The latest Google Ads news and trends

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00:00every year they say that broad match is getting better and every year they're saying that queries are getting more complex so broad match is just becoming I would say more important especially with the complex queries that we're getting all right Adriaan welcome to the PBC Mastery podcast uh it's really good to have you and um before we get started I just wanted to say just wanted to tell you that I really respect you and and how you how you work and and operate um I always tell people when they ask me how do you stay up to date and how do you get your news updates I always mention you I have to shout out Thomas as well Thomas Eccel and Yan Fant because he's also like probably the original news update guy on on LinkedIn so we also always have to shout him out but you are the the number one source for me um I don't see anyone who's posting as often as you as fast um so just wanted to to say that I I really respect that and it's awesome to to have you here on the podcast um so before we go into like we're going to be talking about news Trends Google Ads before we do that um Adriaan tell us something about yourself that most people don't know so most people maybe don't know that I go to the gym six time a week so besides news I'm also outside and uh I have a live outside of LinkedIn and Google Ads and uh yeah I'm uh into powerlifting I think uh my best deadlift was uh 250 for three so K it's okay yes kilos so uh I'm

01:41doing all right and uh just like LinkedIn I also want to push that uh to the max so uh we will see where we go to but uh I'm hoping to do 300 for one in uh one and a half year wow the to 250 kilos I think in pounds for the people from the US that's like 5005 50 pounds or something like that crazy wow nice um so the second question is uh what is something that you believe about Google Ads that most people would disagree with okay yeah I I already know I already know one thing so this is a weird thing maybe but I believe that a conversion bit Strate strategy can work uh with a low amount of conversions because I I've done some tests and I've I've seen it work better than manual CPC so I don't know what's going on um but I've seen it work with with even like 10 conversions per month for example that it's just outperforming the other strategies so that's why I will always keep testing things and um you never know sometimes it don't it does not work but in some cases it did work so interesting so that that just proves again that you just need to test and experiment for yourself right yes heavily cool so um Adriaan um I'm actually personally wondering um how did you get started with Google Ads and when did you develop an interest to share so many news updates as you're doing yeah so it basically already started in school um I was doing uh a course in marketing and then we had a few um few things that we could do with

03:20Google Ads for example um we needed to go to a company and we needed to start Google Ads so that was really the beginning uh because I did a I did education in online marketing e-commerce and sales it was one of the first uh schools in the Netherland that gave that course nice um so that's really how it started it and um I even had one webinar about online marketing and they told me the challenges that online marketing had and then I was immediately on Switched on I was like okay this is really interesting um because normally I was used to reading books about traditional marketing and this sounded just way fancy with online tools you could measure things for example uh create and build websites for ex for example so that was really interesting uh so that's where it started yeah and then from there how did you end up doing Google Ads so um when I was almost done um with school I started already as a freelancer but I was more in general marketing and I did some internships with uh LinkedIn growth and also a bit of marketing and Google Ads but it was more just giving some small tips and looking into the system so when I started it was more broad Marketing in general uh but quickly I realized that uh Google Ads um really had some interesting uh chances especially with enough jobs for example um so yeah basically I got one job for Google Ads I just told them that I could do it I learned everything about Google Ads and that's how it started and yeah

05:00I'm just very committed to things so when I start something I will be consistent and that's how it went that's interesting um so that also shows from you going to the gym six times per week um that you have that commitment and uh and motivation to to keep going um did you always this like sidestep but did you always have that as a as a kid like being committed to something having the discipline to show up yeah yeah yeah from my early age I already had that it it it has some downsides because you only will focus on a few things and you will not try a lot of things maybe but the big upside is that you get good at something and uh you can achieve something uh and with with work it it was just finding something that I enjoyed that I got en energy from and goog was the thing because you can see the revenue increase you can talk with business owners um you can also help them with the product for example price pricing um online you can give them tips so yeah with Performance Marketing you just see results and that's that gives me energy yeah yeah that's that's that's cool man and and as I said it definitely shows in that you because you show up okay you go to the gym six times uh per week but you also post on LinkedIn like six times per day so it's uh that's crazy um so when did you start to develop that interest to start sharing news updates um next to you know sharing your knowledge and everything but when did you really start to focus on the news so I think around two and a half years ago I started uh creating maybe three years ago I started with with a few posts and there was no

