Marketing Alpha

How The Rich Get Richer in Google Ads

• WolfPack Advising • Season 1 • Episode 32

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Michael Cooney, co-founder of WhatConverts, unpacks the hidden power of lead tracking and marketing attribution. Michael shares his journey from building gold mines in Africa as an engineer to building one of the most trusted SaaS platforms for marketers.

We explore:

  • Why most businesses measure the wrong marketing metrics (and how it kills ROI).
  • How WhatConverts helps agencies and businesses tie every lead back to real sales value.
  • The truth behind Google Ads’ algorithms, Performance Max campaigns, and the future of AI-driven advertising.
  • Why understanding customer lifetime value changes the entire conversation about marketing ROI.
  • Practical lessons agencies and business owners can use to stop wasting ad dollars and start scaling profitably.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your marketing dollars are really working—or felt frustrated by confusing reports and empty metrics—this episode will give you the clarity you’ve been looking for.

Thank you for listening! We hope you’re taking away some valuable insights to help you dominate your market. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review—it really helps us reach more business owners like you.

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Stay tuned for our next episode, and keep pushing forward with Alpha Marketing!

Speaker 1:

Basically, Google wants to determine the one who's getting the most success and can get the most clicks and pay for the most clicks. We want to kind of give it to them. So if one person is sending back value data and another person isn't, it's going to skew towards the person who has the value.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Alpha Marketing, your go-to resource for unlocking the full potential of your small to medium-sized business. Hosted by Aaron Shishilla, CEO of Wolfpack Advising, Now let's learn how to dominate your market.

Speaker 3:

Today I'm so stoked to have Michael Cooney, who's joining me as the co-founder of WhatConverts, a SaaS company that helps businesses track every lead back to the marketing source. With an engineering background and years of experience building digital solutions, michael has helped thousands of companies, from small businesses to large agencies, gain clarity on what marketing actually works. So, michael, welcome to the Marketing Alpha podcast. It's glad. I'm super stoked for you to be here. I'm glad that you're here.

Speaker 1:

Oh, thank you, Aaron, and thank you for being a customer for so long. I think you've been with us five years.

Speaker 3:

I think it's been a while. Yeah, I'm one of your biggest fans. I would say.

Speaker 1:

Wow, I saw the customer story that Alex did with you and that's great. We have a lot of great customer stories and yours is one of the good ones.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, it's been. It's been one of those things that I don't know. It was such an issue at the beginning, when I when I started my career in marketing and sales. So a little bit about my background and then we'll jump into yours, michael, because you're the special guest here. But to give you that clarity, like I was trying for two years to make Google ads work and I didn't know what, why it wasn't working, and I was getting so frustrated because, you know, covid, I didn't know it was coming, but COVID was coming and I needed to make something work. But it wasn't until, like, really, that we joined WhatConverts and I started diving into the analytics of that, that I truly understood why campaign was or wasn't working, because I was looking, I was, those analytics were available to me. But, passing it back to you, you know, tell us who Michael is, tell us about WhatConverts, what is it that you do?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I mean, as you mentioned, I started my career as an engineer. I was actually an electrical engineer responsible for building gold mines on the electrical side in Africa, so that's where I started. But engineering was so detailed and I just really loved marketing and so when the internet came around, I started doing marketing for engineering companies and then from there we built a large engineering network online. It was an engineering directory connecting engineers and suppliers, and what we found is when we're generating leads for the suppliers, it was always a challenge, so it was kind of a thorn in my side and ultimately we also added on a digital marketing agency to this directory and we started doing great things.

Speaker 1:

We built websites, we did search engine optimization, we did pay-per-click campaigns, and the pain was always like what have you done for me lately? What am I getting value from my marketing dollars? It was always a very difficult thing to answer, especially if the result is a conversion, like a phone call, and so over time we built up systems to track it and we tried other call tracking solutions and lead tracking solutions and they weren't doing it for us. And so we're like, okay, we're going to build something and that's what WhatConverts is. It tracks every conversion from your website and your marketing and it ties it back to your marketing so you can get those insights. And then, when you get those insights, you can make better decisions, so you can cut the bad campaigns and increase the good ones. And then, yeah, from then on it gets more complicated and tied together, but we ultimately solve the problem on proving is your marketing generating ROI? And then, once it is generating ROI, then let's go and grow it.

Speaker 3:

You know I can't believe that at the given time, like I don't know I've tried the other solutions that were out there and they just again, like you mentioned, they weren't doing it for me, whether it was the user interface on the front end or how it all ties together. Because what converts in terms of the user interface and I don't mean to butter you up anymore, but it's pretty intuitive.

Speaker 3:

It's pretty intuitive, pretty easy to get to, like to actually do it and like, even just when I have sales conversations with any particular business or company and we're talking about advertising, right, that's, that's one of the questions that we get all the time is like, well, how do I track the return on investment, how do I know that's working, or whatever else? Like I'm able to just show the WhatConverge dashboard, to be like no see, like this particular company that we just worked with.

Speaker 3:

This is their data the last three days from advertising, and I can click this button right here oh, that's their SEO, and so now you can see what the total quotable value is and the sales value is of that. So we know actually what's working, what's not. But anyway, going back to what you were saying just there, I think it's incredibly awesome how you kind of worked within the industry itself to create this particular tool, rather than just jumping in to create this tool, um and and being able to just have the opportunity to do that yeah, I mean, um, I could tell you some stories from the agency days.

Speaker 1:

There was one that was a client for a long time and using the wrong metrics kind of sets you up for failure. So in the search engine optimization days, we got them more and more visitors every year. But then, once you get to the top, you know you hit a plateau and I ended up calling it the dreaded SEO plateau. And so your whole value as a marketer is based on search engine positions or visitors to a website. And so, even though you're getting maximum ROI because you got them at the top of Google, you're generating a lot of leads you get fired because the growth rate has plateaued, and so it just means you're looking at the wrong metrics. And that's when I realized you got to track it down to the real value, and sales is ultimately the goal. You want to get it down to the final sale.

