You Can’t Do PPC Without Doing This!

Steve Trang: Everybody. Welcome to module two where we're gonna be talking about how Google works in bidding effectively. We got Brandon Bateman here with Bateman Collective, and we're doing our PPC masterclass on PPC. Right? You know, I think one of the things that a lot of people are using PPC, it's a very effective strategy, but not everyone has the experience or the foundation necessarily to, you know, get either ask insightful questions or really get in nitty gritty.

You know, we have a high level. We understand how it works. You know, is that yellowish background or the different background, but, really, how does this work at a at a deeper level? So, let's talk about building a foundation for a high level strategy. What are the things that we should be considering?

What should a business owner as using PPC be considering?

Brandon Bateman: Yeah. The I think there's a ton. And, really, the goal of this episode is to to build that pretty solid foundation. So the thing is sometimes we like to jump straight into strategy, but if you don't understand kind of the basics of how the platform works, then the strategy doesn't make sense. So this is going to be I'll openly say this is gonna be, like, we're gonna do six episodes here, and this is the most boring of all those episodes.

I'm gonna try to make it as engaging, as interesting as I possibly can. Yeah. But this is this is straight up boring. We're gonna talk about technology and how it works. Mhmm.

But it will make all the other ones make a lot more sense.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And this is the critical knowledge that a lot of people are missing where they keep on, like, falling into holes with their PPC strategy. Yeah. So that's why I'm really excited to to do this. So there's gonna be other things that are a little bit more practical that we're talking about later, like like, how do you optimize for lead quality, how do you do your budget strategy, how do you do location strategy, all that kind of stuff. And this is just a foundation that you need for that.

So that's why I'm excited.

Steve: You know, like, Paul Sparks, we do the whale club together, and we talk, you know, one of the challenges that we have as entrepreneurs. Right? Because we're fast movers. Because we always wanna jump to strategy and execution. Let's go straight to strategy and execution.

Right? But, you know, what we talk about inside the whale club is we gotta take a step back. Mhmm. Now let's look at things like, you know, what are your at the highest level, which isn't PPC necessarily, but the highest level is, like, what is your programming? Like, what, like, how are you wired?

Why do you believe what you believe? And if you don't know know know these things, like, you're gonna do some things and sabotage yourself without knowing. Right? So talk about that. And then we also talk about first principles.

Like, what are the ultimate realities? Doesn't matter how smart and strategy, whatever. Like, the reality is the reality. Right? And then you got your belief system.

And then once we have your belief system in place, now we could talk about how we're gonna execute what you actually want.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: And And we can't execute what we actually want if we don't understand the strategies. Right? Because what what people wanna go through, maybe they wanna go straight into tactics, techniques Mhmm. Tools. I wanna do this.

I wanna do that. But without understanding all the strategies, how can you possibly apply the right strategy?

Brandon: It's it's true. And and oftentimes, people will just tell us, like, just just do whatever works for that guy.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And then they just fall on their face with it.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Right? So they're like, well,

Steve: if it

Brandon: works for him, it must be fine for me. But, like, you you have to understand yourself, like, your business and and how you operate, and it's gonna be different for everybody. Mhmm. And I hate being the guy that says, I wish I wish I had, like, a copy and paste where it's like, oh, just do this and you're gonna kill it. But it's, you'd be surprised how often we have, like, the same strategy doesn't work for two clients, and then we but it works really well for one and then really bad for another one, and then we change what it is for the other one, and then that works for them.

But then we change that with the first one hoping they do even better, and then they do worse. Right. Because there's different strategies that are working better for each of them.

Steve: Well and every business is different. Right? We wanna think that it's all the same. Right? Like, hey.

I wanna do what Doug Hopkins is doing. Right? Or I wanna do what, Eric Brewer is doing. Right? I I could just go out and say these things.

I don't run their operations.

Brandon: Yeah. There's there's a lot more detail to it than than a lot of us realize. So let's just start with the foundation of of how Google works, and I'll start, like, really, really simple, and then we'll it'll get really complicated really fast. Mhmm. Right.

So people, they have desires. They go to Google to search for those things. The moment that they click the search button on Google, there's going to be a bunch of results generated. And in case you're not familiar like, I actually have talked to some people that are like, I don't get PPC ads. I guess you do.

You just don't realize their ads. Because it used to be that, like, Google highlights these in yellow and says, hey. These are the ads at the top of the page. And then over time, they've just slowly made it harder and harder to tell the difference between PPC and organic results.

Steve: Yeah. Well, they had a company mission of don't be evil. And then I think at some point, one of the meetings, they just removed that part.

Brandon: Did they legitimately have a don't be evil company mission? Yeah.

Steve: When they found it, it was don't be evil.

Brandon: Don't be evil.

Steve: But it's no longer no longer on their list of things to do.

Brandon: That's so funny. Yeah. I I didn't know that about Google. Yeah. So yeah.

Maybe in the spirit of not being evil, they used to highlight the ads. And then and then now they just put this, like, tiny little ad symbol next to the PPC ads, and then the organic results look almost exactly the same just without the ad symbol. Right? So a lot of people don't even realize their ads. Right?

So what you're usually gonna see so you could make searches on Google where there's no ads just because there's no advertisers looking for those searches. Mhmm. But if you're searching, like, sell my house fast or we buy houses, I guarantee you, there's people looking for those searches. Mhmm. Right?

So then you're gonna see four ads usually at the top. That's the maximum that Google will allow. And then you're gonna see a bunch of organic results underneath that.

Steve: Potentially after the Google Map.

Brandon: Yeah. Potentially after the Google Map, which interesting update. There there was a core algorithm update to Google in March, and the percentage of the time for a search that's localized in this industry that the map pack is showing up is down by 20% after that algorithm update. So Google is more favoring the organic results over the Google Business Profile results, which is fascinating and and throws a lot of SEO campaigns out there for a complete loop. So that's a little bit less than it's actually if if you look at it, like, net net, it's kind of like a positive for PPC, and it's sort of a negative for SEO from a Google Map pack standpoint.

Although SEO otherwise probably gets a lift too. So, yeah, that anyways, side note. That's kinda fascinating. So what happens a lot of people don't realize happens the second that you search. The second you hit enter.

Mhmm. Essentially, what happens is Google will send out a ping to all the Google Ads accounts and will basically say, this is the person that's searching. And that includes a lot of information. It includes, like, what did they search right now? It's also, like, all the other information associated with that person, which is, like, other websites that they browse, the content on those websites, other searches that they made yesterday, the day before, which is a lot of intense stuff.

Right? Like like, I just came here to see you in Phoenix. Do you you think Google knew that I was gonna come here to see you in Phoenix? Yeah.

