Episode 428: Kaity Griffin
In this episode, Kaity Griffin delves into the nuances of advanced Google Ads strategies. She also shares insights on the rise of AI in marketing and her journey to creating a successful business while maintaining a work-life balance. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Basic overview and evolution of Google Ads
Importance of conversion tracking in ad campaigns
The strategy behind keyword research and targeting
Comparison between Google Ads and Meta ads
Mistakes to avoid when setting up Google Ads
Using tools and methods for effective keyword research
Metrics to track for assessing Google Ads performance
Tips for crafting effective ad copy and visuals for Google Ads
Importance of key phrases in Google Ads
Use of competitor and brand campaigns
Strategies for Optimising Google Ads
Legalities of using trademarks in ad copy
Impact of AI on marketing and ad management
Kaity's approach to leveraging automation and AI tools
Balancing business growth with family life
Marketing strategies for small businesses and digital agencies
Role of continuous learning and investing in education
Personal achievements and business milestones
Get in touch with My Daily Business
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We're not trying to satisfy everyone who is typing in what we sell. We're trying to satisfy the people that are the core most likely to buy, most likely to convert. In her instance, I'm giving her suggestions about, what words indicate that it is a higher price point or a luxury planner without saying expensive planner. What are those qualifying words that indicate my core target market? It could be what type of material the planner is made out of. It could be it's a linen planner, for example, or it could be that it's handmade or leather-bound. What are those qualifying words that indicate that someone is more aligned with my product or service than the person just typing in the daily planner?
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Welcome to episode 428 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today is an interview episode, and if you are struggling right now in your business and you're thinking, should I be doing more ads, then today's interview episode is going to be helpful for you. And even if you're not struggling, even if you are flying high and you're like, what cost of living crisis, what recession, it's also going to be helpful for you. Across the board, helpful episode. Before I get stuck into that, I want to let you know that Group Coaching is open. If you are interested in being part of our incredible 12-month program where we work together every single fortnight for a year, and you have all of my help, all of the help from the other people in the group, it is an intimate group. You get to know each other, you get to open up vent, cry, and celebrate all the good things and all of the hard things together, then please check it out and apply at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching.
We always get people after the fact saying, I didn't realise that it closes. I didn't realise it was open. It's open, and it will close. It will be starting in August or September of 2024. It's the last time that we'll open this for this year. If you're keen, please hand on over to mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. The other thing I want to mention before I get into this amazing interview episode is to of course, acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the Wurundjeri and Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, the traditional owners and custodians of the lands in which I record this podcast and meet these amazing people and host Group Coaching. I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's interview episode.
Years ago when I was living in London for the second time, I had a job writing trend reports for a major trend forecasting agency that is still in existence and I would say is in the top three of the major trend forecasting companies in the world. Part of my job was to look for patterns and to look for things that were happening just on the surface. And usually, you would use the rule of three. If you could find it three different times, I mean you had a lot more data than this, but you would start by going, that is becoming something. It's snowballing into something. I've always found it interesting when I see that pattern again in different places. Today's guest is somebody who I was recommended three times by three people I respect and admire each of them completely separately, they don’t know each other.
Came to me and said, “You know what? I would recommend this person when it comes to Google Ads.” They are incredible, they are phenomenal, and their course is next level. Who is that person? It's Kaity Griffin, who many of you'll know as the Google Ads specialist, the Google ads guru, the Google Ads person who is out there changing the lives of so many small business owners by teaching them how to manage their ads themselves. If you have not heard of Kaity Griffin, do yourself a favour and go and check it out. You can always just Google Kaity Griffin because she's the Google specialist, so you'll find her very quickly. But it's Kaity Griffin. I found several people kept talking about her and kept recommending her, I went and purchased her Google Ads course and wanted to upskill myself.
I don't run Google Ads for anybody. However, it's always important to understand all of this stuff yourself, particularly when you're talking to people about all sorts of things. And I have to say that even just the start of her course, I have not finished it, the start of her course was next level. It was so helpful. Down to earth, and she's somebody that you just knows her stuff and knows it incredibly well. Kaity has worked as the Google ad specialist behind some of the biggest brands here in Australia. In 2021 alone, Kaity and her team achieved $25 million in revenue for their bespoke Google ads management clients. She's had more than 1500 students go through the Kaity Griffin courses and she's in the top 3% Google Premier partner. She's recognized by Google as the top 3% of digital agencies when it comes to client growth, client retention results, and annual ad spending.
It is incredible what she has created. More importantly, I think she's created a business for herself that allows her to also be a hands-on parent have a great relationship with her partner, to live where she wants to live, which is out in the burbs in Melbourne. And as somebody who also lives out in the bush and she lives even further out in the bush, I love that I've created a business where I can see my kids have time to myself and do what I love and help people, but do it all in a way that works with me and is in alignment with my values. I feel that Kaity is on the same path there in terms of aligning the way that she wants to work, the freedom that she has in her life also creating a business that does incredibly well and is also super helpful in changing the lives of other small business owners.
I had to have Kaity on the podcast and I just have to say a special massive thank you to Kaity. We were using Riverside and I have to say Riverside, still has some real niggles when it comes to recording. This episode did cut in and out multiple times and kudos to Kaity because she just kept going with it. And Scott, our editor who's done magic to make it sound very consistent and as if it was not cutting in and out. Whether you are into Google Ads yourself, whether you're thinking about doing them, or whether you are wondering what they're all about, you'll get so much from my interview. Here is my interview with Kaity Griffin.
