Lillie Beiting of Stanley Black & Decker On How to Boost Your PPC

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Lillie Beiting returns to share with manufacturers how you can boost your PPC and make sure you’re using it properly.

Danny:

Alright. Welcome back. This is a two part series of PPC. This is part two. In part one we went over a little bit of that framework, that 30,000 foot view of what is going on in PPC. Hopefully we gave it justice in the 20 minutes that we went over. Because there’s quite a few things going on. In this episode, we’re going to really go over a couple of little, best practices, a couple of different considerations you might want to have if you’re going to implement a PPC campaign. We have our guest, Lillie is here again to kind of walk us through her process on what she does with her PPC campaigns and share some tips and tricks and a little bit of strategy on what you might want to consider. I’m Danny Gonzales.

Judson:

And I’m Judson Voss.

Danny:

And this is IndustrialSage. Alright, let’s jump into more of that tactical approach on a PPC. So a big question.

Lillie:

Uh oh.

Danny:

I know you’ve got a good answer for it, right?

Lillie:

Uh oh.

Danny:

A company wants to jump into PPC, what should they do? What are the first steps?

Lillie:

Oh, it’s my answer again. It depends. It really depends. So depending on what you want to accomplish, there are a lot of different ways you could go. So I think I mentioned in the last session that we did that an approach you would take from a retail perspective is going to be a lot different than something to just brand aware or to get people to go to certain pages or to mirror a traditional campaign. There are so many different ways you can go. So what I really start with is identifying what you want. I’ve worked with clients, I’ve worked with my own… I’ve worked with people more on the manufacturing side of things. And so many times I’ve had meetings with people where they just don’t have realistic expectations, and it really works best if you segment everything out and understand what you’re going after. That’s why so much of pay-per-click, depending on which medium you’re using, is set up at a campaign level. So you can do different campaigns. So first of all, figure out what’s important to you. Figure out what’s important to your brand, what you’re trying to accomplish. Are you trying to get more, just clicks to the website? Are you trying to get more people to sign up for your newsletter or podcast? Which you should subscribe.

Danny:

Oh I like that too.

Lillie:

I got your plug, there we go. Or, really what it is you’re trying to do. I’m in a B2B situation, like the industry I’m currently working in, it’s really about nurturing people and getting them to respond to you and engage with you and understand how your products fit them, right? So figure out what that is first. And then there are a lot of different tools you can use to get to that answer. So keep that in the back of your mind, but be open to what the rest of the market has to say. So you’d mentioned again earlier that this changes every single day, this literally changes every single day, every single day. I mean, pay-per-click, for the most part, depending on which platform you’re using, is bid based. It’s an auction, right? So much like the stock market, much like even something like eBay, it’s subject to what else is going on in the market. So that also changes. It’s human nature. And there’s a lot of different analytics and research and predictive programs you can use to help you get your hands around that. So you may see people coming from an avenue you wouldn’t have previously considered. So keep an open mind. And then after that, there are a couple of different areas you can use depending on your needs. Google is the metric. They’re the metric system really of digital marketing. They’re a great place to start. They have so many free predictive tools. If you’re in AdWords, they have Keyword Planner. They actually, they used to have within YouTube Keyword Planner too. But I think they’ve moved that more over to display of vertical planning, but there’s so much within there that you can start to use. And then use common sense too. So Google does have a lot of neural network work. It is a neural network work. Yeah, that was, that was great.

Danny:

Easy word.

Lillie:

Right? Yeah. Neural network capabilities that they’re using, but it’s still a computer. What it may suggest might not make sense to you necessarily, but look through what they’re suggesting and kind of preen from there. And make sure you have somebody who knows what they’re doing with YouTube, because it’s really easy to waste a lot of money and time and anger your clients. And none of those are good things.

Judson:

In general. Do you have a URL for that one tool? Common sense?

Lillie:

For common sense? I wish. I wish.

Judson:

That’s too bad.

Lillie:

Unfortunately, you can’t purchase it these days.

Judson:

Speaking of tools actually, and we don’t want to go into everything. The beta machine only records for eight hours, and we wouldn’t have time.

Lillie:

Gotcha.

Judson:

Can you throw out a couple ideas? You mentioned the free stuff on a Google, maybe another place to start that sort of that SEO keyword type of thing.

