I'm Canadian, and my husband is British. Even though we both speak "English," I've accepted the fact that we don't actually speak the same language.
And I'm not just talking about the obvious linguistic differences, like bin/garbage or flat/apartment or advert/ad. Within the first few years of our relationship, I learned that even when we're saying the exact same words, they meant completely different things due the the cultural and familial contexts in which we were raised.
For example, when I say, "What do you want for dinner tonight?"
What I mean is, "What kind of food do you want to eat for dinner tonight? But obviously, don't suggest something I don't like."
And what Phillip hears is "You're in charge of dinner. Make or order something that I'll like."
Even though that's not what I said. Or what I meant.
Communication is complicated! There are three different sentences at play here:
- What I said
- What I meant
- What he inferred that I meant, based on what I said
"Lovely, Jyll, but isn't this newsletter about Google Ads?"
YES! Because the gap between 1, 2 and 3 is also hurting your campaign performance. Let me tell you about a recent Google Ads coaching client named Fern, who manages paid search at an agency specializing in home builders...
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Fern booked a call with me so we could audit a few of her client accounts together. As we reviewed the keywords, search terms, ad text and landing pages for her various home builder clients, I noticed a common challenge: the language Fern was using didn't always match the language her clients' target customers were using.
Some examples:
- Fern had added "house designer" as a negative keyword to a Search campaign. The client doesn't offer standalone design services. However, I pointed out that if someone is looking to design their house, the next step in the journey would be to hire a builder and implement that design. Since the client does offer design services for its clients, it would make sense to advertise on this keyword - and emphasize on the landing page the ease of hiring the same company to design and build your house.
- On the contact form, one of the required fields was "Site Location." Site Location? That's builder-speak. We want client-speak. A potential client filling out the form would call it their "Address."
- A different builder's landing page call-to-action was "Book Your Initial Meeting." This caused double misalignment, because a) when a client clicked that button, it took them to a form, not a calendar to book a meeting, and b) a client doesn't want a meeting, they want a quote so they can pick a builder. I suggested "Get a Free Quote" or "Request a Free Consultation" instead.
- Most of the client's keywords included the location; for example, "home builder montreal" "home builder sherbrooke" etc. But the search terms showed that a lot of people weren't searching this way; they were simply searching "home builder." Perhaps we could expand the non-location keyword set, and rethink the location-specific headlines we were using if most users weren't searching that way.
Whether you're an in-house marketer, a freelancer, an agency or the business owner yourself, you are biased by your own "insider" perspective. Perhaps the reason your Google Ads aren't performing the way you want them to is because you're stuck on sentence 1 ("What do you want for dinner tonight?"), without realizing that your potential customers are seeing sentence 3 ("You're in charge of dinner!") - and not clicking/converting as a result.
Do your Google Ads campaigns need some TLC? Book a call with me and we'll get your problems solved.
And a final note: We won't have an issue of The Insider in two weeks (December 30) so I will see you again in your inbox on January 13th. Happy holidays, and happy new year!