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Hi Kaity, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited for this. As I was just saying before we hit record, I think this area that you're a specialist and super expert in is such a mystery to a lot of small business owners and they half understand it, half don't. I know that they'll get a lot from your chat, but how are you feeling about life right now?
Good, I'm feeling great. We've just wrapped up our latest intake into our course, in which we teach our students either how to run profitable ads for their own business or their own clients if they're digital marketers. Things are going well right now.
Yes, and I have been a student in your course. I am one of those people who has not completed the course yet, even though I'm always telling people not to buy courses and not complete them. But I just think from what I've seen, it's incredible. Can you tell us a bit about your story of your whole brand and how you got to where you are now teaching so many people, were you always interested in this? What did you do straight out of school? What was the journey of Kaity?
I went straight to uni and I did a marketing degree, so commerce majoring in marketing, but didn't find my fate. I was always interested in online and digital. And then I started my own e-commerce business in 2012. Looking back, I was so young when I did it, but I was just like, I'm going to start a business. I ran that business for a few years and was like other business owners looking for ways to grow that business and stumbled upon a podcast about Google ads and was like, that seems something that I'd be interested in. I started DIYing things myself. I doubled in in outsourcing SEO and Facebook ads. It wasn't until I got my hands dirty inside an ad account running ads for my own business that I realised that that was something that I was interested in more so than even running the e-commerce business.
I had had my first baby and I was like at this crossroads period where I sold that business and moved agency side and worked at a well-respected agency in Melbourne that specifically just specialised in Google ads and was able to work with some great e-commerce businesses, like big businesses like Showpo and a Swim Make Law were my clients and a lot of international businesses as well. Then had my second baby and realised I don't want to be doing that hour commute into the city every day and decided it would be about five years ago now to start my own business, which is a half agency where we do the outsourced Google ads management for our clients. And then the other half is a course-based business where we teach both like I said, digital marketers that are looking to run ads for other people or the business owner that either doesn't want to outsource or has tried outsourcing before and feels a bit burnt by that merry-go-round process. That is how I stumbled upon Google Ads. I was always interested in numbers and data and that stuff was always my strong suit. All those different aspects of Google Ads aligned with what I was naturally interested in. And then, created this business and here we are.
And here you are indeed. You're doing very well. If anyone's reading this and they're thinking, Google Ads, is that just where I write something into a search engine and then a bunch of ads appear? Can you just briefly go over what does Google ads mean? Especially because when you said you started in 2000, or you were doing your business in 2012 and then you started working for somebody and you've had your own business for five years, I would imagine that the space has changed significantly since you were started and it's constantly changing. what does Google Ads mean to somebody if they're reading thinking, I don't know what that encompasses.
That's a great question because when you say that it's changed a lot in the space like I've been working with Google Ads, for now, more than 10 years, I've been working inside ad accounts, whether it's my own or for clients, and it has changed dramatically in that space. But what hasn't changed is the strategy behind it, the actual execution of how you get ads in front of people is what's changed. But at the very basic level, and I always like to bring things back to the basics because getting caught up in the fancy new features is what overwhelms people. And it's not what drives profitable conversions or drives the growth of businesses. At the very basic level, Google Ads is just when you type something into Google, you get served with either text-based ads, and they can be four above any organic results.
They're the ads that look pretty much like an organic SEO-based listing, but ads that show at the top, either in text-based form or ads that are like those product-based shop, we call them shopping ads, whereas it's got an image, a price, and you click through When I refer to Google Ads, that's the main thing, or they're the main two types of ads that I'm referring to. Google Ads does encompass a whole different type, like lots of what we call networks. The Google homepage where you type something when you're Googling something that's called the Search network. And then you've got other networks like the Display Network, which is where you are browsing on someone else's site. That could be, you're looking at news.com.au or a blog and you see ads that pop up. They're still part of Google Ads, but they're not part of the core.
Part of how I run Google ads when we're talking about Google, it's when you're Googling something and you're getting listings or getting ads served to you on the homepage, that is like the core nuts and bolts of Google ads. And that has not changed. As I said, the execution of how you get ads in front of the right person at the right time has changed. But the strategy or the end goal is trying to serve ads to people who are going to buy from you or become a lead. And that is when they're searching on Google, is when they're further down that purchase funnel, they're searching for a solution. Whereas when they're browsing on other people's sites and you're trying to do that interruption-style marketing, that is better. ISA is better suited to the domain of meta ads, Facebook, and Instagram because those ads are more robust on that platform than they are on Google. What we want to do is capture demand when someone's typing something into Google.
I love that explanation. And one of my questions, and I'll just ask it now because you're on that pathway, is when people are reading and they're thinking, I haven't tried Google ads or I tried that once years ago, it didn't work or but we're just pouring all our money into meta. What do you say, and you alluded to it there, but what would you say to somebody if they said, we've only got this much money to spend and we are just going to do social media because isn't that what you're supposed to do? I'm smiling because I have worked online and in marketing for 20-something years and it's interesting when you're like, social media didn't always exist guys. There are other ways to market outside of social media, but I think also with that, it can be the lure of like, social media is just this tap that I can turn on and meta ads and all the money will come. But what would you say to people who are listening thinking, I don't need to do Google ads, I've already got social ads.
Social ads are amazing like meta ads are fantastic. I use them in my own business. A lot of our clients use them in conjunction with their Google ads. There's often this, in the digital world, there can be this real us first them mentality where it's either all Google or all meta, Facebook, Instagram, whatever you want to call it. My preference is that I always have the philosophy of following the money. Usually, for the most part, businesses will be suited to both platforms. Facebook and Instagram ads. Meta ads will tap into the demand generation or the interruption marketing style of ads. That is when someone is on social, they might not have actively realised that they've got a need yet or a problem that needs solving. the number of times I see an ad for something on Facebook or mostly Instagram and I'm like, I'd love that and I'm going to buy it, I hadn't thought to Google it yet or I hadn't thought to search for that as a solution.
