513: Ilana Wechsler – Google Ads for photographers like you’ve never heard before

513: Ilana Wechsler - Google Ads for photographers like you’ve never heard before

 

Andrew Hellmich: Today's guest is a former data analyst turned pay per click or PPC expert, and almost 10 years ago, she founded Green Arrow Digital, a digital agency specializing in Pay Per Click marketing for businesses. And then came her other business Teach Traffic, and that's the one you may have heard mentioned in the interview with marketing expert James Schramko from Episode 494. When asked about traffic generation in that interview, James immediately stopped me, and he said, "You need to speak to Ilana from Teach Traffic. She is the true expert on the topic." And as James mentioned, and I've since learned, Ilana is an authority on Google AdWords, Facebook advertising, as well as content marketing strategies for a variety of businesses and Teach Traffic is where she teaches business owners exactly how to run profitable digital ad campaigns for themselves without needing an agency. I'm talking about Ilana Wechsler, and I'm rapt to have her with us now. Ilana, welcome.

Ilana Wechsler: Thank you so much. I'm really stoked to be here.

Andrew Hellmich: So I immediately know you're an Aussie. I'm sure the listener will too just by the fact you use the word 'stoked'. That's an Aussie thing, isn't it?

Ilana Wechsler: I guess, so, revealing myself too much already.

Andrew Hellmich: So you're based in Sydney, Australia. How did you get into PPC advertising?

Ilana Wechsler: Oh god, how long have we got? I will try and abbreviate the version, because I know this is just the intro, as you touched on. I was a former data analyst, contrary to like these, you know, typical entrepreneurial stories, I actually loved my job, and I worked in corporate and I had no intention of leaving like I wasn't somebody who dreamed of starting my own business at all, actually, but basically corporate life and family life are kind of like oil and water, and they don't really mix. So when I had my first child, I basically couldn't go back to part time work, and I had a, yeah, pretty bad pregnancy complication in the late stages of pregnancy, so that kind of caused me to re-evaluate life and my priorities. And so I thought, well, "I can't work part time, and if I work full time, I'll only see my son on weekends, and that's not an option." So I made the difficult and also not so difficult choice to leave my career, and I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do, like I really didn't. And as I said, it's a really long story. I'm going to really try and abbreviate it, but basically, I thought, what are my skills? I thought, I've got really good Microsoft Excel skills. So I thought maybe I can help companies with Microsoft Excel, because I used to link up with databases and your, you know, very complicated formulas and all that fun stuff. And so I put an ad on gumtree.com.au, which is, you know, kind of like a Craigslist for your US listeners, for Excel Help. And to my surprise, I actually had people respond. So I started doing Excel consulting, and then I thought, I need a website. So I bought excelhelp.com.au, and I taught myself how to build a website, that took a while. And then, to my surprise, I thought, build it, and they will come. And build it, they did not come. And so began my passion for traffic. Actually, through that start, and very quickly, I realized, hang on a minute, this traffic thing, there's something in it, rather than this Excel consulting work that I was doing, this traffic thing is actually really important skill to learn and to have in lots of different industries. And so I ended up starting an agency, and you know, my first clients, I said "Look, full disclosure, you're my guinea pigs, like I really don't know." So I charged them basically nothing, just to learn. And I started as just a Google ad agency. I'd like to say that was a very strategic decision, but it really wasn't. It's just because that's all I wanted to do. As soon as I found Google ads, I thought, "This is my love language. This is my I found my data home", and yeah, I literally just did Google ads for businesses, and it grew beyond my wildest expectations. That's the honest truth. Like I never ever thought that I would grow an agency, and I had clients all around the world, and got to a point where I was like, "I've got calls at 11 o'clock at night and six o'clock in the morning, because I'm the one in the annoying time zone", you know. And I had three kids by this stage, and I just thought, "Oh my God, this is, this has grown kind of way beyond what I ever imagined", and I feel forever grateful of that experience. But I just thought, yeah, growing an agency is kind of not one of my life goals. So then I launched Teach Traffic, which is the community where I help people run traffic campaigns so that they don't need an agency. Because I genuinely believe for most businesses, especially with an ad spend at five or $10,000 a month, you really don't need an agency. And so it's my passion to really help people. You know, all the money that they're spending is on ad spend, rather than ad spend plus huge agency fees. And I guess that says a lot from somebody who, I still have my agency. But, yeah, mainly teach people now, there you go. That's my story.

