Surfside PPC Podcast

What's up everyone? Welcome to the Surfside PPC podcast. This is episode number 27 and today I'm going to be going over Google Ads AIAX. So, I've gone over this actually in one of my very first episodes on the podcast. Just kind of a quick overview what I've seen from it. So, I've been using it more since then. So, a little bit of what what I think it is, how I plan to use it long term, and really best practices for using Google Ads AI Max. So, if you are currently like, how do I even get started with AI Max and what is it? Google actually does a decent job of explaining it. So, I have these two campaigns running just kind of as a let's see what happens type thing, but Google ad services, medical and home services. I have all these different ad groups for different different types of businesses that I'm targeting. So, dentists, chiropractors, therapists, psychiatrists. If we go into the actual keywords themselves, you can see dental advertising agency, dental PPC company. Of course, I am not bidding nearly high enough to get onto these. So, the goal is basically let's see if we can get anything out of this campaign without overspending on clicks. So, probably not, but it's going to be used more as tutorials for future campaigns because I'm putting together basically a mini free course for Google Ads. So, for AI imax, basically what you're going to do is go to your campaigns and go into your campaign settings. So, we have Google ads services, medical and home services. I click here. Once our settings opens, we can scroll down. Now, manual CPC is not my preferred bidding method. I prefer to use target CPA, but for a campaign like this, I I don't really like using maximize conversions to start. I think what Google should do is use max ize conversions and set a max bid with it, but I don't think they're going to do that. So, AI max for search campaigns. Get the best AI powered performance for Google search. Engage more customers more easily and boost performance. Easily expand your keywords with broad match technology. So, when I think about AIAX, to me, it is built for larger companies that have very good conversion data going into Google ads. If I am actively optimizing for booked clients that have spent revenue with me, that have paid their invoices, then it's a lot easier for me to optimize for more of those. and for Google to find more clients for me. This works a lot better for industries that get volume. So, if you're like a roofer, it's more difficult because you're like, "Okay, we need this some person to come in. They are going to call us. That call we are then going to, you know, send send somebody over to give them an estimate and then they're going to get a few estimates from a few different roofing companies and they have to figure out which one they want to go with." And that whole entire process might take a month, it might take a week. So, from a Google Ads perspective, it's hard to always track that. Okay, this person came in 2 months ago and now they are actually getting their roof replaced or they are getting a brand new roof installation or they're changing their entire roof material. So the hard part is when you have those types of longer journeys and less overall volume. So my business falls into this because I do not have, you know, I'm not landing 30 new clients every month. I don't have constant leads coming in through Google Ads and constant closings coming in through Google Ads. So when you have that, it's much easier to send that back and say, "Hey, here's all my HubSpot data. We're bringing in 30, 40, 50 new clients every month and here's where they come from. So with that data, Google's able to understand, okay, we know what Google Ads is driving for this company. And what you're able to do with AI Max is say, we want you to go find people even beyond our targeting that will help us find additional conversions without really increasing the overall price of it. On the surface, it sounds wonderful. In reality, it's not perfect yet. So, I think when I did my last video, it was in beta. So, it's currently no longer in beta. So, it is currently rolled out. You'll see it in your account in your settings and it is something for search campaigns where you're not creating a specific AIAX campaign. It is a setting within your search campaigns. The best way that I can describe it is a combination of dynamic search ads along with broad match keywords. So, you're essentially saying I want Google to So, it's really dynamic search ads. It's just another name for it. And the goal for Google is to get people to opt into this so that they can learn more about buyer journeys and say, "Okay, this person searched XYZ 3 days ago and now they're coming back to the website and booking and spending money with this company. So, it works really well for volume type of businesses. If you are an e-commerce company, it makes complete sense because if you're selling makeup or, you know, any really product, you know, makeup, fashion, any of any of these different products where people are searching all sorts of different keywords, searches, competitive names, you never really know exactly what everyone's searching. So, from a pure keyword targeting perspective, it's not going to get people like that as well. So when you're actually looking at this, what AIAX does when you turn it on, text customization. It's going to use text from your website, landing pages, ads to create customized ad copy, and final URL expansion. So if I, for example, under Surfside PPC, which I do, I have a lot of pages for dentist PPC advertising, dentist Google ads management, chiropractor, Google ads management. Let's just say I have 300, 400, 500 total pages of chiropractor SEO, dentist SEO, dentist local SEO, dentist Google ads, therapist Google ads doctor digital marketing agency. You know, I have all of these variations of pages. With AI Max, what I can theoretically do is say, I want you to drive traffic to these pages, figure out what works and drive me conversions. It works better when you have conversion data already set up. So, I would not do it for a brand new campaign. For a campaign like this without data, absolutely not. For really good performing campaigns that are looking for more volume, I think it makes sense. So, let's come over to our presentation here that we've prepared. Google Ads AIAX and how it works. And yes, contact surfite PBC if you need help with uh anything Google ads related we can do consulting we can do management so we can help you if you are struggling with Google ads got a quick little presentation we put together with the help of AI but essentially what AIAX is how it works final URL expansion so we'll go through this so it makes more sense it's a setting within your search campaign so it's not a specific campaign type it is search campaigns is the campaign type but it's not an AIAX campaign it is let's turn on AI max within our search campaign so learn the two halves before before you flip it on is essentially saying every feature lives under search term matching asset optimization. So you can turn it on or off and there are two different options as far as search term matching asset optimization. So how you decide to use AIAX to me it's something you should only turn on if you're seeking more volume in a good performing campaign. Use case tree service running one search campaign for emergency tree removal near me can enable AIAX without rebuilding a single ad group. So next is going to be how search term matching works. This will probably make a little bit more sense where if you do enable it for emergency tree removal near me, it opens