The Transcript

How to Do Simple PPC Advertising for Your Online Business

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You are listening to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show for folks who want to discover smarter ways to create and sell profitable digital goods and services. This podcast is a production of Digital Commerce Institute, the place to be for digital entrepreneurs. For more information, go to Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce. That’s Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce.

Sean Jackson: Welcome to The Digital Entrepreneur, everyone. I’m your host Sean Jackson. I’m joined, as always, by the analytical Jessica Frick. Jessica, how the Frick are you?

Jessica Frick: I am still deciding. How the Jackson are you, Sean?

Sean Jackson: Always well. I am excited to continue our debate from last week about PPC. In fact, the whole show is about PPC, so we might as well put it at the top — our question — which was: is PPC for everyone? You say?

Jessica Frick: I say that it’s not.

Sean Jackson: Okay, tell me why.

Jessica Frick: I think that digital entrepreneurs should have a varied marketing mix, but I don’t think pay-per-click is for everyone. I think it’s certainly a good idea for most people, but I don’t know that it’s going to be the right play for everyone. Now, I think there’s some validity in saying you don’t know until you try it, but that’s not what we asked.

Sean Jackson: Right.

Jessica Frick: What we asked is, “Is it for everyone?” and I don’t know that it’s going to pay off for everyone. I don’t know that everyone’s business is the right model for that kind of conversion.

Sean Jackson: Yeah, I think that’s an important point to make, is that you really have to look at how your business operates. When we say PPC, we of course mean pay-per-click online advertising, etc. I would say, Jess, in support of your argument, if you were selling something very inexpensive, you may not have the margin to actually afford to advertise that way, with PPC. You may not even have the margin to do an experimentation, especially if you’re strapped for cash. Would you say that’s an accurate statement?

Jessica Frick: Absolutely.

Sean Jackson: But those cases, I think, are far and few between. I’ll let you have that argument in very niche cases. I’m going to give the affirmative. What I’m going to tell you folks is this: I think you do yourself a disservice if you don’t at least test things out. Now, it could be that PPC is not right for you because of you. You may be the actual problem. So, while others may see success in it — you, your business, how things are run, how you operate — you may not actually be ready for it.

But, if you can do the basics of online marketing, which you probably do today. You have a website. You’re selling something online. You are out there communicating to social media. You’re looking at search engines and how to improve your placement in there. Then you’re going to have to, at some point, put PPC in the mix. Because you’ve done everything else. I think that for most online businesses, they do a disservice if they don’t test it out to start with and then — I’ll caveat it this way — give yourself permission to fail at it.

Jessica Frick: Now, Sean, when you fail at a normal thing it’s really not so bad, but when you fail at paid placement, you’re losing money. Why is that okay?

Sean Jackson: Because we spend all sorts of money to fail. How many times have you gone on a new business pitch, and you spent the time and money to do the pitch and you never got the business? We, as entrepreneurs and online people, constantly do things that fail. We take the time to write a post that we think is going to be a hit, and it fails. Failure is, I think, a very important part of success, because it means you’re trying new things. Yes, it can be painful when you’re spending money in the hope that it comes back to you in something. But we do that all the time. We just don’t have that actual moment where it’s, “Put in your credit card and keep your fingers crossed.”

Jessica Frick: True.

Sean Jackson: I would argue that PPC is for everyone. If you’re of the mindset of continuous improvement, knowing that you don’t know what you don’t know, and you can’t know something until you try it. How’s that as the good compromise between?

Jessica Frick: I think that’s a good one. You don’t know it until you try it.

Sean Jackson: That’s right. In this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur, we actually have a very special guest on who is truly a master of PPC for a variety of different industries. When we get back from the break, we are going to interview Sean Dolan of PushFire, who not only is a great, awesome human being, he’s also done work for our company. So we’re definitely talking to someone who we believe and trust, and has helped us. He also has some really unique insight into not only how to start doing advertising, but also some of the things you should be looking for once you get good at the basics. So make sure you stay tuned, and we’ll be right back.

