This is a strategy from Tearing Up Your 2020 Plan:
- Part I: Opportunities to Change with the Times
- Part II: How to Find Out What’s Changing, for Whom, and How
- Part III: Estimating Demand for Your Business During COVID-19
- Part IV: What Google Knows vs What the Marketer Shows
- Part V: How is Your Customers' Language Changing?
- Part VI: Using Search to Improve Customer Experiences
Watch the Video:
Read the Transcript:
Stop Living in 'The Macro'
Think of the word “joint checking account”.
Seriously, stop and think about it. What do you think that person wants?
Let's show you what they get. I searched for the word “joint checking account”.
Ex. Citibank
Citibank is ranking in the top position, sweet, I click on it-- joint.
Well, I thought “joint”, I was assuming that it was about two people opening a bank account, not one person. Then I N-Gram that page and I see the word “joint” is not mentioned on that page at all.
Ex. Citizens Bank
Interesting. Then I click on the second result, Citizens Bank:
No people on this page, nothing on this page about joint accounts-- zero.
Ex. Fulton Bank
Then I went to Fulton Bank:
No mention of the word “joint” on their page, and all these people are paying $15-$20 each click and this word is searched thousands of times a month. And then I searched and clicked on three more.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Nothing said to me, “hey, we understand that you're looking for a joint account”.
Wasted Spend
This is what happens when you live in The Macro.
You make a checking account keyword in Google and you let Google match it to all the different words, and overall you're converting enough to continue to pay for this waste. While smart bidding and those kinds of things are great, you're also sometimes overpaying or driving customers to things that you don't actually do.
But let me show you what it's like to be a company in The Micro.
Living in 'The Micro'
Ex. Simple
Simple has shared checking accounts.
Notice these two lovely, happy people. Look at the sub headlines, Share what makes sense. Now, they're not using the word joint either, in all fairness, they call them shared accounts (which I would talk to them about if I were them). But look at the photo in the bottom right.
- Two people
- Keep what makes sense.
- Yours, mine, ours.
- Dream bigger together.
- Save faster together.
They fully understand how this customer's thinking and they're in the mindset of that customer.
This is one out of eight PPC ads and landing pages, which means...
7 out of 8 businesses completely missed the mark on who it is they're talking to.
Why? They did not analyze the individual N-grams of the words that people are using around these types of checking accounts. And it's that simple.
You know what's sad?
^ This quote is the saddest quote, not because it was ever said, it's because it's one hundred and thirty years old. And I just showed that seven out of eight of the paid ads for joint checking accounts completely missed the mark today.
In spite of all the tools that we have that John Wanamaker did not have, we are still in the same freaking boat, if not worse.
Key Takeaways
- Take the time to create cohesive creative and copy on your ads and landing pages to match searcher's intent.
- Use an N-gram tool to analyze the words surrounding keywords you bid for.
- Don’t “set and forget” campaigns when leveraging tools like Smart Bidding.
Start Over: Part I: Opportunities to Change with the Times
Watch Webinar: Tearing Up Your 2020 Plan with Wil Reynolds & Rand Fishkin
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