Want to increase your leads and sales with online ads, but not sure where to start? Meet Ilana Wechsler.
In Episode 81 of the Bean Ninjas Podcast, Bean Ninjas CEO Meryl Johnston talks to Ilana Wechsler, Founder of Green Arrow Digital and Teach Traffic, about getting started with Pay-Per-Click Advertising.
Episode Highlights
3:00 – Ilana’s background as corporate analyst and her transition into SEO and web traffic
8:00 – Using flippa to analyse websites and content websites and keyword research using Google-ads
15:00 – The challenges of agency work! Buying more traffic does not solve all problems!
21:00 – Launching online courses to allow business owners to run their own traffic
23:00 – Re-targeting as the best ROI activity in advertising
26:00 – Why you should install tracking codes for Google & FB
30:00 – How to choose between FB ads (more social things, need to go softly and not sell right up front, need to develop awareness) vs Google Ads (known products work, but expensive cost-per-click)
33:00 – Why the sequence of what people see when ads appear is so important
34:00 – The benefits of using Google and FB platforms
Transcription
Meryl Johnston:
Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Bean Ninjas Podcast. Today I’m joined by Ilana Wechsler, who is the founder of Green Arrow Digital, which is a PPC (pay-per-click) agency and she’s also the founder of teachtraffic.com.
We chat through some of Ilana’s tips and they’re pretty practical around things that you can do to improve the way that you’re using Google Ads or Facebook ads and she covered really some learning of things that you can implement pretty simply in your business to get results. That’s one component of the episode.
And then, the other is hearing about Ilana’s transition from running her agency to focusing on her education business, teachtraffic.com. And I found that really interesting, her thought process in working out where she wanted to spend her time and how she made that transition.
And if you’ve been listening regularly on the Bean Ninjas Podcast, you will have heard that I’ve been focusing on building Financial Literacy Training products and we’re still absolutely running the agency somehow to Bean Ninjas where we’re delivering done-for-you bookkeeping, financial reporting and dashboard reporting. But we’re really focused on building up the education side of things, too.
And so, it was interesting getting Ilana’s perspective on her thought process around why she came to that conclusion. And then also, how she’s gone about implementing that so that she can focus on building the education about her business.
Hey Ilana. Welcome to the show.
Ilana Wechsler:
Thank you so much for having me on. It’s my pleasure.
Want to increase your leads and sales with online ads, but not sure where to start?? Join us on the Bean Ninjas Podcast as Ilana Wechsler, Founder of Green Arrow Digital and Teach Traffic shares her knowledge. Click To TweetMeryl Johnston:
It was funny, we were taking a few weeks back and I was on your podcast and then we were having a little chat afterwards about education and running agencies. And I was really interested in your story. And I thought, “I have to get you back on to the Bean Ninjas Podcast to share not only that story but also some of your knowledge around traffic.” So really excited to have you here and have this chat.
Do you want to start by sharing with the audience a little bit about your backstory in terms of your agency and how you got started with that, and then, will dig into that – the evolution?
Ilana Wechsler:
Yeah, sure. So I have I guess an interesting story, but I guess everyone’s story is interesting on some level, of course, right? But I’m not your typical story of I always dreamed of opening, starting my own business or whatever, and I’m quite the contrary, actually.
I come from a corporate background. I worked for ten years in sort of funds management, institutional funds management as a data analyst. And I loved my job, actually. I loved; I didn’t love corporate and the politics that came with it, but I love the work that I did. It was really challenging; I’ve worked with really smart people and I just, yeah, as I said, I really enjoyed the work. And every day was different, etc. etc.
Anyway, but my life took a bit of a left, an abrupt left turn, as you say, when I had my first kid. Actually, I went on maternity leave and had every intention of returning to my very happy job, but I had a bit of a complication in my pregnancy, which resulted in my child coming a bit early. And as such happened, when your health scare comes into play, you re-evaluate life and all that kind of stuff, so I decided that I couldn’t really leave my child and go back to work.
I did the math; I used to work pretty much from like 7:00 to 7:00; 7:00 in the morning ‘till 7:00 at night. And then, when I had my son, I was like, “Hang on a minute, he’s only awake from 7:00 to 7:00. When exactly am I going to see him if I go back to my job?” And so, it became a bit of a no-brainer to decide not to go back to my job because obviously, I chose family over my career.
