547: Kaity Griffin – Google Ads For Photographers: From Clicks to Clients

547: Kaity Griffin – Google Ads For Photographers: From Clicks to Clients

 
Andrew Hellmich: Today's guest is a Google AdWords expert with a difference. And from what I understand, she has a knack for cutting through a lot of the technical jargon associated with Google Ads, and really is focused on getting her clients measurable results. And if you take a look at the reviews and testimonials when you go searching for her name online, you'll find examples like this one from Stacey, where she says "It's so refreshing to see someone in this space who cares about seeing people succeed, actually getting leads and making sales, rather than just a pricey ad manager who doesn't care about delivering a result.” And on her website, she says what she does is for small business owners who want to cut through the tricky tech and create seriously profitable Google ads. She also has a podcast on the topic, multiple courses from basic to advanced, and offers consulting services and Google Ad audits as well. To date, over 1500 students have benefited from her training. I'm talking about Kaity Griffin, and I'm rapt to have her with us now. Kaity, welcome.

Kaity Griffin: Thank you. I have not read that testimonial or review out loud from Stacey, I should actually, you know, go back on a bad day and look at them, because I do have some good, some good ones that gave me a little pep in my step that one.

Andrew Hellmich: You do, and is that the vibe you get when people discover you that, you know, "Oh, my God. Finally, someone who actually cares about getting results."

Kaity Griffin: Yeah, I think there's a couple of points of difference that work in my favor, in that the marketing space can often be dominated by men, and that for females can be quite intimidating a lot of the time. So most of my students are actually women. We have men as well. But, you know, they actually want to upskill rather than just be talked to in a really confusing way. And also, you know, I'm pretty straightforward and down to earth, I don't really put a lot of mayo on things, so I think when you just talk in everyday language, it is refreshing, rather than trying to over complicate things. I mean, it's always inevitable that there'll be acronyms and jargon in any industry, but trying to just bring things back into how it relates in everyday kind of language, rather than fancy marketing speak.

Andrew Hellmich: It feels like your business is like a mechanic. So you know where the stereotypical woman doesn't want to go and see the mechanic, because they feel like they're going to get ripped off.

Kaity Griffin: Yeah, that's actually a really good analogy, I should do that. I'm going to swipe that. But it actually is because and I'm also the mechanic that's like, the old school mechanic that doesn't have a fancy place and kind of in the back alleyway, you know, I'm very much like nothing is fancy about my business. I don't really care about aesthetics or social media. I don't really care what things look like. It's about how it performs, like the numbers wise. So I'm probably, yeah, a lot like that old school mechanic that gets results, but isn't overly, you know, fancy. I feel like the things that make your business look pretty aren't necessarily the things that affect the bottom line of your business. I mean, photography and all that sort of stuff, obviously. But when it comes to, like, perpetuating, you know, this really, making things really pretty all the time. I don't think, I think that often gets in the way.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, I like that. I like that. How did you get into Google AdWords to start with?

Kaity Griffin: Yeah, so I was an Ecommerce business owner trying to figure out how to grow that store. This was 10 years ago now, and was listening to podcasts on SEO and Facebook Ads. Was dabbling in sort of all that stuff. And until I listened to a podcast on Google Ads, I was like, I think, like, I think I can do this. And I tried to fumble my way through some YouTube videos and set things up. And even though I didn't really know what I was doing, I was able to get some results. And I really liked that visibility between, I can spend this amount of money and get this amount back in. I can see the orders coming through, and I can tie back results where, I'm very impatient. So SEO was like, "Oh yeah, I've done some stuff, some optimization, but I can't say for sure that it's like this tangible benefit." So I really like that clear link between money spent and money received. So then I realized that it sort of suited all my skills. I really love numbers and data and all that sort of geeky stuff. So I decided to sell the Ecommerce business and go agency-side in the Google Ad space. Worked at one of Melbourne's most, it has one of the best reputations worldwide, really, of being a Google Ads agency. It was founded by a guy called Mike Rhodes, who literally wrote the book, The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads, joined his team and just had the best experience working there. And then was there for about three years before I had my second baby, and was like, "I don't think I can commit to like, that full time in the city kind of job anymore." I need to kind of take a back step. So wanted to have my own business where I have a bit more flexibility. So have been running this business, which is half-split between the done-for-you client work, and half-split between the teaching side with courses, started about four and a half years ago, and I'm still part time, like I only work three to four days a week, but I'm able to, you know, get the best of both worlds, do the teaching and also do the client management.