Speaker 1:

The problem in business, like if you're working for a dentist I'm just going to use them as an example you get a family come to you as new patients. Initially it might only be worth $500 to the company, but over 10 years it's worth $20,000. So you got to get some kind of value, to show the value when you get that customer. So that's an extended lifetime value. But then you also get other customers where there's a first-time purchase and then there's many after that. And if you measure the marketing on the first-time purchase, I'll give you another example.

Speaker 1:

We work with HVAC companies Many times the first purchase is a repair to an HVAC system. They come out it's less than a thousand bucks. They attribute that to marketing, because they came to marketing. But then the next year that same customer comes back through marketing and purchases or decides to replace the HVAC system, which is a 20 grand fee, and so marketing gets no credit for that. You know fee, and so marketing gets no credit for that. And so what we found is we built a system that could help you determine the value of the opportunity. So with marketing is like how much am I willing to spend for this opportunity? And that's based on the ultimate value. So in marketing, basically in a nutshell, the language of business is dollars, and so how do you communicate that in dollars? So that's what we built WhatConverts to help the agency, but not just the agency, the client. We want to help them make good decisions with their marketing.

Speaker 3:

Do you think that within building WhatConverts obviously you know you have a lot of experience with the engineering side and running your own marketing agency Do you think that there's a lot of lessons you've learned from other marketing agencies in terms of how you're building what converts? Like what kind of specialty things have you learned or changed over the time from working with other agencies? Just going back to that, I know that there's a lot of customers that I have to kind of talk to them about that whole lifetime value thing. Like hey, it's not just the initial sale, but you just earned that customer, but now they're in your database, so now we need to try and get their lifetime value. So like, what specific lessons or things that you think you've learned after the fact?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So after the fact, I mean, one of the conversations that agencies miss is when they get a new client. It's just asking, like, how are we gonna measure success for this marketing campaign? And you know, I've had situations where the one client says, hey, man, if you're making my phone ring and I'm quoting, you're doing your job, you know. So, initially, like we knew that, and then I was like they were getting, you know, 10 calls a day and he was quoting and he was happy. And then we got it to 15 calls and he was happy. So that's one scenario.

Speaker 1:

Another one I had that conversation and he was like, well, it's a corporate company, my KPIs are increasing impressions. And so I was like, well, that's a stupid KPI to target, because it is. But at least we knew what we were targeting. So I said to him look, okay, I understand that, but your impressions on driving leads and that's what drives business. So I was coming back to leads as the last step before the sale. So I said we got to change it to leads. So we changed it then and then he was like, okay, that makes a lot more sense. But we had that first conversation.

Speaker 1:

How is success going to be measured. So that's one lesson. I can go on more. The other one is you've got to know the business of your client. If you don't understand that dentists you know get value for a long period, you're going to underspend. You're not going to be able to compete with the agencies who do understand that. The same thing, if you're dealing with a distributor of electromechanical components I've got one client you know he secured a client being Tesla and then SpaceX. So the first sale are test orders but then they get these big regular orders over time. And so you've got to understand, like that's just. You know several examples where, if they didn't get there through marketing initially, all the following value wouldn't have come.

Speaker 3:

So just understanding the value you're really bringing, you need to understand your client's business I felt like if we were having this conversation 10 years ago, or I do feel like that like the initial conversation of marketing was all about impressions and that's what everybody cared about was like reach your impressions or like you know, even if it's a billboard, how many cars are passing through this particular highway. But the conversation and then more leaned or into like clicks or like how many leads you got. But what you're probably seeing now and I know what converts does this as well is like not only what leads are you receiving, how many of those are good leads, right? And then of those good leads that you receive, like when I say good, I mean like which ones are quotable and then of that data too. Like you guys are sending the, the quotable data and the sales value data back to these algorithms. Like I know, google ads is the big one that receives it. Are there any other platforms like, I think, probably facebook and reddit?

Speaker 1:

facebook and bing are the ones that you know receive it directly. Those are the ones we've got an integration directly with gotcha. But yeah, google google is the biggest in terms of for our type of customers it's just amazing seeing the evolution of marketing in general.

Speaker 3:

Just come from. It was all about you know impressions, or where you were at in the phone book or how many cars are passing through on this billboard. To how, more seriously and even with ai, in my opinion, more seriously it's geared to actual revenue, dollars in sales. So if you're not actually sending the sales value back to google ads like of what you're actually reporting, like to sales value back to Google ads, like of what you're actually reporting like, to me, that's a huge detriment to your campaign.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely so. You know Google has a campaign type called PMAX. If you try to run PMAX without value, it's just a guess what you're going to get. You just don't know what it's going to give you. But if you use PMAX and you give it value and like, like soon after you've got the conversion, it just operates really well. It gets to train the algorithm like. This is valuable. This is not valuable. So if you're not giving it that input, google doesn't know, and so it's just then it's going to try to base it on clicks and conversion rates. You know so it could give you anything.

Speaker 3:

Can you describe for the audience a little bit like how that works, because I would imagine a lot of the audience members don't understand, like when you're running a Google ad campaign they might be doing it on their own right, that they're just like oh I'm, you know I'm getting calls, you know, that's what matters to me. So why are we feeding back and how are we feeding back the sales value or like the revenue generated?

Speaker 1:

So I mean there's a lot I could unpack there, but I mean, at the end of the day, should we start with what's Google's motivation?

Speaker 1:

You know Google want to earn ad revenue, and how did they do that? So they've got, let's say, 10 people bidding for the same you know amounts or the same. Let's say they all want to bid five dollars per click. And so google's like who should I give it to? Then they look at okay, which one's more targeted, which one's going to result in the end result? Basically, google wants to determine the one who's getting the most success and can get the most clicks and pay for the most clicks. We want to kind of give it to them. So if one person is sending back value data, another person isn't, it's going to skew towards the person who has the value.

Speaker 1:

So I'm looking at from a different point of view, from a google motivation point of view, and their motivation is how do we earn more money? And how they earn money should be tied to who gets the most value from our platform, because if they get value from us earning their dollars, this is going to be a longer term revenue play which is, as a stock price, to continue going up. I don't know if that's a weird way to look at it for you, but to me it kind of helps me understand how to play the game. And then the game becomes you know that you need to generate value from what they're giving you and then, from your client point of view, from what you're spending, you've got to get an ROI so you can continue spending and get more value. And the more you spend, the more love you're going to get from Google.