Andrew Hellmich: So good, so good. It sounds like a huge success story. So why keep the agency or is someone else looking after it? Now, because it sounds like you're so busy.

Ilana Wechsler: Good question. I actually sold half my agency. I would have loved to have sold all, but I felt ethically I couldn't teach if I didn't still do, and I let these do, still do somewhat. So I strategically, kind of have a handful of clients in all lots of different industries, a couple of Ecomm, couple of lead gen, couple of like, you know, membership kind of sites. So I get the exposure across all the different industries, and honestly, that's what keeps me sharp so I can help my community, because if you don't run traffic, it changes so quickly. So for example, you know, one of Google's latest things that they're heavily, heavily promoting is performance max campaigns, right? Maybe your listeners have got a call from Google directly, and these people are sales people, so they are pitching this hard. And if I just listen to these Google people and what they're saying, I would have a very, very different perception of what it actually is, you know? So you've got to be able to, well, I have to run my own traffic and see my and experience things. So that one of the problems with performance max, and I know this is probably beyond the scope of the interview, but it illustrates the point, is that it cannibalizes all your other campaigns. Now, Google won't tell you this. Google won't tell you that if you launch a performance max campaign, your existing campaign won't get any impressions or data. It's because it's a high priority campaign. So by running my own traffic, I have the current exposure to what's actually really happening on the ground, and I can help people go look. Just make sure you realize this. If you do this, this is going to happen, etc. That's just one example. So that's, that's to answer your question of why I didn't fully sell my agency.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, no, that's a great reason. I mean, everyone loves to learn from someone who's actually in the trenches and doing what they're teaching rather than just teaching, because it gets outdated so quickly.

Ilana Wechsler: Traffic is one of those things that like, I guess it's what keeps me in a job, right? Is that it just changes so quickly. And I also have, like, in my 10 years of running an agency, which is kind of like dog years, I would say, is that I've helped so many different people in so many different niches, and I've probably tested every offer under the sun, every funnel in every niche, like I kind of got an unfair advantage, I guess, in what works and what doesn't work, and every niche, there are nuances in it. And so, yeah, I kind of distill a lot of that knowledge for people.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So if I come to your new website, Teach Traffic or the business that you're passionate about right now, like, how do I get started? Like, I imagine if I came to you and you were consulting to me, and I'm a photographer, and I said, "Hey, Ilana, I just want more traffic." Like, would your first answer be, "Okay, let's run Google ads. Let's run Facebook ads." Or would you say, "Hang on a second, either website even converting. Where are we going to send this traffic?" Like, does it start before the traffic?

Ilana Wechsler: It definitely starts before the traffic. One of the first questions I guess I ask people is, 'How have they got traction to date', right? Like the customers that they have had and good customers, how have they found you like in the first place? I always found my job as an agency person of, twofold, first identifying what is currently working for people, so I can just pour rocket fuel on it and identifying what doesn't work for people, so that we can just stop doing that. And so it's that sort of, that identification of both those things, which is a good, often a good starting point, but it often is not the end point. It's just sometimes helpful, especially if people have tried things in the past, that we can kind of get an indication of what's working and what's not working. Because I want people to get quick wins, like straight away. The other thing is, you know, I guess, for photographers, I would urge your listeners to, I guess, encourage them in that there's probably lots of right ways. It's not black and white. You might talk to 10 different photographers who run 10 different traffic strategies, and they all kind of work in their own way. It's so it's there's not like, it's not like a mathematical equation where if it's right, it's right, and if it's wrong, it's wrong. There are lots of ways to make it work. You've got to kind of got to work out what's right for you and your business. So Facebook ads, we were just saying just before we hit record. I am not a fan of Facebook ads, actually, and that's a big call from someone like myself, who, I run Facebook ads for people, but it's a dog's breakfast at the moment, it's been amazing, and many businesses have grown. Their businesses incredibly well with Facebook, but since the iOS update and all the privacy stuff it is, you know, it's a roller coaster ride. It's white knuckle stuff. One day you're up, the next day you're down. It's really volatile. And for most people, they don't like that. I don't like that. So I want something that's incredibly stable and consistent, and I kind of just can set and forget, and it can just run as much as possible, kind of on its own. And I guess that's why my preference has always been with running Google ads over Facebook ads, because of the huge level of intent. So if you're a photographer, in Terrigal, right? And I'm getting married in Terrigal, I don't go to Facebook to find a photographer. I go to Google, right? And I type in wedding photographer Terrigal, or wedding photographer near me, or wedding photographer New South Wales. So I've eliminated the variable of, is this person interested in a photographer, they've literally just typed it into Google, right? So it's like sliding my business card under the nose of someone at the instant that they've searched for it. So if you can't get Google search traffic to convert, maybe it's not even profitable, but it's a starting point, then I would say there's a problem kind of with your website. So that is often my starting point for people, right?