Andrew Hellmich: And it's not just you in the business, either, is it? Because I've been speaking to Hannah to set this interview up.

Kaity Griffin: Yeah. So I've got a team now, an amazing team. Actually, Hannah and Lily were two of my students, so Lily's been with me for about four or five months now. They're both Kiwis based New Zealand, and they were both students of mine going through my big course, which is like a 12 week Google Ads course to upskill you, they were both freelancers, so going through it to run ads for clients, and then I advertise positions. And Hannah joined me over two years ago, Lily nearly six months ago. So they bring a lot of viewpoint of a student. So we really see ourselves as, I think often, when you're doing a course, or even hiring someone to be a client manager, having that experience of actually being on the other side is really helpful. So me, being an Ecommerce business owner gives me a lot of insight to be, to know how much the client cares about the money and cares about what's going on, and Lily and Hannah can know what it's like to be a student on day one, not knowing anything about Google Ads and how to piece all those puzzle pieces together, those steps together. So and then we've got a couple of admin support teams. So it's about we're Team Five now, which is, yeah, awesome.

Andrew Hellmich: Fantastic. So you mentioned there, like you have clients where you manage their ads and their ad accounts, and you also have courses. When a photographer is thinking about going down the road of utilizing Google Ads, which is the right avenue to go to, or is there a split when you think, "Okay, this is the better road for me?"

Kaity Griffin: Yeah, it's a great question, particularly with photographers, you guys aren't going to have a huge ad spend because there's only one or if it's a, you know, one person photographer, you can't go nationwide and have the goal isn't volume. It's really steady leads, lead flow, right? Lead flow, not orders. So it's a different mindset than it is, or different strategy than it is, with Ecommerce. Ecommerce, you're looking volume. And so you might get up to spending, you know, I've got a client that over this Christmas period, they might spend $200,000 in a 30 day period. We're talking about a lot of scale. So absorbing our fee into that, which might be $2,000 is a drop in the ocean. But when you're a photographer, you're probably not going to go past like the $500 mark a month ad spend. So absorbing that $2,000 doesn't make the most sense. So my kind of tipping point is when you reach that three to $5,000 of ad spend and you're looking to scale up, then it's time to consider outsourcing. However, I don't think photographers will ever get to that point, because if you're spending 3000 to $5,000 a month on ads, that's a lot of leads. Focus on converting them, rather than focus on scaling that ad spend. So there's slight differences between that in that Ecommerce you're looking at like an average order value. It depends on what type of photographer you are. You might be a newborn photographer or a maternity photographer that also offers newborn and family sessions. If you get someone in at the newborn stage, you might have a lifetime value of 5000 if they then go through and do the newborn photo shoot and then a couple of family shoots led down the track, so you could still outsource, because that fee could be compensated against that lifetime value. But I wholly believe, like we, I wouldn't personally take on a photographer as a client. I think it doesn't make sense for you guys to be outsourcing and paying a fee. It'd be better off upskilling and say our course, it might be the cost of three months of outsource management, but you've got that skill to be able to then go and run ads for yourself. And we've had photographers go through it, and then they're able to dial in that lead flow. So then when they've got it, like, if they're booked out, they just can turn, you know, wind down budgets for a few months. If it's coming up to their busy season again, and they've got some capacity turn up those budgets. It's really about dialing in. What are the keywords that lead to inquiries that suit you and your specialty.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Well, I'm going to ask you about keywords in just a minute.

Kaity Griffin: Yeah, sorry, I jumped the gun.

Andrew Hellmich: No, that's all. It's all good. That makes total sense there. When earlier, you said, you know, you loved your Ecommerce business and having the Google Ads, you can turn them up. You can, you know, can increase your spend, then you're obviously making more sales. You can measure that. You get all geeky. How do you know that your ad has produced the results, and it's not just an organic sale?