And it’s just unfortunate that one does need to make that choice. I mean it was an easy choice, obviously, choosing my son over my career. But it was I guess unfortunate that it wasn’t really a flexible work environment that I could do.
So that kind of sparked my journey like into working for myself and I had no idea what I was going to do and it was a really tough time, actually. So I kind of sat back one day and I thought, “Oh, God. What are my skills here?” So obviously, I’d really honed like some excel skills; I basically spent ten years living in a spreadsheet. You could probably appreciate given your background as well.
And I used to build really complex spreadsheets like linking up a database because I used to be a programmer as well. So I was like, it’s all very complicated spreadsheets. Back in my days, a data analyst used to make one change and take ten minutes for the spreadsheet to update because there was so many formulas and all these functions and stuff.
Anyway, so I’ve got really good excel skills, what can I do with it? So, I mean, this is going back 11 years now; so I’ve put an ad on Gumtree, which is Australia’s equivalent of like a Craigslist saying, “For excel help and I’ll build people’s spreadsheets.” It was my offer and that’s how desperate I was. And to surprise, people responded to this ad that I’ve put out on Gumtree for free.
And I actually got some decent work out of it. Some like decent, medium-sized businesses contacted me and I thought, “Oh, hang on a minute. I’ve got a bit of business here. So I need a website.” So I bought the domain excelhelp.com.au and I taught myself how to build a website, which wasn’t that hard because I did use to be a programmer. Built my first website, and then to my surprise, no one came to my website.
And so, I thought, “Okay. Well, how does one get people to a website?” So I started ringing around different agencies. And so, that kind of actually sparked my adventure and journey into web traffic, actually. And then, I very quickly dropped my excelhelp.com.au, and it’s probably a whole another story of my online journey, but yeah, that’s my background. Bit of a long answer to a short question. Sorry about that.
Meryl Johnston:
No, that’s great. And it really creates the why that you wanted to know about traffic. Well, you’ve got a website, but now it’s going to it. And so, how did you start teaching yourself about traffic and how did that then involve into your agency?
Ilana Wechsler:
Yeah. Honestly, I became quite obsessed with it, actually. Purely out of a necessity, I was so determined to work out how I can have a flexible work environment because I just was so passionate about not leaving my son and putting him in daycare. And he was quite; he was a very clingy kid, he was very attached to me and obviously, I was to him. And I mean, I couldn’t even leave him with a nanny. He would just always cry so I became quite obsessed with how I can learn traffic.
So what I started doing was, I guess this is the data analyst in me, is that it’s a website called Flippa, don’t know if you’ve heard of it. But it’s basically a website where people buy and sell other people’s websites. It’s kind of like a marketplace where people; so I thought if I look at Flippa, if I analyze these listings, it will reveal all these different business models.
So I analyze these listing to see what people doing, what online businesses people have built and what are the business models that they’re doing. So some people had an affiliate marketing website that they build and some people have content, and like this completely fascinated me. It was a world that I hadn’t even, didn’t even know existed and it was a whole world. I mean, especially in the US, as I said, this is going back 11 years ago now.
And so, I analyze these business listings and I started trying to do affiliate marketing and failed miserably at it; like, I was absolutely terrible because I wasn’t a copywriter. And then, so Flippa also had a listing which sold for $80,000 and it was a content site. And I thought, “Oh my God.” Like, it was making $5,000 a month. And I thought, “Oh my God. Like, if I can make $5,000 a month, then like, that’s more than enough that I can live on happily and I don’t have to go back to my old job.”
Even though I was earning more in my old job, but it was like sufficient. Like, once you factor in childcare; and all this kind of stuff. Anyway, this particular guy who was, he sold this site on Flippa, was selling a report on how he built out this content site. He’s selling his report for $100, so I bought this report. And let me tell you, I followed this and it was like, it was basically teaching you how to do SEO.
So I followed this report to the letter. Like, if he would have said, “On Day 2, jump on one leg,” I would have done it. I just did everything that he said in this report and it totally worked, actually. So I started building out content sites and having; it’s basically an SEO game and it was mastering keyword research to see what are the expensive keywords and how you can rank for them and that sort of, I mean, it’s a whole games change now. I wouldn’t; definitely wouldn’t do this business model now. But as I said, this is going back so long ago now when it was like the cowboy days.
