[00:00:00] Strength Matters Media. Video. Print. Podcasts. Today's topic is when Google ads go wrong, a cautionary tale for health and fitness pros. And we've got a couple of interesting stories to share with you today. Digital advertising is important, but there are pitfalls. And both James and Andrew are both going to share a couple of stories.
[00:00:21] James, you want to start? Yeah, this all started off with our number one candidate, legend, client, whoever you Juergen Brolin. Fan. Exactly. So Juergen had a conversation back in. June this year, and he was telling me about his website company that he'd hired. And he also told me about this Google Ads service company that he'd hired as well.
[00:00:43] And we are talking about it, and he says, Look, James, all my costs have gone up with Google Ads. I've got this fancy new Google Ads agency. We're pushing revenue to my, uh, traffic to my website. I'm not getting conversions, and I'm... It's cost me a lot of money. Can you have a look to see what's happening? And [00:01:00] I looked into it and I was horrified.
[00:01:02] I was literally horrified by what I saw. So now give credit to the Google ad agency. They were definitely driving traffic and around certain keywords to his website. However, they had no understanding on the, on the whole conversion customer lifecycle journey. So they were just sending traffic. To a website page that had a few lines, like there was no story.
[00:01:26] There was no conversion. There was no reason for people to go to that page and say, click the net. They're going to click off, right? No call to action at all. It was, it was like, they like shoulder pain, click this link here. And then it was like a little paragraph about the problems of shoulder pain, but it was nothing to do with, it was just like a little generic, something that chat, GBT could have, could have written together altogether.
[00:01:50] It's really important to understand that like. Most agencies, ad agencies, right? Google agencies, they understand how to get traffic. They know the technical expertise to get the right keywords to go to [00:02:00] certain things. But they don't understand the website journey, right? And the actual user intent of what they're looking for to understand that journey here.
[00:02:07] So it's, you've got to, it's, it's one thing pushing traffic to a website. It's another thing completely understanding what the user intent is in that website and creating a website or landing page that converts for that traffic. Because in Juergen's case. People are going to that page, but they're clicking off again.
[00:02:25] What does that signal to Google? That it's a crappy web page. If you are going in and not landing on here and spending time on here, and the keywords aren't right on that web page, it is completely, they're going away from it, and Google is saying this is a crappy web page. So therefore, I'm going to make, I'm going to charge you more money to go to that same thing.
[00:02:42] So what could be a 10 cent click or whatever it is, could now become 1. 50. So you've got to really optimise. Well, it's, it's... No, in terms of advertising, you pay for the most, the best click link at the top wins, basically, or wherever you want to try and advertise with Google. So, it's all about the [00:03:00] targeted clicks, so the best click, the person who bids the most wins most of the time.
[00:03:04] But, you can keep bidding more and more and more, but at the same time, you have to bid optimally to get it. And it's quite hard, it's quite a technical way to explain things, but basically you want, um, a good ad for people to click on, which is number one, right? That's what Google want. Second thing is all about the experience when they go to that web page, are they staying on that web page, learning more, doing something on that web page, and is that web page loading fast?
[00:03:28] Speed is everything in terms of website design at the moment. So, so a lot of agencies, and this is, this is Juergen. I've now since spoken to about five or six other people in the same thing who are paying for Google ads services and they get, they're not getting conversions anymore. They're not getting as many like sales from it.
[00:03:45] And I looked at their web page and it's exactly that. There's no compelling reason from the stay on that page in the first place. The pages are slow. I'm talking really slow. They're scoring F on some of the metrics we use to determine what's a good web page and they're just going away from it. So [00:04:00] there's more, there's three factors you consider when you're using Google ads.
[00:04:03] One is, are you searching for the right keywords and using the right appropriate keywords for your business, for your local area, for your market, for example. For example, a personal trainer. Who's in, um, Cardiff needs to be doing personal training near me in Cardiff type ads, that type of thing, right?
[00:04:18] That's the first thing. Are the right keywords for the area appropriate? Second thing is, is the website, website fast? If it's not fast and it's not loading quickly, then you're always going to struggle because you, Google won't like it. Users get impatient and they'll walk away from it. That's a big problem I see with a lot of fitness professionals.
[00:04:35] Their websites suck. And the third thing is, what is the, what is the content on the page? And what's the call to action to get them to do something? And that's where you're going to try and focus. It's those three areas that you need to think about. And then you're going to think about the ongoing cycle to develop that lead and nurture that contact long term.
[00:04:52] Those three things are key. It's not about just driving traffic to the webpage because that just is a recipe for disaster and will cost you a lot of money in the [00:05:00] future, which I think Andrew's going to share his story of when he started out in Google Ads very shortly. Here's a special message from our sponsor.
