[00:00:10.370] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:10.850] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:11.210] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:13.010] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:15.110] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected us and our businesses, as self-employed people, over the last seven days. Welcome back.

[00:00:29.450] - Taylor
Welcome back.

[00:00:29.450] - Gordon
So this week has been quite a busy one for me because it was the first week of rehearsal for Pantomime.

[00:00:36.830] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:00:36.830] - Gordon
So we had our read-through on the Monday, and then on Wednesday we had a slightly unusual rehearsal. I had a good friend of mine called Juggling John, who is fantastic. He came and did a circus workshop for everybody. So a very unusual rehearsal. And it was great fun. We did all sorts of things. We learned how to juggle three balls. Scarves. We had diablo. You like diablo, don't you?

[00:01:08.810] - Taylor
Yeah. I like diablo.

[00:01:08.810] - Gordon
We had Poi, which is the things you see at festivals. We had juggling clubs, and we also had spinning plates.

[00:01:19.310] - Taylor
Okay.

[00:01:19.730] - Gordon
So everyone got to have a go at all of those. And hopefully it's sort of given someone or some of the people in the cast a little bit of a spark to go and practise, and we end up getting a skill in the Pantomime, which makes it much better. Other than that, it was just a really good time to, you know, get together and have a bit of a team building experience.

[00:01:44.930] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely.

[00:01:45.530] - Gordon
So that was good. Any news from you? You had the Apple event? Was that interesting to you?

[00:01:50.210] - Taylor
Yeah. The Apple event. I wanted to get a new MacBook, but I will hold off for the time being.

[00:01:55.430] - Gordon
Okay. What did you like? So just to let you know, Apple had an announcement on Monday and they announced brand new MacBook Pros. What did you like in particular that...?

[00:02:06.350] - Taylor
I think just mainly the speed and the new CPU and stuff.

[00:02:11.450] - Gordon
And you find that yours isn't fast enough?

[00:02:14.150] - Taylor
It's not that it's not fast enough, but obviously it could be better. It could be faster.

[00:02:17.450] - Gordon
Okay.

[00:02:18.110] - Taylor
I also like the 16 inch because I currently have a 13 inch, which would be nice to upgrade and get a bigger screen.

[00:02:24.470] - Gordon
As long as it fits in your backpacks and everything else.

[00:02:28.190] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:02:28.190] - Gordon
Because otherwise you won't have the ability to carry it around easily.

[00:02:32.690] - Taylor
Yeah. True.

[00:02:34.250] - Gordon
So let's get into this week's topics. So this week we are going to talk all about "Google Ads." That used to be called "AdWords," but it changed a while back and it's now called Google Ads. And the reason that I want to talk about this today is because I've just had a Google Ads account set up for me for my Pip Kennedy website. So, I should explain why I've done it like this, and who I got to do it. So I have a website for my Pip Kennedy performances, which is when I perform for adults. And that's normally close up at sort of a private party or corporate or at weddings, that sort of event. Pretty much anything that's not a children's show. And it's a website that I did while we were in lockdown, and I had a lot of help from Taylor, so thank you for that again.

[00:03:34.550] - Taylor
You're welcome.

[00:03:35.750] - Gordon
And it looks stunning. I'm really really pleased with it. Go and have a look. Pipkennedy.co.uk. It's a great site, I'm very pleased with it. And for my children's shows, I get lots of repeat business. I get people who refer me, word of mouth. But I don't get a lot of that for my Pip Kennedy performances. And the reason for that is I don't get a lot of those enquiries coming in. So that was why I decided, about a year ago in fact, that I wanted to do Google Ads. Now, Google Ads for those who don't know, is a 'pay per click' or 'PPC' advertising format. And the idea is that you have an advert, you give it keywords, and when people search for those keywords, your advert will pop up and you are bidding against other people in the same sector using the same keywords so that you can be higher up. And if somebody clicks on your link and goes to your website as an advert, then you get charged an amount of money for that click. And the more you bid, the higher up you go, and the more you will pay every time someone clicks on your ad. So that is the very very basic idea of Google Ads. There's lots of other bits that it does like Google Ads display, and all sorts of other things, but we'll keep it very simple for the moment, because that's what I've done. Now, I didn't know a great deal about Google Ads. I still don't know a great deal about it. So I employed a professional who is a Google certified Ad... No, Google Ads certified developer. They set up Google Ad accounts basically. And he's also a magician. His name is James Hailes, and he basically took on the whole job for me. I sort of said to him, "I want a Google Ads account set up for this website," and he went away and he did it all.