Andrew Hellmich: So let's say I have people coming to my website but not booking then you would say, "Okay, we need to get the website working first before we start sending more traffic there". That would make sense.

Ilana Wechsler: I would suggest that, yes, but it might be a situation of, you know, let's say I'm getting married in Terrigal, and I want to look around a little bit. I'm not quite ready to commit to contacting this particular wedding photographer, which I would say is perfectly understandable. I want to browse their gallery of photos, and I want to get a sense. So therefore, you need to do a retargeting campaign, right? You need to, as awful as it sounds, have ads that follow them around a little bit, right? "Oh, reminder. You know, like, here's some of our latest shots", or perhaps, when they get to the website, there's some really useful guide that they can download, that it's free, and you've got a way of capturing their details and giving them value before they're actually quite ready to purchase. So I find, you know, like most people just go straight for the sale when people just maybe need a little bit of time.

Andrew Hellmich: Cool, all right, I want to ask you more about retargeting just a second. Let's say I've tried Google ads and I've had no success with them in the past. Like, have they changed? Should I go back and explore them. Or do you think immediately, like, what comes into your head? "Hey, you're probably doing something wrong."

Ilana Wechsler: I'll tell you honestly what comes into my head. Yeah, they've done it wrong. They've fallen for the Google gotchas. I've actually got a Google gotcha guide, because it's, I just see this all the time. It's honestly got to a point where I have to ask someone, did you set this up yourself, either without getting any help or just following the Google prompts. And if they answer yes, I know exactly what they've done. I don't even actually need to look what they've done. Is they've created either a Smart Campaign, which is a dog's breakfast. Don't do that. If they haven't done that, then they have set up one campaign with one ad group and about 300 keywords in that one ad group with all the services that they offer, right? The problem with doing that is that success with Google ads is all about ad relevance, alright. So if I'm looking for a wedding photographer, I want to see ads that talk about wedding photographers. Okay. If I want to have a photographer for my family, for my baby photos, and I search for baby photographer, I want to see an ad that talks about baby photography. If you throw all those 300 keywords into the one ad group, that you can't control what ad is shown based on the keyword that it's attached to, okay. So account structure is the key to success with Google ads, so that you can force ad relevance. And Google rewards you with this by giving, they've got a metric inside Google Ads called quality score, which is a number from one to 10. 10 being the best, one being the worst. That if you get a good quality score, and you get a good quality score by people clicking on your ads and providing a good user experience for them, they reward you with lower cost per clicks. Okay, so you are incentivized to actually enforce ad relevance and provide a good experience for people through structure, and you're rewarded with low cost per click. So if you have had a bad experience with Google ads, and let me tell you, you are not alone. I have spoken to so many people who have lost their shirt or melted their credit card because they've just done it the wrong way. I encourage you to give it one more shot. Now I would say, for photographers, it's probably going to be high cost per clicks, okay, like, I don't know off the top of my head what it is. So you might, your listeners might be thinking, "Oh, but the cost per click is much cheaper on Facebook ads versus on Google." And I guess I would push back on that and say, but the level of intent on Google ads is so high that it's all about the cost per lead, that it's actually costing you to acquire that lead, you will get much higher conversion rates on Google than you will on Facebook.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay

Ilana Wechsler: That's the truth.

Andrew Hellmich: All right, before we go any deeper into this, and I've got thousand questions that are coming into my head, let me just take you back to when you said, if someone types into Google "Central Coast wedding photographer" or "Terrigal wedding photographer", then my ad should show up if it's done correctly. Immediately what comes into my mind, and I'm sure the listener as well, is that they’re SEO terms, how is Google ads? How do they tie into SEO, if at all?