So anyway, so I followed this report and I learned how to rank. And I got really good, I used to learn how to rank in Google for certain terms, it was even like ten minutes of me publishing a blog post. But anyway, the whole, basically, a house of cards and that came crashing down a few years later.
But the moral of that journey and that story is that I mastered SEO even though I don’t do SEO. But keyword research and traffic and long-tail keywords and that kind of stuff. And so, when Google had an update and my business came crashing down overnight, which is why I don’t recommend people do this business model now, I decided to build a proper business in a flip B equation and actually run Google Ads.
So instead of being enemies with Google, like I was with SEO, where it’s a whole mask game with Google, I thought, I’m better-become friends with Google and actually run Google Ads and I knew keyword research anyway, which is the fundamentals of Google search and all that kind of stuff.
And so, I just flipped the equation and that’s how I started my journey into agency work. And I had a friend of mine in this space who was looking, so I said to a friend of mine one night, “Look, I think I want to do Google Ads and run Google Ads for people because it’s like an easy transition for me. But I just, I don’t have any clients, I don’t have a business to test this on.” And he said, “Look, I’ve got an agency. We need an AdWords person. Do you want to use this client as a case study for you?” And I was like, “Hell, yeah.”
He gave me my first client and that was my first hooray into Google Ads and agency work. And yeah, that’s going back seven years ago and kind of like the rest is history.
Meryl Johnston:
And so, where did you take that agency over the period of over the last seven years? What’s been the evolution with that business?
Ilana Wechsler:
It has, honestly, far exceeded my expectations of where I ever thought it would go. And it’s funny, it’s one of those things that like, you start something; so I started the agency just to learn it. And I thought, “Well, this is a really good skill to have and who knows where I end up?” It wasn’t a goal of mine to grow a big agency, it never was and it kind of never has been, actually. But it’s one of those things that I thought, “I’m going to do this to really master a skill and I want to become a new ninja at traffic. And then, who knows where it takes me from there?”
And so, fast forward seven years, I just put my head down and worked really, really hard and built it up to be really big and I suddenly, I just sort of; actually, like a few months ago, actually I was in Miami speaking at an event on Google Ads, actually. And I just, it just kind of like the penny dropped for me a little bit. I thought, “Hang on a minute. Like, here I am, halfway across the side of the world, talking about Google Ads, and I’ve got all these clients and this agency work. Like, is this what I really wanted?”
But, which the answer was no, actually. But I always became, it sounds really bad, but like the victim of my own success. Like I actually, and I still do, absolutely love the work. Like, I find it truly fascinating work that I do, but my goal was to never grow a big agency. I just; I love the data behind it. I love the psychology behind it and it’s like solving a puzzle.
But yeah, to answer your question on where my agency evolved to, like we’ve literally got clients all around the world. Some really big-names clients that some people in the industry have heard of. I’ve got the amazing opportunity to speak about Google Ads to big audiences. Like I was; I speak at Social Media Marketing World, you may have heard off, and other smaller sized conferences.
So I’ve ended up in a place that I honestly and genuinely never ever thought I would end. But I think it’s just because I love it and I just became really passionate about it and I find the work so fascinating and I’m not one of those people that like suffers from lack of motivation. I always have to stop myself from working because I do genuinely find the work very interesting.
Want to increase your leads and sales with online ads, but not sure where to start?? Join us on the Bean Ninjas Podcast as Ilana Wechsler, Founder of Green Arrow Digital and Teach Traffic shares her knowledge. Click To TweetMeryl Johnston:
And I think that’s quite an interesting position to be in where you love the work, but the more work you get; and this is something that I found in my business, the more work that comes in, the bigger your business grows, the less time you actually spend doing the work. And then, it becomes more about managing a team or managing or growing a business and all of the other, the admin, the accounting, the everything else that goes alongside it.
And so, it sounds like you might have had that realization in Miami where, as you said, you’re speaking at that event, enjoying what you’re doing. But then, you also had client work that needed to be done. What was your thought process around coming to that realization? What were some of the factors that you were thinking about?