Speaker 1:

So what actually ends up happening and what I've seen is the guys that are conservative in spending, they fall further and further behind as things get more expensive. The guys who are spending aggressively and they have their technology and they qualify things and add value, they end up getting more and more and then they can spend more and because they can spend more and the ones that are conservative can't spend more, the divide grows. So the rich get rich and the poor get poorer. So I think I don't know if I answered your question correctly, but it's kind of like a very zoomed out way that you as a marketer got to get roi. Giving that value to google helps them give you better roi and then don't try and lowball it, because if you lowball it, google's going to give it to the one who's giving the higher value. So I don't know.

Speaker 1:

I sort of went off on a tangent there, I can bring it back to clicks and conversion rates if you want to.

Speaker 3:

No, no, that's perfect. I think that's a really unique insight there that I haven't necessarily heard before. I was under the impression. Obviously, we know the entire thing is an auction. You know, as more people are bidding, the price goes up and that's how Google prices it, right? So if there's more people bidding but I never considered that they would be using the sales value data not only to understand, like, how much money you're making, but possibly say like, hey, this particular company is making more money. I want to push to this guy because he's creating more value from that and I can then charge more for my. Is that what you're saying? Like Google can then read that value to understand, hey, I can charge more for.

Speaker 3:

And that's another beautiful insight that you mentioned because there's a lot of guys, a lot of guys that I talk to and they're nervous about spending money on Google ads or they're nervous about spending money anywhere when it comes to advertising, and it's very difficult to have in a conversation because I'm like, look, we can spend money for a month, but, like, it's going to be a wash, right, I need to get multiple months of data in order to understand, because what converts and Google ads will tell me what's wrong, like give me a month, give me two months of clean data, of enough data with enough budget, and then I can fix whatever's there, whether it's the click-through rate, whether it's a conversion rate on the landing page. Maybe the messaging is off, or maybe which I think is an absolute beauty, which we can get into, is actually the uh, the call transcription and the ai sales coach that you guys have to understand. Hey, we gave you this amount of leads, right, but lo and behold, it's actually your office team or your sales team that is not able to convert the calls, for whatever reason. Like that was going back to one of my early days. That was another big thing that we realized was hey, we were sending a bunch of leads from Google ads over to the office team, but the office team wasn't trained well enough in how to manage those calls. So somebody would call in and say, hey, do you do this service, which we did and they'd said no, and then hang up and you're like, no, no, we do that.

Speaker 1:

You know, one of my favorite examples of that is there was a car dealership using WelcomeVerts and the marketing agency was just going over the calls and they came across this call where a guy saw a Ferrari, an exotic car, you know on the thing and it was going for close to a million dollars. And this person says hey, I see a Ferrari on your website. Is that still available? I'm interested. And the person says no, it's sold. Put the phone down. And so the marketing person says no, they told us that they want to sell these cars and that's not right. So she sent it to the sales director and the sales director, like he was fuming because he's like, yeah, we have this car. So he called back the person who inquired and actually sold the car. So exactly what you're saying is like you could do the best job, marketing. But if the salesperson like doesn't answer the call or doesn't do a good job, it's like the value of marketing is just lost.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and that's that's huge. With these campaigns too, with Google local service ads, for example, that's another big one. It's like if you don't pick up the phone and the call goes to voicemail, google pushes your ranking down and so you don't, you don't get as many leads, you don't get good quality leads, you don't get good costs. And so, with what converts and how we're able to track that within our system is like obviously setting up those particular numbers but then making sure that you're actually picking up the phone and then looking at that metrics, because we can see like hey, your absolute top of impression rate on search is much lower than what we would expect. You know it's 10% or it's 12%, which is much lower.

Speaker 3:

Let's go look at your call log history and then see are you actually picking the phone and answering? Yeah, because a lot of times there was another story. This one was crazier. We're running ads for this guy for maybe like a month or two and he had no clue, but he was just a single man operator, didn't have, like I think he was spending like a thousand bucks a month or something like that on ads and all of his calls that were like considered spam, getting directly put to voicemail and like hidden, for I think he was using t-mobile or something like that and they were. They had like this thing and without like having the system to be like. He's complaining to us like I'm not getting any calls, like I'm getting no leads, and we're like what are you talking about? You just got 20. And we're able to look at that actual history to understand and then look at the the, the actual logs to see what is actually happening with it.

Speaker 1:

That's crazy and it's such a simple, easy thing to solve. But if you don't have the data and you're not tracking it, it's yeah. And I think that's the one insight you've realized and a lot of people realize once they do it is having the data to troubleshoot is huge. Like sometimes you're running and you don't look at the data and you think like is it really worth it? And then you like come up with a situation like this and it's like if you didn't have the data, you wouldn't have known. So having that data, going back and look, it's so important. And that's what I say to marketers before you take on a new client, set up a tracking system. We recommend WhatConverts, but set up a tracking system and set a baseline. Before you start marketing, have that conversation like what does success look like? And then track it. And then, as you work, you know, see the growth. So as a marketer, you know that you've got a tracking system. You have to deliver, but if you you know doing the right job and providing value, that shouldn't be a problem.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think a lot of business owners miss out on that, as maybe, like they want to start advertising and they get into advertising but they don't understand, maybe the due diligence that they need to do after the fact, like how hard it actually is to run a Google ad campaign. It's not easy, because if it were easy, everybody would be rich and everybody would be doing it, but that's obviously not the case no.

Speaker 1:

But the other thing is like when you're tracking and doing things that are difficult, another client from agency days. He had a um, an agency that says, okay, you need to run google ads five grand a month budgets. So he says, okay, they did it and they didn't get anything. So the agency says, well, you just need to spend more, spend 10 grand. And spend 10 grand didn't get anything. And so I took on that client and when I started working with them, they said like, yeah, we're not doing google ads because it doesn't work, we only want to do seo. And I was like, okay, that's fine, we did seo. We started getting them results. They were super happy, high quality leads and, you know, increasing volume. So I said, look, let's use google ads to fill in the gaps. And and they're like, absolutely not, and you know they're a scam.