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Sean Jackson: Welcome back from the break, everyone. Jessica, this may actually be the most confusing interview we’ve ever done, given the fact that we’re about to interview our very special guest who happens to share my name. Please introduce our guest, and make sure when we’re talking to him, we direct it to the right Sean, not to me.

Jessica Frick: Yeah, that’s a good point. Sean, I’m excited to introduce Sean. But Sean Dolan, who is president and COO of PushFire. Sean is a recognized name in the paid placement industry, and he is a keynote speaker and an all-around great guy. He’s actually done work for us here, so I can think of no one better to talk to about paid placement than Dolan.

Sean Jackson: Mr. Dolan, welcome to the show.

Sean Dolan: Thanks for having me, Mr. Jackson.

Sean Jackson: Exactly. Our poor audience is going to be like, “Which Sean are they talking about?”

Sean Dolan: You guys can call me Dolan.

Sean Jackson: I’ll just call you Dolan, exactly.

Sean Dolan: I’ll roll with whatever.

Is PPC Right for Every Type of Business?

Sean Jackson: Well, the good news is you actually spell your name correctly, so I’m happy about that. Sean, we have been debating — Jess and I — about the role of PPC. Is it for every business online, or is it for only certain types of businesses online? Please answer the question for us. Is PPC for everyone?

Sean Dolan: Yeah, when Jessica actually reached out and asked me that in setting up this interview — she asked me that question — I said that PPC is not for everyone, it’s just for winners.

Sean Jackson: Ooh.

Sean Dolan: While it’s funny, I often find people that are asking the question of whether they should do PPC. To me, it’s so self-serving and testable, that the time you spend thinking about it, you could have just tested it and figured out if it works for you. I’m a big fan of “shoot and then recalibrate,” so I always tell people, “At least rule it out. Rule it out and then tell me it doesn’t work.”

If you haven’t tried it, the billions of dollars being spent on it … There’s some bad advertisers out there and big corporations that waste a lot of money, but I don’t think they’re wasting billions of dollars and not getting returns. That’s the argument I usually make to people. We do PPC for our own company, for obvious reasons, and it’s money in, money out. At the end of the day, it works or it doesn’t.

Jessica Frick: That actually brings up one of my questions to you, because as you know, I actually took the negative. I don’t think PPC is for everyone. I know that it works, but I also know that there are a million other ways you can get business. Didn’t you get business off a bathroom wall?

Sean Dolan: Yeah, we did. We had a guy call us — and we ignored him, we didn’t understand the lead. If someone fills out a lead and they don’t know how to fill out lead forms, then we rule them out as potential clients. There was something weird about it and suspicious. Anyway, we actually finally … He was very aggressive and got a hold of us. He’s like, “You guys aren’t going to believe this, but I saw PushFire in a bathroom stall in Sugar Land.”

I still don’t quite know how that came about. I’m not complaining, but I’m also not pursuing that either. Yeah, they come from everywhere. One of my clients teaches real estate investing, and something that he always says … We generate the PPC leads for him, motivated seller leads for his real estate flips, and people always ask him, “What’s the magic marketing? What works? What’s the best?” His answer is, “Everything works. Everything. All of it works. Some better than others, but sitting around not doing it definitely doesn’t work.” That’s where I try to get people, is just try it. Just do it.

Jessica Frick: How do you generate leads for PushFire?

A Super Simple Way to Generate $100,000s of Dollars of Business with Just a Few Hours of Work

Sean Dolan: Over the last three or four years, we’ve been fortunate enough that Ray is good at SEO. We rank one or two for PPC management on Google, depending on the day. It’s us and WordStream, neck and neck. That generated a lot. The problem with that is we would get leads from various sources. We would get a lead for women’s underwear, and then we’d get a lead for trailer hitches. My team is mastering and understanding the landscape of two completely different industries, so the scalability there is weak. We did that for a long time, and we were very successful at it. We have clients from all different industries.