Ilana Wechsler:
Yeah. Look, agency work is, it’s a really tough business, actually, and it’s tough as an agency because you; so I’ve got a very specialized agency where we only do Google Ads and Facebook ads. Like I don’t do SEO, I don’t do web design; like, it’s literally all we do. So it’s tough because many business owners feel that traffic is the answer to all their problems and they come to me often and it’s awful and I feel so bad for these business owners, but they come to me so desperate and they think that buying more traffic is going to solve all their business problems and it often doesn’t.
Like, traffic is only, it’s an important piece of the pie, but it’s not the pie itself. So agency work is tough managing clients’ expectations because many clients feel that this is going to save their business and it often doesn’t. And I never would make that illusion to business owners that this is going to solve all their business problems.
Yes, so agency work is I found very taxing on me emotionally because whenever we took on our client, I really wanted it to work for people. But at the end of the day, like if I’m trying to sell somebody’s widget, let’s say, I run Facebook ads and Google Ads, trying to sell their widget. If people don’t want their widget, I can’t dress it up anymore. Then I can, I can buy the best traffic in the world. But at the end of the day, people don’t want the widget; I can’t make them buy.
So I found that very difficult on me in sort of emotionally in dealing with, and maybe that’s just because I’m a mom. I mean, I’ve got three kids now; that dealing with just the level of client expectations and especially when you’ve got multiple clients.
So when I was in Miami, we were having this issue with this client, I mean, it was an issue like they were just trying to sort out some stuff and dealing with the time difference. I was literally up ‘till 5:00 in the morning on a phone call with a client because of the time difference. It’s not their fault, it was my fault I was in Miami.
And it’s just really, it’s just tough work. So it just kind of; it took its toll on me in the last seven years and then, I just, I guess, yeah. I just stood back and I thought, “Hang on a minute. Like, I love the work, but it’s managing client expectations.” And as you say, like once you start getting to a certain size, you’ve got to employ people and you’re not doing the work. And I was like, “I’m not doing the work that I love.”
And it became a bit joyless and I thought, “This is not why I’m doing this. This is not why I’ve started it.” So I ended up selling half of my agency, actually, and just keeping a handful of really, clients that I’ve had for a really long time; I have a wonderful relationship with them. They very much view me as being a partner in their team rather than an enemy. Some people think agency is the enemy, well, it’s actually the opposite.
Like, as an agency, somebody who runs an agency; like, I’m aligned with the business owner to make it work. I mean, people have had such awful experiences with other agencies, so I understand how they feel that. But I’m as aligned to make it work as the business owner and I often treat the budget that they give me to spend on their behalf as my own money. So it can be quite, I guess, taxing, which is why the Miami penny dropped for me. Did that answer your question?
Meryl Johnston:
It does. And so then, where did you decide to focus; I know that we’ve known each other over the years and I’ve seen some of the things that you’ve been doing in the education space and around challenges. And so, how long have you been doing education? And it sounds like you then decided to make; it was that the decision that you made to sell part of the agency and then focus on education?
Ilana Wechsler:
So, yeah. Probably about three years ago, I got approached by Sydney Uni, so Sydney University to run out full-day workshops; so not to students but to business owners, so to teach Google Ads and Google Analytics. So I thought, “Oh, okay. I could give this a try.”
And it was like my first foary into teaching and I really enjoyed it. And they tell you to run like workshops like once every six weeks and that was it. Like, it’s not like a curriculum and it wasn’t like part of a degree or anything. And so, I thought, “Well, let’s try this because as this journey hasn’t been anything such as in my life,” and I’ve just said yes as to try it on for size. So I did that and I really enjoyed it. So then, I’ve been, as I said, teaching for three years.
So then, about two years ago, I launched an online training because lots of people from uni wanted more training. So I thought, “Oh, hang on a minute. Maybe I can do some online videos.” So I launched an online membership way back two years ago and I run my agency in conjunction with the online training. Kind of like two wholes of the one business and I just really enjoyed the teaching part.
But what I found was the agency work just kind of kept pulling me away from the teaching part; just squeaky wheel kind of thing that clients jumping up and down, “We need this, we need that.” It just kind of kept dragging me away from the teaching side of things.