Speaker 1:

But what I said is, look, we've got the tracking system. Give me three months and just give me. In those days it was $600 a month. Now I'd probably recommend two grand a month. Run it for three months and let's see. And then you do it scientifically. So I think what I'm trying to say is, by having a tracking system, you can run experiments, you can try things, you can get the data you can see and then you can make decisions based on what happens. So you have to spend enough to get enough data to know if it's working and to compete with your competitors. But you don't want to spend too much too soon because it takes time. Like you said, it's hard.

Speaker 3:

It takes time to optimize, to see the results, to see which are the bad leads, which are the good leads, and once you've tidied it up, then turn up the gas what's your going off on a different topic real quick what's your take on the like, the marketing attribution question, where people are like trying to understand, or let's just take, for example, a different facebook ad campaign where you have like a broad reach campaign versus like a conversion campaign, and maybe even like somebody sees a broad reach campaign or interacts with it and then actually closes on the Google ad Like what's your typical recommendation?

Speaker 1:

and like how either a marketing agency or even a business owner handles like where they attribute the revenue to for that yeah, I mean broad reach campaigns where there's no click and it's just a view through and it's just like more of a branding play. I kind of see broad reach reach display campaigns more as um mindshare, just branding. So I kind of put performance marketing and brand marketing in two different buckets.

Speaker 1:

So I think performance marketing when you're new and you're early on. I'm a fan of performance marketing. You've got a problem you're solving, you've got a product you want to sell. Choose the keywords. People search for those keywords, they buy the product and then you get going.

Speaker 1:

So I think in the early days I would lean that way For the broad-based marketing. If there isn't a click, it's difficult to track, but then is it effective. So the campaigns I see that are effective. Like if you're doing Facebook, we don't track as much Facebook, but I know in the e-commerce players the people that are pure e-commerce. Facebook is great and you can buy from the shop directly from Facebook. You could also fill in a lead form from Facebook which we track.

Speaker 1:

So I suppose I mean I don't know if that helps, but to me you do need to have some direct connection to sales in your marketing and then, as you've got name, as you've got revenue going along and you have a bit more margin, yeah, go ahead and do the broad-based, the display marketing, build your brand. So what brand does for you is it increases your conversion rate. That's one thing it does for you. So even with what converts in the early days, competitors who had larger brand would convert more than us. But as our brand has grown, as word of mouth has grown and as we've done more display campaigns and our brand has grown, when people get into a demo or they do a trial, the conversion rate is higher. So I just see I kind of see it as if you're new and you're getting going focus on performance campaigns and then, once those performance campaigns are going and you want to improve your conversion rates and get more of those performance campaigns, let's start doing display. Does that yeah?

Speaker 3:

answer yeah no that that and you know, I would say we're like that's a lot of the same conversations that we have with our companies that we work with too is like the same recommendation when you have limited budget, you know we just need to get you leads and it gets you business coming in, because that's what's really ultimately going to drive you forward and make you feel like happy with this type of relationship.

Speaker 3:

But also be able to afford more is when we get a profitable campaign. Is when we get a profitable campaign, so like if somebody comes to me and they're you know they have a limited budget of 500 bucks, even dollars say, hey, let's just do a Google local service ad campaign, let's just do a Google search ad campaign, because I can target the highest intent of people ready to make a purchase and it's all up to you to just close the call and convert them. But I would 100% agree with you. You have that brand recognition. Somebody calling in it's like, oh yeah, I remember this particular company. It's a whole lot easier to close on that. Going back, I'm still a little bit blown away about because I didn't even think about Google using the sales revenue data when you're putting that back in the algorithm of them using that to make the big players even do more well because they're getting more value from it, versus a smaller fish having a tougher time in that aspect yeah, I'll see it in, you know.

Speaker 1:

so, in the like, if you go to chicago, let's say, and you're an hvac company, you've got the big players there and you better be willing to spend because they're going to be spending $150 per lead to, you know, to get a lead. And so you just think of those budgets and now, if you're competing with them, if you're not willing to spend $150 per lead, you're not going to be shown, and if you're only willing to spend $80 a lead, google's not going to show you. So it's kind of like you either got to find the gaps between where the big players aren't really going, you know it's not going to show you. So it's kind of like you either got to find the gaps between where the big players aren't really going, you know it's. You got to. I just think you really got to understand the competitive landscape Marketing. You know it's getting more competitive and it's getting more expensive. And so what I mean when people come to me, like when we started WhatConverts and I said, guys, you got to qualify your leads, you've got to give them a value, and the agencies every time would tell me no, my client will never do that. And with my agency hat on.

Speaker 1:

When I started WhatConverts, I used them on my agency clients and I said guys, you've got to do this for me. And they were like nah too busy, we're happy with the results we're getting. But then a competitor came in the market and their Google ads budget quadrupled for the same results. So they're getting a hundred leads before for, let's say, a thousand dollars, now they're spending $4,000 for a hundred leads. And so they were like Mike, what do we do? And I said, well, we can either just spend more for the same amount or you can qualify and value your leads and I can be strategic. And so we did that. And we found, instead of targeting you know a thousand products which they had, we targeted their top 50 with the highest value. So we spend more on those 50 and we reduce the spend on the others, and we sent the value back to Google and they were able to compete, get higher value leads for the increased spend.

Speaker 3:

There's two things that come out of that for me.

Speaker 3:

Number one one of the things that we struggled with that same conversation with clients is like and it always came back to like if they weren't happy with performance, we would say, okay, well, we need you to qualify your leads and tell us which ones are good, which ones are bad, because we can't help you if we don't know.

Speaker 3:

Right, we need, we need that particular feedback in order to improve.

Speaker 3:

But we also started just we're launching now actually a lead qualification service.

Speaker 3:

So that's where you know you pay a little bit extra and someone from our team is listening to every single call is ingrained into your scheduling software, whatever it is, and automatically updates the quote values, the sales values, if it's good or bad lead, tells that with our ads team so our ads team can make optimizations to the campaign itself, and then puts in individual notes on every log within WhatConverts so we can actually see what specifically is going on On top of, of course, like the AI transcription and the AI sales coach. So then we can go directly to the client at the end of the month and say, hey, these are the leads that you got, these ones were good, these ones are the ones that we need to optimize, for this is your total return on investment. We noticed these things listening to your calls and what your team needs to improve on in order to get a higher return on investment. For example and this is what we're doing on our end that's hugely valuable to your clients.