I was spoiled that we were getting all these leads coming in through SEO. I decided that I wanted to take control of that and actually go out and acquire a specific type of lead. I went for the investors. I have a lot of investors we work with that are very successful. I’ve been doing this for over eight years in the real estate space, doing advertising. I get that space. I went online and I Googled “real estate forums.” I recommend, if somebody is trying to generate leads — find that water cooler. Find out where everyone is. If you think there’s not a water cooler for your industry, Google “chewing ice forum,” because there’s a forum for people that like to chew ice.

Jessica Frick: Dude.

Sean Dolan: Yeah. It’s real, look it up.

Jessica Frick: They talk about chewing ice.

Sean Dolan: Yeah, just a group of people that just enjoy chewing ice. That’s their thing. There’s plumbers forums, there’s attorney forums. Whatever is your market, there is a place online those people go. If there’s a website, that means there’s AdSense. That website has to generate money. If there’s AdSense, that’s your in.

I found this online real estate forum. They had three ad sizes across their website. I created three ads while sitting in Starbucks. They were not fantastic ads. I wanted to do all of it myself because I’m putting together a case study on how anyone can do this. I threw the ads together and I put together a landing page. It was very in your face. I understand the real estate investors enough to know how they speak and how to get their attention. I threw it up. I spent about $2000.

Actually, in four days, I got 20 leads at about $50 a lead. Right out of the gate, I was generating leads. I closed 10 of those lands, and I will probably close another five. This is just two or three weeks ago that we ran this. I had to pause it because I couldn’t take all the calls. Even at the 10 leads that we closed, the minimum revenue for that is $120,000 a year, assuming those 10 stay with us, which they tend to do. A third of those tend to spend more than the minimum. As their business grows, they’re spending $3000 to $5000 a month. Conservatively, from a few hours at Starbucks, I generated $200,000 a year in revenue.

If you do the math on that, 10 minutes of Googling the forum niche and finding out where the water cooler is, four hours at Starbucks creating the landing page, 20 minutes setting up ads in AdWords, 20 hours doing calls and sending contracts — that’s about 24 hours and 30 minutes to generate $200,000, or $8,163 per hour in revenue generated. This is literally overnight. There’s certain variables, like I had to be able to sell them. But when it comes to generating the leads …

Why Even a Failed PPC Test Is Better than No Testing

Sean Dolan: People dismiss display because the intent’s not there. “I have to figure out the intent based on the website they’re on.” With search, it’s very easy. People that are looking for PPC links for real estate, they’ll Google that. Through display, I have to identify where those people are. But it’s so easy to do. To me, if you have $1000 that you wanted to test — even if PPC fails, you have purchased data.

If you spend that on radio or TV, the data you get back is very weak. If you spend it on PPC, the data you get back is very specific. You know exactly what doesn’t work, and you can move forward from that. Obviously I’m biased. I’m in the world. I’m in it every day. But when I’m working with companies and they have other marketing channels … Man, I constantly feel like we outperform all the other channels.

Sean Jackson: Isn’t that part of the scary part? If I’m just doing this, if I’m just starting out, I don’t know if it’s going to work. And even if I think it may work, isn’t it too hard to put together? You gave a very specific example, but again, isn’t it just … I think there’s a lot of fear from the potential complexity of it. “I’m not a designer, I’m not a copywriter, etc.”

Sean Dolan: Yeah, and I don’t want to downplay my Photoshop skills that much. If we’re talking about just an average person, I definitely understand Photoshop enough to create an ad. It’s not a spectacular ad, but it’s enough to do the job. You can get people on Fiverr for $50, $100 to create you that great ad or maybe a set of ads. In fact, if we do the math I just did and instead I outsourced all of that work that I did, the 24 hours — it would have worked out to, let’s say, $1000 for the landing page, conservatively. You can get them a lot cheaper than that. But $1000 for the landing page design and copywriting. $500, let’s say, for the ad creation.