So as I said, yeah, with perspective in Miami, I just thought, “Hang on a minute. Like, I really enjoy the teaching. It’s growing nicely, but I spent zero time and effort in trying to grow it purely because the agency work just takes up too much of my time.” That kind of doesn’t make much sense.
So, yeah. So that’s when I decided to sell half the agency and just had a handful of clients, as I said, and focus entirely on the teaching side of things. So, I then, I’m about to launch a new website called teachtraffic.com and that will just be all about education and really focusing on growing that because that’s what I love and then I could do the work that I love, which is the traffic side and then teach it. So that’s kind of how it evolved.
Meryl Johnston:
And what are the key things that you teach? Or what do your students; what’s the objective they’re trying to achieve? I mean, it sounds like the overacting theme is traffic, is it broken; do you have different courses? Or how do you structure that? And what kind of things do you teach?
Ilana Wechsler:
Yeah. So it is an online, I guess, membership, right? Where I’ve got a bunch of different courses; so I’ve got a full course on Google Ads, I’ve got a full course on Facebook ads and a full course on Google Analytics and I’m teaching people how to run their own traffic.
So often, it’s either the business owner themselves; one who not have an agency; maybe they’ve been burned by an agency, which is super common. Or they’ve got an agency but they want to bring it in-house, which is also becoming more and more common where the business owners want to kind of have control as to the traffic that they’re running because it’s actually very, very important to the growth of their business.
So I teach either the business owner or their staff members how to run their own traffic without needing an agency. So you just pay like a flat monthly fee and you get access to all that training. It’s kind of like Netflix where you can watch it all in one go or just repeat it, but I guess the difference is I’m in there every day answering people’s questions.
So people ask questions, “What do I think of this? What do I think of that?” They send me screenshots of, let’s say, ad copy that they’re running or it’s a strategy that they should do because a strategy is very important. And I help; I basically do exactly like what I do in an agency. The only difference is that I’m not doing the implementation. I’m just telling them what I would do if they were in my agency.
You know, having done a million and one different strategies in every possible, conceivable niche or vertical out there. I’ve seen trends, I know what works, I know what doesn’t work. Obviously, there are nuances in industries, but generally speaking, I know what works and what doesn’t and yeah, there’s definitely trends.
I’m a big believer in using more than one platform because we live in a multi-device, multi-platform world, and people are on more than one platform. And it’s really risky to build your business just from one platform.
Meryl Johnston:
So we dig into the broad topic and traffic for a moment and we’ll go back to your agency-based; if you were to start working with a small business, they have a digital presence, but they’ve never really done much with traffic before, they’ve never really done Google Ads or Facebook ads or anything like that. How would you approach that? So how would you figure out whether traffic was the right method for them? And then, would there be any things they needed to have in place for it to be effective?
Ilana Wechsler:
That’s a really good question. So I deal with these kinds of businesses all the time where they’ve got some of an online presence, they probably don’t get a huge amount of traffic, but they’ve got obviously traction through online and offline marketing. So often, what I say to people is to start with what’s called a retargeting or a remarketing campaign. So it’s just a bit of jog, but basically, people who come to your website and then leave, the idea is that you show just those people an ad purely based on the fact that they’ve come to your website before.
So say, you come to my website, teachtraffic.com, you have a look around. You think, “Okay, that was interesting. But I’m going to think about it and come back later.” The mere fact that you’ve come to my website means that you’re on an imaginary remarketing list; so I’ll put a certain tracking code on my website such that I remember the people who have come to my website.
Obviously, I don’t know their name or any kind of personal information; it’s just been, it’s like cookie-based or tag-based, and then I can show that person an ad for the mere fact that yesterday, they came to my website. So often, that is the best starting point for business owners. And because it’s the lowest hanging fruit, you don’t have to overcome the hurdle of showing someone an ad where they don’t know what your business is, like, “Who is this? I’ve never heard of this person before.”
You know that they’ve heard of you because they’ve literally come to your website like yesterday and therefore, the fact that they didn’t contact you or buy or whatever it is you want them to do doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not interested in your business and they don’t want what you sell. It might have just meant that life kind of got in the way for them and perhaps the phone ring or one of their kids hurt themselves or did something; it’s often that’s the case for me with three young children.
