Surfside PPC Podcast

welcome to the Surfside PPC podcast Go to surfsidepc.com to join Surfside PPC premium and ask your questions Thanks for listening and please subscribe What's up everyone Welcome to episode 6 of the Surfside PPC podcast So announcing that my new 2026 Google Ads course will be available tomorrow as of the publishing of this episode But if you're listening to this my 2026 Google Ads course should be available It's $34.99 a year So if you're interested then you can go get that there Basically you you'll have yearly updates and you'll you'll have Google Ads course information for $34.99 a year for life as long as you want the subscription If you join my premium my premium is just $5 a month either YouTube membership Patreon or my school page So that is basically everything That is the the sponsor of the Surfside PPC podcast if you want to get in your questions or anything like that No major things to really my goal is to start on the beginning of these episodes talk about you know trends I see and things like that Not really a major trend episode but I do think this episode will be helpful for anybody who is running ads for somewhere that gets local store traffic or foot traffic or things like that So what I want to talk about today is I got a question from somebody in my email and pretty detailed question So I'm going to put it in here I I changed a couple of things just because I don't want to mention specific stores and things like that but ultimately it's a consignment shop and they want to know should I run ads for my consignment shop So we are going to put in question number one here I own a consignment shop and I have a lot of competition where I am located in Florida Should I try to run Google ads for my consignment shop I don't want to waste the money but I want to make sure it is profitable Or if you think it could be profitable Okay so this is a good question So basically if you run a local store this could apply for really any local store where you know you're getting people that are coming to visit your your local store And let's just say you have other competitors in the market Like if you're the only type of store in your market and you do a search of you know sporting goods you know sporting goods Myrtle Beach and you you're the top at everything and there's not really another real competitor there then you know it's one of those things where running ads if it it may be worth it but it also might be something where you're just kind of paying for people that are already going to be visiting you anyway That's one of the things you have to balance But truthfully I know I'm probably very pro- Google ads compared to most people cuz that's just what I do for a living and what I see But I do think there's a competitive advantage to running ads Even if you decide I'm going to run a $1,000 budget or I'm going to run a small budget If you've never run Google ads before you should reach out to a professional Reach out to Surfside PPC and you know we we could figure something out if it's a small budget Large budget obviously reach out But basically to answer the question I generally say I am pro running ads to your local store especially if there's a lot of competition in the area For this one specifically a consignment shop I know near me and I just did a quick search There's like four or five that come up So it's one of those where with a consignment shop you can get more people that are potentially going in and selling things to you where you now you have more things that you're able to sell And in addition you can also get more foot traffic to sell more of those products to people So to me it's one of those things where I if you're if you have an advertising marketing budget let's just say you want to spend an additional $500 $1,000 $2,000 you know maybe more depending on what you know what size store you have how many locations you have I do think it's worth running Google ads I think running a mix of search campaigns just really targeting your your main keyword you know consignment shop near me consignment shop you know what whatever location you're in Last episode I kept saying De Moine but you know we'll use Myrtle Beach this episode So consignment shop Myrtle Beach So essentially what you're trying to do is you're trying to target here are the keywords that people are going to be typing in near me Now there's a lot more to it actually running your ads You know negative keywords conversion tracking What you want to do is you want to connect your Google business profile directly to your Google Ads account So that is going to be run as a location asset You can set up a call asset So it's going to increase the number of phone calls you're getting Uh and I would run a mix of search campaigns and performance max Now there's a certain strategy I tend to use for this for local stores So running Google ads for a local store local business that you know where you are getting traffic in in your actual physical shop you know a blind store something like that there is there is kind of a a strategy to it And ultimately what you can actually do over time is you can optimize for store visits So you can actually get enough data of people visiting your store after they click on Google ads You know I've worked with a client that would sold gold and people would go into their store and we would get hundreds of store visits tracked through Google ads every month with not a whole lot of spend So there's a lot of ways to do this and really it's targeting the right keywords and setting up your your strategy the right way