[00:05:43.610] - Taylor
Okay.

[00:05:44.090] - Gordon
So there's quite a bit that needs to be done. For example, you need to set up the account first of all. You then need to attach a bank account or a Visa or debit card, Visa, debit or Mastercard. You then need to make sure that the website that you are sending people to is suitable for Google Ads. Not every website is suitable. So you need to make sure that it's going to be worth your while setting up a Google Ads account. Then you've got to figure out what your keywords are going to be. And again, that's based on the actual website. What keywords does your website suggest as being good keywords to send people to your site? Because Google won't show your adverts if they're not a good fit for the keywords that you are bidding on. So, for example, I couldn't bid on "holidays in Orlando" because there's nothing in my website that suggests it's going to be of use to the people who click through on that ad. And Google are very particular about this. They want people who click on an ad to go to somewhere that's very highly relevant. Otherwise, it makes their search engine appear like it's not doing its job, and that's not going to earn them any money. So that's really important. Once you've got to that stage, you can then set up your campaign, which requires you to decide on what the ad is going to look like and what it's going to say. And again, that's really important. Having your headline right. Having your keyword, having the wording or the content in the advert is really important. Then you get to submit it to Google. They will then check that ad for you, to make sure that it's relevant, as we were talking about just a minute ago. And once they give you the go ahead, then you can set your campaign live. And it's at that point that the advert appears for people and you start to get charged. So James has set all this up for me. He's now going to spend the next month tweaking it. So you can put negative keywords in to your ads as well, to your campaigns. So basically, for me, I don't want to appear when people search for "Harry Potter party magic," because that's not going to be what I'm looking for. So "Harry Potter" would be a negative keyword. So if people were searching for that, my ad would not be shown. So that's something that needs tweaking over a period of time. So that's being done as we speak, that's being done at the moment. The other thing that I think maybe you could talk about Taylor, is conversions. So Google Ads will give you code that you can put on your website, and it will then track somebody that comes from Google, through your advert, to your website, and then takes an action, whatever action that is. And so they give you code to allow you to track that. Now that doesn't always work. It does depend on the user's browser and whether they've allowed these tracking mechanisms to happen. But, Taylor, do you want to talk about the developer side of it and the code that they give you and how you can use it to track things?

[00:09:30.150] - Taylor
Yeah. So the way that we have the form set up on the website is there is one pop up form, and they all use the exact same form and the exact same trigger. So it means that basically you kind of have different triggers, different buttons, but they all show the same form. So the first thing you need to do was being able to track when someone has converted from the site. So obviously you can track from when someone goes to your site. But what is your trigger? So for some people, it will be different things. Some people it will be a checkout page, some people it will be ringing a certain number, for some people it's filling in a form. So you first need to kind of decide what is your conversion? What do you count as a successful conversion?

[00:10:17.850] - Gordon
So for me, it's somebody filling in my enquiry form. I can't track conversions for bookings because that's normally a process that requires some interaction or a phone call, etc etc. So for me, my conversion is somebody clicking on my enquiry form, filling it in, and hitting the submit button.

[00:10:40.050] - Taylor
So there are lots of different forms you can use. You have plug-ins for WordPress or custom forms, and you basically need to be able to somehow track how, when it's been filled in. So the easiest method is to send them to page, a thank you page, and if someone lands on that page, you know they have obviously submitted your form. However, if you're not doing that, you need to hook into a JavaScript function, if it exists, that basically knows when a form has been submitted, completed or clicked on. There are lots of different ways to do that, and you can find on the internet, but that was the way we went. So we had a JavaScript hook that allowed us to be able to hook into, that when the form has been submitted, it runs a quick function and triggers our code that we need to run.