But it's a great way to plant ideas in people's heads that something is missing in their lives that they need. Whereas when you are not testing Google Ads is when people have decided that they need a solution and they're searching or they've decided that they've got a problem and they're searching for a solution. You're missing out on people if you're not testing Google, you're missing out on people that have they're probably further down that purchase funnel. And that's not to say that Google ads will perform better than Facebook, it's to say that they have different functions in the marketing pie and there'll be some businesses where Facebook and Instagram ads don't work businesses where Google ads don't work and vice versa. But for the majority, a combination of both will work well. It's not like if you go all in on Facebook you are also covering the same people that are searching on Google. You need both to get the coverage across both channels of people that you're trying to convince that they need something from you. On Google, they're already convinced they need something and you're trying to convince them that you're the right person to buy from, if that makes sense.
Yes, it makes sense. And also I feel like I'm also guilty of seeing things on Instagram. I think we all are. That's then something arrives and they'd be like, when did I buy? It's like, now I have one of those tooth-clear thing.
I know I bought, it's like a drain hair plug that I never used again, but I'm like, that looks good at the time you can and also when I go back to the difference between Facebook and Google as well is that Facebook's a lot more visually creative when it comes to ads. You can demonstrate a lot more things through video advertising which is great for Facebook advertisers. It's terrible for me because I am such an aesthetically challenged person that I could not come up with Facebook ads for the life of me. But Google on the other hand, is much more like if you think about your behaviour on Google, when you are searching for something, you are not paying that much attention to what the ad says, it's just a means to an end. It's showing you an ad in the right position to click through and have the opportunity to convert. It's not as heavy on the ad creative side of things, which is great for me because I would be struggling otherwise.
I love this. With people when they're starting on this platform and let's say it's a small business owner who's even listening to this and thinking, I'm going to give it a go, what other first steps they should take? Also are there first steps that you see people consistently take that are just not great for them to be doing or these are the mistakes that people make when they start working with Google ads, when they've had no instruction or they don't know what they're doing?
The two key mistakes that the majority of accounts make, and that's whether they're run by an outsourcing agency or whether they're run like by yourself and you're trying to fly by the city of your pants, the first thing is that conversion tracking is rarely set up correctly. The ability to tell which ad has driven which click that is driven, which conversion, like the conversion tracking piece is critical to be able to determine and optimise an account effectively because it gives you real-time data about what keywords or what targeting is working, what targeting isn't working, and the ability to double down on what is working. Conversion tracking is often incorrectly set up. And then the other key mistake that most people make is trying to go big. I often recommend that people start small and build from there because if you start small and you start to see some level of traction, it's a lot easier to scale an account or just build an account and get conversions and not lose a bunch of money.
It's easy at the beginning to try and go broad, very broad when I'm talking like broadly themed targeting and say if you run an account for notebook planners, I've got a student at the moment that has enrolled in the course and she sells a premium daily planner and it could be easy for her to want to try and target anyone that is typing daily planner into Google. Yes, there will be a subset of those people who'll be interested in what she's selling, but hers is a high price point. It is $90. Not everyone that is wanting a planner wants to spend that. Some people might want to download something from Etsy. You have to think about things and we're not trying to satisfy everyone that is typing in what we sell. We're trying to satisfy the people that are the core most likely to buy, most likely to convert.
In her instance, I'm giving her suggestions about, what words indicate that it is a higher price point or a luxury planner without saying expensive planner. What are those qualifying words that indicate my core target market? It could be what type of material the planner is made out of. It could be it's a linen planner for example, or it could be that it's handmade or leather bound. What are those qualifying words that indicate that someone is more aligned with my product or service than the person just typing in the daily planner? Yes, the daily planner is relevant, but we are looking for the most relevant over the most reach. Often people get confused and try and go after keywords that have the most search volume behind them, whereas I'm interested in the keywords that are going to deliver the best results rather than the highest amount of clicks.
Because in the Google Ads game, you're paying for each of those clicks and I'd rather pay for 10 clicks and get one sale than pay for 200 clicks and get one sale. It's about identifying what are those, and that's what I teach a lot through like keyword research and things like that what are those words that identify that someone might be interested in what you are offering? And that could be if you sell more expensive products, that could be words such as luxury or sustainable or handmade. Those words indirectly indicate someone's willingness to pay more money. The biggest mistake I see is that people are trying to target, and I understand this because when I was running ads for my own business back 10 years ago, I would be like, I'm going to bid on the word, I run a health food store, I'm going to bid on the word say if it was health food store. You need to go deeper and think that could be targeting people looking for a health food store in person. Exactly. Even going that one level deeper and doing health food stores online or things like that indicates that they're more likely going to want to buy or convert with what you're offering.
Yes. With that, as you've just mentioned, these keywords are so important to understand the intentionality behind them. If someone has an understanding of some keyword research that they may have done for blogs or some other marketing tool that they have used, are there other tools without going super into all the stuff that you teach? Are there helpful tools? For example, the Uber keyword? I feel like Neil Patel has gone and bought every keyword tool that exists out there outside of Google where can people start and should they be using the same words that maybe they've already pulled together for blogs or for other marketing materials that they're using?