and conversion tracking So there's a lot to it obviously to to make it successful But really for me it's it's worth running ads for your local store unless it's one of those scenarios where your local store just happens to be in a market where you're kind of the main you're the main you know if it's consignment store and you're number one pretty clearly you know is it worth running ads I don't know I I tend to kind of say no If it's one of those where you have a couple locations and you're looking to increase foot traffic you're looking to get more people in and out of the store which is you know it's always a goal Obviously you're trying to increase revenue It's worth at least starting with a I would say a threemonth test budget just to say we're going to spend this and we're going to kind of monitor what's happening in our store with our foot traffic with our overall revenue Now you can't just give it like a twoe period and say "Okay let's see if this is working." It's going to be one of those things where give it three four five months Give it an investment I always say at the very least Google ads you're probably going to make your money back if you set it up pretty well At the very least you're running ads in your local markets people that are searching for exactly what you're selling But what's really interesting about Google Ads is in some scenarios and it's like it always interests me but in some scenarios somebody might search consignment shop near me They click on a a $5 ad They have a $1,000 couch that they're like "Yep I have a couch that I would like to consign with you." Great You know you sell that couch for $900 Now this company spent on a $4 click You know there's a a $450 check going both to the consignment shop and to the couch owner So it's one of those things where you know very cheap clicks can turn into huge business And you know one person I I know me personally that's actually I did conside a couch that I just didn't feel like selling on my own And that's basically what happened Like I end up getting a check you know we kind of split what it was We did sell it for around $900 and you know I got a check for like $450 and for the consignment shop Now I had a really good experience with them So if I'm going to consign again I'll do it there And I've also walked through the shop since then I just didn't purchase anything but it it's a nice they have nice stuff So it's one of those things where a combination of Google ads and even meta ads for your local store I'm all about it and you know just getting getting more foot traffic using audience data on search engines to reach more people that you know potentially may have gone to a competitor So I am a yes to running Google ads for your local store I and it's one of those things at the very least you should test it If you have a lot of competition then it's something that absolutely you should be doing Especially if it's like you're getting a lot of customers in your stores If you're somewhere where somebody you know one or two people walk in a day then you know it's one of those maybe maybe not you know if you're like some specialized computer repair and you know you get a few customers a day you know which is really all you need then then really it's one of those things where you know maybe it's worth running ads but it just depends on overall competition in my opinion So that that's how I'd answer that question running ads for your local consignment shop All right so let's get to our question number two So question number two is going to deal with AIAX So somebody asked me a question like do you use AIAX Well you know what would I kind of recommend So here is question number two Do you use AIAX yet Do you have any recommendations with AI Max Okay so AIAX as of and this is going to change because it's like one of those AIAX isn't going to be the same thing forever and I think it you know things start a certain way in Google ads and and I think they end up a certain way and it's just understanding how they work and how to use them effectively So AIAX is a feature within your search campaigns To me it's one of those where yes we are all going to be using Amax eventually Maybe not all of us It might be one of those things where you know larger budgets bigger volume kind of interested in going after more customers I would say a AI max is definitely going to be something that I have implemented in a lot of my accounts So far I have only used it in a few accounts I've used it basically by itself in its own campaign and just bid separately than I did for some of the other campaigns just to kind of see a test It's more of one of those things where I have clients who are interested in expanding their campaigns getting more volume and that's one of the ways to do it So do I like it Do I like the search terms that come in It's very similar to broad match for me So when I when it first came out I kind of called it broad match on steroids I don't know if that's necessarily the right way to put it but it's you know it's one of those things where I think if you're feeding good data into your Google Ads account and you're really optimizing for qualified leads then AMAX can definitely work if you are a a very niche you know you're doing a very niche type of service it's you know it's I think last episode I mentioned pediatric dentist like something like that where it's you're not you know you're targeting a specific person and you're not really this this massive you know it's like somebody who's a landscaper but it's like oh yeah we do landscape design but really our specialty