Kaity Griffin: Yeah, conversion tracking. So conversion tracking is my number one non-negotiable in any ad account. So for a photographer that might be your Contact Us form, placing a bit of code on the Thank You page, or the thank you whatever indicates that the form has been submitted, and having that fed through to Google Ads. And then what happens that Google is intelligent enough to say that if this keyword, someone clicked on this ad, and then they filled in a form, it can feed back that information, and we can see, "Okay, well, we had 10 form fills this month, and three of them came from this keyword, four of them came from this keyword, and another three came from this keyword. So you can see what is generating those leads. And then the goal is to try and figure out which are the ones that drive the best you know, the highest volume at an appropriate price, and which ones are duds. So again, I was looking at a student account today, and there was one keyword in an ad group that had spent maybe $500. Another one had spent $20 but the $20 one has been converting. So what happens? We turn that $500 one off that's just churning through money and allocate more budget to that one that's actually converting. But yet, conversion tracking allows us to be able to tie back that information and tell Google if someone hits this thank you page and they've come from an ad, make sure you attribute it back to the keyword that drove that click.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so do I need to have a separate Thank You page or separate lead form for each different campaign I'm running. For example, if I'm running a Facebook Ad, I'm also running Google Ads, can I direct them both to that same landing page, and Google still knows that it's come from Google?

Kaity Griffin: Yeah. So when someone clicks on an ad, it's what's called a GCLID gets added to the URL of, so if your landing page, my landing page, katiegriffin.com, if I was running a Google Ad, anytime someone clicks on a Google Ad, it has this thing called a click a Google Click ID GCLID attributed to it, and then that's the way that Google measures that back. So it doesn't matter what URL it is, it just matters whether the GCLID kind of can tie back that information. So you don't need to have separate landing pages at all. And the setup, the actual setup of that conversion, will depend on what site you're on, are you on Squarespace? Are you on WordPress, whether you have a thank you page. A lot of sites don't have thank you pages attached to contact us form fills. It's easier to set it up if you do, but they might have just like a success message. So if you think about the execution of setting up a conversion, if you can just tell Google if someone hits this URL, that means they've converted, that's a lot easier, rather than if they've clicked this button on this URL. That's a bit more technical, but still doable. So it's not a separate landing page, it's just a separate bit of code.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so if I have a WordPress site, I'm probably gonna have a plugin that allows me to add that code.

Kaity Griffin: Yeah, correct. So we usually do that through Google Tag Manager, which there's a plugin on WordPress called like GTM for WP, or something like that. GTM for WordPress, and that allows, basically, us to enter code without messing with the theme and the back end and stuff like that. So it's, yeah, it's sort of an intermediary plugin that we can use.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. Now, you said something interesting that caught my ear, and I'm guessing the listeners as well, is you said, "If you're running an ad, you're going to send people to your landing page, kaitygriffin.com, and might to me like, "Whoa, that's your homepage." Would you send someone to a homepage if you're a photographer?

Kaity Griffin: No, not necessarily. Sorry. I was just using that as an example of like, it'll just attached the GCLID to that. My ideal wouldn't be sending to a homepage. It would be to send to the most relevant landing page to what you're trying to get the person to buy or opt into. So if it is your wedding photography package, then a wedding photography page with you know that you already should have on your page, your services page, or whatever it is. So the relevant services link that then gives more information and then also a chance to make that call to action. So whether it's submitting a form, filling out an email, you know, whatever it is, but just taking out the step from just sending everyone to the homepage and then having to navigate around, take that, make it easier for the end user and send to the specific service or offering that you're trying to advertise.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. Got it. Okay. Like, with the ads, like, there's a lot of listeners to this podcast that have a lot of success with Facebook Ads, and a lot of the time, what the photographer is doing is running a style of ad where they're offering a free session, a print credit, and then getting people, because it's a no risk to you. So let's say you see that ad in your Facebook feed. You think, "Oh, that sounds pretty cool. I've got a photo with my two kids and my husband, and there's no risk. I'm going to get the free session. I'm going to get a free print or free credit." That's super successful for us. Can I run something like that as a Google Ad. Or do I have to be more general with my advertising on Google?