Ilana Wechsler: They do not tie into SEO, Google ads is completely separate to SEO. I would argue, though, that it would be recommended to do Google Ads first to see what keywords are good in terms of generating new leads, that you then pour your efforts into SEO. So for example, many people start their business doing SEO first, right that "I want to rank for wedding photographer Sydney." Now that would be probably high traffic keyword, which would be really competitive and really difficult to rank for, but you don't actually know if that keyword, 'wedding photographer Sydney' is actually going to make the phone ring for you. You don't know if it's going to generate you leads. If you run Google ads, you can test a whole bunch of keywords to see which words actually convert to customers or sales that you then say to your SEO person, "Hey, you know what wedding photographer Terrigal is actually converts way better for me than Sydney, because I'm out of Sydney, so don't even bother trying to rank for that term. Let's just try and rank for these handful of terms which actually make the phone ring for me that are way easier to rank for and actually not going to cost me nearly the same amount of money", but yeah, the SEO rankings and Google ads are two completely separate beasts.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. Okay. Now, if I'm running a Google ad campaign, I can test or I can see a measure how well that's working, can't I? So I can see if I've got 100 leads, and then work out if my website's not working, or do I assume that the leads are no good? Like, how does that testing part work?

Ilana Wechsler: Good question. So the beauty with Google ads is it's all very, very trackable. You can set up phone call tracking. You can set up, obviously, online form tracking, so you have the full transparency at your fingertips to see that I've spent $100 or whatever, or $1,000 and I have generated 15 phone calls and four online form bookings, and therefore you can kind of weigh up whether it's worth it for you to continue. Google tell you everything when you run traffic. So they'll tell you what people actually typed into Google that triggered your ad that hopefully that person ended up contacting you. So that's called your search term report. They tell you what the language people actually use and that they typed into Google, which is really, really important, as I said, for SEO purposes, or, you know, blogging, if that's what you want to do as well. And you can see if there's certain terms that you don't want to rank for, for example, 'free wedding photographer Sydney', right?, that you might want to add as a negative keyword to say, "Google, actually, I don't want to show my ad for when somebody types in anything to do with free and so you can add that as a negative keyword, and Google will prevent your ad from showing in those instances.

Andrew Hellmich: Very cool. All right. And what earlier you said, I imagine, or I'm pretty sure, that the lead cost for a wedding photographer would be quite high. Why did you say that? Why do you feel that?

Ilana Wechsler: Not the lead cost, the click cost? So the way Google Ads work is it's an auction, okay. So a keyword costs a certain amount based on how many other people are bidding on that keyword. I'm just guessing it's probably expensive, because I would imagine lots of wedding photographers are bidding on that keyword, because that's how people find their wedding photographers, by generally going to Google. I don't know firsthand, but I'm just anticipating that it's probably not going to be a cheap keyword, but that's generally a good sign. That's a sign that people are actually bidding on this keyword and making it work for them, because then they wouldn't bid on it anymore. I'd be discouraged actually, if it was cheap. Probably like, "Oh, that's actually not a good sign." So competing in competitive markets is nothing to be afraid of. You've just kind of got to know how to compete and think a little bit left of center. Like, one of my clients actually still in my agency is a mortgage broker in Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, like, talk about competitive right? That's probably the most competitive place, right? So I'm not afraid of competitive markets. You just need to know how to compete in them in a really strategic way. And I kind of say to people think like a sniper, you know, just being hyper targeted, hyper focused, and yet that's how you can compete.

Andrew Hellmich: Like, can you give me an example of how that Beverly Hills broker would be hyper targeted? Like, are they narrowing down and not just going after all the Beverly Hills? Is that what you mean?

Ilana Wechsler: So we target certain regions within, you know, Los Angeles, number one, number two, we rather than I would never dream of bidding on the term 'mortgage broker Beverly Hills' like that's just competing against the big banks. I'm not even going to engage in that context. I'm going to think the way that their end user thinks, right? So some people might type in mortgage broker, and good luck to them. I'm not competing in that. But some people type in the specific kind of problem that they have. So they might type in, you know, 'zero tax income loan'. So people, there's a certain type of I've learned all about different mortgages through my help with this. So they type in the specific type of loan that they're looking for, you know, so rather than that big money keyword of mortgage broker. We also do a probably going to go a little bit off topic here, so forgive me, but we do a display campaign, which is banners on other people's websites. I think like LA Times is one of them, or New York Times restrict it in their target locations, and they show banners on those high traffic news websites just in the regions that they want to advertise. And they only pay when somebody clicks on their banner, so they get a ton of free branding because lots of people see their ads and don't click and that compliments, and that drives a lot of brand traffic, brand search traffic, because they advertise their rates in the banners. That's another component of the strategy. But by far, in a way, it's a search campaign for the specific types of loans that they offer, which the big banks just don't think to bid on those kinds of keywords, and we pay a fraction of the cost per click.

