Surfside PPC Podcast - Episode 2 - What Campaign Types Should I Run?
What's up everyone? Welcome to episode two of the Surfside PPC Podcast. If you wanna ask your questions, join either my school community, join my UT membership, or join my Patreon. Either one will get you access to premium content and you can ask your questions and I will answer them on the pod. So let's get right into it.
Corey:What we're gonna be doing or going over today is going to be just campaign types. What campaign types we should be running, strategy, how we should be thinking about different types of campaigns. So I'm gonna go from basically campaigns that I think are the most important to least important. Probably won't mention everything. I'm not gonna talk about display campaigns because I don't really run display campaigns.
Corey:So certain things I probably won't talk about, that probably means maybe stay away from it. So getting started with it, the very first campaign I believe every single business should try to run is search. Now it doesn't mean search is always gonna be your best performing campaign, but I do think a good performing search campaign is kind of the basis of what most businesses really want if you're looking for consistent leads from paid advertising? So to me, a search campaign is kind of where I always start. So I look at creating a search campaign that is either going to drive me leads, in the case of lead generation, or purchases potentially doing things like begin checkout, you know, some of those pre purchase conversions, depending on how much volume you're getting.
Corey:Now, if you're getting plenty of purchase volume from a search campaign in your account, you don't need to optimize for the other conversion actions. But if you're kind of in that, okay, we're getting some purchase conversions here and there from search, then it might make sense to add in a little bit more conversion data. So you're able to optimize a little bit more for like the complete funnel. So my thought with lead generation and search is I always think you should have a lead generation search campaign aggressively bidding on the best keywords for your business. So what that means is if you are a roofer that is serving the, know, pick any market in America, a roofer that is serving Dallas, for example.
Corey:Basically, I think the most important thing to start with is making sure that you are targeting keywords like roof installation Dallas, roof replacement Dallas, roof installation near me, targeting your local market. So targeting keywords like that, I think getting the most you can out of those keywords, because that ultimately is going to be where the best searchers are. It's worth paying for that traffic. You might say, I'm not paying $50 per click, but for a roofing job, I mean, the average roofing job is thousands and thousands of dollars that, yet, there are companies that are willing to pay $50.60, $70 a click, sometimes higher, because if they can get a lead for every three or four clicks, or every five or six clicks, then there's a pretty good chance that they're gonna be making a whole lot of money, because they're gonna have a good lead flow coming in, plenty of jobs for the roofing company. So to me, that's kind of always my starting point.
Corey:Search campaign targeting really the main high search intent keywords for the services that you're providing. Now, sometimes people ask, when do you separate campaigns? So I use roofing as an example because you could potentially say, hey, we're gonna create roofing installation, roofing replacement campaign. Now roofing installations and replacements are much more expensive for the most part than a roofing repair. So a roofing repair may just be a couple of shingles that needs to be replaced and fixing a leak.
Corey:And not that it's an easy job or something, but the upside for that job isn't the same as installation replacement. It's the same with hardwood floor repair compared to installation refinishing. So ultimately what you're trying to do is say, what does it make the most sense to bid aggressively on? For roofers, installation replacements, I think you would wanna create a campaign, put most of your budget behind it. A repairs campaign could be something where you say, hey, we're putting a secondary budget behind this.
Corey:Basically, we wanna target keywords like roofing repairs near me, you know, maybe roofing company near me, certain keywords like roofers near me where the the search intent isn't clear. You know, it could be potentially, you know, somebody roofers near me may be looking for an installation job, but ultimately what you wanna do is say, we wanna put our aggressive bids on those keywords in that search campaign, and then we wanna have a secondary search campaign targeting these other services. I've done the same thing before with a company that did water damage restoration, you know, different restoration services, very expensive clicks. Mold remediation, not as expensive as restoration. So it's instead of kind of mixing in a service that's less expensive with less upside, then that's when you wanna kinda start separating out some of those services into their own campaigns.
Corey:And for e commerce, it's the same thing. If you have different categories of products, then creating separate search campaigns can be a good strategy depending on, you know, what the return is for those products. So ultimately, that's how I look at creating my initial search campaigns. Now, one of the new things is AI Max for search campaigns. To be honest, I'm not a huge AI Max.
Corey:So far, I haven't used it that much. I'm assuming I will use it a lot in the future. Just in beta right now, it's I haven't seen the greatest results with it. A couple of clients that I'm using it with just because they are interested in testing it and and seeing how it performs. But one of the things that I do in addition to these campaigns, this is now this is not your first campaign you wanna create, is almost like a top of funnel campaign.
Corey:The goal of this campaign is let's get clicks in that are gonna be much cheaper, that are the search intent is not close to, you know, this person is actively looking for somebody to do the job for them, but things like, you know, roofing replacement cost, roofing replacement, you know, companies, you know, things where, maybe companies isn't the best example, but you know, these top of funnel keywords where, you know, how much does a roof leak repair cost? Those types of keywords where you're trying to target things where people are searching for the initial stages of like, what can I expect for this specific service if I need it, basically? So top of funnel campaign, that is where I think AI Max could also make a little more sense. Now you always need to keep in mind if you have multiple search campaigns, you need to bid separately depending on what you're actually targeting. So if you want really aggressive bids, sometimes you can just set your bidding as maximized conversions and just let it run.
Corey:The other way to do it is setting target CPAs higher. So saying, okay, I'm willing to pay now $300 for a roofing replacement and installation lead. I'm willing to pay a $150 for a roofing repair lead. I'm willing to pay $75, you know, for a roof installation cost lead. So you can kind of adjust your target CPA budgets.
Corey:You also use portfolio bidding strategies and kind of keep everything on the same bidding strategy. Probably wouldn't make sense for what I just talked about. But ultimately, you're when I'm talking about campaigns for search, that's kind of how I'm thinking of it. I want a high search intent campaign for my best services that we're targeting. And for some companies, you know, they have really one service that they're providing.