Steve: Well, yeah. They're reading your Gmail.

Brandon: Yeah. They read the Gmail. They know that I searched on Google for flights to Phoenix. Mhmm. They see my likely, they are connected with companies that see my credit card history and know that I purchased a flight.

Yeah. Like, there's a lot of reasons that, like, Google knows that about me. Like, that's that's really, really insightful. Right? So all that data kinda comes together.

And this data is so many things. I the best way I could describe it is we know that there's tens of thousands of data points per person. Obviously, brand new account, Google knows less. Seasoned account, it knows more. But there's a lot a lot of data.

Mhmm. Right? And all that data is used. And then all these accounts, they kinda get that ping that says, like, hey. We've got a new person that you might wanna advertise to here.

And then they all come back with, like, their bid on what they're willing to pay for it based on their calculations that they do on their side. So that that's kind of the basic foundational piece. So all these bids come back in, and there's also the element of quality score. If you've you ever heard of quality score, it's Mhmm. It's honestly a little bit tricky, but it's basically, like, if you do the things that Google likes for you to do, then you're more likely to be what they consider a better quality advertiser.

Like, let's just say your landing page loads really slow, so people never get it loaded and they click back. Google doesn't like that. Right? So they're gonna penalize you. Alright.

So let's just say we take quality score off the table. Basically, what's happening is all these accounts kinda put in their bids. And then what's gonna happen is the company who spends the who's willing to pay the most money for that click, they're gonna show up number one. Company that's willing to pay the second most money, number two. Third most, number three.

Fourth most, number four. And then whichever one gets clicked. So let's just say the person clicks the top one, that's gonna cost more money Mhmm. For that advertiser. And then if they click the one that's on the bottom, then it's gonna cost a little bit less money for for that advertiser.

So that's kind of the order of operations and, like, how things happen. Does that make sense, like, on a foundational level?

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. I you're saying that it sends it out. I kinda when you're saying that, I kinda picture, like, the the the new guy that walks into onto a car dealership. It's like, I got a new one.

Right? And all the car guys are

Brandon: Yeah. You look at, like, what's he wearing? Yeah.

Steve: Right. So

Brandon: Is is he likely to buy a car? Right? So that it's it's very it's very similar. Right? So they use all that data to do that.

So common misconception about PPC is the goal is to show up number one. Mhmm. Like, a lot of our clients, they, like, search on Google and they see their ad in, like, the third position. They're like, well, I must be the third best advertiser in my market if I'm gonna be in the third position. Yeah.

It's not it's not true. Right? Because because, basically, what's happening here is there's, I'm trying to think of the best way to describe it. Like, there's some advertisers that are gonna choose to go after something. Someone else could be like, I know that's not actually worth that much money.

Mhmm. I'm not gonna bid that much on that.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And maybe they don't win that click in that circumstance. And is that a problem? Maybe it's not. Right?

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Advertisers that spend more money are gonna show up higher more often. But so much of PPC is actually the science of bidding. And the science of bidding is basically how do you value that inventory when people are searching. And I kinda think of it like, I guess, you could think of it just how we underwrite a house. Mhmm.

We underwrite a deal. Like, you think, well, what ZIP code is this house in? Yeah. And where is it, or or you think, like, how many square feet is it? How big is the lot?

How old is it? How many bedrooms? How many bathrooms? And all those things you use to kinda say roughly what is this house worth. Mhmm.

Just like all of that data that you have from Google about, like, what did they search historically and and, what kind of affinities do they have and what what are the psychographics, and what is the keyword that they're searching right now. All those things are somewhat predictive of the value of that click. So each of these accounts is basically underwriting the value of the click, and then they're trying to to pay for it.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: I think, a common comparison here is comparing this to to real estate, and I'll show, like, where people, like, go wrong sometimes. So I've noticed a lot of people that like, you you mentioned that episode with Robert Wensley with that clip that went viral of, like, you'd pay $2,500 for this lead. Right. I've noticed a lot of people that I've talked to have taken that kind of the wrong way Mhmm. And just thought the whole goal of PPC is to find the best quality leads Mhmm.

And who cares what they cost? Right. That'd be, like, me coming into like, let's just say I'm the new guy, and I'm coming to I'm coming to Phoenix, Arizona. I'm like, I'm gonna wholesale. Mhmm.

And I'm just saying, you know what? How do the wholesalers make a lot of money? They just sell houses for a ton of money. That's how you get good spreads. You have to sell really high.

So I'm just gonna find the most expensive houses I could possibly find in the market, and I'm gonna go wholesale those. Mhmm. And that's how I'm gonna make lots of money. Right? So that wouldn't work if I'm just like, you know what?

Let's just find let's just find the most expensive possible houses, and I'm just gonna buy those, and that's how I'm gonna make money in real estate.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Probably not a good strategy. No. On the other hand, you could say, well, wholesalers, they make money because they buy low. Right? This is this is how a lot of marketing agencies approach this.

Right? Where they go and they're just like, I wanna show my client. We're getting so many impressions. We're getting so many clicks, so much so many leads. Mhmm.

Whatever. So I'm just gonna try to focus on how do we buy the cheapest possible clicks. Right? So I'm like, I'm coming to this market of Phoenix. I'm just saying, I'm just gonna look for the cheapest stuff around.

And is that a good wholesale strategy? No. Right? Because I might look at this house and say, like, oh, it's only $200. Maybe it's worth, like, 150.

Mhmm. Right? That's that's not a good strategy. So what you have to do is you have to take into account, like, value and cost. And a lot of people think this is mostly keyword based.

It's not like keywords like the ZIP code. Mhmm. It tells you a little bit. It doesn't tell you a lot about, like, what this what this click is worth. Right?

So so the way that this this works, just like if I wholesale, I'm not looking for, like, really high value houses Mhmm. Or for really low cost houses. I'm looking for houses that have a large discrepancy between the value and the cost of the property. In other words, I'm looking to buy at a discount, usually a certain percentage discount. Right.

And I'm gonna underwrite those properties, and then I'm gonna buy them at 70% of ARV minus repairs or whatever my formula is. Right? Like, that seems so simple. That's how we do it with real estate. Meanwhile, people then go into PPC and they're like, oh, I'll just I'll just buy the cheap stuff.

Mhmm. Or, like, I'll just buy the really expensive stuff because that's probably worth a lot. Mhmm. And what they don't do is look for deals. That that's how companies actually really succeed with PPC is that you buy clicks for less than what they're worth.

Mhmm. And knowing what they're worth is, like, half of the game PPC. Theoretically, if you bid really, really well on PPC, all the stuff that most people care about doesn't matter anymore. Like, I could I could have a keyword that's not that good. Right?