Kaity Griffin: So you can use that offer. But think of it in that when someone's browsing Facebook, you're trying to actually get in their head and say, "Oh, have you thought about a photography session?" They're not consciously aware of that yet, or they haven't looked, they're not looking for that at that particular moment. They might need it. They might like, in their mind, "I need to get those family photos." But you're getting in their face when they're not actively searching for that. On Google, people are typing in, you know, family photographer near me, whatever it is, they're actively searching for that solution. So you don't need to have a specific offer in order to run ads, because also remember that your ads are generally text based. You're not able to use like your video or as much imagery with Google Ads. So what you're really trying to do is get people to your site, and then you can have that offer on your site as like a when they get there, they realize that they've got that offer, but you don't need to, but it's a great idea. Like, you'll probably increase your conversion rate, and you'll get, you know, better lead flow from that. But the difference is people are actually searching for you as a solution when they're on Google, rather than being sort of in the awareness interruption style marketing that Facebook will serve. So both complement each other.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So I hadn't even thought of this, but you just planted the seed there. So I could run a Google ad campaign and send people to a landing page which actually has that offer on the landing page. So I'm just going to try and get the clicks from Google to that offer.

Kaity Griffin: Yes, but with Facebook, there's a better adoption rate of those type of landing page kind of offers, right? So if it's like a, you know, opt in to get this, that's much more suited to Facebook. I would have it as long as it doesn't look really promo-ey, like really heavy on the, and I'm sure you don't do this, but you know those ads that are like, you click here, and then it's like, a one click upsell, and then it's this, and then it's that. Obviously it's not going to be like that, but have it actually still addressing the fact that they're looking for that photographer. Because you're not trying to convince them that they need one. You're trying to convince them that you're the right person to take photos of them.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay.

Kaity Griffin: So with a Facebook Ad, you have to convince them that you know you're trying to convince them that this is what they need in their life.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, like, don't miss this.

Kaity Griffin: Yeah, they've already decided that you're trying to convince them that your style of photography is the right style for them. You're the person that's meant to photograph them and their family or their wedding.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay. So you could have a more, selling me and my style as the right photographer for you on the landing page, and then have the offer at the bottom.

Kaity Griffin: Correct, yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: A little bit more subtle.

Kaity Griffin: I wouldn't hit them with the offer straight up, because they're probably like, "Oh, I don't know." I think with the Facebook Ad, you're probably mentioning that in the Facebook Ad, and it's probably a key part of the Facebook Ad copy, or whatever it is, in the click for the Facebook Ad. With Google, they're probably not even reading the ad copy, to be honest. It's just where you're sitting on the page, like, think about the amount of times you've Googled something and probably haven't even read the headlines or anything like that. It's really just, are you showing? are you there? And then they're clicking through, and if they're clicking through and seeing an offer that they weren't expecting to, it might be a bit disarming. So, yeah, put it down a little bit.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. Got it. Just a side thing here. I just noticed now, or just the last couple of days, that Google has changed their like, when you do a search now on the page, it's not page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, it's just a long scroll.

Kaity Griffin: I know, it's really annoying me. I just noticed that the other day as well. And like, there's ads like, throughout the page.

Andrew Hellmich: Yes

Kaity Griffin: It's very, I don't like it, but yeah, there'll be four ads. I mean, up until, um, we're recording this in November, and up, as of now, there's up to four ads at the top, four text ads, four search ads at the top of the page. And I used to be able to say those could be up to four at the top and maybe four at the bottom, but now I'm like, oh, three in the middle, and you keep scrolling. So it's pretty annoying. But yes, it seems to be a just a one big, long scroll.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah. I'm curious. Now, I think, personally, that more of those ads in the middle will get clicked now, because I used to think I'm going to skip past the ads and go to the organic post first, but now they're sort of hidden in there, halfway down.

Kaity Griffin: I, yeah, but I don't know. Like, yeah, I don't know. Be interesting to see. We used to be able to tell. We used to be able to have this metric inside Google Ads called 'average position'. So you could say, you know, for this keyword, our average position is number seven, which meant that you were the seventh listing on the page, or one, whatever it is, you don't get that now. So it'd be interesting, like, what sort of click through rate those lower positions get? I don't know.

Andrew Hellmich: So how do you choose, or how does Google choose who goes in position 1, 2, 3, or 4? Is that a bid, an auction?