If I hired a sales guy to do all those calls for me, pay him $500 per lead he closed … If we take all that out of the $200,000, I’m left with $193,000 for 30 minutes of work. Do you know what I mean? Which is $96,000 an hour. Yeah, people get caught up in trying to do everything. This is huge in the real estate investing space. I keep bringing it up because a lot of my clients are in that space. But all these other guys, they’ll be on these forums and they’ll be like, “Hey guys, I’m trying to learn SEO.” I’m just like “ugh.” “I’m trying to learn PPC. I’m trying to learn all these things.” Then I ask them, “How is your flooring? Do you do flooring really well? How’s your roofing? Are you a good roofer?”

Are you going to buy a house and re-habit yourself, and hammer and nails? No. You hire people that know how to do that. I think people, they get caught up in wanting to do everything themselves. But when you outsource it, the math just makes so much more sense. Your time is valuable. Me and Ray always go over this. It’s been a mantra. If we find ourselves doing something that costs less than we make per hour to have somebody else do, we need to have them do it. That’s really helped us directly change our business and improve the revenue that we generate. That would be my response. Unless you’re passionate about graphic design, or unless you’re passionate about landing page design, man, just hire somebody. Just pay the money, have someone who is a pro do it.

What will happen is, if you do it wrong, you’re getting a false positive. You’ll disprove PPC where it might have worked had you hired someone who is competent and can create a good ad. Nobody is that far away from doing what I did in putting together the landing page and ad themselves, but at the same time, just hire someone who is good and learn from them. Prove the concept, prove the math. If you generate revenue from it, then you can go into the details and maybe play around with ads. That’s my recommendation, is outsource.

Jessica Frick: Sean, you’re pretty strong about outsourcing. What would you say the minimum amount of money is for someone to need to properly test whether paid placement is going to work for them? And should they just go straight for Google text or display? Should they experiment with social right out the door, too? Or do you suggest they use a budget and tier in? What do you think is best?

How to Find the Right Budget for Testing in Your Niche

Sean Dolan: Okay, I had a conversation with somebody yesterday whose wife is starting an event planning company. Or it’s been running, and she wants to help market it. The advice I gave to him for his wife was Facebook lead ads for their very specific area. If you want to test out PPC with the very minimum cost and lowest barrier of entry, you create a Facebook business page and you do Facebook lead ads. For her, it was event planning. It’s this bride who is frazzled. It’s like, “Don’t let this be you on your wedding day,” and you target people who are engaged within five miles or 10 miles of her home. She doesn’t have an office.

That’s my first step. I tell people that it’s either that or go to Google search and advertise on the exact product that you sell. If you sell blue shoes, you go to Google and you advertise on the term, “I want to buy blue shoes today.” I don’t care how expensive that term is, that’s not really the point. Bring people in that have the highest intent to convert for your product. If you can’t convert those people, you have a business problem. You have a lower funnel problem. A lot of people confuse that and they think that PPC didn’t work, when really it was the sales didn’t work. The follow-up didn’t work. In real estate, how many realtors do not answer their phone when my wife is calling them to check out a property?

That would be my biggest advice. If you’re going to test PPC, you want to make sure that you rule out your business as maybe being a problem. A good trick to do that is to advertise on the most obvious term and test it out. If you’re able to convert those terms — again, at whatever price — then you know you at least have your sales funnel together. It would be different if we’re talking about someone who has an established sales funnel, but I think here we’re talking about someone who is maybe getting started. If that’s the case, that’s how I would test it.

Sean Jackson: That’s a really good point, talking about the initial people that are just getting into this, going after the intent. I think it’s the question of budget, to follow up with Jessica. Part of it is, maybe you shouldn’t be playing in Google to start with. Maybe something like Bing, or a second or third tier place where you can make mistakes and it not cost you a fortune. You go after intent on a cheaper scale to test it out. Would you say that’s the case? If so, what would do it, $500? Do I need $1000? Do I need $10,000?