Andrew Hellmich: That is very, very cool. And you know, I've just got another string of questions about banner ads now for photography, hang on. Let me stay with it, just so that we're in the same ballpark as you. When you say 'wedding photography Central Coast' would probably be expensive. When you say expensive, I'm thinking, I don't know, $5 or $10 a click? Is that what you're thinking?

Ilana Wechsler: Honestly, I don't know. So I imagine photographers much like dentists. So actually, in my agency, this is a part of the story I didn't include, but I specialize my agency at one point for a couple of years in just Google ads for dentists. So I know their local business very, very well. And what worked really well in dental would absolutely apply to photographers. Would be a number of strategic campaigns. One campaign with would be very, very tight location targeting, like a five kilometer radius around where this person lives. And you'd say, you know wedding photographer near me, these near me type keywords are very mobile focused, so you can basically turn off desktop. And that worked incredibly well. And I would imagine that works very well for photographers. Another type of campaign which works very well in dental which would photographers as well would be like a suburb campaign. So rather than bidding on 'wedding photographer Sydney', I actually wouldn't even engage in that keyword at all. That would just be, you know, it would feel silly and just wasteful actually, you would bid on specific suburbs. Okay, so you were saying you grew up in Mona Vale, so 'wedding photographer Mona Vale', 'wedding photographer Avalon', 'wedding diy', and those kinds of surrounding suburbs that people generally wouldn't be bidding on, that would be definitely much cheaper cost per clicks you might find you could you definitely want to link up your Google Ad Account to the Google Maps, which is used to be called Google My business, it's now it's called, rebranded, I can never keep up with what it's called, but you basically link that Google business account to your Google ad account so you can have ads in the maps, which works very, very well.

Andrew Hellmich: That's cool.

Ilana Wechsler: You can't run a map only campaign, though. It has to be tied to a search campaign, and you just be really targeted in certain regions, you know.

Andrew Hellmich: I love it. This is so cool. So, Ilana, I have had some experience and success with Google ads.

Ilana Wechsler: Oh, great.

Andrew Hellmich: This is about 10 years ago, though, so quite a while ago, and at the time, I was learning what I could about Google ads, and I was getting clicks. And I think in the beginning, I was paying about two to $3 per click. And then what happened, other photographers in the area started to get in on the action, and the cost of my click was going up and up and up and up, and it went over $5 and that's when I sort of stopped doing it. Probably it was a bad decision, looking back and listening to what you're saying. But is that one of the things that is driving up the cost of the click, because I'm competing with other photographers?

Ilana Wechsler: Absolutely. Yeah, it is an auction. So that's why I suggest to your listeners to think outside the square a little bit in terms of keywords that you bid on that would not be as competitive and may not get the same amount of volume of traffic. That's okay. You just need more of those types of left of center keywords to get to the traffic numbers that you want. And what I find is those long tail, very hyper targeted terms actually convert better, you know.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So, can I give you an example? Let's say there's a popular venue where a lot of brides choose to get married. You'll see here on the Central Coast. Can I use that venue as a keyword for my photography business and then show up when someone types that keyword in?

Ilana Wechsler: You could, in theory, like, that's legal. Google, have no problem with you bidding on whatever keyword that you want, so long as this is the big thing, you don't say that you are that venue. So what's the name of the venue? Just so we could use an example.

Andrew Hellmich: Let's say 'Kim's restaurant'.

Ilana Wechsler: Kim's restaurant, okay, so you can bid on the keyword, 'Kim's restaurant'. I would probably wouldn't just bid on that. I would probably bid on Kim's restaurant, like functional, I don't know, but you can't say that you are Kim's restaurant. You've got to say 'wedding photographer, specialist for Kim's restaurant'. You can mention it in the ad copy, but you can't claim to be that business, because what Google don't want is, they don't want people searching for it and then clicking on the ad, thinking they're going to that restaurant,

Andrew Hellmich: Right. But I could then have say wedding photography at Kim's restaurant?

Ilana Wechsler: Absolutely

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. And that's theoretically what someone will be typing anyway, looking for a photographer who's actually been there. And then if someone clicks on that ad, would you suggest I send them to a blog post featuring photos at Kim's restaurant, or send them to my home page?