Speaker 3:

Huge, huge Cause. Then they don't. It's the thing is like it's hard finding time on their end to like for somebody to go in there and listen to some of the calls and document that, but they have to train somebody on how to do it. They don't necessarily know how to do it, but that's something that we started.

Speaker 3:

Another thing that I recognized, and kind of going back to the Facebook ad stuff with Google ads we have a basement like waterproofing company in Ohio that we're working with, and so they do a lot of like basement clean outs and then waterproofing the whole thing and sealing it out.

Speaker 3:

And so their contracts or their, their deals are like not just like, oh, 100 bucks here, 100 bucks there, it's like tens of thousands of dollars for one job. So their cost is very high. And when I went to, or when our team went to, google Ads, for example, we did that and started that because it was one of those things lowest hanging fruit, high intent did a phenomenal job there. But when we wanted to increase spend because they were looking again, continue to to grow, because we were doing such a great job with Google ads, we're like, hey, let's test out running some campaigns over in Facebook as a, as a alternate, rather than just increasing our spend on Google, because we're seeing from the auction insights that you're already getting a good portion of the impression share for what we have and what we recognized through the data is actually seeing.

Speaker 3:

The cost per lead on Google ads was like double that of what we found through Facebook, but with Facebook it took longer and took more money because we needed to warm up an audience like do a broad reach campaign, as we were talking about earlier, and then taking those people that interacted with the broad reach over to a conversion to actually capture the lead information. Or they converted later, like through organic, or they converted later through the actual Google ad itself because the little cookie tied to their initial ad interaction was there.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's just what you're saying. In the end there, it's like they kind of work together, google ads and Facebook. And I see that many times. And I've seen that Facebook, even my behavior, like when I'm on Facebook, I'll check out something, check it out, oh, that's interesting. And I'll check it out three times before I do anything.

Speaker 1:

And the reason for that, like Google ads, has the triple T effect. You know you can target something at the time that they need it and then you can track it. So I call it the you know the triple T, because if you have a magazine ad and you just catch somebody at the right time, you know it's not going to be as effective as if somebody says I'm looking for this and I want it and then you say, like, here it is, I've got what you want. That's Google ads. It's like when you want it, you search for it, you get what you want at the time you need it. That's why it's so effective With Facebook.

Speaker 1:

You may not need it at that time, but you're interested, so it takes longer to convert. And then, at the time you do need it, what are you going to do? Well, you're going to search for it, but you may have seen them on Facebook. So I mean, that's why one of our favorite features and you've probably used it as a customer journey where you can actually see every attribution point and it's the higher the value that you're selling, the more attribution points there typically are. If it's a fairly low in value, it might be one or two attribution points and then they buy. But if it's a higher value thing, you'd probably see like several attribution points and then they buy. But if it's a higher value thing, you'd probably see like several attribution points before they take the first conversion action.

Speaker 3:

Going into Google Ads and the Triple T. How do you think this is playing into with AI and I? Gotta ask about the whole AI topic and like what are you guys thinking about for that, if anything like what's on your radar?

Speaker 1:

So I mean, if you want the quick answer, I think these AI chatbots are going to be ad-supported and if they're ad-supported, it's going to be very similar to what Google Ads is at the moment. And so, if they're ad-supported, they're going to have tracking data and we can track their tracking data and what converts. So, even the ones that aren't ad supported, if they come from chat gpt, we're already seeing leads and conversions from chat gpt, but it doesn't have all the campaign information. And so, with google and the ai mode now, um, I think that's you know. Obviously they've got google ads already and now they got AI mode and it's Google ads and AI mode. So, yeah, we're tracking those already. But if I had a crystal ball to look at, I'd expect, you know, chatgpt to ultimately be ad supported.

Speaker 3:

Really Like a free version that people like. I guess the free version would become the ad supported version.

Speaker 1:

Perhaps, yeah, free version, or even the paid version, having some ads. I'm not sure exactly, but they're not profitable at the moment. And how do you get profitable? You need more revenue and I think the ad revenue is a whole lot higher than 20 bucks per user. But I mean, I'll watch and see and what's going on. But to me that's what I think's gonna happen either they become profitable by just increasing revenue or they become profitable where the training and all that doesn't take as much cost, because at the moment they're spending billions to train the models and you know all the gpus and electricity. So either that those costs come down, as you know things become, you know, hit critical mass, or they do the airspin. So I don't know, you know we'll see how it plays out, but I I am watching it, but I think it's.

Speaker 3:

I'm betting there's going to be ads I could, I could probably definitely see that, especially with google. I mean, they're not. There's no way that they're gonna sit there and just take take this beating from chachibuti or others and lose out on their advertising revenue because it's such a big portion of their business. I also see ChatGPT or different AI models selling the data. Somehow, if you don't pay for a higher level version, then there's some. I guess it could be advertising, but I don't know how you would like legitimately privatize the data in an ethical way to be able to sell like what somebody's interested in or chatting about with their AI model. Maybe they're using it as their therapist and then they start seeing therapy advertisements on another platform.

Speaker 1:

I think it's coming. I mean Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They hated advertising when they started Google and they weren't going to do it, but now they're earning. You know what's it? $300 billion a year from advertising revenue. I think Mark Zuckerberg as well wasn't initially a fan of advertising, but now, you know, now they're also doing billions of dollars in advertising. I just think subscription, paying for a subscription, like as the models come out, it's like well, 20 bucks here, 20 bucks there, where in advertising, people are willing to spend, you know, $100 a lead. So the advertising is just going to be higher revenue than subscription.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think, if money still matters, I suppose advertising is coming and I think I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't mind Google ads advertising, it's relevant, it's for something I'm searching about, so it kind of helps. Advertising where you're watching TV and now it's, you know, you're a sit through a minute. It's, that's a pain, but yeah, anyway, I could agree with that. I could agree with that.