up to longer conversational searches like large oak leaning on my roof after storm. So when people go into Google and search things like what to do if a tree falls on my house, then what you have is okay, we have our ad pops up emergency tree services. It's it always sounds better when I say it that way cuz what's going to happen is it's going to match for things that are irrelevant. It's going to match for competitive terms. So keep in mind this is not perfect. The thing is what with Google and keyword targeting it can continues to be more limited and limited over time. I don't know how how limited it's eventually going to become. I think AI Max is a way to say, "Hey, you can set your targeting and basically give Google suggestions and allow Google to expand beyond your your current targeting." They have a few different things in Google settings where they're starting to do this as well where it's, you know, if you feel com confident with more conversions or, you know, if you want Google to go out and basically say, "Yes, we want you to try to spend more money and find us some additional conversions." And if you don't, that's That's okay. AIMAX is essentially saying, "We are spending five grand a month. We want to spend seven grand a month. Can you find more conversions within Google?" That's essentially what you're doing. You're saying, "Use our website. Use all of our ad or use all of our website content. Use our website pages to see if there are things we can target that we're not targeting well enough." And it might come down to something for like a tree service where you say, "Okay, we have a page on our website about tree removal costs or how much does it cost to hire an arbor arborist or how do I know if my tree has a specific disease. And if you have a good base of content, you could actually drive more of that traffic to your website, hopefully at a lower cost. And you know, those 5 6 7 8 9 10 clicks cost as much as one tree removal near me click. And if with in your local market, it could lead to more conversions for you. So that's really the way that I look at it. It's almost, and I I hate to say this, but it's almost paying a little bit more money for SEO traffic, which is really what Google wants you to do and what we might be forced to do, unfortunately. Text customization and final URL expansion. So this is the two main things writes from your own content and your landing page copy to build headlines and description lines and then finally URL expansion is going to find the landing pages that are most likely to drive conversions. The thing is if you have 500 landing pages and you're like, "Yep, Google, find me conversions." You have to understand there's going to be a learning period for Google because they're sending traffic to a bunch of different pages using a lot of different targeting. So that's why I say this works best if you have a really large budget because a large budget allows you to say, "Okay, we can easily you know, easily spend a lot of money and lose a little bit of money or break even in the short term so that in the long run we can actually make more money. So text customization, final URL expansion are the main things that this uses. And when we come back over here and just look at the overall like within our campaign settings. So let's come back to our campaign here and we'll go into our settings. So we have this other one locations. We have medical and home services. All of these I can turn it on with locations. Basically it's targeting people searching their spe specific location, you know, Google Ads agency, Myrtle Beach. So, we're targeting throughout the entire country, but it's all very location-based in terms of keyword targeting with AIAX. And I would not turn it on for this. Truthfully, it would be a terrible thing to turn on for branded searches. I could say how do you want to show on searches that contain brand names. I can say show ads only on unbranded searches. So, that's one option and that's something I would recommend doing for sure in this case. The other thing is going to be yeah, here's your two options. You can add URL exclus inclusions. You can add text guidelines. They will have asset examples as well. So, coming back over to our presentation here. Basically, final URL expansion is going to try to find the best landing pages. Text customization is going to try to find the best assets to build. It's a way for Google to expand your existing campaigns without you having to build a a huge campaign. Controls that keep you in charge. Brand inclusions and exclusions, locations of interest, URL exclusions. These are all things where you can say, "Okay, a pool builder adds locations of interest to the three counties and services. excludes its careers page and financing page. So paid clicks don't land there obviously. Which URLs on your site site should never be a landing page for a paid click? That should be where your URL exclusions go. So AI brief and text disclaimers. You can use a brief just to basically say use this type of ad copy lock required copy with text disclaimers. So if you have anything where it's like hey we need to make sure that this is is showing up here. But ultimately what you're trying to do is just guide the AI into hey I want you to still follow my brand guidelines, but also, you know, keep going out there and trying to find me more conversions. And then finally, within your reporting, you will see within your search terms reporting, what is an AIAX match? So far, I have not seen this work great for me, and I've seen some things pretty irrelevant. I I work with a dog trainer, not a huge budget, but they turned it on just be like, "Let's see what happens." And it just brought in completely irrelevant thing like things related to cleaning and then dog grooming and all sorts of things that are just completely irrelevant for dog training. I get some body who grooms her dog might need training, but to me that's not anywhere near the intent of what we're looking for. And then I've turned it on for a couple of other clients where we've seen better results and it seems to work much better if we are feeding in good conversion data. Feeding in poor conversion data or no conversion data, absolutely avoid AIAX. If you are, you know, running an established campaign that's been running for a while, then feel free to use it and it could work really well for you. So AIAX, just basically a quick overview of how it works. Maybe we'll do a some type of AIAX campaign aign and spend spend $50 on it and see what happens, but ultimately I think it's going to be $50 wasted unless it's a campaign that has some conversion data in it. Wish I could share some more data from actual client accounts, but I will say it is working better if you have an established account with good data. So, if you're like, do I turn this on? To me, I think the answer right now is yes for a a week or two in campaign in accounts that are spending a lot that are looking for more conversions that have solid conversion. But ultimately, it's another tool within your, you know, Google Ads toolbox that you can test, try to implement for different clients. But it's really a um, you know, the challenge right now for me is getting good conversion data in the account and from there then we can really improve everything. So this is AI Max. This is uh, podcast episode number 27. We will have more episodes coming out in the coming weeks. So if you have any uh, questions about anything, please leave them either in the comments or shoot me an email. And thank you for watching my video today and make sure you subscribe to my podcast and my YouTube channel.