Kaity Griffin: Yeah, it's. I mean, there's other factors that come into it which are more technical, you know, quality, score, blah, blah, blah, the most basic level you pay higher, you get higher on the page, right? So the goal is to not be concerned about what's my click cost, you know, "I don't want to pay too much." "Well, I'm willing to pay $100 for the top position, not that I would, but $100 for the top position if it means that I'm going to get conversion rate of 20%", you know, I'll convert that all day long. So it's about working out which keywords deserve to be spending enough money to get them on the top, because those keywords might have a four to five times higher conversion rate, which means, yes, it pays more to get the click, but it pays less to get the lead. So focus on what the output is, not what the input is. Often people get hung up on, "Oh, this keyword. I need to get this keyword, the average cost per clicks too high. I need to get it down." They're just looking at that one stat. And I look a little bit across on the screen, I can see if that's your highest converting keyword, and it's got the best cost per acquisition. Why are you focused on bringing that cost there down? Let's focus on how we can bring it up so we can get more.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Yes, that makes sense.

Kaity Griffin: You know, like cost per click is irrelevant if it's converting within your goals.

Andrew Hellmich: Absolutely. So let's I'm gonna go into Google Ads, gonna set up a campaign for my photography business. And I know like I've looked at my numbers and I'm willing to spend up to $100 to get a bum on a seat, to get someone in front of my camera. That's the maximum I'm prepared to pay. So I might need 10 leads to get that one booking. I might need five leads to get that one booking. So is that a metric that you need to know, or I need to know before I start my campaign?

Kaity Griffin: I mean, if you know that, you're steps ahead of everyone else. So what we like to do is work backwards and say, you know, as a client manager, or if you're running your own account, have a goal to work towards, if you're just like, you know, if you have no benchmark of what's a good cost per acquisition and what's a bad cost per acquisition, you have nothing to optimize against. So A, having a metric like that $100 is great, but B, having a metric that's established from real time data, so you know that. So we always like to teach people that, "Okay, let's work backwards. So if you know that your lead conversion rate, so any, everyone that comes to your site, 10% of those people fill in a Contact Us bomb, then out of those 10%, how many do you convert as paying like, how many become clients?" Then we can work backwards and say, "Okay, well, is this an achievable CPA or not?" Because we've got the data on, all right, we'll say the average industry cost per click is going to be X, you're going to spend, you know, we can work, we can use the numbers to actually extrapolate and say, "Well, yeah, based on your lead to client conversion rate, this looks like a really achievable number." And I have a calculator that I work of, just a G Sheet calculator that I give to students to say, to be able to plug in those numbers, plug in your existing site wide conversion rate from you know, like a lead conversion rate, then lead to client conversion rate, and then your average client value, the average client value is $2,000 and those numbers like, how much can you afford to it pops out sort of this is what sort of data you're looking at and what a cost per acquisition could be for you. I know I've just yelled a lot of jargon.

Andrew Hellmich: But no, that's okay. So is it the cost per acquisition? Is that the ultimate number I'm trying to find?

Kaity Griffin: As a service based business? Yes. You're trying to find, how much can you afford to pay per lead and still be profitable? So what is the number? Because the, and it's not just a break even, it's sort of like, say, if you're, because I've sort of worked backwards there, say your average package rate is, your average booking is $1,000 as a photographer, right? So if you're willing to pay $100 per lead on the Google Ad side, and you convert, you know one in every three of those, you're really paying $600 for each booking. Now, if your average customer value is $200 and you're paying $600 for a booking, that's pretty crap. But if your average booking value is $5,000 and you're paying $600 that's really good. So the other stats will also impact, there's no one single this is a good cost per acquisition. This is a bad cost per acquisition. It's all relative. But that's the stat that you're optimizing against, because everything comes down to, when you're looking in an account, what keywords come in under our cost per acquisition goal, what keywords come in over? How can we even it all out to make sure we're minimizing the bad, getting as much as we can out of the good?

Andrew Hellmich: So I basically, I have to start somewhere, throw some mud at the wall and see which ones start working.

Kaity Griffin: Yeah

Andrew Hellmich: I've got to put some skin in the game.

Kaity Griffin: 100%, yeah. You'll never, like I will never promise that anyone's ads will work, because we don't know until we put the data out there. It's like a real time experiment. You'll have the best opportunity to succeed, but we can't predict how someone's going to, what keywords someone's going to resonate with your, you know, that's all testing, finding that sort of stuff out.

Andrew Hellmich: All right, so let me give you an example. So I opened up the Google Ads, is it the dashboard, and I've opened up Keyword Planner, and I've put in a few search terms here, like family portrait photographer, Central Coast, portrait photographer Central Coast, wedding photographer Central Coast, and couple of the searches, a couple of those search terms have, when you look under the average monthly searches, nothing, just a dash, and the other ones have from 10 to 100 or 100 to 1000, so if it's just a dash, does that mean that there's not enough to even go after?