Ilana Wechsler: Well, that is the conundrum that many people face. Is where to send people. It depends, and you could split test it. You could send a portion of the traffic to the homepage and a portion of the traffic to the blog post. I would just really urge your listeners to try and imagine they are their target customer. They are that bride or groom who is searching for that wedding photographer. Where would they want to end up on your website? I would imagine that if I had committed to getting married at Kim's restaurant, that I would want to see what the photos are going to look like from that restaurant, right? I'm not interested in the nature shots or in the bush because it's on the beach. I'm making this up, obviously, right? So my goal here is to imagine myself in these photos. So what better way than to sort of showcase Kim's restaurant, and I can say, "Oh, that beautiful angle, like he nailed it there. Or the sunsets are amazing." I gotta make sure I get like a sunset shot. So I would imagine that sending it to that blog post would be more relevant to me. But I would just suggest to your listener that there is gotta be some way that people can contact you from that blog post.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. Got it. That makes total sense. This is, again, this is amazing. This is so good because I think we hear so much as photographers about Facebook ads. There's very, very little talk about Google ads, which tells me there's probably less competition for the listener. You mentioned retargeting before, and the news that we've all heard was that, you know, retargeting won't work anymore. Is that true?

Ilana Wechsler: That is not true. I still very much do retargeting for all our clients, and it's a important component to the overall digital strategy. I wouldn't say it's the only component to it. It's a compliment to it. I am a big fan, though, of retargeting on more than one platform. So for example, you might run Google search ads to get the right person to your website, but then I personally like retargeting them on Google and on Facebook, and often, that's what we do. Like we will have what's called cold traffic, so people who've never heard of you never come to your website, and we rely just solely on Google search ads to send the right traffic to the site. But then we will retarget on Google, Facebook and Instagram and various other platforms, if necessary, and I would imagine for photographers, retargeting on Facebook would be a no brainer. Here's a tip for your audience as well. Something which we've done successfully numerous times in the past, is we will retarget our existing customers, ideally recent customers, because what we want is for our happy customers, who are gushing from the photos and the beautiful wedding ceremony that they've just had when they go to social and they see their ad, I want them to comment, "Oh, my God, I had Andrew as my photographer. He was amazing", and suddenly my ad has got amazing social proof on there. And, yeah, we very strategically show ads to existing customers for that reason.

Andrew Hellmich: That is so good, that awesome tip. One of the things, or one of the friction points, I think, for photographers, for the listener, is we're dealing in quite low numbers compared to a lot of other businesses. You know, a lot of us are solopreneurs. You know, we, if we're a wedding photographer, we might only be photographing 30 weddings a year. You know, portrait photographers certainly shooting some more than that, but we find that the minimum requirements to do things like retargeting are sometimes too high. Is, are there ways around that, or are different ways to retarget without relying on huge numbers?

Ilana Wechsler: So you're right. You need a minimum of about thousand people in your list in order to retarget. So there's a number of things you can do. The first thing you can do is create an audience size of a quite a decent duration, time duration, so maybe 90 days. Okay, so maybe over 90 days, you'll get to thousand people. And so therefore that is enabling you to retarget. Now, obviously you're going to burn through that audience pretty quickly, so that there are other ways to sort of grow an audience. You can upload your database to Facebook, you can upload it to Google, but you need to have spent $50,000 in the lifetime of your account, so that might not suit some of your listeners, which is fine, but you can upload your database to Facebook, and obviously, hopefully you've got a minimum of thousand people on your database that you could do that for. You can also create engagement audiences, so they are audience of people who, let's say you've got a really active Instagram account or Facebook account, and they've never gone to your website. That actually doesn't matter, you can create an engagement audience of people who've engaged with your profile, be it you know, like one of your posts or your photos, and then you can show those people an ad, if maybe you've posted a video on social media. You can create an engagement audience of people who've watched a portion of your video, once again, even if they haven't gone to your website. It doesn't matter. I would argue that that's less targeted, but you know, it's under the guise of retargeting. Maybe you've got a YouTube channel, you can do the same on YouTube for Google so you can create an engagement audience on YouTube, so people who've watched any video of yours on your channel and then retarget them on the Google ecosystem.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it, absolutely, so at the most basic level, could I run a Google ad campaign, get traffic to my website and just retarget those people one at a time on Facebook. Or do I need that minimum of a thousand to even start retargeting?

Ilana Wechsler: You need that minimum of a thousand, yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: That's a thousand visitors, isn't it? I don't need a thousand email addresses in my database.