Sean Dolan: Yeah, it’s tough. When people come to me, if they’re not spending $5000 a month, for my business to work, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. I obviously give lots of people advice on the phone even if we’re not a good fit. For me, putting a price on it’s hard. If you’re an attorney who is wondering about PPCing for “truck accident attorney,” that’s hundreds of dollars per click. If you’re looking for “local hair salon,” that’s going to be a ridiculously cheap click. It does depend on the industry that you’re in. You can guess based on the lifetime value of the customer what that bid might be in general. There’s also tools you can look at.

It’s really hard for me to answer that question without knowing what their business is, but I will give the answer of, seek somebody out. There’s a lot of actual Facebook groups and there’s a lot of LinkedIn groups that discuss PPC, Facebook. There’s so many people on there that are very giving of their knowledge, and you can crowdsource that. I would suggest somebody like that. Either talk to somebody who is a professional, or go to an organization — even a meetup. DFWSEM up in Dallas. We’ve got SearchHOU in Houston.

Go to a meetup and ask somebody. Say, “Hey, this is my industry. What sort of amount should I spend?” You don’t want to spend too little and have it fail because you didn’t let the math run. You have to have enough sample data to really know statistically how that’s going to play out. A lot of people stop short. If they would have spent 10 more dollars, they would have gotten the lead that justifies it.

Sean Jackson: Right.

Sean Dolan: I would recommend going and seeking that advice out from someone in person.

Sean Jackson: Let’s move the conversation up. We’ve talked a lot about the beginning things that you have to do. I think you’ve covered through the basics. Let’s talk about the pros. You are obviously a pro. There are trends that are affecting the industry. Where is it going? I want to specifically key in on a couple of things. I want to talk about mobile and I want to talk about video. That’s how I’d like to end our interview. I want to go to the more advanced topics now. We’ve covered the basics, let’s talk about mobile and let’s talk about video. What do you see people are not doing that are currently advertising? What should they be doing better? And what they should be on the lookout for.

Future Trends in PPC and How You Can Stay Ahead

Sean Dolan: It’s an interesting question, because when I hear, “What’s on the horizon?” I immediately think, “98% of the people aren’t even doing what’s available today.” Do you know what I mean?

Sean Jackson: Right.

Sean Dolan: So many people aren’t doing what’s available now. But I think for horizon, if somebody were more high level, I think Facebook and Instagram are definitely — there’s opportunities there. Be first to try out new tools. New social network, whatever it is. Reddit recently released advertising. For anyone using Reddit, they see them. Obviously the targeting is not great right now. I think because the advertisers are not utilizing it very well. I’ve peeked in. I’m looking for the right client to try on Reddit. That’s what I’d recommend, is trying to stay ahead of the game and get into these new opportunities before all the competitors.

By the time Walmart and Chevron have gotten buy-in from upper management to venture into Reddit, it’s a little late. The competition is going to be there and the cost-per-click is going to go up. As far as mobile, man, people talk about advertising with PPC. They’re like, “I don’t have a website.” Of course, I’m like, “You’re hundreds of dollars away from having a website. Not a great one, but something.” That aside, there’s “click to call” options in Google, where you can have an ad that only shows up on mobile devices. When the user clicks it, it says, “Would you like to call this person?” You don’t even need a website.

Sean Jackson: Right.

Sean Dolan: You don’t need a website for PPC. I think little things like that, that people aren’t aware of and they miss out on. I think there’s huge gaps. I drive around town and I look at businesses, and I want to save all of them. They’re all missing out on such basic opportunities that would cost them very little to make a huge impact. That’s where I would go as far as mobile. Then, with video — video is killing it, particularly on Facebook. Hands down, every piece of content we put up, video drives more engagement than anything else.

There’s some arguments based on the authenticity of all that and what they actually count as a view, but I know from personal experience video definitely grabs me. I think if you’re an event planner, a hairstylist, or you sell honey from the bees in your backyard, if you go on Facebook and you advertise in a 5-mile radius and you put a video of yourself … Take the video on your iPhone and you post it. You explain your story. I think anybody could do really well.