Corey:It might be one you know, I've worked with with a company that really they're like, we want to advertise for, you know, plumbing repairs. It's like, that's all we wanna advertise for is plumbing repairs. Like, what we do, leak repairs. And they're like, we want people that are searching plumbing repairs. Like so it's sometimes you get things where we're just doing something very specific and, you know, when when that's the case, it's like towing, you know, towing near me, towing and flat tire.
Corey:Like, there's not a ton of things to target with the ways people are searching for that. So that's kind of the way I look at it. Ultimately, search campaigns, I think that's where you wanna put the majority of your budget most of the time. Now, the next campaign type is performance backs. When you say Performance Max, you either get, you know, people have mixed opinions on it.
Corey:Performance Max is a great campaign for e commerce. So it's really built for e commerce for, you know, Google Shopping, connecting your Merchant Center to it. And what I'm finding with Performance Max more and more is there are Performance Max works really well for local. It works really well for ecommerce. And for lead generation, it does require management.
Corey:Like you do have to manage the campaign and figure out ways to make it work. It's not a perfect campaign. It might drive you some low quality conversions, low quality phone calls, but I'll tell you over the last six months, I've been running more of them for lead generation because now you can actually see the search terms that are driving, you know, what it's actually going after. You get a little bit more of the audience targeting that, you know, for longer sales cycles, like for a, you know, plumbing leak repair, it might, or water damage restoration. It might be, we need something immediate where we don't need an awareness ad running.
Corey:We need to spend all of our money on direct response. It's like, that's fine. Performance Max does still go after that. So to me, Performance Max, if you're kinda skeptical on it and you're like, no, then don't run it. But I have found good results with it.
Corey:And if you are a local store, you know, you definitely wanna run a local store visits objective performance max campaign. If you are an e commerce website, you definitely wanna run a sales e commerce campaign. So those are the ones or or sales purchase, you know, those types of campaigns, sales performance max. Leads performance max is just one of those. You do need to watch it.
Corey:You do need to manage lead quality, and you need to understand that it's gonna drive you some low quality leads at times, but it does go after really good audiences. And to me, the top of funnel search campaign that I mentioned that incorporates, you know, maybe potentially AI max, maybe using some broad match keywords in that. Didn't really talk about keyword targeting as much, you know, specifically match types in this episode. But that that's kind of a whole another conversation that that we'll have. But, basically, it's it's one of those things that with Performance Max, I get not wanting to spend a ton of budget behind it if it's not looking like the leads that come through it are good.
Corey:But I do think there are positives to running it. And I think ultimately you're gonna be reaching you know, even if you're like a, we do garage door repair, right? You know, you're gonna be reaching your local market. So just having that, hey, we're reaching homeowners in our local market, you know, when they do drive into their garage door by accident, maybe you're top of mind. Maybe they saw your ad, maybe they saw one of your trucks in the neighborhood, maybe a neighbor said something once, yeah, I saw that ad tip.
Corey:It's kind of the thing I think about it. Ultimately, you don't wanna run Google Ads based on like vibe marketing that way, but with Performance Max, I feel confident enough in the audiences that it's actually going after that. I do think it does a good job of reaching more of those top of funnel keywords. You know? What happens if my son drove into the garage door?
Corey:You know? Maybe your ad shows for that because you're running Performance You know, when your search campaigns wouldn't otherwise be targeting it, maybe you get a cheap click, somebody comes to your website and they convert. Know, it's one of those things that And that's kind of what I look at with Performance Max and lead generation. Now, the only other real campaign that I've been running is demand gen. So, I don't run as much just YouTube standard video view campaigns.
Corey:I don't really run display campaigns. Smart campaigns, I never really ran. So really it's a lot of search and performance max, if we're talking about campaign types. The last one would be demand gen. Demand gen is video, so the whole point of demand gen is you're running your video on YouTube across the display network potentially.
Corey:I personally prefer to run more on YouTube than display network. And with demand gen, I find the usefulness of it is if you do have a video marketing or video creation strategy, running video ads can be useful even with a small budget because you're building up a YouTube audience. So the main thing that I focus on with demand gen is I am if I'm using more audience targeting through Performance Max and, you know, especially for like a e commerce website or something where the sales cycles might be a little bit longer, maybe b to b a little bit more because video can be a great way to actually promote your business. So with certain things I do use demand gen, I would say I don't use it that often. There are different formats and different strategies behind demand gen.
Corey:I would say if you are using it, I use it the most right now to target TV screens. I use it to target like in feed ads and like the watch next and, you know, some of the other feeds rather than things that are just like pre roll ads. And then, you know, for me, I'd rather run different demand gen campaigns targeting different inventory at low budgets. But if you're running a $3,000 monthly budget for lead generation, you're much better off running mainly search. And then if you wanna run a separate performance max, or maybe split it between both, see what happens the first month, first couple months, It's really the best way to see, you know, what's actually gonna come in.
Corey:I've had a lot of success with Performance Max recently, getting more store visits, getting a lot of phone calls, phone calls going through the business profile, a lot of Google Maps inventory. So search Performance Max is kind of my main thing that I've been setting up in accounts, new accounts. Search is always where I start. That is like my main priority. Say, you know, budget wise for for e commerce, you put your budget behind what what drives purchases, which is generally gonna be performance max and shopping.
Corey:And then, you know, search is kind of your third there. But ultimately, you know, putting budget where it's gonna work. Search is probably 80 and performance backs is probably 20 on the lead generation side. So if you have any question about this, just let me know. Thank you for listening and this is our podcast episode number two.
Corey:Make sure you subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends, and thanks for listening.