I don't invest in any paid keyword research tools and I don't encourage anyone else to do it. The best keyword research that you can do is if you're a business owner, you're running ads for your own businesses, and you understand your products and your services the best. You understand what are those words that even for me, if I am looking to run ads for my own business, for Google ads courses, maybe even Google ads mini course or something like that, I know what products that sometimes you have to think a little bit step back a little bit because it can be harder when you're entrenched in your own business, but you do know your products and services well. But in terms of keyword research, the three main ways to do keyword research are if you've got Google search console installed, that's basically looking at your insights about how people are finding your organic listings.
Looking to see if there's anything relevant in there. The second one is looking to see if you have an active Google Ads account. That is the best way to mine keyword research is inside Google ads you get what's called a search term report. You can see how people are searching for your ads and how they're getting your ads are getting shown. Ideally, you have conversion tracking set up so you're getting real-time reports on what is working and what isn't working. And then the third is I also teach using ChatGPT and leveraging the ability to craft a well-rounded prompt that can also get some keyword research ideas. But I like to stress that keyword research shouldn't be this laborious process that takes a whole week and you get stuck in the mud. The best keyword research will always be done in real-time in that you might test just one keyword at the start and you are finding iterations of that via the search term report with real-time data attached to it.
That's the reason I don't recommend investing in paid tools. A, lot of people are interested in what their competitors are doing and I don't give a crap. Like I don't care what my competitors are doing because I don't get any performance data attached to that. It's irrelevant seeing what they're bidding on if I don't know how it's performing so I don't get hung up on it. And B, a keyword, the only difference between a good and a bad keyword is whether it converts or not. There's no such thing as, without any performance data attached to it, there's no such thing as a good or a bad keyword. A good keyword converts and a bad keyword does not convert. But you only know that once you're testing it. Keyword research is doing effective keyword research is a key part of your initial setup strategy to give your campaigns the best legs from the beginning. But over time it's just part of an ongoing account management process that is continuing to refine your keyword data or your keyword set based on real-time insights. That doesn't require you to invest in any third-party tools. I think third-party tools are there to make the process seem a lot easier. You can input your website or whatever it makes it does make the process seem like you're getting a shortcut, but it doesn't do anything in the long run.
This is bringing up lots of ideas, not just in Google ads, but let's say people are listening to this and they're using agencies and I feel like sometimes I'm bagging out agencies, I'm not at all. I think there are incredible agencies that are out there and doing amazing things. What are some of the metrics that they should get their head around so that it's not a case of I'm paying someone else to do this, I'm not understanding the reports, I don't know what they're telling us? I'm just a hundred percent, and I say this to everyone, like whoever you're working with, whether it's an agency or not, if you're paying for something, get a little bit of understanding of what you're paying for so that you know what questions to ask or even to say, could you please explain this part to me?
But in terms of things like keywords, I hear this a lot and I know you've just said there's no such thing as good or bad, but you'll have sometimes people saying, but we got you to page one on these 10 keywords. But as you said previously, you'd rather get 10 people coming that are the right people coming as opposed to people searching for something that doesn't have a flow on effect your conversion. My question, I know it took a while to get there is what metrics or even just a couple of metrics would you say to people this is helping you track the performance of your Google ads?
I think it's a great point. I always say when you're outsourcing something, you have to be a little bit dangerous and I'm this, I feel the same way about my own business. Like I outsource my accounting because I don't want to be doing that myself. But I still, it's my responsibility to have my head across because there'll be sometimes where I'm like, “Hey, that doesn't look right. Can you double-check that?” And no one is going to care about your own business like you do. You do need to, when you are particularly paying good money to someone to do something for you, the level of care that they have is never going to be as much as you. You do need to be making sure you're a project manager across that. And that doesn't mean you need to know how to do the implementation side of things, but you need to know how to effectively gauge whether something is going right or wrong.
If you're not ready to do that, then it's probably not the time to outsource because outsourcing is expensive, particularly if it's done wrong. In terms of the key metrics, I get frustrated when agencies are reporting back to you the number of clicks or impressions that your ads are getting. It's irrelevant information. I don't like it, I would never even say to a client, you got 3000 clicks this month. Like who cares? It's just about what's the performance. If your agency has never spoken to you about things like what is your cost per acquisition goal or what is your return ad spend goal or had those discussions with you about what the first thing that we do when we onboard a client is to understand if it's an e-commerce client, how much return ad spend are we looking to achieve for each dollar that's spent?
We have that as our benchmark that we optimise every aspect of the account against. If we're shooting for a 500% return on ad spend, then every single optimization is performed in line to try and get the account to that goal. Likewise, if it's a service-based business that's working on a cost per lead, we call it a CPA metric cost per acquisition metric. I have a client at the moment and their CPA metric is that we need to get leads for under $30. Again, every aspect of the account is getting optimised. I can only make a decision about what's a good keyword, what's not a good keyword what's a good ad, and how much can we up our budgets. That is all done in line with how's it performing relative to the goal of $30 CPA. If you don't have that established you can't optimize an account without a goal.
It's like saying to your kid, I want you to get the best mark on the test, but not telling them, you know what the best mark is. You can't. You have to have a goal to be able to optimise an account. Having an agency that has spoken to you about that stuff. And that's ideally meeting those goals or trying to meet those goals. And then the second aspect is ensuring that the stuff that they're feeding back to you is accurate data. Again, conversion tracking is accurate and that doesn't mean that you need to know how to set that up, but if an agency is telling you that they got you a hundred leads per month, but you only had 20 people fill out a contact us form, there's a discrepancy there. You need to be like, that doesn't sound right.