Sean Jackson: Yeah, that’s a good point. Once you get into it, I think over time — just to sum up our conversation together — it’s not hard to get started in this. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune. But you should have at least a general idea, and ask others for their opinions and advice. Get into it. See what’s working for you when somebody is ready to buy right now. See what’s not working, and it could be that your business is broken. Then, of course, always be willing to go out there. Find new places that are on the forefront. Continue and expand.

But don’t forget the block and tackling. At the end of the day, if you’re not blocking and tackling, then you’re just missing opportunities that are so easy to grab. Then, of course, as the future unfolds with more mobile, video, etc., be willing to take a chance on them. Be willing to take a look. But realize that as you explore in this journey, you’re constantly going to be refining. Don’t forget to do the basics well to start with. Would you say, in summary, that’s pretty much what you said for the past 20 minutes?

Sean Dolan: Nailed it. That’s a wrap.

Sean Jackson: There you go. Well, hey, Sean, not only do you spell your name correctly, and not only do you have great insight, but you are a true gentleman and scholar. Jessica and I really appreciate you being on the show.

Sean Dolan: Anytime. Thank you so much.

Sean Jackson: Thank you, brother.

Jessica Frick: Thanks, Sean.

Sean Dolan: Y’all have a good one, bye bye.

Sean Jackson: Hey, everyone. This is Sean Jackson, the host of The Digital Entrepreneur. I want to ask you a simple question. What is your business framework for selling digital goods online? Now, if the question perplexes you, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Most people don’t realize that the most successful digital entrepreneurs have a framework or a general process for creating and selling their digital goods in the online space. One of the best free resources is Digital Commerce Academy. Digital Commerce Academy combines online learning with case studies and webinars created by people who make a living selling digital goods online.

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Welcome back, everyone. It’s that time for us to give our recommendations for the week. Jessica, what do you have to recommend for our audience?

Jessica Frick: I can’t believe I’ve never recommended them on this show before, but Raven Tools. I love the Raven Tools team. I love the product. I have been a devoted user for years. When it comes to marketing reports and getting all the data you need in one easy place, Raven is where it’s at. Now that they have their site auditor tool in full force, it is absolutely unmatched and worth every penny.

Sean Jackson: Yeah, what’s the matter with you? Why haven’t you recommended them before? We love that tool, and we love those people. Gosh.

Jessica Frick: I have no idea. You know, I wear the t-shirt all the time. I don’t wear other people’s t-shirts very often, but I wear Raven all the time because I love talking about them. I don’t know.

Sean Jackson: Yeah, I agree with you. Raven Tools, everyone. Definitely check out that tool for the week. For me, I’m going to say to continue in our PPC thought, I have a blog site to recommend, which is the WordStream blog. WordStream.com/blog. Absolutely go and read that if you want to go and get more information about PPC, wouldn’t you say, Jess? That’s a good resource. At least to start out with. It’s going to cover both the basics and they, of course, have a tool that will help you for keywords, etc.

Jessica Frick: They do. It’s funny that Sean just literally said that WordStream.com competes with PushFire.com for SEO traffic.

Sean Jackson: Right. Hey, we’re equal opportunity here. Heck. We’re giving you both sides of the equation. We don’t care, as long as you succeed. That’s all that matters to us. Go take a look at Raven Tools, by all means. Great guys over there, great tool. In addition to our friend Sean Dolan from PushFire, by all means take a look at WordStream.com. Research and see what they have to say on their blog site if you are truly interested in learning more about PPC. All right, Jess, it is time for our question of the week, what we want people to ponder. You ready?

Jessica Frick: I’m ready. I’m ready.

Sean Jackson: What is the most important thing when it comes to growing your business, the quantity and quality of leads, or the process?

Jessica Frick: Ooh. That’s a really good question. Obviously, being the ops chick, I have to say process.

Sean Jackson: Of course I’m going to take the other side, which is the quantity of leads. Give me more to sell.

Jessica Frick: We should talk about this.

Sean Jackson: We should talk about this, and we’re going to do that on the next episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. Have a great week, everyone, we’ll catch you next time.

Jessica Frick: Thanks for listening.