[00:11:36.930] - Gordon
Which is basically a callback to Google, isn't it?

[00:11:39.750] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:11:39.750] - Gordon
To let them know that an event has happened.

[00:11:44.370] - Taylor
Yes.

[00:11:44.370] - Gordon
So, normally, as Taylor was saying, you would have a thank you page. That means that if someone fills in your form, you take them to a completely new page, which basically says 'thank you for filling in this form.' It could be a 'thank you for making a purchase page,' but it's a page that people will only ever see if they've taken that action. And that's a really good way of doing it. But the way that my site is set up, we don't have that because we have the same form on every page in the same place, so that it's in the menu bar, and it's always there. And the pop up comes over the top of the page that's currently loaded. And I didn't want to send them to another page because it might be that they've got some more things that they want to look at on the site. They've made an enquiry, but now they want to check something else. That's why I had it as a pop over. And that was a little bit tricky to begin with, wasn't it? Because we failed on the first attempt. Because what happens is once you've added your conversion code, you can tell Google Ads that you've added this code, and it will then check to make sure you've added it correctly to make sure it's seeing the conversion coming in; and it didn't, did it?

[00:13:01.530] - Taylor
No. There was something that basically wasn't triggering properly, but we managed to fix it.

[00:13:07.410] - Gordon
Yeah. Second time round, we managed to fix it. Now, it's been running for about four or five days now, and I've currently got it set at £6 a day. So that is my maximum budget, and it will get to the point when it's shown my advert and the clicks have happened up to £6, and then it will stop. Now, even at £6 a day, we're still looking at, what is it? 6 threes are 18. £180 ish a month, which is quite a lot.

[00:13:47.230] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:13:47.710] - Gordon
£6 a day doesn't sound much, but it's the sort of thing you can change and you can alter. And obviously the more you spend, the more enquiries you're going to get. And Google know this, that's why they allow you to set that budget so that you can manage your advertising without it getting out of control. Because that can be something that is very detrimental to a business. You know, if you put £10 a day, £300 a month, that's £3600 a year. That is a lot of money and only if you are making conversions, is it worth doing. Now obviously, if I'm spending £6 in a day and I'm getting at the end of the week, what's a week? £6 a day times seven is... 6 sevens are... What are 6 sevens Taylor? 35 is five sevens, 35, 42. So I'm spending £42 a week. So if during the first week I take one booking, which is worth £400, then I've spent £42. I've taken £400. So it's sort of 10% of my return on investment. And that's a, for me that's a reasonable return on investment. I always look at it as being sort of 10%. So whatever I spend, I want to make ten times that amount on the investment and that's quite a low percentage. A lot of people would be very happy with spending 40% to get 60% return on investment, and that's up to the individual. For me, I've always kept it at 10% because that is a very good return on investment, and that's what my aim is. Yours may be different. You may find spending 90% to get a 10% return on your investment, so that's a 10% over and above what you've already spent.

[00:16:04.810] - Taylor
But if you're turning over, for example, 10 million and you spend 9 million, 1 million is still a good turn over.

[00:16:12.310] - Gordon
Return on investment. Yeah exactly. You have to make...

[00:16:16.090] - Taylor
It's all relative to... You know, there are 'drop shippers,' the people that do drop shipping on Amazon and stuff, and they have half a million pounds in advertising that they spend. But they turn over, you know, over a million a month.

[00:16:33.430] - Gordon
So they're making half a million. Their return on investment is half a million. So I mean, yes, it would be great if everybody was able to get the... Someone at our front door. You carry on. Talk about Google Ads versus organic.

[00:16:55.830] - Taylor
Sorry about that. We just had someone at the door. So my dad's just gone to accept it. But yes, I mean, Google Ads can be kind of really useful for a lot of things. It's a way of knowing that the people that are going to be landing have come because they're searching for a specific thing, and you're essentially answering their question that they have. So if they say, "I want a magician in Croydon, that's keywords 'Croydon' and obviously 'magician' are going to be things that my dad is looking for. So that's obviously going to be targeted, and they're going to be interested in that, rather than just happening to stumble across it when searching for red shoes, you know that they're going to be pre-warmed and know that they're going to be somewhat interested.