What's going on here? Reporting on things like the number of clicks or what's the average cost per click or what position you're sitting in. I mean it's irrelevant if you're getting 3000 clicks and you haven't had a conversion, that's a pretty crappy account so when you're getting reported to or you're getting your data fed back to you, everything needs to come back to how it's going in terms of that either cost per acquisition or return on ad spend goal. And it's also a bit of a red flag to me when agencies send out complex, convoluted reports that are very hard to understand. We internally at our agency, we have all the data and stuff at at our fingertips, but when we're reporting to clients, it's usually like a three-line email saying last month's results were this, here's what we are looking to achieve for next month.
Things are tracking along well like our clients are looking for us to do all the data crunching and feed it back to them in human insights. If you're getting a 40-page report at the end of each month, that's probably not giving you any value and it's probably like causing you just being like, I guess it's doing okay. it's trying to pull the wool over your eyes. I think it should be reporting and insight should be fed back to you in a way that is like a conversation rather than just a 600-page report that means nothing.
Thank you so much for saying all of this because honestly, I think there's lots of people that need to hear that right now. Also here, and I say this with everyone, like go back and ask questions. I've had people book in for coaching with me to go through a report that they're paying tens of thousands of dollars a month for. I'll be like, we can go through it, but this is you've already paid for this service, so they should be the ones going through. Here's the report and here's the next steps and here's what we as the experts suggest, we will now do an experiment and test and come back to you again. I love that you shared that. And thank you for sharing all of those metrics as well. As you said before Google ads differ from other maybe social ads, there's not a huge visual element. Obviously, with the shopping ads, there is a visual element and if you're, I was doing this last night, I was looking for kids' bathers for my son who's doing swimming lessons and realised there are none.
Anyway, it's hard to find bathers at the moment because it's so cold and I was just going like all the Google shopping, like come on, there has to be somewhere that sells bathers. What things have you seen that work well visually or even with the copy? Are there certain asking questions or are there other things in copy that help or do you feel like Most of the time it's, I've searched for like we have good traffic to our site for one particular search and search for X type of business coaching in Melbourne. And then I'm just checking that those words are in the things that I'm looking for and then I click, is it that simple or do should you pay attention to the copy and visuals if you're doing visual ads for Google ads?
Just quickly back to the other point about the bug reports as well, I also have a real bug there with that. I find it to be very lazy because it's assuming the responsibility like you're paying a service and then getting a report that's like, we've got a client that has another business and she, they outsourced to another agency and it's more work for the client to have to then disseminate the information in a report. That's just another bit on my high horse about that. I just can't stand it.
No, I completely agree.
In terms of the copy and when it comes to shopping ads, the product image is for the most part pulled directly from your Shopify or your WordPress backend. You don't necessarily need to craft those images, but you can do things on the optimisation side of things that can improve the if you notice, so you might sell a picnic blanket and you want to test whether the picnic blanket rolled up works better than the picnic blanket displayed with people lifestyle based images versus product based images. Again, it's all a test though. In terms of copy, are you talking more about copy on the front end at the ad site or on the site?
No, let's say I've searched for something me ads pop up what am I looking for there in terms of the audience? Am I just literally matching what I've searched for with like, okay, I've searched for six-month business coaching and this says six-month business coaching packages? Like is that enough to just put, I think they'll search for this so I'll put that in my title and my ad or is it crafting some human beautiful, beautiful text?
Again, I try and keep things pretty simple. Ad copy is going to be important but it's not the end all for clicking through, like I said before. How many times do you sit there and comb through the ad copy that you're looking at? What's important is that you've got the key, I mean the main thing is the headlines. You've got the keywords that you are hoping that are going to entice your prospect to click through. The goal, I always say the goal of the ad is to get the click and the goal of the website is to get the conversion. You want to make sure that your ad is doing the job of getting the click-through to the site. But in terms of crafting that ad copy, it's just about, there are features you can use called dynamic keyword insertion, which can basically when someone is searching for something on Google if you have a keyword that matches that, it can dynamically insert someone's search term into your ad copy.
It's about using advanced features like that so that some key phrases stand out inside your ad when your ad is being shown to a prospect, but the key parts of the headlines and ensuring just those key phrases. With the example six-month business coach ensuring that's in the headline, it's not a copywriting challenge to try and have the most witty clever ad in the world. The ad is going to be looked at for 0.1 of a second. What the user is just trying to see is, is that relevant? And especially Google will bold terms that are in someone's search terms. If they again type online for a six-month business coach and your headline has a month business coach that is eligible to be bolded. It will stand out more in terms of the ad copy. You're just trying to have ad copy that matches what someone is going to type into Google.
Okay. And then one of the things that comes up a lot, and I remember when I used to work at Mimco, we would talk about this a lot internally, is when you have a brand name and other people are like bidding, they're trying to win your business. If somebody's learned about you and let's say you're a wedding cake designer and they put in your name and three other wedding cake designers come up first, what are your thoughts on that and how does that work and should people be bidding or putting Google ads on their own brand name?
I love that as a question because I have a lot of thoughts about it. The first thing is when you are typing in someone else's name, let’s say someone else is bidding on the term Kaity Griffin, and they're not me, they're what I refer to as competitor campaigns. When I think about the structure of an ad account, we've got our non-brand campaigns where they're people that have, you're targeting people that haven't decided whether they're going to go for Mimco or they're going to go to Big W. Let's say they're looking for jewellery, they haven't decided whether they're going to go for one or the other.
I love that you draw those two things together. I can just hear the people.
I mean like they're up for grabs for anyone or Michael Hill, let's go Michael Hill.
I have no problem with you putting it on.