Kaity Griffin: I rarely take the keyword planners word for things, because they'll often, usually, when it's got a dash, it just means, essentially, they don't have enough data to give you that, but 10 to 100 still a really broad range. And you have to also remember that's for that exact match term. There could be variations of that, that your keyword is matched to, that aren't included in that, those stats. So again, I wouldn't just, if that's a relevant term for you focus on. And when you're in Keyword Planner, focus on relevance over number of people searching, because the higher the number of people searching, the broader your reach will be. So an example would be, if you're a photographer and you specialize in, you know, rustic weddings, let's say. If someone is typing in 'wedding photographer', yeah, they could be interested in you, but they also could be interested in a retro wedding or this or that you don't know, and you might convert 1% of those people. If they type in you know 'rustic wedding photographer', that qualifying word of rustic indicates a lot more purchase intent, because you're much more likely to convert someone if that's what you offer. So even though that's probably got a 10th of the search volume behind it, you're probably going to convert a lot more of those people, have a lower cost per acquisition, so it's relevance over reach, right? And then if you went one step further and say you're a female rustic wedding photographer, and that's what someone's looking for, again, you're looking for, wanting people to qualify themselves at the search term level. Because one of the biggest thing, and what I mean by qualify themselves, is indicate what they're interested at the search term level. So. So when they're typing something into Google, if I'm typing in the word photographer, most ad accounts for photographers will just be targeting photographer within 15 kilometers of my geographic, whatever it is, and the accounts go bust because photographer might have a lot of people searching for it. Are they searching for a photography course? Are they searching for how to become a photographer? Are they searching for, What do photographers charge? Are they searching for? Should I use a photographer? We don't know. They have not indicated at the search level what they're looking for, compared to someone that searches for female rustic wedding photographer in you know, Tacoma, okay, suddenly that person has indicated exactly what they're looking for, and those people are a lot more prime to convert if that's the service you offer. So people get really, because I think with an SEO game, it's a mind switch, because with an SEO game and with most things, you're looking to kind of get as much visibility as possible. In Google, you're not trying to get visibility, you're trying to get the right type of visibility to the people that are going to convert.

Andrew Hellmich: I love that. Okay, so I'm thinking, I guess, SEO branding wise, and thinking about the terms, how I would brand me, my photography, my style myself, and then using those keywords in my Google Ads.

Kaity Griffin: Correct and not the keywords in the Google Ads, because Google Ads think of that as the ad copy, those keywords to target people which don't necessarily need to be in the ad copy, and then layering that on top with things like things called negative keywords, which then block people that might be searching for what you offer but are indicating that they're the wrong type of lead. An example 'cheap wedding photographer'.

Andrew Hellmich: Right

Kaity Griffin: Cheap should be a negative keyword so that anyone searching for cheap, budget friendly, you know, whatever, anyone indicating that they're price shopping, if you're on the premium side, they're not your people.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So you can make that a negative keyword so your ad doesn't show to that person, even though they're looking for a female rustic wedding photographer in Tacoma.

 
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Andrew Hellmich: You mentioned, and I mentioned in the intro, that you've got courses, I know you've got a wait list for, I think for the big course, you've also got a couple of smaller courses. Like, if I wanted to dip my feet in, like, should I go all in and just, like, "Okay, let's just do this." Or do I just, can I get my feet wet?

Kaity Griffin: A number of different ways. So I've got a free keyword series that expands more on kind of what we've spoken about today, that's totally free. That's my opt in. That's totally free is on my site. Then there's a $30 US in, US pricing $30 boot camp, which is essentially Module One of my course. The real focus of that mini course is giving you enough information for you to make a decision about whether you want to invest in the bigger course. Because the bigger course, it's an investment. It's like photography, it's an investment that you're going to make in upskilling. So at least do one of the smaller ones to identify, like, you know, it'll give you more tools to be able to see, "Is this something I want to continue further with?" And then you can make the decision about the bigger course, but yeah, I'd go with keyword series, free, couple of videos, and you'll be able to start doing some research on what keywords might be a good fit for you with photographers. It's, yeah, it's quality over quantity. It's going to be a small ad account, probably one campaign, one or two campaigns. The stuff we teach you in the big course is the optimization the account set up, because Google Ads is very technical and it's hard to get it right on your own. That's all covered in the big course. The mini course is really giving you information on, do I want to, here's the theory, "Do I want to give it a more of a go?"