Speaker 3:

I could agree with that. The part that I think I have a problem with advertising is like when you don't know where your data is or how it's being tracked, for example, google Chrome. You can use Google Chrome, but it's kind of like not understanding how much they're learning about you and understanding you, and I think that and I don't know how you necessarily go about that, because I know it's anonymized and everything else but I don't think that the end consumer, the general clients, know how much of their information they're actually giving up. They're kind of just, oh yeah, it's a little black box of of whatever then I mean then I mean with google, like chrome, they know everything.

Speaker 1:

When you're driving, google maps, I know where you're driving, they know where you're driving, they know where you're going, they know what you're visiting, they know what schools your kids go to, they know it all. I think Facebook as well. I mean if you've got a Facebook pixel on any website and you've got a Facebook account, they know every website you visit. So it's kind of creepy and scary and you can worry about it, or you can just stick your head in the sand and say like I'm not that interesting.

Speaker 3:

So I think I've tried to privatize some of my life, but then I just went back to like you know what I don't. It's not like I have anything to hide. What are you going to pull from me? Exactly weird photo from when I was 13 that I I took or something like that. I mean, I guess it's a little bit embarrassing, but who doesn't have that, who doesn't have that?

Speaker 1:

and I mean I guess it's a little bit embarrassing, but who doesn't have that, who doesn't have that? And I mean, in some ways, you know there are regulations like Google Analytics that changed from the universal analytics to GA4 and it made the product worse. And if you look at it, it kind of came down to they had to increase their privacy because in Europe they were getting penalized and you know just to behave with the regulations. So they have to show the world that they're keeping things private and that's why many times they could give you more detail of who the person is interacting with your website. But they can't, because if they did, you know they'd be shut down very quickly by them having it. It allows you to have better advertising, allows marketers to have better targeting.

Speaker 1:

So I don't know, it's one of those things, uh, but they probably they have too much data on all of us. They probably have it already. So I find I sound very lackadaisical, but it is a serious thing, especially like um in our systems. You know we spend a lot of time with compliance and HIPAA and not allowing data to be breached or anything like that. So it is a serious topic, but I think, as an individual user or my personal usage. I'm not too bothered.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I do want to go back to one thing that you mentioned about the revenue with like ChatGPT and like if you're using ChatGPT and like if you're using ChatGPT as regular, like chatbot you're talking about it whatever and there's advertisements within that. And versus the personal and how you mentioned that businesses are more than willing to spend a lot more money, I would say, like the businesses that aren't using a system, like what converts don't necessarily understand how much money they're actually spending on it. So, like for Google ads, like there's probably so many accounts and campaigns and so much money that they're making because businesses don't have a clue about like the actual stuff that they're tracking, because they're just spending money. Like the performance max campaigns there's so many businesses out there just running performance max campaigns without tracking a single thing and their budgets are whatever and it's just going left and right.

Speaker 3:

But like when you have a system like what converts to be actually track and see how much you're spending for what and understanding like, hey, what did they actually search, I feel like it gives a brighter appreciation of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean even with WhatConverts. We run Google Ads and we spin up a performance max campaign and initially we weren't sending the value of like, if we do a demo or if we do a trial signup, like what's the value to Google, you know, because there isn't a value at that point. So we weren't sending it. And we spin up a performance max campaign and they gave us, you know, like 20 garbage leads immediately. And so, because we had the data and we looked at it and we're like, okay, hold on pause, that, close that campaign. Then we decided, okay, how much are we willing to spend for this opportunity, like for a demo or for a trial signup? And so, depending on if it's an agency or an individual customer or a customer in a specific industry, we've got different values and levels.

Speaker 1:

We put that in and then we spun up the PMAX campaign and now it's learning and it's like, oh, the garbage has disappeared. But you're right, the number of times I've heard of people like, oh, I thought I put a monthly budget and it was a daily budget and I burned five grand in a week, and it's just like, and they got nothing for it. You know, those stories are there and then, like you said, yeah, I'm running PMAX, google tells me it's better and I've got, you know, a hundred form leads filled in or a hundred calls, and they're not looking at the value. They think they're doing great, but it's all just noise.

Speaker 3:

So are you having success with Performance Max campaigns for WhatConverts?

Speaker 1:

So this is early days. We have, on the other, automated bidding. We've had success. I will tell you, it's more expensive than I want it to be, but it is driving.

Speaker 3:

They preach it like it's the holy grail of advertising this Performance Max campaign. But, every time, I look at it, every time it's it's. It's never as good as just setting up a singular campaign, you know, a single ad group and targeting that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah I'm looking so I have heard of and I've seen some accounts that have success, some success, and I'm pretty convinced it's tied down to tying it to value as quick as possible. I'll report back, you know, after we've done some more. When we turned it on without the value, it was a disaster. I will tell you that I have seen e-commerce campaigns do well from it, where they're getting, you know, reduced cost per clicks and cost per lead.

Speaker 3:

Okay, I want to go back to the AI, chatbots and the SEO real quick. Wolfpack, as a marketing agency, we're getting a pretty good amount of leads that we would say are from SEO, which are from chatbots. So we'll see within the lead report or whatever that they converted from ChatGPT, they converted from Google Gemini or whatever. Do you see a lot of agencies focusing on that or a lot of companies trying to focus, like, I would imagine, try to use WhatConverts to track that information?

Speaker 1:

It's very early days, so I'm seeing the news and the noise. You know what's going on. I'm getting bombarded with emails of people offering AEO instead of SEO. You know, answer engine optimization instead of search engine optimization, and I'm getting people like you know how they do it. My view has always been if you create quality content for your users, you're going to be fine, you know. So you make sure you've got the technical SEO sorted out, you've got your link structure, all that.