I don't want to offend, but I'm interested in ICOs higher end. What I was trying to illustrate is that they're up for grabs for anyone they haven't tied it. Yes. Where then you've got people that are searching for Mimco jewellery, they have gone to the step where they're searching for a particular re of the particular brand and that's what I refer to is when that is your own brand. For Mimco that is referred to as a brand campaign. I would isolate that traffic into one campaign because they're further down the purchase funnel. They've decided what brand they're looking for and all your job is to do is to show them the ad and ideally convert them to high conversion rates, high return ad spend, high profitability, and low cost. On the flip side, if I wasn't Mimco and I was bidding on the term Mimco jewellery, that is what I call a competitor campaign.
That is the inverse where it's usually lower conversion rates because you're trying to convince someone who has already decided on another retailer or brand that they should go with you instead. You're trying to bring them back up the purchase funnel. And then over to your end of the purchase funnel. You've gotta do more work. They're usually less profitable. In your mind you again I always like to bring it back to just real human elements. If I've decided to buy a Toyota car, just seeing an ad from Maserati isn't going to convince me to buy a Maserati car. They have to do a lot more work to convince me just at the click of an ad. What you're trying to do is as a brand campaign, the reason why those are powerful is they protect your space because it's not illegal and there are no rules against anyone bidding on your brand name.
Anyone can bid on any brand name around. The only limitation is that if you have a trademark, they can't include it in your ad copy. In their ad copy. If Mimco is trademarked, then someone cannot have the word Mimco in their ad copy if they aren't Mimco. I always say if you're bidding on someone else's name, which is a fully functioning strategy in that I would test that as if you've exhausted your non-brand potential of those people targeting people that haven't decided on one brand versus another. If you've exhausted that potential then it might be time to test bidding on people that are going after comparable brands and see if that is a strategy that works. It doesn't always, like I said, you've gotta do more work. The conversion rates are usually lower, the click costs are usually higher because your domain authority is low for those keywords and the like.
But it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be tested. The thing with that is that Google had a lot of creative licenses let's say I am a competitor of Mimco and I'm bidding on a broad match keyword of Mimco or a broad match term of jewellery by jewellery online. Google had the creative liberty that if someone is typing in Mimco jewellery, they still can show your ad just because someone else is showing up in an option of your brand name, it doesn't necessarily mean they're bidding on your brand name. It means that Google is saying that what they're searching for is related to the keywords they've got in their account related to the targeting that they've got in their account. It's not always, people often get quite caught up in the fact that someone is being, what's the word, like sneaky and trying to, but it's not always the case.
Like I've had situations where clients have, we didn't realise that we were bidding on someone else's name because Google had matched a version of our keyword to someone else's term. So it's not always a sneaky thing to do, but it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be tested. My recommendation is always to isolate those competitor keywords into a separate campaign because they're usually less profitable and you want to keep a close eye on them. And you also want to make sure that you are not using dynamic keyword insertion. Back to what I suggested earlier, if you are using dynamic keyword insertion, which is a feature in ad copy if someone is searching for Mimco jewellery and you are not Mimco but you are bidding on the term Mimco jewellery, it can say in your ad copy buy Mimco jewellery online and that's where people get in trouble. You are allowed to do it, but it's bad taste. You're only not allowed to do it if it's trademarked, but it's still bad taste. I recommend never having a competitor term in your ad copy.
Okay. Then with the rise of AI, everyone being like AI will do everything ever. I was talking to some girlfriends the other day and two of them are psychologists and they were saying it's scary to think that people are getting their therapy now from AI. I also I understand why people would do that when there are such long wait times for mental health practitioners. But in terms of Google ads, like where do you see Google Ads going in the next few years and about AI, I mean will it get to a point do you think where people don't have to think as much in terms of what am I trying to do here? What are people searching for? It will all just be like, this is your business. I mean I saw an AI tool the other day now where you can just put in three of your competitors' websites and it will make your whole website for you with no graphic design, no web developer, nothing. No copywriter, no graphics, it'll just be like boom pumping it out, which is interesting. But where do you see this all going?
I love AI. I love leveraging AI in my own business and my management of ad accounts. I believe that will never replace the need for human insights and management inside an ad account. AI can do its best, but there's nothing like combining artificial intelligence with manual insights as well and project managing it. I give the example I have a robot vacuum and it is amazing, but I still need to pick up things off the floor and mop up the dog. Because it can't be able to do that itself and it's not going to know when there's a nappy on the floor that can't be vacuumed up. Yes, a robot vacuum is great, but it doesn't get around the fact that I still need to be involved in cleaning my house. And the same goes for when you are running an ad account.
Google would love you to believe that you can just press a button and they'll run ads for you, but they always behave poorly. And these shortcuts that we're taking through AI, you need to be essentially able to program the automation and be able to program the insights. I love automation, I love using tools like ChatGPT and advanced automation tools in my own business, but I use it to become more efficient at something I'm already doing, not to get around doing something altogether. Particularly when you're spending money on something, everyone knows that AI can go haywire.
What if it went haywire and spent $10,000 on your ads? You need to be across what's going on still. I believe there are places where we can leverage automation, AI and those tools inside ad ads management to get rid of some of the grunt work, the boring data-crushing, mind-numbing stuff. But nothing will get around the ability to layer across strategy and human intelligence over the top of that. I think the magic is when you combine the two, we're always trying to look for a shortcut. But shortcuts aren't necessarily the best thing for a business. Shortcuts with parenting or shortcuts with, you need to get under something and get detailed with something to make it work.