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay. How many people do you encounter have tried Google Ads and lost a shitload of money, and thought, "Okay, I've got to learn how to do this properly."

Kaity Griffin: 95% of people. I mean, majority of our students.

Andrew Hellmich: I thought, you're gonna say no one.

Kaity Griffin: No, majority of my students are coming to me, and they've usually gone through even four or five agencies who burned through cash. We just got a client last week that was with an agency for six months. I looked inside the account. It's terribly set up and, you know, really poorly executed, and he's paying money for that. We've had students in the past that have come to the course. They've been like, I'm so broken because I had four ad managers that were taking money, and I realize now, after going through the course, that I was getting taken for a ride, and they're also taking my money, and they get better results when they learn how to do it themselves. So the skill of learning how to run your own ads is really it's a hard skill to master because it is flexing a new muscle. It's learning a new language of ads and metrics and all that sort of stuff. It's hard. Google Ads is hard in terms of the platforms, not easy to navigate. It's confusing, but once you master it, and you don't have to outsource it. That's where the magic happens. Majority of people get really taken for a ride, particularly, if I can give any advice, is if you're going to give it a go yourself, don't listen to what Google are recommending to you. Google are recommending things that are going to line their pockets, and it's essentially my number one bit of advice be- ignore Google. Don't do what they're telling you do. They don't know what your account strategy is. They don't know what your goal is. They don't know what you're selling. You know they're thinking with their best interests at heart, which is money in their pocket. You need to ignore that, and that's why you need to upskill, because you can't trust the system, because a system will burn you as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. Okay, so like, with all that being said, like with the long course, how long is the long or the big course?

Kaity Griffin: Yes, it depends on, you know, we usually get between three and six months of support in form of calls and Facebook support. But then you have access to the course for, you know, lifetime of the, it's you get, you get unlimited access to the course. It's not capped. So students go through it and then either decide to sign on to our rolling kind of membership with support, ongoing support on a monthly basis, or they get that big dose of support over the first three, six months, and then they go and add it alone, because I've always got access to the portal. We update videos, because Google changes everything all the time. So yeah, it's kind of a, it's your one stop shop to continuously refer back to, to upskilling, and go through again to that. Did that answer the question?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, you did. Yeah. So I'm gonna have to dedicate a little bit of time to learn this, but once I've learned it, I should be right.

Kaity Griffin: Yeah. And the learning curve is steep. Like, I don't want to sugarcoat that, your brain will be like, "Oh my God." Like, all the, you know, it's different to Facebook Ads. They're a lot different. It flexes a different muscle. It's less creative, it's more data and stats. But the benefit can be really huge if you can tap into the right people on that platform.

Andrew Hellmich: Love that. Awesome. Okay, last question for you, like, if I'm running Google Ads, does Google reward me in any other ways? Like, do I go? Do I get better SEO rankings for example, because I'm spending..

Kaity Griffin: Nah

Andrew Hellmich: Nothing.

Kaity Griffin: Nah. No, they won't. They'll say "stuff, yeah".

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, all right.

Kaity Griffin: You don't get a bump in anywhere else.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so really, it's a standalone thing. It's got nothing to do..

Kaity Griffin: Standalone platform. It's like if you're running Facebook ads and expecting a bump in Google organic SEO, it's not going to happen. So even though they're owned by Google, they're completely different sort of arms to their business and completely different tools. They don't have, you know, a crossover.

Andrew Hellmich: Awesome. Okay, got it. All right, Kaity, where's the best place to go and learn more?

Kaity Griffin: Yeah, kaitygriffin.com, that would be where my website is. Got everything there. They'll probably be pop-up that will get you to sign up to that keyword series if you want. Yeah, that's really where everything lives,

Andrew Hellmich: Awesome. I'll add links to that and your other social accounts with the show notes, and this has been awesome. Well, thank you so much for letting me throw those questions at you..

Kaity Griffin: No worries

Andrew Hellmich: You're awesome. Thanks.

Kaity Griffin: Thank you. Pleasure to be on.