Maybe it's not the right lead quality. Mhmm. A lot of people would say don't target that. Well, what if I bid right for that? What if I know that it's worth hardly anything and then I bid according, and I can actually get it for a discount compared to what it's worth.

You know?

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Could be worth something to me. Right? Or on the other hand, like, you know, they're like, in Robert Wenzes' example, if there's these leads that are very, very valuable, would I pay a lot of money for those? I absolutely could, and it could be totally worth it. Does that make a little bit of sense, like, this this concept of, like, valuing traffic?

Steve: So for example, right, you know, in in Phoenix, you know, it was not unusual for a cost per click to be $40. Yeah. So we might say, well, you know, if someone's saying, what's my house worth? Right? That's only worth $5.

Brandon: Correct.

Steve: Well, you're saying the argument's, like, it's worth paying a dollar. We know it's worth 5. We we know at $5, that still gives us, a a significant return on investment. It's still worth bidding 5. We're still worth $5 free market value.

It doesn't hurt to bid a dollar to get that more or less.

Brandon: 100%. There's no such thing as, like, a bad click. There's just a bad price Right.

Steve: For

Brandon: that click. Now some clicks are so bad, the bad price. Like, you could be, like, you could be a fraction of a penny and you're still paying too much. Right. And then you probably just won't get them at that price.

Right? So practically, like, there is, like, a a zone that you just don't go into here. But and I'm not necessarily saying, like, the whole game here is, like, you go after cheap clicks and get them even cheaper. What I'm saying is in every market, investors have different strategies. There's gonna be that one guy that's like, this is your competition.

There's gonna be the one guy who's like, I'm just picking all the best keywords. I'm just gonna pay whatever it takes Mhmm. To be number one on that. There's always that guy because he just thinks it's a great strategy because he's just like, let me just dominate. And, dominate sounds great until you're out of money, and then it's not as fun anymore.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And then there's somebody else who's going after, like, super cheap traffic and stuff. And and where you find your best success as a PPC advertiser is going to depend on where the weak spots of your competition are. If they're really good at buying those high value leads, then you're gonna have a great niche in those medium value leads that you get for really cheap costs because they're not competitive. Or maybe they're just going for cheap leads, and then you just know, like, well, they're only bidding $30 for these clicks. And if I pay a $100 for these clicks, I get just the right ones Mhmm.

That's gonna be really valuable to me. The key is that you bid according to value.

Steve: Right. Yeah. And that's how you get the return on investment.

Brandon: That's how you get a return on investment. And that's how you make it safer. Because if you know what these things are worth and you bid the right amount of money Mhmm. Then it will work out. And, like like, in Robert Wensey's example of, like, if we want $10,000 per contract, and we know that we can close one in four.

The thing is almost nobody has that Mhmm. Certainty on their numbers. But if you work with a good company, they can have a lot more certainty. So something that we do with all of our clients is we'll actually model out before you've actually been through this exercise. Do you remember, like, when we started your PPC campaigns and we looked at what kind of return on investment do we wanna get from the campaigns?

And then we worked backwards. We reverse engineered that return on investment. Mhmm. We said, if we're going to get there, these are the things that would need to happen along the way. We should be getting leads of roughly this quality at roughly this cost, etcetera.

And then you can see how things are tracking according to that. Because people say, like, oh, return on investment's the only thing that matters in a marketing campaign. We don't realize that to get statistical significance for return on investment costs a ton a ton of money. Mhmm.

Steve: And And by the time data, which requires a

Brandon: ton of money. Yeah. Yeah. I hired a I hired a data scientist recently, to answer one question for me. That question was, how much money do you have to spend on PPC to know if it works or not?

There's a really hard question to answer. Mhmm. You might be kinda curious to see, like, how how we went about it. Mhmm. So we basically said, like, I'll I'll compare this to something, like, simple that we all understand.

Right? It's like flipping a coin. Mhmm. So here's an equivalent question the way we'd have to phrase it, for flipping a coin. So you'd say, like, well, we're gonna flip a coin, and every time we flip it, the coin itself is gonna have a 50% chance of getting heads, 50% tails.

How many times do we have to flip the coin to at least have 90% confidence that it gets heads at least 40% of the time based on the stats proving that? Because you have to choose kinda like your confidence interval, then you have to choose your margin of error. Yeah. So we did that same thing. We basically said, assuming and that's that's assuming the coin actually works.

Mhmm. Right? So what we did is we set for a PPC campaign. Assuming it's headed for a five x return, how much data do we need to actually prove that we're getting at least a four x return Mhmm. In such a way that nine out of 10 times we're gonna be right, and then one out of 10 times we're still gonna be wrong.

Steve: Alright.

Brandon: The answer, a $144,000 for the average investor is how much you'd have to spend on that campaign.

Steve: Wow.

Brandon: Here's the thing about this. Like, people sometimes, like like, get a little mad at me for saying this. They're like, why is PPC so expensive? That's that's not any more true for PPC than it is for any other marketing channel in this industry. The the reason it's like that is because there's data sparsity with the deals that we're doing.

Mhmm. Like, you're looking for really sparse outcome just like how you, like, wouldn't flip a coin twice and get tails two times and say, like, that coin doesn't work. It's never gonna get heads. People do that with their marketing, though. Right.

It's the equivalent of literally flipping your coin twice and seeing if it gets tails and just, like, writing off that coin. Like, that coin's never gonna give me heads. It doesn't work. The results don't lie. Right?

It's a 100% of the time it's got new tails. So why would it ever be different?

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: That's how people think about their their marketing. But I thought that was super fascinating. So so when you're doing that and then just imagine then you're segmenting deeper. Mhmm. So you're not you're not just doing that for, like, all of the marketing.

Now we're saying, like, oh, for this keyword. Mhmm. So now we need a $144,000 per keyword. You understand? And then, like, we're probably running multiple split tests.

So this gets, like, wildly, wildly, wildly expensive. So everybody wants to think about along the lines of, like, oh, just, you know, you know what it's worth and then you pay that. But the reality is unless you have a ton of data, that's that's not really practical. And that's where an agency comes in because we have a lot of data that, that makes it like, we have literally 200 times more data than you'll ever have, and we still don't feel like we have enough. That's the reality of PPC in this industry, which is why I think it's so fascinating.

Steve: Yeah. So then, we haven't talked about budgets. Or is this the budget component?

Brandon: Well well, let's let let's talk about let's talk about how you get the like, just just for building the foundation a little bit deeper. Let let's talk about how you, like, do use this data to to bid. Because there's there's gonna be, like, two specific schools of thought Mhmm. On this. School of thought number one is manual bidding.