I've seen that there's a huge shift, I guess for prompt engineers. I'd never heard of that title years ago when my parents were still alive, so it must've been a while ago, but my dad, I remember he said, “A YouTube executive, what is that?” I was like, “Dad, this is a whole new world.” And now I heard somebody the other day say, I think we have to hire a prompt engineer. I was like a prompt engineer. And they were like, for AI because it needs good prompts and you need to have somebody that knows exactly what they're doing. In your business, you are in, as am I, every second person is a business coach. It is a very saturated market. You're in a space where there are a lot of digital agencies out there and yet before I enrolled in your course, I had three different people who don’t know each other, all recommend you from different parts of the country.
They were like, she's the best of the best and then I must have gone to your website and then I got your Instagram ads. And I was like, okay. And then went through your whole funnel, I guess Soul fell for it. No, it was a great thing to fall for. It's been amazing. What have you done to have this life I understand you also live outer in Melbourne. I'm also in the outer suburbs of Melbourne yes. Don't want to have to drive into the city. When you were building that business app, did you just use Google Ads? You're a Google Ads person, how did you market yourself and get yourself to a point where you can run these businesses and have the life you want to have as well?
My passion or my real priority was working part-time. I've got three kids and I'm only prepared to work three days a week. I needed to have a business that I was able to do at that time. And I also back to the discussion about automation and AI and that stuff. I mean that's why I love language, I love efficiencies, I love taking shortcuts when they work to be able to free my time up to work on things like strategy and getting the systems and processes and the boring stuff in my business organised. And that's why when you say some tools can jupe someone else's website, that stuff doesn't concern me. I don't think it can concern other people because we all know what it's like to have a business, the fulfilment side of things, the execution, the pipeline that you've got.
There's stuff that you can't just pick up and replicate. They're things that take as I said, I'm five years into my business and my systems and my back end of my business are super tight, but it's taken five years to get to that point. Replicating a website isn't going to give you a business. In terms of marketing myself, I don't use Google at all for my own business because when it comes back to the discussion about targeting the right people, people often haven't realised, and I'm sure you're in the same situation where you haven't realised you need to enrol in a 12 week, three months, six month Google Ads course and you're not typing that into Google. And when I'm trying to advertise a Google Ads course on Google, I'm competing with a free YouTube video or a blog post or a $30 Udemy course or whatever it is.
I need to have a way to basically take someone from being unaware of me as a person and also potentially unaware that they need to learn Google ads to be prepared to drop a pretty sizable investment on a core. The majority of the way I do that is through Facebook ads, meta ads are that's a great way to reach people who aren't yet solution-aware and maybe even not problem-aware and to offer a variety of either free or low-ticket products. I've got two key opt-ins that I use. One's a low cost and one's a free one. And give a little bit of information so that then someone can make a decision about whether they want to go further and learn or whether it's not for them or my teaching style's not for them or Google ads isn't for them. But taking them on a journey through that way rather than expecting someone to come to an ad and drop a couple of grand on a course. I crunch all my numbers and understand that it takes someone on average probably nine months from first joining my email list to joining my big course. I can't expect to be profitable on the front end when I'm running an ad.
Interesting and always interesting when you have been the recipient of buying something from somebody to hear about it. On that even when you started your e-commerce business, did you like, yes you had a marketing degree, but it doesn't mean you can just
That taught me nothing.
I hear that fit from people, they're like, I did a three-year marketing degree, but did you have mentors? Did you have people, did you read a book that was like, I can do this? And even as you've kept going and as you decided, I've got these three kids and I want to work three days a week, I have two children, but I also am on that whole, I want three days a week. Even with my youngest just starting school next year, my husband was like, why don't you go to five days? I was like, why would I do that? I don't have to like, I never want to work five days a week again. Did you have people that were helping you? Did you read a book? Did you have, do you have family that are in small business that you were like, they've done it, I can do it.
No, when I first started the business, I joined a mastermind, which was expensive but good to be able to just get my whole thing about running a business is to try and is I'm prepared to buy shortcuts, whether that be I'm prepared to buy someone's course so that I don't have to spend six months learning a process or something myself. I can take their intel and use it in my own business. I am never shy about dropping money on whether that be a ChatGPT course a Zapier course or a ConvertKit automation course a course that is going to buy me time back and also learn from someone who is 10 steps ahead of me in that process. It is not necessarily one thing in particular rather than just trying to nut it all out myself, I will always try and see if there's some online learning that I can take to advance me more than I was a month ago.
I'll typically do one like focus on one thing at a time. It might be that I'm trying to step up my game with ChatGPT I'll focus on that for a quarter and it could be that I'm trying to improve my email marketing, so I'll enrol in an email marketing copywriting course. Then all those things stack against each other to continually improve the business. But I look at my business as an extension of the way I look at an ad account that it's all a test, it's all an optimisation. Each time I launch my course I'm tweaking what worked from last time and I'm changing little aspects each time I'm building a foundation and I'm layering things on top of each other. And does that answer that question? I guess I'm just piece by base trying to learn from other people that have done something in the same area that I'm looking to to get better at.
I love the idea of time. I'm always saying to people, you can't get more time. You can always make more money, but you can't get time back. If you're spending money to get the time, that's great. That's a great way of looking at it. Finally, what are you most proud of from your business so far?
I don't think I've even said this anywhere, but my husband was able to take a step back and he hasn't been working for the last six months. That is the biggest achievement probably of my business, is that it's given us the financial stability to be able to have one parent step back from work altogether, which has given us a lot more time as a family, and the result of that isn't that I am then and then increasing my workload, it's that I can stay three days a week as well and my husband gets some time to be doing the day-to-day stuff at home. But that's probably been the biggest achievement is just that security and the financial flexibility to have a life that we can enjoy with our family and not feel like we're in the right race.