So starting with a retargeting campaign is often the lowest hanging fruit for businesses. It’s super cheap to run. You can run it on like literally $5 a day and yields the best return on investment. So from 9 out of 10 businesses, I say to them, “Start with retargeting. If you can’t get those people to take some kind of action with you, it doesn’t have to be a purchase. It could be them filling in a contact form or downloading some kind of useful information; whatever it is your business offers. Then chances are there’s a problem with what you’re showing them. It’s a problem with your offer.”
So I often say to people, “Show those people a different offer.” And it’s a great testing ground to test what’s something good that you can run online on a really warm and forgiving audience; does that kind of make sense?
Meryl Johnston:
It does. Absolutely. And so, what would be the next step? So say that you’ve implemented retargeting, and as you said, that’s low hanging fruit, so they’re starting to get some returns on that. What would be the next step?
In Episode 81 of Bean Ninjas Podcast, CEO @Johnston_Meryl chats with @greenarrowdigit ’s Ilana Wechsler about the benefits of a smart and targeted pay per click advertising campaign Click To Tweet
Ilana Wechsler:
Well, in order to do retargeting, you need to install the tracking codes from the ad accounts on your website. So Google and Facebook, they’re not friends with each other. Sa Google, Google Ads or Google AdWords have their own tracking code that you need to install on your website; kind of like Google Analytics code. And the same with your Facebook ad account, the Facebook Pixel.
So both those tracking codes go on your website and by installing them on your website, it’s kind of like pressing record on a tape recorder, you’re remembering the people who’ve come to your website. So then, you’re ready to go and then, you need to start creating what’s called retargeting lists so it will remember those people who come to your website.
So you create, let’s say a 7-day list, which remembers everyone who’s come to your website in the last seven days. Or you can do 30 days, so you can even do, for Google, 540 days. It will remember everyone who’s come to your website in the last year and a half, which is pretty crazy when you think about it. Obviously, if they clear their cookies, they’ve been wiped. But most people don’t clear their cookies that frequently. So you can theoretically show those people an ad.
So provided you’ve installed the tracking codes, you set up your lists, then you can create what’s called a retargeting campaign and show those people an ad. Personally, I like to create either a 7-day retargeting list or a 14-day retargeting list so that I’m not showing the same people, the same ad over and over again. So if somebody comes to my website in the last seven days, they are automatically put on my 7-day retargeting list. I show them an ad, let’s say, for my free video calls that I offer. If they don’t come back, if they don’t click on that ad and they don’t come back in 7 days, they’ve fallen off that 7-day list and I’m not showing them an ad anymore.
So it’s just a good way of reminding them, “Hey, you were here in the last seven days,” I don’t say that in my ad, but if you don’t come back, then I assume your lack of click means that you’re just not interested and I’ll never show you an ad again. That’s just one kind of example.
What you could also do is you can also upload a database to Facebook. You can do it on Google but you need to have spent more than $50,000 in the lifetime with that account, which most businesses haven’t, so it’s a little bit more tricky with Google. But Facebook, they don’t have as tighter restrictions. So if you’ve got a database of name and email addresses that say you’ve developed offline through, I don’t know, lots of different ways, you can upload that database to Facebook, that name, email address and phone numbers.
It’s not available to anyone, so although I’m not a lawyer, people always want to ask, “Okay, for privacy reasons, uploading it to your ad account and you can show those people an ad.” And I really like doing that; I really like showing an ad to database people because these days, email open rates, I’m not 100% and it’s a good way of trying to show people what you’ve got to offer without them having to open an email, etc. Then also, they end up sharing the ad and tagging friends, etc. Does that make sense?
Meryl Johnston:
It does. And I also wanted to ask you about how to choose because not many people; or I don’t know many people that know or have gone in-depth on both Facebook ads and Google Ads. So is it a pick one or the other? Is it both? How do you decide which is right for each kind of business or which kind of offer?
Ilana Wechsler:
Yeah. And it so depends on the kind of business. If you’ve got a kind of business where it’s a known product or service that you’re offering and people are searching for it, it would make sense to me to do Google search ads. So say for example, for, when you had a consulting business as an accountant, you might want to get in front of people who type into Google small business accountants and insert Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane or whatever.