is you know some some other you know pavers or something like that within it you know some type doing doing some type of luxury pavers like travertine tiles or something like that So it's one of those where the more niche down you get the more that I think AIAX doesn't work as well because it's just there's if you're in a niche down service there's only so many leads to go around and ultimately it's very reliant on conversion data So can you feed it enough good conversion data to actually work That's one of the big questions that you know I kind of have with Google Ads right now It's like can I just always have enough conversion data for all my different clients Certain industries like it's just easy to get conversion data In certain industries it can be very difficult Just expensive clicks You know you really have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars It's like what I always say with like HVAC My first HVAC client up came to me with like a $1,000 budget years ago and I was like "Oh this works." And we we got some leads from it We we got enough that it was like "Oh this this is good." And I I build them a decent amount Then you know sever years later when we got into like AI I my a track client was like "Yes we want to run immediately heating repair type keywords." I'm like "All right heating repair keywords." So basically what ended up happening was they had a $2,000 budget and a couple the first click is like $50 I'm like "All right." And they're like "Well then that's way too expensive." I'm like "I think this is what you know it's going to cost to get our initial date because it's a good click." We got a few of those clicks in and our first conversion is like $200 300 something dollars So basically what's difficult is if you're not you know if you're paying $300 $400 per conversion the client has to be really open to saying "Yeah I'm willing to test I'm willing to spend a little bit more than I need to." And bringing this back to AI Max are is it worth spending that additional money if you're not actually seeing good conversion results that come from it And this was a big question with performance max for a while I almost think AI max should become its own type of campaign where I think I think search should still be something where it's like yes you can run search campaigns targeting broad match phrase match exact match you still have search terms you still have the ability to you know target keywords and bid up on keywords and target the right people I don't think that should ever really go away I know we have local service ads now but like I don't think a local dentist should write up oh you know you're either running AI max or performance max and you're just kind of running these automated campaigns because ultimately then Google ads is just built for the biggest largest spenders which it already is but there is a skill to it So basically going back to AIAX long way of saying am I using it What are best practices for it I think it's worth testing in accounts where you do have a lot of qualified lead data where you are spending a lot of money where your client is opening open to getting more volume and and trying to expand on you know what they're currently getting in the local market That's really my thought on it is it's worth it in the sense of large clients need more volume Is it something I use in an account where you know a plumber reaches out to me and says you know "Hey Corey I want to run ads for you know you know for plumbing repair and and for plumbing keywords." Does it make sense for them to then you know run AIAX Probably not I generally don't even run too much broad match keywords for clients like that unless they're really large clients and they're and they're again looking for all the volume in the world Just clicks are really expensive with AI Max It's not like your clicks are somehow just all of a sudden cheaper And you know is it worth still spending a really high cost per click when some of the search terms coming in aren't the greatest I mean AIAX broad match it's it drives good results I mean it's going to go after really good searches but there's just crap that comes in you know in with all of that And it's like sometimes just using phrase match and just bidding up a little bit on it is you know sometimes the best strategy I found But it is one of those things where you know who knows how that's going to change over the next you know year two years three years down the road So that is my thoughts on Google Ads AI Max and running Google Ads for your local store So this is going to conclude episode number six of the Surfside PPC podcast Again you can get my Google Ads course My 2026 Google Ads course should be available It'll be available Wednesday February 11th It will be the release date I believe that's correct So if you see it you can join $34.99 a year So I will see you on the next episode And remember if you want to ask questions you can join my premium I'll have a lot of premium content coming out a lot of premium Google Ads content So you can join it there A lot of more tutorials and things like that So definitely expanding our overall content that we'll have available for everybody And and that's kind of what our our goal is as we move forward this year So hopefully everybody uh learned a little bit this episode and I'll see you next time Thanks for listening to the Surfside PPC podcast Please go to surfsidepc.com for management or consulting options or to get my course or join Surfside PPC premium through my YouTube channel my school page or my Patreon Please subscribe