Mhmm. School of thought number two is automated bidding.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: You're acting like you're familiar with this. I'm sure you know, like,

Steve: like, some

Brandon: of the basics. I think you did manual bidding probably back in the day.

Steve: I I did manual bidding with a third party tool that automatically changed it

Brandon: Okay.

Steve: Because I didn't trust Google at the time.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And that's that that's actually pretty common.

My goodness. We could go we could go deep into we could do go deep into that. So, like, the natural progression of how we think about this is like, okay. So we know that bids really matter.

Steve: Mhmm. So how

Brandon: do you bid? Right? Because it's all based on this data that nobody will have enough data to have anyway. So what do we do if we don't have enough data Mhmm. To to actually bid properly?

So the way that you do it, there's kinda two camps here. There's manual bidding and automated bidding. You'll find that in general, people tend like, let's just say you found a 100 of the top PPC marketers Mhmm. Today and ask them if they do manual or automated bidding, 99 out of a 100 are gonna say they do automated bidding. Yeah.

Steve: Let's just

Brandon: say you go to a small business and you ask a bunch of marketers, more often they're gonna be doing manual. So there's kinda like like, this is like a holy war that exists within, like, the world of PPC. So it's like it's a hard question to answer, like, which one's better. I think the best comparison I have for you is, like, stocks versus real estate. Mhmm.

You know? Like, someone will say, like, oh, stocks are way better because I bought a property and I lost money in real estate. So I'm getting negative 20% returns there compared to 9% in the S and P 500. Stocks are better. But, like, it matters how well you manage it.

Mhmm. Like, if I'm a horrible property manager, then my returns in real estate are gonna be changes. Horrible. Like, it's it's simple. Right?

Just like if I'm horrible at picking stocks, my returns in stocks are gonna be horrible. Right? So that's where, like, so many people say, like, I've tested that, and that doesn't work, and this one works better. And, like, it's like, well, yeah, of of course, you're doing better with stocks and real estate if you're a bad property manager. Mhmm.

Like, that's that's just natural. Right? So so that's kind of the the the the thing that exists here. The what generally will happen also, a lot of investors think manual bidding is the best way to do it, because the word manual just sounds like more work, and more work for the PPC company must be better. Right?

Yeah. Like, it's like, manual. I feel like I trust that versus automated might not be as good. But here's the thing.

Steve: Or they might feel like, what am I getting what am I paying for?

Brandon: What am I paying for if I'm doing the automated? Like, because manual, they picture just, like, there's just, like, this dude with, like, glasses, probably really long hair and, like, a Sprite or something. Like, just kinda, like, coding away EPC account, like, hours into the night so that they can, like like, it's 11:00, and the metrics dipped a little bit. Hold on. Let me just press these few buttons.

I'm just gonna boost this again. Like, that's what people picture when they picture manual bidding. So far from the truth Right. Of how it actually works. But the yes.

Those are the those are the two schools. I'm most a fan of automated bidding. I think automated bidding will like like, to give you a picture of how deep we went into manual bidding. Like, we actually like, you could ask people, like, early on in my company. Most of the people that could be my company listening to this right now might not even remember this, because they weren't there.

We had we used to have a manual bidding computer, like a computer for manual bidding in the office. I bought an old computer from one of my employees, and I because I wrote this whole, like I I know a little bit about data science, about a lot. Enough to make a machine learning algorithm Mhmm. Not enough to make it run fast. So I had this algorithm for manual bidding that literally took, like, three or four days to, like, run one cycle.

So we got this, like, separate computer. Like, this is our manual bidding, like, computer, and we'd run the algorithm on all the data. Like, so just just I'm just giving you, like, a little picture of, like, how deep I got into manual bidding, and I still can't make it work as well as automated bidding today in today's landscape. Manual bidding was, like, the thing back in, like, 2017, 2018, 2019 when I got into this, but it's not anymore.

Steve: Yeah. Well, I mean, I was doing it before then, because I was doing, like, in 2012.

Brandon: Yeah. That's and that's when, like, manual bidding was the only way.

Steve: Yeah. So I'm trying to think I think Marin was the one it was the company I use.

Brandon: Yeah. Have you looked at their market cap recently? No. Last time I looked at it, they had expenses last year that were greater than their entire market cap as a company in the year that I looked at that numb those numbers. Because manual bidding, nobody does it anymore except, like, these random, like, old school marketers that think that they have, like, the world figured out with their emotional way that they like to change bids and accounts.

So it's it's like they they just they just like the power, you know. Like, I'm just pressing all

Steve: the buttons. Blackjack more than a slot machine.

Brandon: Exactly. Yeah. It feels like blackjack, not a slot machine. Yeah. You know, if you had a slot machine with great odds, which doesn't practically exist, but if it theoretically did, that's what automated bidding would be.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: But here's the thing. It's it's about how well you do it too. Like, there's a wrong way to do it, and there's there's certain things that you need to get right. But picture it like this. Google has those tens of thousands of data points per person.

If you're manual bidding, you're just you're bidding based on the keyword. If you use automatic bidding, then you can leverage all those other data points.

Steve: I didn't know that. So automated bidding includes all the psychographics and things you were saying earlier and intent and previous search history.

Brandon: Yes.

Steve: I didn't know that.

Brandon: It does. So here's here's the best, like, comparison I can give you. So, like, we were just talking about our kids earlier.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: I have, like, a daughter that's two and a half. Mhmm. She and the just randomly thought of this one day, so it's a weird analogy. I'm sorry. But the like, we went to a beach when she was, like, six months old.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: She She had no idea where she was. She had no idea where it was. Right? Went to a beach again when she was, like, 18 old. Right?

And she looked at the sand, and she was like, this is sand. Mhmm. And she knew those things. So I thought, like, what changed from, like, person number one to person number two? Right?

This is just, like, the basics of the human brain, basics of the basics of learning. Right? Because if you think about it, like, a lot of people would say the data changed. Mhmm. I would say the data didn't change because if you look at it, like, what did her eyes see when she was six months old versus when she was 18 old?

Turns out her eyes saw the same thing. Like, they were, like, the same pixels, the same picture going into them. Mhmm. But her brain understood it differently.

Steve: Right. Processed it differently.

Brandon: Processed it differently later on based on learning that it happened. Right? Because that's the definition of learning. Like, we receive the same input as we did before, yet we behave differently than we did before. That's how you know you learned.

Not just like that you know something. Like, if you don't actually do anything, then it's useless. Right? So that's the definition of learning, is that now she looks at it and she says, like, that's sand or, like, that's yellow, that's green, that's blue. Right?

So that's that's, like, the the basics of, like, humans and how they work. Right? So just just like that because I know AI is this super big topic. Right?

