Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 128 - Maxed Out

What should you do when the search opportunity is maxed out? When is too much of a good thing not such a good thing?

I have a new Google Ads coaching client, Kasim, an agency owner who booked a call with me after feeling torn in the middle (his words) on advice he received from various Google Ads specialists and Google reps. He was looking for some firm answers to issues they hadn't been able to solve. Kasim's agency specializes in Google Ads for local services businesses like plumbers, electricians, and roofers. They've achieved excellent results for their clients over the last five plus years, but found that they weren't able to scale the campaigns anymore as much as they'd like.

For example, one client on a $100 a day budget wanted to double to $200 a day, but they ended up getting the same number of conversions with double the CPC. Not the outcome they were looking for!

And then when Kasim tried to limit the CPC, that extra budget simply wouldn't spend. So what to do? 

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google and now I work for you. 

This is Inside Google Ads: Episode 128, Maxed Out.

What Kasim's story signaled to me is that we had an Impression Share challenge. To find out just how much of the opportunity Kasim's client was capturing, we looked at Search Impression share and saw one of the highest numbers I've ever seen for non-brand Search – 91% Impression Share. Keep in mind, this is non-brand Search in a highly competitive industry, and they were showing ads on practically every single available Search.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. Kasim was surprised by my surprise, noting that many of their clients' accounts have non-brand Search Impression Shares of 70% or more. 

I told Kasim that this high Impression Share is directly linked to why their CPCs are so high, much higher than what I typically see for this country in these industries. 

However, and this is the really really impressive part, Kasim had built excellent landing pages for his clients and even offered sales training to his clients. So, they were able to get 20% conversion rates on those expensive clicks. That's also a much higher conversion rate than what I typically see for this country in these industries. And so that's how they were able to make the high CPCs profitable: High conversion rate.

To put it another way, yes, they had very high CPCs. They were getting pretty much every available search. For most businesses, that wouldn't be profitable. But Kasim made it profitable for his clients because they had more than double the usual conversion rate. So they got twice as many leads out of every one of those more expensive clicks. And then they were much more likely to close those leads because Kasim had trained his clients on how to close leads well. It's no surprise they were kicking butt and that his clients wanted to increase spend, but we still had the scalability problem.

Here's what I told Kasim, which I also want to tell you: Remember that behind every search query is a real person. These real people only search for a “plumber” or an “electrician” or an “air conditioning repair service” so many times. If you're already reaching them pretty much every time they search for exactly what you offer, you've maxed out that audience on Search.

So, how do you grow when you're already dominating your core search terms? 

You have to expand your reach. And this means you need to either reach people searching for related but less direct terms or reach people when they aren't actively searching. 

Let's tackle the first one. Reaching people searching for related but less direct terms. This involves broadening your keyword strategy. Perhaps incorporating Broad Match or AI Max with conversion-based bidding instead of Phrase or Exact Match with click-based bidding, which is what they were currently doing. While this will still bring in traffic that is less likely to convert, the CPC should also be much cheaper, netting out to more leads at a similar CPA, at least in theory. You never know until you test it with your conversion-based bid strategy.

Because they were using click-based bidding up to now, this strategy was not available to them. It was a recipe for disaster. But by transitioning to focusing on conversions, it does open up a much larger pool of potential queries.

The other option is to reach people when they aren't actively searching. This is where campaign types like Demand Gen come into play. Demand Gen campaigns use Image or Video ads targeted by audience, like homeowners or in-market for roofing services, and they run on Google owned properties like Gmail, YouTube, Discover and Maps. As with expanding your keywords, launching Demand Gen can bring you a lot of relevant or semi-relevant traffic at much lower CPCs than Search. So, it won't convert as well, but can bring you incremental business you wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

I spoke more about this strategy in Episode 120 and Episode 124. I'll put both of those links in the episode description in case you missed them.

The key takeaway here is that once you've achieved a high Impression Share on your most valuable search terms, which I usually consider about 40% to 50% Search Impression Share, assuming you have competitors, then continuing to push more budget into those areas will likely only inflate your costs. And for most businesses who aren't as well optimized as Kasim's client, that would be a recipe for disaster. 

To truly grow, you need to think about new ways to connect with those real people you're trying to reach. Whether through expanding the scope of your Search targeting or by reaching them through different channels entirely other than Search.

If you've maxed out your Search opportunity and you want to grow your Google Ads account together, you can book a call with me at jyll.ca. That's J-Y-L-L dot C-A or follow the link in the episode description.

This story was initially published in my free bi-weekly Google Ads newsletter, The Insider. You can join more than 9,000 Google Ads practitioners like you, getting a real Google Ads case study in your inbox every other Tuesday by signing up at learn.jyll.ca. That's J-Y-L-L dot C-A or follow the link in the episode description. 

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time inside Google Ads.