. Mhmm.

Steve: And they're

Brandon: actually doing anything useful. You know? So you kinda have to, like you anyways, if you if like I said, if anybody, like, has any doubt and they want a second look at their account, like batemancollective.com/disruptors, that's the place to to look. And we can we we do these audits, and and we do them free because, you know, we just try to add a lot of value. Like, that's that's part of like, it's always been like, I even had people asking me if they can pay me money to audit their account.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And I was like, no. I only do it free. That's that's the only way that we're comfortable doing it. So

Steve: we we have one more module, but we're also we have our q and a that we haven't really talked about yet. So the q and a how do they get to the q and a right now?

Brandon: Yeah. So there's a I mean, there's a couple of links we've been throwing around throughout this. The one of them is batemancollective.com/toolkit-disruptors. Mhmm. And in that one, like, once you sign up for the toolkit, if you want access to like, there there's a lot of stuff in there, and and we can we can talk deeper about it another time.

But, like, specifically, like, an eight part master class just on Google Ads. We got a three part master class on Facebook ads. We got location, strategy stuff. We have how our how we do our bids, our account maintenance checklist. Mhmm.

There's a lot of cool stuff there. So, yeah, once you get in there and you, after you after you sign up for the toolkit, you'll see a link to register for the q and a, and we'll email it to you too. And, yeah, we'll be doing that, once we get all these episodes out. Mhmm. And, it'll be a great opportunity to, like, ask specific questions about this.

And if you wanna work with us, of course, you can go to batemancollective.com/disruptors, and that's how you sign up for a strategy consultation with my team.

Steve: Alright. Perfect. So, yeah. So, hopefully, you guys got a lot of value talking about lead quality secrets, how to maximize lead quality. Again, like, we're nerding out.

This is kinda what we do. And then, make sure you tune in to the next one where we're talking about how the top teams do acquisitions with PPC. We'll see you guys on the next one.