I decided to get tactical for this newsletter edition.

You might think this isn’t a relevant article for you if you aren’t personally managing Google Ads, but walk with me here. There is A LOT of value hidden in the data of your Google Ads your company may not be leveraging. This article will give you just a taste of what may be buried in your ads.

Learning More About Your Target Audience

• When do customers need your product (time of day/month/year)?

• What do customers need to know before they want to/can buy?

• How often could they switch from a competitor to your product?

• What issue would cause them to consider switching to your product?

• Is your target customer aware of your product’s category?

• Is your customer searching for your product using the wrong terms?

We can learn a lot about our customers’ habits, where they are in the buyer’s cycle, and how many potential customers are in-market to buy when we dig into the data Google Ads readily gives us.

In a previous newsletter, I talked about one of the problems with Google Ads:

Consider the graph above. Your best and lowest cost audience is the dead-center bullseye. This group is ready to buy what you’re selling—today! You likely know this customer very well. They share common traits, have similar storylines, face similar problems, and need what you have—no demo necessary.

However, just like a bullseye on a dart board, it’s a small target or a small audience. So you’ll have to target those who are less ready to buy today to find more potential customers—but they’ll take more effort and money to convert. This is where things get convoluted and when many will claim “Google Ads don’t work.”

Get More from Your Google Ads

Google Ads is more valuable than just the leads or sales you generate. The data you get back on what worked and what didn’t is practically gold. If you’re generating conversions, good. Keep doing the things that are generating conversions, but don’t stop there. In order to maintain growth, you’ll have to dig into the data and *gasp* try new things.

Here are a few practical ways you can use your Google Ads performance data to make better product and marketing decisions:

• Headline variations can help inform copywriting decisions for landing pages, blog posts, trip wires, social media, and email.

  • Look at what’s working and implement across channels where you want customers to take action.

• For ads that are converting, dig into the keywords that drive the most conversions (whether your target is leads or sales), and create more content focused on answering those queries.

  • This is for all channels, social media, email, long-form, video, etc.

• For ads that are NOT converting, dig into the keywords that drive the highest click-through rates, and create more content focused on answering those queries also.

  • This is again for all channels, but use this content to generate marketing leads (simply email capture), and put those leads on a lead nurturing program—they’re not ready to buy today, but are interested in what you’ve got.

• Analyze the search terms used to find your product to identify potential new features or product enhancements.

  • Oftentimes customers will look for more than one feature or solution, so you may find there’s low-hanging fruit in the market to generate customers.

• Look closely at what time your conversions happen. If they’re happening off business hours, this gives you more clues as to what your customer’s schedule may be/daily life looks like.

  • Have empathy for your customer and express this in email copy or your sales follow up. You may also use this to justify having staff on-hand after normal business hours if your product requires speaking with or working directly with a human.

The number of ways you can use your Google Ads data to inform decisions across all of marketing, as well as product, is unending. Each business will have different needs and your data will only be as good as you are in running Google Ads.

If you’re hitting a wall with your Google Ads, I got people that can help. Reply to this email or grab time for us to discuss your challenges.

BREAKING NEWS

Missouri jury finds Realtors, brokerages guilty of conspiring to inflate commissions

“The defendants have been ordered to pay damages of $1.78 billion. Treble damages could result in the NAR and brokerages paying roughly $5.36 billion. It also opens the door to additional potential copycat lawsuits being filed in other states.” (Full Story on Housing Wire)

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Weekly Podcast Feature

Unlocking New Infill Opportunities, One Lot at a Time with Ben Bear, CEO and Co-founder of BuildCasa

Solving housing affordability challenges is going to take many approaches. Ben Bear joins us to discuss the strategy his company, BuildCasa, is executing in several California markets.

BuildCasa addresses housing affordability by unlocking unused land in neighborhoods. BuildCasa buys extra lot land from homeowners, sub-divides, and prepares the land for a new home to be built. This approach is helping existing homeowners realize significant financial gains from their unused land, and is added inventory to local markets where new homes are increasingly tough to find.

Ben answers a few of the obvious questions I had such as how does this affect future values for the homeowner selling the land, and what is the total market opportunity to sub-divide land from homeowners and to build on (hint: it's probably more than you think!).

Have a topic you want to see written about next week? Submit your questions here or respond to this email.