Ilana Wechsler: A thousand visitors. That's why I suggested creating an audience size for the longest duration, because that will remember people for the longest period. So on Facebook, the longest duration, or time that you, it will remember people is 180 days. So if you create, like a master audience list, and this is something that I'm a big fan of as well, so I teach people to create a number of different lists of different durations. So we've got our master list of all website visitors 180 days. So that's everyone who's come in the last six months. You can do the same on Google. Their longest duration that they allow is 540 days. So over a year.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. And then if I wanted to get started, I could run a Google ad campaign just on its own, to initially get traffic and then use that traffic that I've paid for, that I've got clicks through Google, and then retarget those same people.

Ilana Wechsler: Yep, absolutely.

Andrew Hellmich: I love it. So good. Okay, the quality score that you mentioned is that something we have to worry about in the beginning?

Ilana Wechsler: Not really. That's only really once your accounts been up and running for a little while, quality score is assigned at a keyword level, so your different keywords will have a different quality score. But really, if you implement the right structure that I am an advocate for, then you pretty much won't have a, you don't really have to worry about a bad quality score.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so I want to ask you about banner ads, but I want to finish a little bit here with the Google ads. Like, is there a course for beginners that you have, or did we start with your YouTube channel? Where do we learn to actually start our very own Google AdWords campaign?

Ilana Wechsler: Yep, I have a complete beginners course inside teachtraffic.com that walks you through, like, the big picture of Google ads and how to set up all the tracking and how to do keyword research, and step by step tutorials on how to create the campaigns without falling for the money wasting mistakes or the Google gotchas I mentioned. So yeah, it's all there and ready to go inside my community.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so that's if we go to teachtraffic.com/training?

Ilana Wechsler: Correct. Yep, that's it.

Andrew Hellmich: I'm just on that page here. There's a big reason why, according to research from Unbounce, an estimated 98% of paid ads fail. That's incredible.

Ilana Wechsler: I know, right? And I I've seen some doozies, let me tell you, in my years.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, I'm just on your page here, the training page. Is there one particular course we should start with, or just anywhere?

Ilana Wechsler: I would say, probably, depending on what your listeners would want to do, I would probably start with a Google search course. But maybe, you know, they're running successful Facebook ads. They just want to improve it better. Then, you know, it really depends, like, I'd hate to kind of give people a one size fits all approach, so.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, sure. Well, I'll have links to that in the show notes, but the listener can go to teachtraffic.com/training, and have a look there. You said something that really piqued my interest there with the banner ads. As a small photographer, you know, small business, can I run banner ads, you know, in my local area, you know, on newspaper, like you said, or, you know, popular blogs, things like that in my area that my local people will see?

Ilana Wechsler: Absolutely, yep. So the big requirement is that whatever website you want to advertise on, they need to allow Google ads on there. So, for example, I don't allow Google ads on my website. So you couldn't advertise on my site. So there are a bunch of websites. Like, there's over 2 million websites that allow Google ads, and most publisher sites like, that's their primary way that they make money, because they earn money when people click on the ads on their website. So for example, Sydney Morning Herald, you know, allows Google Ads, news.com.au, eBay. I mean, there's literally over 2 million websites. So rather than advertising on there for all their kind of listeners, Australia wide, you could say, I want to advertise on there, but only in a five kilometer radius around where my photography business is, and it's restricted to that. And you might find I don't even want to advertise on a mobile. I want advertise people when they're on their desktop in my region. You can be as granular as you like, right?

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so I could do some research. And I don't know if there's an easy way to do that, I could do some research and find where my, let's say, with wedding photography, my prospective bride and grooms will be searching online see if there's any, am I looking for banner ads or Google ads? Like what am I specifically looking for to know if that site runs ads?

Ilana Wechsler: You are looking for banners, and in the top right hand corner, you'll see if it's a Google ad or not. One of my other kind of favorite, there's another tip for your listeners - approach is…

 
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Andrew Hellmich: … so it sounds like you're thinking that I'm overthinking things. And if I've got a website that converts, I can just direct traffic to my website.

Ilana Wechsler: Exactly, yep. I mean, you gotta remember, like, as I said earlier, like you're getting in front of people at the instant that they're searching for it. You know, it's a different moment that somebody's in when they go on to Google and typed in 'wedding photographer Terrigal' to when they're scrolling through their Facebook feed waiting for their coffee to come and they're just looking for to pass the time, they're in a different mindset. It's a different moment, you know.