Speaker 1:

But if you're creating content that targets keywords, again I always go back to what's the motivation of google? Google wants to give you the best result, because if you get a great answer from your search, you'll come back again, and so they always want you to come back. If they give you a bad result, you're not going to come back and they lose users. So they're always optimizing for the best search experience, and I don't think it's any different for a chat engine. They want for you to come to them to get answers and get the best answer. How did they get the best answers? Well, they found the best content. And what's the best content? What's? Pretty much follows the same thing as seo.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I would 100 agree with that. I get a lot of companies on my social media because I'm pretty big in like different facebook groups for a lot of the companies that we work with, and a lot of people DM me or comment on my stuff or like I'll even share like screenshots of you know the, the what converts data and the email that I get showing the source of it, and I just post that. Or especially when it's like a chat to be see that was the referral source or something like that. And a lot of what they say is like well, how do I optimize for that kind of thing? Or like, how can I do that? And my same wording that always goes is just like it's the same thing that we have been doing. It's the same thing.

Speaker 3:

I'm not doing anything special. You need to make sure, like your website is crawlable. You know, have all the technical stuff done, have all the accessibility, the regular SEO stuff, but besides that, provide really good valuable content. You SEO stuff, but besides that, provide really good valuable content. The information that makes you unique to if you're a local service area business makes you unique to your area, For example. Just going off on a little bit of a tangent. Did you know that there's these hybrid termites that are moving more north from Miami? There's these two different breeds of termites. Yeah, and the University of Florida discovered these two termites started mating and now it's like this hybrid super termite and it's making its way further north, Fun fact.

Speaker 1:

So what are they doing about it?

Speaker 3:

I don't know. I'm sure the University of Florida is trying to figure out how to get rid of them. Like they have tons of different chemicals and stuff Because we work with a lot of pest control companies and so there's, like these super hybrid termites, because it comes from one particular breed that usually likes to eat the condensed wood, which is usually structural yeah so it causes more damage to homes and the.

Speaker 3:

These two types breed together and I don't believe that their chemicals and everything now works as well on them and they're more damaging to homes man, that sounds like a marketer's dream.

Speaker 1:

You can really tap into those fears, yep. It's like yeah, you know, just you know get a product that's sorted out and get prepared so your house doesn't get eaten.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I need to going back to that now that you made me think of it. There's an agency that we're looking at partnering with that creates really good video content and he's a really good vr videographer and editor and and does a phenomenal job. We could probably just do something up that's related to these hybrid termites. Yeah, I forget what the.

Speaker 1:

I gotta look it up like what the name of it is like uf hybrid because it's like a special name yeah, I mean it's uh, I get to wonder like why am I paying this anti-termite bill to my pest control company?

Speaker 3:

and it's like, well, the house is built with wood, so just just the the thought like it could possibly happen is enough to keep on paying, you know, monthly yeah, yeah, it's one of those things I don't know and it's amazing that you don't realize, like, how much money can actually be involved in that, and I guess that goes back to the businesses and the privatizing. You could pay 20 bucks with ChagBT or you can release it to the businesses and the marketers to spend a bunch of money on a cost per lead, because the value of the customer is there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

No I mean we've, it's crazy so. So I mean you don't realize how much, uh, companies pay. But that's I mean that's what I was saying to um in the email before. This is like, if you're in a position where you are getting a positive roi from your marketing, keep the momentum. Don't sit back and like, yeah, we got enough, you know. So I suppose I'd say if, if you're getting a positive ROI and you want to continue growing, double down, because it's just going to put you in a stronger position, it's going to grow your business and it's going to allow you to weather a larger competitor coming around and outspending you. So I encourage you, I just, you know, I don't think, because some people are like, hey, man, I'm getting a great ROI Pats on the back and it's like, well, you're making $5 for every dollar you put into it. Put as many dollars as you can.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I saw that in your email that you sent over in terms of the different things we could discuss, but one of the things that I again have to and I would imagine from your agency days you get this as well is sometimes with campaigns you're going to have really solid months and then you're going to have a dry month of like two or three months with campaigns that don't perform well and the return on investment goes down, for whatever reason.

Speaker 3:

whether it's you know, the cost just goes up because other advertisers get in the market and the cost for everybody goes up. Whether it's just like you have a dry spell of leads but then you're going to have solid months that it performs really, really well and, like you mentioned, double down. But also my conversation to them is once you get to a certain point of advertising on Yelp it was, it was seven.

Speaker 1:

Wow, yeah, yeah, they do, yeah, so I mean so, yeah, when I'm mentioning that like double down if it's working. So many times I've had customers where it is working and they say like michael, these results are great, can we spend more? There are times when you can't spend more. Like in google ads, we had like high impression share, you know so meaning we were pretty much there every time someone searched for your terms and we weren't exceeding the budget. So when they asked like can we spend more because the results are great and because they had the tools and the insights, I was like yeah, no, you actually can't spend more. And they're like you, sure, and they were keen to spend more. So it's very rare you get those situations, but I've had it several times and most of the times, when it's so good, it's like yeah, no, we can't actually spend more.

Speaker 1:

But by saying that I found in an agency-client relationship it builds trust, you're saying like I know you want to give me more money, but I'm saying no because of this. And then, when it comes to a day like so, when that was happening and the Google Ads thing happened, where it was competing, I said look, we've got to build a moat and I think we can do it with SEO. So we diversified into SEO, which is like quadrupled amount of SEO content we were doing with that client. And then what we found out is in the early days the Google Ads was the highest performer, and then it flipped to Google Organic being the highest performer, and then it's flipped to Google organic being the highest performer. So now we hit a moat around.

Speaker 1:

You know, if people want to jack up the ad spending, we could be like, fine, go ahead. You know, we we still good in the organic. So yeah, diversifying is good. Only double down if there's room to double down, you know. But yeah, obviously you keep monitoring it because things will get more expensive. And then it's like, okay, we've got to make sure we stay ahead.

Speaker 1:

It's complicated Marketing is harder than people realize it is.

Speaker 3:

There's a lot of nuance to it, a lot of different nuance to it. And speaking of the complexity, we're running a little bit low on time, so I want to ask you one last question, and maybe this actually stems. Five more questions, but we'll see. There's a lot of people, and business owners in general too, that feel lost when it comes to marketing and maybe feel like it's a scam. Right, because there's so many marketing agencies, michael, as I'm sure that you know that don't do a good job. They don't use WhatConverts, and so their marketing turns out to be a scam because they're not using WhatConverts.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to turn this into an ad.