Steve: Buzzword.

Brandon: Yeah. Buzzword. I mean, last time I was on the show, I think it was a I think it was a buzzword. Because the thing is, like, people figured out language models for AI Mhmm. Recently.

Like, chat GBT is, like, an amazing language model.

Steve: Yeah.

Brandon: Turns out when it comes to numbers, computers have been better than us for a long, long time. Yeah. Like, there's like, AI, it feels like people think it just, like, started existing. We've been using AI in digital marketing for, like, a really long time. And then, like like, predictive analytics for a really, really long time.

Alright. Because it's it's really good. Because no human can look at 10,000 numbers and make a decision. Mhmm.

Steve: Well, it goes back to the definition of intelligence. One definition of intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns.

Brandon: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And just like if we're just thinking of numbers, like, let's just say you had a graph. You have x axis, y axis, and then you have things that are, like, kinda clustered on there.

You can notice, like, oh, there's a few dots here. There's a few dots there. You're, like, seeing, like, how those things are grouped together Mhmm. And the patterns there. The way computers can do it, imagine there was, like, like, that's a that's an actual form machine learning algorithm called a cluster analysis.

That was the type of analysis that my whole bidding algorithm is based on. Yeah. Computers could basically do that as if that graph had a thousand axis. And they can see those trends in the data. And, like, humans, they can't

Steve: They can't conceptualize that.

Brandon: No. So so it gets it gets really powerful. Right? So so just like but it it depends on what information you give them. Like like, let's just say, like, we, like, gaslit my daughter and always told her that green is yellow instead of which would be a horrible thing for a parent to do.

Let's just say we did that. She would think that. Mhmm. Right? Or let's just say we never made the distinction.

Like, we never told her, like, like, green is a different thing. She just knew about yellow and blue. And, like, it'd be, like, yellowish blue. Like, I don't know. It's like it's like that in between one.

Right? So there's, like, the data that you feed it is really, really important. So when when it comes to, like, targeting, a lot of people, the first thing that they think of is, oh, how do I target the preforeclosures on Google? How do I target the probates? Whatever.

Those are all data points that are features. That's like the the data that's like the sand grains that are, like, coming into the eyes of the baby. That sounds horrible. But, you know, like like, visually, like, they could see those things. Right?

But then the, but the data that we use to, like, train Google with automated bidding is the data of, like, what actually happened. Like, oh, you see all this? This is a beach. Mhmm. Then the next time they see it, they recognize this is a beach.

Right? And they and then they go in the sandbox and they say beach, and you're like, no. That's a sandbox. That's a beach. And so then they start to have these, like, finer and finer distinctions and understand the difference between things.

So so if you do that right, you can actually train Google on, like, the difference between a buyer and a seller Mhmm.

Steve: Or

Brandon: the difference between a seller and a motivated seller. If you do that wrong, then you just end up, you know, completely wasting your money. So I hope that analogy makes a little bit of sense. But the way automated bidding algorithms work is they basically use all that data, far more data than we could ever use in a manual bidding scenario, and they use that to put in that bid. So then the game becomes not, can I just, like can I, as the mastermind, decide that I really wanna target this or I wanna target that or this keyword is not good because I don't feel like it's the right person Mhmm?

Or whatever. Believe it or not, there's there's a, yeah, there's, like we even have our best performing keyword right now. You wouldn't even believe what it is. It's something that nobody expects. But the the, it's not that.

It's all based on, like, the data that Google actually observes Right. In that circumstance, and then it learns and it gets smarter and smarter over time. So then the game becomes, how do I train Google? How do I get on Google's side? And how do I give it the right data so I can get really, really smart so it can underwrite my traffic for me based on tons of data that I'd never be able to see or be able to know about so that when a click happens or there's an opportunity for a click, I can bid just the right price so that all my competition, they were underbidding, but I know it's more valuable.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: So I'm gonna pay more. Or everybody else is paying for that, and they're willing to pay 50 or $100 for that click. But because of my data, I know that's not as valuable as they think it is. Right. So I avoid that click.

Steve: Well and it goes back to, you know, people don't necessarily recognize this, but Google's job is to get you to spend money.

Brandon: Mhmm. And the

Steve: way for them for you to spend money is actually for you to have success. The more success you have, the more money you spend. So their job is to take as much money from you and me as possible, and the best way for them to take our money is to give us success. And so they create automatic bids that help us be more successful. They make more money.

Brandon: Yes. Yes. 100%. It also there's yeah, we we can go pretty deep into, like, the because, yeah, a lot of people do automatically think, like, oh, Google just wants to, like, sell off all its bad inventory and stuff like that. It just wants to monetize everything it possibly can.

Mhmm. And it wants everybody to have as similar to each other a return on investment as possible. That's that's basically, like, what's care of our

Steve: our actual ROIs. I think we just wanna make sure that we're spending our money.

Brandon: That's true. But, like, if, let's just say there's a landscape where, like, like, this is why Google kinda handicaps manual bidding. Mhmm. Doesn't give out those people all the data that they could. Let's just say there's a scenario where some people just really know how to, like, nail Google Ads and other people don't.

It's worse for Google because these people quit and then these people don't pay that much.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: So So what Google wants more

Steve: people there, so we have the auction process.

Brandon: Yeah. They want it to be pretty equalized. Mhmm. So, anyways, I hope that makes a little bit of sense because it it'll it'll work into, like, our budget strategy and and stuff like that. And it helps you understand, like, what the real goal is with PPC.

Like, the goal isn't to show up high on the page. It's not to show up low on the page. It's not to, so some people are like, oh, first position strategy. That's the way we do it. And it's like, well, that's not right.

Third position strategy, that's the way we do it because you said the first position's overvalued. Like, no. Not all the time. Like, sometimes, like, these clicks are worth a $100, and then the first position is, like, $20, and then the second is 10, and then the third is 5.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Go first. Yeah. Well, I think they

Steve: they might be thinking first is best because organically, the first result is

Brandon: If you're not paying for a result. Yeah. But, like, first like, something a lot of people don't realize. You make a Google search right now, you see who's at the very top and who's lower. That person at the top is the person with the worst return on investment.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Not the best because they're paying more than those other people Yeah. Are. Now that doesn't mean that's not somewhere you wanna be. Like, that's that's a volume game.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Right? Like, it must be

Steve: a priority.

Brandon: Yeah. It it just depends on what kind of business you wanna run. Yeah. Like, here's another, like, fun marketing fact. So you can actually model out diminishing returns in a PPC campaign.

