Ryan explores whether you should or shouldn’t use PPC automation tools to assist you in your paid search efforts. The answer isn’t so simple.
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What's covered today:
What is PPC Automation?
Should we use it?
What are the benefits to Automation tools?
What are the drawbacks to Automation tools?
TRANSCRIPT
Jon:
All right, Ryan. Today we're going to talk about PPC automation, or pay-per-click automation. Now Ryan, I've been hearing a lot about pay-per-click automation tools. Now, this is mainly with brands who are doing one of two things. I see it when they're either trying to save a dollar by not working with an agency, and they think, "Hey, automation can help me do all of these things that my pay-per-click agency is doing for me." Or, they're just trying to scale their traffic up extremely quickly, and they see automation as the holy grail of them being able to do that. So, I'm really excited to learn about this, because I keep hearing about it, but I don't know much about it, and so I'm happy to have an expert to discuss this with. So let's just start by defining what PPC automation is exactly.
Ryan:
It's a big topic, and PPC automation can mean so many different things to different people. But high level, it generally means not touching certain pieces of an account, and having some type of computer system make decisions for you, within the Google or Microsoft Ads space, and it's even going into the social world as well. But basically, something gets done without a human touching it. Whatever that looks like, it's from high level computers.
Jon:
So, it's not an all or nothing. Because I was just looking at this as an all or nothing, like you're either using automation to run your PPC, or you're not. But you're telling me that just having some automation built in can actually be beneficial, as opposed to just going full automation.
Ryan:
Yeah. And there's different thoughts on that, just like everything online, even in CRO, I'm sure that it has to do with... Everybody's got an opinion, and it's different than everybody else's, on what works or what doesn't. It's based on their experiences or what they've seen, or what they've been told. And so, you've got extremes, where Google Smart Campaigns are an automation in Google Shopping, that will literally do everything. All you do is give it a budget, and what your return on ad spend wants to be, and it goes and does that. If it can be accomplished in the system, it will do it. If your return on ad spend goal was too high, for example, it's just going to sit there, and not really spend any money. If it's really low, it's going to spend a lot more money, and get you a lot more clients because the potential's there.
Jon:
So you're telling me automation can't solve all of my hopes and dreams.
Ryan:
I wish it could. There's some people that will promise you that, for sure, but if anybody is telling you that, they are lying, or they have an ulterior motive in place for you and your business. And on the other side, there are ways to use automation that help but don't necessarily do even the work in place of a human doing the work. And, as with most things, and my most common answer, which is also my least favorite answer in questions about digital marketing, is, it depends. Where should your business lie in that space around automation, specifically in the PPC realm? It's going to depend on where your business is at in the life cycle, what you're able to afford as far as agency or humans doing work, and what are the long-term goals of the business, or what are you trying to accomplish?
Ryan:
And so, let me take it in a few phases I guess, in kind of explaining what I believe in automation. You've got the full automation, where you're just going to either use a tool, or, for most businesses, use Google's Smart Campaigns in the e-commerce world to spend money for you in Google. I think in some spaces it does make sense, but it also comes with a very large asterisk, where you're having Google do all of this work for you to grow your business, but Google's goals, generally speaking, are different than yours. As a big, publicly traded company, they have responsibilities to their shareholders to grow their revenues and profits, just like you as a business owner have a responsibility to yourself or to your employees to grow revenues and profits. So for most businesses, Smart Campaigns and full automation in Google is not my recommendation, and it is mainly around understanding what's going on in your account and the ability to really scale.
Ryan:
But small advertisers, just starting up, you've never spent before, you really want to see if your business online has some legs to it if you start spending money, I do think Smart Campaigns within the Google space do have a place to play in that. And if I had to put a line in the sand, probably somewhere around $500 or less a month in ad spend to kind of prove a model. My wife, for example, would make me prove something to her before we actually jumped with both feet into a business and say, "Yeah, let's throw a bunch of money at it, and really see if it works." She'd say, "All right, let's kind of see what happens if you just kind of let Google do something on the side here to see what happens with 500 bucks over a couple months, 500 a month for a couple months." I think there's something there.
Ryan:
On the other spectrum, no automation, where you are 100% customized, doing everything either with an employee or an agency internally running an account on Google and Microsoft. That has a place to play, and I think that pool of companies where that makes sense is probably in more of a mid-tier type business model where you're spending a few thousand a month, maybe as high as 10,000 a month, where you're really just one person doing all the work for you, and you can do a lot of customization, because generally when you're at that spend level, you're not the biggest, you're not the smallest, but you're having to compete with some of those biggest, and you need some of that kind of surgical precision to find those specific keywords, or specific searches for specific products that really makes sense for your company, and you've seen the conversion rates that work.
Ryan:
And then, the vast majority of businesses fall kind of in the middle, where you do need some automation, and you do need some human strategy and somebody else, and some humans touching the account as well. And so, focusing on the middle is where it gets most complicated. So, for the majority of businesses out there, it's how much, or what parts of the account really make sense there. Is it an internal employee with some automation? Is it an agency using humans, and some automation? And what goes first? Is it the automation first, with a human checking on it, and making sure it's working? That's going to be a broad spectrum within the space.
Jon:
So, I'm hearing that it makes sense to prove out a business. So, prove out a new product perhaps, somewhere where you're just going to spend a little bit of money, and you want to start and see if there's a good product market fit there. And if so, then it would make sense to expand beyond just automation. But it does have its use cases, which is great to hear. So, okay. So, you've talked a lot about, there's three tiers to be thinking about, right? And that that kind of messy middle is where "it depends" is usually the answer, which makes sense. So, let's talk about some tools around this. What are the benefits to using pay-per-click automation tools? You mentioned one of them being to prove out a marketplace, but in ...