Such a huge dream for most people to have. Again, the time I constantly am saying to people, you can't get it back and you shouldn't constantly be working for this idea that, I'll retire at 60 and then I will have the life that I want to have as opposed to having it right this minute. Thank you so much for joining us. Where can people connect with you? Where can they buy your courses? Where can they get into your funnels?
The best way is just at my website, Kaitygriffin.com. I'm on Instagram but I'm not very great at replying to DMs because I'm just social media averse. But I'm @KaityGriffin_ on Instagram as well. But the main way is just my website. That's where everything lives.
Okay, well link to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on and I appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me.
Bye.
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As I said at the beginning, Kaity is somebody who knows her stuff so well, you can just tell, you can just tell the way that she answers questions. She's a wealth of knowledge and is curious and creative and interested in what it is that she sells, as helps people with a living. If you need help with Google ads, if you want to go through her course, if you want to check out the other things that Kaity offers or have Kaity come and speak and do all sorts of things for whatever event or panel or anything else you've got going on, or if you want to use their Google ad services as a client, you can find all the information at kaitygriffin.com. You can also find Kaity on socials @KaityGriffin_. And of course, we'll link to that in the show notes, which for this episode you'll be able to find at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/428.
I'm going to highlight two things that stood out for me. There were so many, and honestly, I think that a lot of people will listen to this a couple of times or go and find the text format on our website take notes and check out everything that Kaity was talking about. But two things that stood out. The first for me, and it won't come as any surprise, is that if you are working with an agency ask questions, do not just simply take a report that you don't understand and be like I just trust that they're doing the right thing. A lot of agencies are, a lot are, and I'm not here to bag out agencies by any means. Some of them are incredible, but just like business coaches, some are incredible, and some are not as great as you had imagined or hoped.
If you're working with an agency and you're paying lots of money, and I get it, a lot of them are expensive, they have overheads, they have staff, they have other people to pay as well. But do not be afraid to ask questions. Do not be afraid to ask what does this mean? Or why are you doing that? Or Can you explain this to me? Can you explain what this acronym means? Many people have this idea that if they're working with an agency, they just have to take everything as gospel and that they should never ask questions or they don't want to make somebody feel uncomfortable or feel like they're questioning them. But this is absolutely what any good agency will be. Happy to answer those questions, happy to go through things, happy to explain things. When I'm coaching people if they've ever got questions, if they're ever like, but why would I do that?
Or can you explain what the purpose of that would be? I am more than happy to explain it and I'm more than happy to also say, what are your ideas? Because I'm not claiming to own your business or I'm not the owner of your business I'm going to guide you as best I can and work with you on different things. But ultimately it is your business. If you don't want to do something that I'm suggesting that's your option, but please ask questions. And I will encourage people all the time, whether I'm doing a workshop or a panel or a keynote or talking to somebody on DMS, to ask questions like question challenges, and do all of that in a healthy non-comb, combative way. But if you are working with an agency, as Kaity said, shouldn't be a case that they're sending you some 600-page report, it should be pretty simple and easy for you to follow and understand and know so that if you were to look at the metrics, you would be like, okay.
Of course, it's gone up because we did X, Y, Z or I know that the agency is testing this, so that's why we are seeing these results right now. The moral of the story, the first point is to ask questions. Ask questions, especially if you're working with an agency or anybody in business. And if you don't under something, do not sit there being silent and worried that you're going to offend somebody. It's your money, it's your business. Ask the questions. The second thing is that I loved the way that Kaity was talking about Google ads and understanding the intention and the journey that your audience is going on and then looking at ways to talk to that and answer those questions that might be asked during that journey with your Google ads in this case. But I think this goes to the whole idea of understanding your audience, understanding who they are, what language they use, and what would be the next normal step in that journey.
Where are they going? What are they dealing with right now? Where's their circle of influence? All of these questions that people sometimes look at at the start of their business or maybe when they're transitioning or they're increasing things or increasing staff or moving into a new territory or rebranding and they go and they have a look at their audience and they do a bit of a deep dive, but it's not something I would say that people are regularly looking at as much as they potentially could. looking at your audience as humans, using human language and human ways of doing things. I love that Kaity talked about the idea of the health food shop and thought, is my audience somebody who might be time-poor or living in a regional area or wanting to get things delivered while they're at work or something else and they, they don't have the time to necessarily go to a health food shop.
Or maybe they want to research things online and just have it all come to the comfort of their own home. Understanding who your audience is, and what do they need. Then she talked about how important that is to get the results that you want from things like Google Ads because you've taken the time to do a deep dive into your audience and what they need. I think this is so important especially now when I know that so many small business owners are struggling to make the same sales and a lot of people are holding back from spending and purchasing. And I get it. I completely get it. I always say to people in those instances, don't freeze. The worst thing that you can do is freeze. Use this time to work on other parts of your business.
It might be increasing your brand recognition, it could be looking at better customer service, better ways of doing things, looking at what you could automate, delegate, eliminate, all of those things. But the worst thing that you can do in these situations is to freeze. It might be a great time for you to review if you've got Google ads, review the things based on what Kaity has talked about today and look at other parts of your business like what could be tweaked, what could be changed, and what could be improved in this time. Because things will improve. They will, they always do. It's a cyclical stuff and it will come back. You want to be front of mind. You want to be still on people's radar and doing the best possible job for them so that when they can come back, they will come back to you. That is it for today's interview episode with Kaity Griffin. As I said, you can find out all about everything that she's running at Kaitygriffin.com. Thank you so much for reading. If you want to look at this in text format, you can go to mydailybusiness.com/podcast/428. Finally, if you're interested in Group Coaching, make sure you go and apply soon at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. Bye.