And you can, from that, like, leverage, like, certain information about the business, like like, how much do they pay, like, their team for different things and stuff like that, and and essentially forecast out, like, a profit maximizing budget. Gotcha. What would you think is a profit maximizing return on investment in PPC?

Steve: Profit maximizing? Yeah. I mean, are we talking about per deal or just for an organization? Like, how much ROI. I mean, if you're trying to maximize ROI, I guess, I'm just looking at the you wanna get cost per contract as low as possible.

Brandon: Yes. Okay. So let's just say you do that. Let's just say it was $10, and now you get it down to $2. Well, now what?

Now you are left with the law of diminishing returns, and you look at, because here's here's what people don't realize. People ask, like, what is the cost per lead in this market or that market? Mhmm. There's no such thing. Every cost per lead exists in every market Mhmm.

Because every bid exists in every market.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Like, you can go into the heart of LA and get leads for $50. Mhmm. You just won't get very many at all.

Steve: Or or you might not be in business.

Brandon: Yeah. Like but you could bid that and and, like, your bid will find a click Mhmm. Eventually.

Steve: Oh, yeah. I remember, what I used to do, I don't think this will work anymore. What I used to do was I set my keyword bid at, like, $25, my daily budget at $10. And so I would consistently get the $10 spent, right, for that keyword because at some point, all my competition have already spent their budget for the day.

Brandon: Yeah.

Steve: Alright. I'm not I'm not I'm not a proponent for this strategy. It's just something that's worked for me over ten years ago.

Brandon: I think it worked because the game was really easy back then. Yeah. That but that's yeah. Like, there there's there's there's some merit to what you're saying. And it's just, like here's the thing.

Like, I can go into a market where the average person's paying $200 for PPC leads, and I could bid $2,000, and I'd pay $2,000 per lead, and I would probably clean up from a lead volume standpoint Mhmm. In that market. Right? So so it's just there's this law of diminishing marginal returns For sure. Where, like because what happens, you're gonna go further and further up on the page Mhmm.

Steve: Close to

Brandon: that first spot. Or on stuff where you wouldn't have shown up, now you're showing up. Right? Because it's like, oh, that click's not worth that money. Well, now it is.

Mhmm. Because you gotta spend the money. Right? Right. So so people ask me, what's the cost per lead in this market versus that market?

Believe it or not, I actually have broken down by county the exact cost per lead based on all of our client data in every single county in The United States. One time my sales team got a hold of it, and it was ugly because they were telling people, like, oh, this is what the cost per lead is in that market and stuff. And, like, that's not how it works. Because, like, yes, maybe in that market right now, our average cost per lead is $75. Mhmm.

But if you go put a $10,000 a month budget into that market, it's gonna be, like, $600.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: Right? Because you're getting diminishing return. And For sure. And the lower cost per lead is reflective of us not having that much spend there. So the, I guess, the the main point of of what I'm saying here is every cost per lead exists in every market, in every situation.

The real question is, add the given cost per lead, how much volume can you get? Mhmm. And is it practical? So then the back to that question of what is a profit maximizing return on investment. Let's just say the goal is to get cost per contract as low as possible.

Okay. So we got our cost per contract from $10,000. Now we're let's just say $1,000 in a single market for cost per contract.

Steve: God. If we could do that in Phoenix, I'd be really happy.

Brandon: Yeah. And, unfortunately, it might not be likely. But well, I mean, you could. That's the thing that's what I'm saying here. You could.

It's just how much money would you be able

Steve: to spend.

Brandon: Right. And it's probably a minuscule amount of money. Right? So so then but let's just say let's just say we make it happen. This way we make a miracle happen.

We get down to a thousand dollars per contract. What's the next play? Well, the next play is we realize we're running a 20 x return on investment. We need to scale probably. Mhmm.

So what's gonna happen is we're gonna increase our cost per contract. Yep. Yep. Cost per contract is gonna go up. So what's gonna happen is now I'm gonna trade efficiency for volume.

Mhmm. So cost per contract is going up. And at the same time, my total number of contracts is going up.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: So now I'm at a 10 x return, $2,000 per contract, and, and I'm getting a lot more volume. Now what do I do? Well, I could probably become more profitable as a company if I, again, trade efficiency for volume Mhmm. And keep on going up. So that just goes up and up and up, and at some point it peaks, and you reach peak profitability as a company.

And then when you make a move from that point, it's like, well, now I'm actually just not making more profit Mhmm. Because of it. So that point where it peaks on average is a two and a half x return on investment, believe it or not. A lot of people don't realize that. It's lower than a lot of people think.

Mhmm. And if you're playing this game where you're looking for, like, three, four, five, six, seven x return on investments Mhmm. You're playing an efficiency game, not a volume game. And you're not playing the game of how do you make the most money on PPC. You're playing the game of how do you have this trade off between volume and efficiency Mhmm.

That skews towards being more efficient, which is a totally fine game to play. Right. But, yeah, a lot of people don't don't realize that. So you're

Steve: talking about so you're talking about, profit in a period of time?

Brandon: Yes. Yes. 100%. So, like,

Steve: if the time when you maximize you wanna maximize profit per month, for example

Brandon: Mhmm. Then

Steve: two and a half x is about the highest return on investment or not as high two and a half x, at that point, you can't go any further because then you're gonna be going down. Your profit will go down Yeah. Monthly.

Brandon: On average. Yeah. Yeah. It depends. It's fascinating.

Steve: This is, I mean, you probably modeled it, but this is one of those things that's like a a fun case study for game theory. Right? Like, because that's

Brandon: That's basically what it is. Classic game theory.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Yeah. That that's that's like if you if you understand game theory really deeply Mhmm. And, like, some basics about Google, then you can actually, like, predict not just one, but, like, three, four, five steps ahead what's gonna happen in your market. Yeah. It's it's really fascinating.

Yeah.

Steve: So game theory is not generally a very entertaining topic. But if you guys are interested in it, A Beautiful Mind. Right? John Nash was the they made the movie about him because he's the one that, discovered it. Mhmm.

Right? So if you guys remember that movie, that's game theory. But I talk about it in my sales training, but it's mostly applicable in my own experience in playing poker.

Brandon: Right? Yeah.

Steve: But, yeah, I mean, game theory is is a fascinating topic if you're a giant nerd, like you and me.

Brandon: Yeah.

Steve: But probably for most people, it's probably not.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. Robert Wensley and I have had more than a few conversations all about game theory. Yeah. So it's a yeah.

It's it's funny. When I learned game theory in college, I was like, okay. Whatever. And then now I'm like, when you see it in the real world, like, this is a this is a real this is a real thing. And if you if you understand these things, it's it's really powerful.

Yeah.

Steve: I took an international business class when I was in graduate school, and we went over it.

Brandon: Yeah.