Lillie:

So Moz is a really great SEO. So that’s not actually, pay-per-click, that’s sort of paper clicks, more nuanced sister these days. Since again, Google is trying to force people over to pay-per-click, and Facebook’s trying to force people, and YouTube is trying to force people to pay for it. Moz, I love though, because a lot of that kind of all plays together. This is a paid subscription, but they’re fabulous if you have access to it. Conductor Searchlight rules. Again, I don’t know if I’m allowed to plug pay services.

Danny:

Sure. We’ll hit back up for…

Lillie:

You can just send my check to us later. I love them. Optmyzer is also a really good platform too. They, I find, are a little bit more accessible, price-wise than Conductor is. But Conductor, I think if you’re looking for something that really compares what’s going on specifically on other people’s websites, it’s money for that, yeah.

Judson:

Gotcha.

Danny:

Like competitors.

Lillie:

Yes.

Danny:

I see where this is going. Okay, great.

Lillie:

I mean, but you have to, you really do have to consider your competitors in this sphere because a lot of it’s auction-based, and that’s, I mean, it’s not just, “oh, do I Pepsi, do I Coke?” It’s, “I need to know what Pepsi’s bidding on so that I can make sure that I’m in that space and protecting my backyard and protecting a marketplace that I want to dominate,” right?

Judson:

Sure.

Lillie:

Sorry, we’re in Atlanta, so we had to go after Pepsi a little bit.

Judson:

And I think in the B2B space too, you find knowing what your competitors doing it is important or just as importantly not doing.

Lillie:

Absolutely.

Judson:

They may not be there at all.

Lillie:

That’s a great point. And a lot of times with B2B, especially in the industrial space… What’s a good way to put this? There’s a lot of work still to be done. But if you are cognizant of these things, you still kind of have a first, market advantage to it. So I think you make a great point, absolutely know what they’re not doing. So you can be there first or leverage perhaps what you are doing instead.

Judson:

Sure. And I think you get pigeonholed to it and say, maybe they’re not on AdWords for a reason. That maybe it doesn’t work there, but other places more targeted do…

Lillie:

Sure.

Judson:

…Or whatever it is that should mixes that up.

Lillie:

And again, everyone is sort of their own little chemistry set, when it comes to digital marketing, so what might not be working for them, might work great for you. And it’s a matter of being open to that process. So really good digital marketing is semi-scientific. It’s kind of a mixture of a science and an art. It’s really like hard statistical analysis if you’re doing it right. And keeping that into consideration and having strong numbers to back up what you’re doing. So plan well, do a very good educated sort of a hypothesis as to what you think is happening, but be willing to change your experiment as time goes on. And the market always does change. So again, maybe what works for Judson Industries, doesn’t work for Lillie Industries, even though we’re in the same marketplace.

Judson:

Gotcha.

Lillie:

So be open to that.

Judson:

Okay, cool. So we talked a little bit about tools and how you go about researching things. Not every marketing department is going to be able to, or want to do that.

Lillie:

Some of it’s quite expensive too, yeah.

Judson:

So now I guess your next option is agency.

Lillie:

Oh man.

Judson:

How do you pick, you know, do it in house, take it to an agency?

Lillie:

So, my thought on doing it in house is this, if you’re the kind of person who can read a book and then properly wire an entire house up to the electrical code, do it in house. And those people do exist, they do. In one of my previous tenures, I worked for General Motors, and I went to thousands of dealerships I dealt with all over the US and Canada. And I met one person who I was like, “You know what? You could handle this.” And he had like two master’s degrees, and one of them was in statistics. So that’s why I was like, “You know what? I think, I think you’ve got this, you probably don’t have to hire out.” But it’s that level of sophistication. So you can internally hire for that. There are some really good PPC gurus out there. The nice thing about it being an internet-based platform is it’s easy to keep in contact with people and keep apprised of new stuff. However, if you’re going the agency route, which is also a perfectly valid and healthy way to go, work with somebody who’s collaborative. And if they make stuff sound really easy, I’d be extremely leery. Because as we mentioned, the level of granularity and sophistication you can get into with this is it’s astronomical. I mean, you could really teach a whole graduate level course on this. It’s that much detail. So I would say work with somebody who doesn’t give you the, “Oh yeah, we’ve got this, it’s fine.” Because that’s, that’s concerning. But instead is very collaborative in their approach. Hears you out, hears what your goals are. And also calls you on some of your BS too. You do want someone who does that because a good pay-per-click manager or someone who is implementing that is the person who says, “Hey, I know you said this was really important to you, we’ve wasted thousands of dollars trying to follow this. It’s not working. It’s not converting. Can we try it maybe on this campaign that is working?” So you want that level of conversation because they’re really the ones interpreting and changing, molding this data.