[00:17:47.370] - Gordon
Look at that seamless. You would never have known that I went away and came back.

[00:17:51.390] - Taylor
No.

[00:17:51.750] - Gordon
This is the joy of doing live shows. That was a delivery we had. I didn't even know... It's for Mum.

[00:18:00.030] - Taylor
Of course.

[00:18:00.030] - Gordon
So she gets more deliveries than anyone in this family. But luckily, the dog let us know and they pressed the doorbell.

[00:18:09.390] - Taylor
The dog pressed the doorbell?

[00:18:10.350] - Gordon
No, they pressed the doorbell not the dog. Because we have our doorbell... We've got a Ring doorbell and it's set up with our Alexa devices so that they announce that there's someone at the door. But when we're recording our live shows on a Friday, we always unplug the Alexa that's in this room, so we never hear it going. So apologies for that. Hopefully that didn't ruin your viewing and listening enjoyment. I don't know what Taylor said. I wasn't here. But I'm guessing that he told you all about organic versus paid. The one thing he may not have said, I hope you didn't, is that with Google Ads, you can switch it on and off. So if, for example, you've got a really busy few months coming up, then you don't need to advertise. So you can pause it. So you can stop spending money while you're going through this really busy period. And as soon as you can see you're getting to a period when you're not so busy, you can switch it back on again. So this, in my opinion, is a really good alternative to SEO. And in fact, I would go as far to say that SEO is not as worth doing these days when you've got Google Ads, because you could spend a lot of money on somebody, or yourself and the time it takes to Search Engine Optimise your website and then find that Google have made a change in their algorithm overnight, and all of the work you've done has just been completely wiped out and you have to start from scratch and do it all over again and pay someone to Search Engine Optimise your site again, or do it yourself again. At least with Google Ads, you have the control, you know how much you're spending. You know, if you're going to be busy that you can turn it off. You know that if it's going to be a quiet month next month, you can turn it on. And providing you've got to the point when your ad is working really well and your website is converting. And that's again, a really important thing we mentioned earlier, making sure that your website is converting, then you can just use it as a sort of a way to earn money. Turn it off, turn it on when you need to. And that's something I think is really important with Google Ads. And so if anyone says to me these days, "can we Search Engine Optimise my site?" My reply to them is, "don't look at it that way, look at doing Google Ads." Because I think you'll find that that is a better return on your investment both in time and money. It's just the way things have gone really. I think sites that have been going for a long, long time. I've got lots of sites that have been going for tens of years now. I think they do really well, but they're based on the fact that the website has been there for so long. It's got this longevity, that Google sees it as being a solid website. And so therefore, it has more confidence in recommending the site, knowing it's been there for a while. But if you're just starting out and you've just bought your domain name, you don't have that advantage. You don't have that age advantage. So instead of Search Engine Optimising, go the Google Ads route. That, I think, is everything I want to say. Do you, have you got anything to add?

[00:21:45.850] - Taylor
No, that's everything I think.

[00:21:47.230] - Gordon
Good. So hopefully that has given you a bit of an insight into Google Ads. If you want some more information, then I'm more than happy to pass on James Hailes' information. He is very very good at this, he knows what he's doing. He is a magician, and so if you're a magician he's got inside information that will help with that. If you're not a magician, he has enough information and knowledge to know how to promote different businesses. So give me a call, I'm happy to pass on his details. Until next week at 1pm, you can follow, like, share and subscribe with us on YouTube and on Facebook.

[00:22:32.050] - Taylor
You can also go to our website: thisweekwith to find all of our past episodes and see any of the topics that we've spoken about.

[00:22:38.110] - Gordon
thisweekwith.co.uk.

[00:22:40.150] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:22:40.570] - Gordon
That's the website address. Until next week at one o'clock on Friday, my name's Gordon, I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:22:47.890] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from the Creative Tinker.

[00:22:50.230] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:22:50.830] - Taylor
Bye.

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Show Notes