Steve: And so we had to learn it. Right? And as I after I learned, I was like, I got a prize for this. Like, I can't remember, like, a Nobel Prize or whatever. Like Seems

Brandon: kinda basic.

Steve: It feels basic. Yeah. So but, anyway, it's still still good to know.

Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. So yeah. Just diving into that a little bit, like, the practical implications.

Mhmm. It has a lot to do with, like like, your strategy of where do you wanna be in your budget. Also, it explains a lot of, like, how locations work, and we're gonna dig a lot into that, in in the next episode. There's one other thing I wanna go through here, which is specifically, like, different types of campaigns and how that affects things. Because this is actually one of the biggest misconceptions.

I I know there are people who are listening to this that are gonna save a lot of money because they're of what they're just about to hear. Mhmm. So there's there are different types of keywords. There's one specific subset of keywords in PPC that's really dangerous. They're called branded keywords.

You You familiar with that? You ever heard of branded?

Steve: I mean, this would be like I think this is a hot button for Doug Hopkins. Right? If I was to target Doug Hopkins as a keyword.

Brandon: Okay. So so that is, yeah, this is advertised. If you're in Phoenix, Doug Hopkins. Yeah. So, yeah.

Let's talk about it. So there I would technically call that a competitor keyword.

Steve: Okay.

Brandon: So so let's just say I mean, your your real estate business

Steve: Onward Financial Solutions.

Brandon: Onward Financial Solutions. Right?

Steve: Alright.

Brandon: So let's just say Onward Financial Solutions is running a PPC campaign. Mhmm. If the keyword that they're targeting is semi house fast Mhmm. That's just normal PPC. Yeah.

It's generic. Yep. If they're targeting Doug Hopkins

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: That's usually people call it a competitor keyword, conquesting keyword. It is technically branded, but by Doug Hopkins.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: What if you're targeting Onward Financial Solutions? Mhmm. That's called a branded keyword. And those are one of the biggest, like, areas of potential wasted spend in PPC, but also of of value. So a branded campaign, like, why would you do that?

Why would you target that? Well, if you search, like, anybody here who is listening, who's doing a ton of, like especially if you do, like, a lot of radio, TV advertising, like, anything like that, you get you get a lot of search volume for your brand. So you search for that. What you're probably gonna find is ads on Google on top of your organic listing.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: And that's not a good thing, especially on a mobile device because now I have to, like, scroll down Mhmm. A long way to find the actual you, and I'm gonna end up calling those people instead. How do I know it's it's gonna happen? It's because every time we target a competitor keyword, our client will come to us and say, I keep on getting calls for it's like as if you came to me and said, like, I keep on getting calls with people asking for Doug Hopkins. I think

Steve: One of the big classically was, is this open door? Like

Brandon: Open door is a great example of a competitor keyword. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: Like, yeah. I'm I'm I'm appreciate you asking. So, you know, what brought you to our website?

Brandon: Yeah. Exactly. So you haven't had to, like, turn this a little bit. Right?

Steve: But we weren't targeting open door. They just assumed we were Open Door.

Brandon: Yeah. The same thing happens about inverse. Mhmm. If somebody else is targeting onward financial solutions. Right?

So if somebody searches for you, you don't want them to have to scroll through, like, four ads to then find your organic listing to find you. And then let's just say they were gonna find you anyways. Well, now there's a chance they call those other companies too. So now you may even have the same lead you're gonna get otherwise, but now multiple people have the lead, which means, like, I have a lower chance of winning it. I have probably a smaller spread.

I do win the the the contract. Mhmm. So so that's where like, that's why you would do a branded campaign. But here's the other thing. I'll give I'll give, like, this story.

Honestly, I don't remember where this story came from. I might have just made it up. Mhmm. It might be, it might be if if somebody else deserves credit, I'm sorry to that person. I don't know where this came from.

But it it's more of an analogy than anything. Let's just say, like, you're a restaurant owner. Mhmm. You have you want more people to come into your restaurant. You hire two people.

Mhmm. Right? And you give them flyers unique to each one of them, and you say, pass out these flyers. And when people come into our restaurant with your flyer, we'll know they came from you. Mhmm.

And that's how we'll pay you. Right? So they give the flyers to the two salespeople. Those salespeople go out. The next day, there's 10 people that come into the restaurant with one guy's flyer, and there's a 100 people that come with the other guy's flyer.

Mhmm. Right? So what do you naturally wanna do if you're the owner of that business? You say, well, this one guy who only got 10 people, he's not very good.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: The other guy who got a 100, he deserves a lot of credit. Mhmm. Let's just say you then find out that the guy who got a 100 was standing just outside the doors of the restaurant. And every single time somebody looked like they were about to walk in, he just handed them a flyer and said, go show this to them, and they'll give you a discount inside. Now who's adding more value to the business?

The guy who was, like, out there on the other side of town canvassing, convincing people to come to this restaurant. Maybe he was standing outside of other restaurants. Right? The Doug Hopkins example that you gave. Right?

Trying to convince people to go there. Right? So, obviously, like, with restaurants, we know this is simple. But the the guy who stands outside the door and just, like, catches people as they're coming in, that's branded PPC campaigns. Mhmm.

Because there's no such thing as getting a search for a branded keyword that was from PPC usually.

Steve: Like, they

Brandon: I don't search for onboard financial solutions just because I just because I, like for no reason. Right? Like, I saw your TV ad. I saw your radio. I heard your radio ad.

Maybe I got a piece of direct mail from you. Like, there's some reason that I'm doing that.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And those channels deserve a lot of credit. So what you'll find often happens is you have PPC agencies, and what they'll do is they'll put brand and unbranded stuff together. Mhmm. And, like, I'll give you an example. Somebody that we both know.

I was just auditing their campaigns recently. Mhmm. And they said, well, PPC is great for us. We get a four x return on investment. We're really happy with it.

And I said, well, do you break out your branded versus your unbranded traffic? Mhmm. And they said, no. We don't break out Branded versus unbranded. So I challenged them with the idea of, like, why don't you try to break that out?

Mhmm.

Steve: So they

Brandon: break that out. And what they found is they had an eight x return eight x return on their branded stuff.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: And they had less than a two x return on their unbranded stuff.

Steve: Right.

Brandon: So now the game changes a little bit because branded, what you have to recognize is that some of that stuff you were gonna get anyways. Mhmm. Now I'm not saying branded doesn't have value because maybe you're protecting your brand a little bit. Right? Correct.

But, generally, you wanna assume that about 75% of those people were gonna find you anyways. So when I see a $100 cost per lead on a branded campaign, I see a $400 cost per incremental lead Mhmm. On that campaign. So branded campaigns are one of the most common, like, wasted areas of spend because they often get overvalued. And I see accounts all the time where they're paying just as much for a branded lead as they are for unbranded.