Judson:

Okay.

Danny:

That’s a great point. Yeah. You don’t want the yes man.

Lillie:

No, no. And if you badger somebody into being an order taker, you’re harming yourself. Because again, you are hiring somebody to be an expert in an extremely nuanced field. And again, you’re hiring them theoretically because they know more than you. So, encourage them too, but hold people accountable as well. One of the things I highly advocate, if you do work with an agency that will see if they’ll give you read access to the platforms that they’re using. So you can take a look. So much of this stuff is, at least from like a certification perspective, is free. So it’s free to get AdWords certified. It’s free to get, I think it’s Facebook Blueprint is the name of it now. You can do that no matter who you are, and then you can slap it on your LinkedIn and be fancy. But really it’s, you don’t necessarily have to be like, the script writing god to do this, but gain some literacy with it and make sure that you do get some insight into what’s going on and indicate PIs in case, you know, you just want to look or, you retain that level of literacy.

Judson:

Makes sense.

Danny:

That’s great. I mean, great. Some really great points. I, you know, a couple of things. So what I’m hearing is it’s a plan. So go back to strategy, plan segmentation in there was a really good piece of breaking it down to a campaign level. So it’s not like, we’re just going to send everything to everybody and all that. But another great area was using some of the tools to be able to, you know, research, but then really just making sure that you’re looking at it, right?

Lillie:

Yes.

Danny:

And you’re constantly…

Lillie:

Yes, yes, yes.

Danny:

…Maybe doing some AB testing, looking at what’s working and what’s not, I think was, is kind of important to us.

Lillie:

And again, remember it does change daily. It literally changes daily. So that’s not to say that, you know, your campaign’s completely crushed within one day, unless you’re a very high volume person like Amazon or a business like that… person. Wow. That’s scary. That was a bad Freudian Slip, ooh! But, in any case, yeah, you should keep an eye on it and be cognizant of internet trends too. I mean, again, I come from automotive, oftentimes holiday weekends were huge, huge amounts of traffic, and you want to make sure you’re protected for that. And you want to analyze that because maybe you have not the greatest sale weekend, you can kind of go through and say, okay, well what models did I really fall on my face for? Like what can I put together to figure out what I can do better next time? Not just on a digital marketing perspective, but an in house perspective too, because data is really a symptom. It’s not a cause of anything, necessarily. And you need to think about it that way. So if you see a big drop off, if you see something weird happening, that’s, you know, it’s like a runny nose, essentially. You’ve got to figure out what’s causing it. So be cognizant of those things.

Danny:

Don’t treat the symptom, go for the root. Ha ha. Alright, excellent. That was good. So anything else that you might want to add? I know there’s a million things we can go over, but you know, I know any, any other little.

Lillie:

So kind of a double edged sword of the internet is that you have so much information, and that’s great. I mean, I think it’s connected us in meaningful and sometimes creepy ways, but ultimately I think it’s a neutral tool, right? So as I mentioned before, there’s just so much misinformation about this. Remain literate, but be open to listening to experts. There were so many free webinars you can attend. A lot of very big agencies will run webinars too. One of the best resources I’ve ever encountered is thinkwithgoogle.com. So it’s a Google property, and they have so much information that they have these amazing case studies in there. They’re usually broken out by vertical. They really do apply nicely. So if you’re looking into information, that’s a really great place to start, and just be leery of some of the things you’ve been told too, and investigate them a bit more.

Judson:

Great.

Danny:

Wow, this is great. Well, we’ll make sure we have a lot, you threw out a lot of different resources.

Lillie:

Yeah.

Danny:

We’ll make sure we put those in the show notes and have it so, you know, our viewers can access that later, But, you know, thanks again so much for coming…

Lillie:

Thanks for having me, this was fun.

Danny:

…on this two part series. This has been very educational, and hopefully I think our viewers find it very, very valuable. So, you know, thanks again for watching this. If you have any questions on PPC or if you have any other additional digital marketing questions, feel free to reach out to us. We’d love to address them in an episode. You can reach out to industrialsage.com/questions, and we’d be happy to look at them and answer them on a episode. So again, thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe, and we’ll catch you next week. Thanks.

 

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