That would be obvious, like you’re sliding your business card under the nose of someone at literally the instant that they have searched for that as intent. You’re not trying to convince them that they need to change accountant, you know that they want an accountant because they literally just typed it into Google. So if you’ve got a business where people are searching for something, they’ve got an itch that needs to be scratched, it might make sense to do Google search for the mere fact that level of intent there. So that’s the good part of Google search.
The bad part of Google search is that it is really expensive. You pay for that privilege. It’s an amazing advertising opportunity because someone has literally just go on to Google to type it in, but you pay for that privilege with the cost-per-click. So you need to set it up in such a way that it’s structured properly and you’re not wasting money on that clicks because they are expensive clicks.
If however, you have got a kind of business where let’s say, you’re not really, people aren’t really searching for it or it’s a really social-type thing, then you might find Facebook ads could be really good. But having said that, it’s all in how you use the platforms. Like, people seem to forget that Facebook; it’s a social platform, it’s a social network. And they often try and sell straight off the bat with their Facebook ads.
And I often use this example where if you’re walking down, I don’t know, a shopping centre, and if walk into a shop and then the second you walk into a shop, a shop assistant comes up to you with a dress in hand and says to you, “Hey, do you want to buy this dress?” And like, you’ve literally taken one foot inside this shop. You’d be like, “Whoa. No. I mean, I’ve just stepped in. I want to look around and I want to maybe try a couple of dresses on and then maybe, I will consider buying one. But I want to browse.” Right?
And people treat their Facebook ads in exactly that same manner. They just go straight to, “Hey, you want to buy this?” They haven’t built that relationship with someone, they haven’t let them peruse their content, they haven’t let them explore and understand who they are as a business as they treat their ads in that respect.
So, although I don’t go to Facebook to find new brake pads for my car, right? I’m good at Google for that. Would I be interested if there was an article on Facebook about the warning signs that I need new brake pads for my car because I drive around a big family vehicle with my three kids and we’re taking kids from soccer practise to dance practice, etc? Yeah. Like, that would interest me and the warning signs because I don’t know, and then I might want to run Google Ads in the people who’ve read that article, because then, you know.
So it’s all in how you use the platform isn’t how you decide which one to use. So it’s so different for different businesses, which is why I think so many business owners struggle with strategy; they all kind of make back their money from the second they spend the money on ads. They’re trying to get that return of investment rather than thinking about the sequence of events for people.
People treat their Facebook ads in exactly that same manner. They just go straight to, “Hey, you want to buy this?” They haven't built that relationship with someone, they haven't let them peruse their content, they haven't let them… Click To Tweet
Meryl Johnston:
That makes great sense. Well, Ilana, thank you so much for coming on the show. Two final questions; do you have any other parting words around traffic or anything else that you think might be helpful or relevant from your business journey? And then the second question is where is the best place for the audience to find you if they wanted to get in touch or interested in learning more about your course?
Image source: https://launchpresso.com/
Ilana Wechsler:
So first question; do I have any tips? It depends on the business, obviously. I’m a big believer in using both platforms in a nice way. I think so often, people just focus on one platform; so let’s say, Facebook ads work really well for their business, then that’s all they do. And I’m a big believer in using more than one platform because we live in a multi-device, multi-platform world, and people are on more than one platform. And it’s really risky to build your business just from one platform.
And I have seen; there were so many business owners who have built their business very successfully using Facebook ads, for example. And then, Facebook, literally, one day to the next has shut down their account and that can and does happen. Often, with no recourse, they can just do that, so business owners haven’t built out an insurance policy. So I personally do like using both platforms even if you just do a tiny little bit on Google.
It’s worthwhile having some kind of strategy that you can know both platforms. So that would be my parting advice. And yeah, if people want to find out how to get some help with running ad campaigns and stuff like that, like I say, you can go to teachtraffic.com and it should be live any day now. So maybe by the time this episode comes out, it will be live; this new website. It redirects to my agency, which is called greenarrowdigital.com. But either way, it will come to me. So, yeah.
Meryl Johnston:
Great. We’ll link to that in the show notes as well. Well, thanks so much for coming on. I really enjoyed the chat.
Ilana Wechsler:
Thank you. The pleasure is all mine. Thank so much for the opportunity.
Meryl Johnston:
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