Andrew Hellmich: Yes

Ilana Wechsler: And so therefore, you know, like, yeah, like, it's just, it's a different experience.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, I'm not scrolling through my Facebook feed looking for stupid videos and things and what friends are doing? I'm actually, I'm shopping.

Ilana Wechsler: Well, you've got intent, like, you've got like, you've taken time out of your day to go to Google to search for something and actually do your research. You know, rather than, you know, the different reasons people go to Facebook mainly for entertainment purposes, like, maybe they're sitting on the couch at night and there's, you know, the ads come up on the TV show they're watching, and they're just entertaining themselves while that ad's finally up, and they see you're out, and go, "Oh, this sounds interesting." And then they opt in for it, and then they never open your email because the moment's gone and they've forgotten about why they signed up in the first place. You know, which is what I find often happens. It's like, even in my business, you know, like, I used to run a lot of Facebook ads, and I just found the quality, like, wasn't that great. And then actually, I ran a lot of YouTube ads for my Teach Traffic business. And yes, the cost per lead was higher on an absolute level, but the quality of the subscriber and the quality of the customer would, you just literally couldn't compare, you know? So you kind of can't think in absolute terms. You've got to really think about the platforms and at the moment that somebody's in.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. You know how on Facebook, I can go into someone's page and have a look at the ads they're running, if they're currently running ads. Can I do the same with Google?

Ilana Wechsler: You can. You can't do it in the Google ad platform, there are spy tools that will tell you what keywords people are bidding on. So you can see that in terms of their banners, you've got to use a different spy tool to see what banners that they're running. But they might not, because a lot of the spy tools are very US centric, and it's only really for big advertisers, so.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, again, am I over analyzing and thinking these things? Just try it and see how I go myself without worrying about the competition.

Ilana Wechsler: I would, I would definitely do some research to see what keywords competitors are bidding on, like that's always helpful as a starting point. I'd do a Google search yourself and see how, what, who is advertising, I would it's awful to say click on the ads, but mainly just to see their landing page, see where people, what offers people are running, do some competitive intel. And I do think, though you're probably overthinking it a little bit, and just kind of start really, really small in a really tight location. And you could just, you know, set a budget of $20 a day and just see what happens and let it sort of grow and build from there.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, awesome. I've got one last question for you. I don't know if I am the norm, but when I do a Google search and I see the three or four or five ad options that come up at the top of page one I tend to sort of skip past those a bit and go down to the organic results. Is that what most people are doing?

Ilana Wechsler: If I had a dollar for every time somebody said to me, "Ah, those Google ads. I never click on those ads." I tell you, people do. They totally do. Yes, there are always going to be those people who never click on the ad. But the beautiful thing is that if nobody clicks, you haven't paid a thing, so you only pay when somebody clicks on your ad. Much different to Facebook, where most people pay for an impression, they pay for your ad to be seen. So if nobody clicks, no dramas hasn't cost you anything. And I would also say that if you set it up right to have the ad in the Google Maps, you will see that actually the ad that's in the map is pretty well disguised. Really does not look like an ad. And actually one other thing as well, when you set up your ad the right way with what's called ad extensions, which is additional components that you can add to your text ad to give you more Google real estate doesn't cost you anymore. It just adds more real estate. When you're on a mobile phone, you can basically dominate the entire screen of somebody. So I did a lot of this in the dental space, where we would add on all these ad extensions. As I said, it doesn't cost any extra. In fact, Google loves you for doing this, because more people click on your ad and on a mobile device, our ad would take up the entire screen.

Andrew Hellmich: Wow, that is really cool. So again, is this covered in one of your courses?

Ilana Wechsler: Yep, absolutely. It's ad extensions.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, awesome. I've done a quick search while I've been chatting to you for Central Coast wedding photographers, and there's one or two. It looks like everyone stopped doing it. It's amazing. So it's wide open.

Ilana Wechsler: There you go. Opportunity awaits.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, and no one in the maps at all in the places.

Ilana Wechsler: There you go. So grab it.

Andrew Hellmich: Ilana, it's been an absolute pleasure. We talked about your website. Is that the best place for people to go to learn more?

Ilana Wechsler: Yeah, absolutely. Just go to teachtraffic.com and you'll find me there.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, and I'll have links to your YouTube channel, your Insta and your Facebook I have all those in the show notes as well. But teachtraffic.com, is the place to go. Ilana, massive thanks for coming. I'm so glad James made the introduction and yeah, massive thanks for sharing everything you have .

Ilana Wechsler: My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.