And the way, like, the way it works out in the spreadsheet that the business owner is looking at in the end of the day shows that PPC is really good. Mhmm. But the reality is that it's not. Yeah. Just like that sales guy that just, like, if you hand a flyer to people walking in a restaurant, like

Steve: Yeah. I'm a fan of of branded, but at a severely discounted cost.

Brandon: That's exactly the ticket.

Steve: Right? Because you see the the URL is gonna line up with your brand.

Brandon: Mhmm.

Steve: So, a, your keyword quality score isn't really good. And then b, they can see it. Like, that's the company.

Brandon: And usually, it is cheap. Sometimes it's not we have a client where even if we put a $10,000 ad spend a month towards branded, we still can only hit, like, 70% of their brand of traffic Really? Because they have just so much, and they're so wildly competitive. And there's other companies where you could just, like, get it covered for $200 a month. Yeah.

So it depends on how competitive it is, and it depends on, how much volume it gets. Right. One thing that really helps you like, if anybody's listening to this and they're just trying to choose company names that are really friendly Mhmm. To this kind of thing, Onward Financial Solutions, it's a maybe. Because I don't know how many searches there are for, like, financial solutions.

Probably a

Steve: good amount. But we wouldn't we wouldn't do it unless there's Onward. We have the plus Yeah. Onward.

Brandon: Yeah. Like, I'll I'll give an example. We worked with a company, and they had two brands. Mhmm. They had one brand for TV, one brand for, like, all their direct mail.

They send it to them direct mail. I know it's wacky, but you you and I probably know a lot of people like that in these kinds of situations. Yeah. So one of their brands was and I'm trying to, like, be, like, really inspecific because I don't wanna give away anybody. But one of their brands was, like, location and then home buyer.

Mhmm. Right? So, like, an example for here would be Phoenix Homebuyer. Mhmm. Right?

The other brand was sell to and then the name of the person. Mhmm. Right? Which one do you think had a really, really expensive branded campaign?

Steve: Sell to. No? No. Oh, the home buyers are just generic.

Brandon: Because it's generic. So here's the thing. Let's just say I'm the other guy in the market, and I just have, like, these home buyers keywords and stuff like that. And it's like Phoenix Homebuyers Mhmm. Is the name of the company.

Well, I'm targeting your brand whether I'm trying to target your brand or I'm not because the fact that it says home buyers in it matches to some other keywords I have that aren't even, like, me trying to, like, take you down. Mhmm. It's just just the nature of it. Versus sell to Steve Mhmm. If that were a company, like, that doesn't accidentally show up when it doesn't accidentally match to a keyword that's trying to be something different.

So that's one thing for you to think about is, like, how generic is my brand. Mhmm. The more generic my brand is, the more likely I have competition, whether I want to or not.

Steve: Unintended competition.

Brandon: Unintended competition. Yep. Exactly. Versus if it's, like, sell to Steve, then maybe I'll still have competition on it. Mhmm.

But those are people that are, like, saying, I wanna target Steve's traffic Right. And I'm gonna specifically go after it, which is actually a good strategy for keywords. If you can find other people that do, like, a lot of TV or radio radio advertising, get a ton of search volume, that's the right kind of stuff.

Steve: Yeah. We have, we have out here. So we have Doug Hopkins. We have Andrew the house buyer. For the longest time, we had 72 sold.

Brandon: Are they not around anymore? I don't

Steve: think they're relevant anymore.

Brandon: I know. At one point, they had massive, massive surge of volume, but the lead quality wasn't great.

Steve: Well, they weren't great for peep for buying houses. Yeah.

Brandon: Maybe for a realtor.

Steve: For a realtor. Right? But they were every minute. They were freaking, sponsoring in the stadiums and, like, the Mhmm. Super Bowl and all this other stuff.

So but, yeah, I think, that that makes a lot of sense. The the analogy of standing outside a restaurant, that makes total sense. I think that was a perfect analogy.

Brandon: Yeah. So yeah. I mean, so that's those are some things that you wanna think about, like, when you're thinking through, like, different keywords and stuff like that. And don't just think because someone came through your PPC landing page that PPC deserves the credit for it. Mhmm.

I'd say if it's a generic term, PPC 100% deserves credit for it. If it's a branded term, usually, the way that we treat those is that PPC kind of assisted that conversion, but it came from wherever it came from, and you have to ask the person

Steve: where

Brandon: they found you. That's the whole way to deal with it. Yeah.

Steve: They're standing outside the door.

Brandon: Basically. Yeah. And it doesn't mean that, like, you didn't have I mean, because I mean, that that's, like, that's an aggressive analogy because it, like, undermines, like, the value that branded campaigns do have. Like, I'm not saying you shouldn't run campaigns that are branded. Just, like you said, at a heavily discounted cost.

And sometimes it's pretty cheap. Yeah. Oftentimes, the strategy that we use you know, we talked about bid strategies. There's a type of automated bid strategy called a target impression share Mhmm. Where you can target basically a 100% of the time being the very top of the page.

Mhmm. We'd often use that for branded campaigns where you're just telling Google, you have up to a thousand dollars to spend each month, but I just wanna get the cheapest way that I possibly can while just making sure I'm at the top all the time. Mhmm. And oftentimes, you'll find that to be pretty cost effective. In some cases, it's not, and that's when you gotta start looking at other things, and then you have to start making trade offs of like, if I had to have that conversation with clients before, like, I know because people get, like, egotistical with their brand where it's like, I just gotta be there a 100% of the time.

And then at some point, I'm like, okay. In platform, we're seeing that we're paying $500 per lead that we get from that. Probably 75% of those people are gonna find you anyways. That means we're paying $2,000 per incremental lead we get from your brand.

Steve: Mhmm.

Brandon: Meanwhile, we're paying $300 for fully incremental leads from the other stuff. Like, it just doesn't make sense. Right. And you have to control it.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. No. Our ego can get in a way. I think that was there was that was even a book.

Right? So, if you guys, are are are still listening, you guys are are getting a ton of value, you know, go to batemancollective.com/toolkit-disruptors, to get access to all the different toolkits. It's fascinating. You showed me the, on the screen all the different things you can get from it. It's really kinda nuts.

So, batemancollective.com/toolkit-disruptors, or go to batemancollective.com/disruptors if you wanna talk to Brandon and his team about any of the strategies we've talked about so far. And then make sure you tune into the next one. We're gonna be talking about location and budget strategy. So, hope hopefully, you guys enjoyed this one, and we'll see you guys on the next one.