[00:05:09] One more client. So that breaking the bank on ads, Google is your ticket. Imagine being the first name clients see when they Google your services near them. Sound impossible. It's not when you've got strength matters on your side, we'll build your website and get you ranked high on Google for free. You'll save thousands on ads, web design, and SEO services.
[00:05:26] Plus get a suite of business tools to help you grow your business effortlessly. All you cover is our bulletproof hosting that comes with a full 90 day money back guarantee. Ever wonder how many new clients you lose? We're not being Google's number one. Don't wonder act now book your free strategy. Call us strength matters.
[00:05:41] com forward slash website today.
[00:05:44] Andrew Wallis: Yeah, I've got two, two quick questions, two quick examples. One, uh, my personal experience and, um, I covered most of the elements that, uh, James has mentioned. Uh, but where I fell foul was, uh, I jumped into Google ads too soon. Uh, [00:06:00] in my journey, you know, I was, uh, I, I, I wasn't ready.
[00:06:03] I wasn't at the right, uh, level, um, to, to be considering that. But it was a case of I needed clients. I needed clients now. So I was throwing, uh, anything out there to hoping that, uh, something would stick. And the mistake I made was I was that busy, uh, training my clients that I, my focus and attention on actually tracking and measuring.
[00:06:26] My marketing spend, uh, was almost nonexistent. So come the end of the month, when a bill would come in from Google that I'd spent thousands on, on Google ads, um, and I didn't have that money to, to, uh, to pay that bill was, was an eye opener for me. And, uh, a secondary example, a client that I worked with, they made the mistake of, um.
[00:06:53] Delegating, um, and I guess abstaining responsibility, putting responsibility [00:07:00] onto their ad agency who were off running, um, merrily posting the ads, uh, but not communicating with with their with their client, the personal trainer and again, um, That ad spend went up and they weren't getting, uh, the, they weren't getting the traction.
[00:07:17] They weren't getting conversions and, and, but they had a significant bill, uh, to, to pay at the end of, uh, of each, uh, advertising cycle. So the key is doing as James said, but equally making sure that you're devoting the time to track and measure, um, how that marketing is going.
[00:07:36] Josh Kennedy: Yeah, I think that's a really good, really good point.
[00:07:38] It's this, it's people don't realize that it's actually really expensive and. Like it's essentially, it's like going to the grocery store. Like you can actually get traffic to your website really quickly. Like you just go to Google, throw some money at it and tell Google, Hey, come to my website. But it's also great with, it's like a slot machine.
[00:07:53] You're putting money in and it's, you're constantly putting money in and you can lose thousands, thousands of thousands, thousands of [00:08:00] pounds very quickly if you don't know what you're doing. So it's more of a cautionary tale to understand and questions to basically ask yourself if you're running Google ads and seeing that it's not converting.
[00:08:09] But also, if you're working with an agency right now, um, are they doing these mistakes? If they are doing these mistakes, you need to get away from them as fast as they possibly can. Because if they haven't set up the ads, if they haven't then also set up the landing page and funnels to help you go here, that optimize for that here with page, web page, uh, spade, web speed page, uh, analytics in mind, then you're onto a loser here.
[00:08:34] And you're going to, it's just a fast track to lose money, not get clients. It's a, it's a. A headache that's waiting to happen. So again, learn from the Juergen's mistakes. Like straight away, he canceled it. So he's off Google ads completely. He's doing other things now, but the point was he's saving thousands and he's also now rejigging his systems so he can then turn the Google ad back on later.
[00:08:53] That's where he's at in his journey too. So in terms of, we've spoken about Facebook ads in a previous episode and the black belt revenue ladder [00:09:00] in terms of, uh, the black belt revenue ladder, where should you be on that before considering going down the Google ads route? Mid to the end journey of purple belt.
[00:09:09] So purple belt is for people earning less than 15, 000 a year. I think Google is the first place to start advertising. I think me personally, particularly if you're a local business, a local fitness business with a or you have a gym or studio or Pilates, whatever place you want to have, like you've got to focus on local search intent, local SEO based side of things.
[00:09:29] And Google is a great way to start, but not until you have the foundations in place first. And that's for people who are mid to the high end purple. Uh, Facebook ads is more over purple into brown belts. But I'd say focus on those areas here. That's my personal thing. Andrew, anything to add to
[00:09:43] Andrew Wallis: that? Uh, only that, uh, the beauty of that, it builds upon each, each belt level that we have within the, um, the Black Belt Academy, Business Academy, you know, we start with the foundational pieces in White Belt and we build upon there.
[00:09:57] We've got that strong foundation to [00:10:00] grow.
[00:10:01] Josh Kennedy: Nice. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much, uh, for listening. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. And if you want to find out what's holding you back from growing your fitness business, go to strengthmatters. com forward slash quiz and take our free quiz.