Speaker 3:

Let's make an ad for WhatConverts. They just use WhatConverts, it wouldn't be a scam. No, yeah, no, I just mean genuinely there's a lot of business owners that feel lost and confused when it comes to marketing and they feel like it's so complex.

Speaker 3:

Obviously, using a system like WhatConverts kind of makes it black and white you know, or we think it's black and white, but there's still a lot of complexity to it. What is your advice to these business owners that are, like you know, feeling a little bit overwhelmed with the complexity and like trying to understand, like WhatConverts and what it all does, because, you know, even a lot of our customers still get a little bit confused about it?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what's your advice to them? So I think you've got to do your due diligence with agencies. Don't just listen to the sweet talker who says all the right things and promises the earth. Get a very like define what does success look like, you know, and just say, okay, if I'm going to pay you this, what are we, what can we expect to get? Or even if we can't determine that, like, what is the process you want to see? A defined process and a defined measurement, like we hit this means we've got success. And if you can set that up, that you know over a three-month period that we're going to measure it and see and even along that pathway, I think that that's going to help.

Speaker 1:

The other thing I think helps is having references. Just like really dig into the references, show me who you've helped, how you've helped them. Is it similar to us? Is it a similar scenario? If they've got reviews, check out the reviews. Now, there's some different review sites. I mean Google, my Google business page. You know people can leave reviews on there. So if you're an agency, get leave reviews on there. So if you're an agency, get some reviews on there. If you're a person looking for an agency, just make sure you're checking out reviews. So I think you do have to do your due diligence and you have to have a very defined performance metric.

Speaker 1:

Like I was speaking to somebody the other day, it's a totally different industry, but they were, they're an author, okay, and they were going to pay a PR company to get them broadcast into the social media channels and to get onto like 30 different podcasts. And I said to them okay, what's your KPI? And then they're like oh well, I get to all these people to get to see me. And I said, yeah, that sounds like impressions. That's terrible. So I said you're an author. I said you got to measure it by how many books you can sell.

Speaker 1:

And I always look at like will this campaign give me a high probability of hitting the KPI? So if you're an author selling books, if I spend this money like, let's say it's $10,000 and it's will I be, will I be satisfied with selling a thousand books? So pretty much means break even. What's the probability of me selling a thousand books through this method? So when you looked at it on that lens, it was like okay, looking at this, there wasn't a high probability of it happening. So it's like pass it over and you're going to be disciplined as a business owner if you can't determine a high probability of it happening. So it's like pass it over and you got to be disciplined as a business owner If you can't determine a high probability of reaching your KPIs. You know, keep looking. So I think I don't know. Is that enough?

Speaker 3:

I think that's solid. I was, honestly, I was going to, I was expecting a different answer, but like I feel like asking the question of just knowing, like what your goal is, what your KPI is and what the actual achievement is. I think that is better because if you understand what that is, you can go to somebody and say this is what I'm looking for. Can you achieve this for me?

Speaker 3:

And then they can hopefully use a system like WhatConverts or whatever, to actually prove the revenue that they've generated from that. And just going for the Google reviews, michael, I've been shouting you out this entire time. I got to shout out Wolfpack, my own agency, for a minute. And that's just for marketing agencies. Michael, I don't know if you know, if you've looked on Google, but for marketing agencies, looking at reviews for different ones, it's like a different animal. There's not a lot of agencies that have a ton of good Google reviews. Have you noticed that?

Speaker 3:

You know, I think they don't know where to go. I suppose it's just google I'm just checking yours up by like 103 five star reviews. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not a single one star, isn't that?

Speaker 1:

crazy. But that's, that's like in your due diligence. If somebody checks it out, then they're like, okay, great. And then it's like, okay, can I speak to some of your clients? And I think as a business you've got to do the real due diligence and reviews, speak to references, you know, and the clients and like really get into it Because obviously the agency is going to give you the best clients you know.

Speaker 1:

But ask the questions and then, yeah, set up the measure. So even with what converts like I run the marketing, if we're looking a new campaign, or somebody approaches me for something, like somebody wanted me to help them sponsor a trade show and I said, look, what's the probability that I'm gonna get this many signups or demos based on the sponsorship? And I said I just divide the sponsorship value by by those and I've got a customer acquisition cost that I target. And and when I look at it, it's like you haven't given me enough information. I can't determine the probability. So the answer is no and so I look at it through that lens. I mean with Google ads as well, or even if we're doing SEO and a content people, I divide it all down by how much does a trial sign up, and how much does a demo cost me?

Speaker 3:

Beautiful advice, michael, beautiful advice.

Speaker 1:

And install WhatConverts so you can check it out. That's a simple answer. Is that the answer we were expecting?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I was expecting. Just no, I wasn't expecting that, I wasn't, but that was still good anyway. Michael, I know we've talked about your name and everything else throughout the entire podcast, but you know, for those people listening, where do you want them to find you? What should they look up?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean they can find us at whatconversecom and then also with LinkedIn. I'm getting more active there. I post on LinkedIn. So that's Michael Cooney on LinkedIn. If you search for me, you'll find me. Give me a follow.

Speaker 3:

You're a LinkedIn person. Huh yeah, I'm also an ex-person.

Speaker 1:

I don't post there, but I am an ex-reader.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's funny. I've always said Twitter, but that's probably the first time I've said ex, which used to be Twitter.

Speaker 3:

You're hip now You're cool. That's what it means it means yeah exactly Cool, michael.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thank you for the conversation. Thank you for being here. Thank you, I appreciate the time and everything else. Everybody that's listening to the Marketing Alpha podcast, go check out whatconvertscom or link up with Wolfpack Advising the best marketing agency. Obviously because we have 103 five-star reviews, not a single one-star, two-star or three-star. We have one four-star, which is very disappointing. But read it. It's a good one, it's a beautiful one. I love that one. Anyway, thank you everybody for listening and thank you, michael, we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1:

Thanks everyone, thanks Aaron.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for listening to Alpha Marketing. If you enjoyed today's episode review and share it with other business owners and marketers. Your support enables us to continue bringing you actionable advice and the tools you need to thrive. Join us next time for more insights with Aaron Shishilla and keep striving to be the alpha in your market.