06:37consistency because I did not have my vision right I was just posting more in general and then when I started Google Ads and I knew that this was the way I wanted to go become a Google Ads freelancer uh instead of a general marketing freelancer um I found out that I still had enough time for clients um and I knew from my internship because I helped a CEO with his LinkedIn that you can get clients through uh LinkedIn um and I know you he posted every day he posted content and I was like okay why don't I do this just for myself and um yeah in the beginning of course I had the feeling like oh what are people going to think about me but I needed more clients because I was only working I think uh two and a half days so I can't sit at home the other two and a half days doing nothing um so so created a plan told myself okay in those two and a half days I'm going to learn everything about Google Ads um and then I'm just going to share it and um I really uh found out that a lot of updates were not shared by the big Publishers like search engine L and that Google had a lot of small updates um and not a lot of people were posting about that so I saw a gap there in the market and I thought that could be interesting to post about yeah um and then now fast forward you are probably the number one guy who's who's posting like these small and big updates um so talking about those what are some of the biggest news updates that we've seen uh recently um and maybe are there different

08:15differences across pmax search shopping different campaign types Etc what are we seeing that the industry is moving towards now yeah I would say General Trends is Google just launching products without them being finished the mon gen gets a lot of updates bmax get a lot of updates G4 get a lot of updates so that's one thing and then they will just release more and more futures um and even with the new design they will give us the new merchant center next and also the new user interface design but they will give us some time and they will release also new Futures in the design like you see with merchant center next so that is a big thing that Google is doing uh yeah another big thing of course is generative Ai and uh I hear everybody talking about creating content in ads for example but I think it will also have a big impact on creating uh reports how so so data so that you can just um write a prompt and then it gives you the data back and maybe you can write a really specific prompt and have you have you experimented with that a lot yourself uh not really at the moment I'm just waiting uh waiting wait there for but also in uh G4 in the search bul in the shirt header you can just write how many visitors I got from the US for example so I think that could be something interesting in the future that a lot of people don't talk about yeah interesting hey guys real quick if you like this episode don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss anything in

09:53the future and feel free to share with a friend colleague or family member cuz that's the only way we can grow this show all right back to the show what sure what are your thoughts on on these generative AI features that Google is releasing um do do you think the quality is good um you mentioned that Google's releasing products are not really finished yet what are your initial thoughts now that it's because it's being rolled out now I would not rely on it to be honest um it's more to get some IDs and sometimes you miss maybe a a hook or a sentence that could be interesting um but I don't rely on it at the moment I I don't think it's it's good enough at the moment to fully rely on it yeah and um what trends do you see in the in the industry um you mentioned we have um J of AI Google merch Center next is coming um but are there any like other big trends that you foresee that are maybe happening now or are coming soon I still see a YouTube growing every quarter again when you look at uh the quarter results of uh Google they are really pushing YouTube and also with the shorts for example and um with the competition with Tik Tok for example I think YouTube we will see it grow and some there's more and more spent going to YouTube so that's one big thing uh and another big thing every year they say that um broad match is getting better and every year they saying that queries are getting more complex so broad match is just becoming um I would say more important mhm especially with the complexer

11:32queries that we're getting yeah um so have you what are your thoughts on Broad match in in general then um do you see good results with it yeah yeah I've seen good results but it also depends a bit on the market for example in some markets you have a few quaries that really gain uh a lot of traffic and are really transactional and in other markets you have longer complexer queries so you really need to look at the product and the market that you're in that's really important and just do not uh use some context so look at the market and do not look as BR match in general yeah um so uh looking into the into the future with the trends and everything that you that you have just mentioned what are the things that you are really excited about about something that that might be coming up soon that others um will also find valuable h um yeah so I'm I'm excited to see where uh the visuals are going in Google how the how the interface will change in the in the search page for example with the 3-day pictures in shopping how how how Google is changing because everybody was talking about oh it's just 10 Blue Links for example but that's not the case anymore especially with more high quality images and it's easier to create backgrounds for example I think when you have St Patrick's Day for example this was an example that they gave you can just uh change the background for example so um I'm really interested in seeing how the search bace will change and we as advertisers can use that so we

13:11get more attributes more futures for example um and that way when you're an early adapter to all those things you can gain uh a higher uh Ros for example or poos yeah um and what are your personal thoughts about the future of of BBC you know we talk about about it a lot in our workshops in our in our content um but I'm I'm curious what what are your thoughts on how you can yeah make sure that you stay relevant and future proof yourself especially now with all of the AI things that Google is is releasing yeah I think I think as a freelancer you will have more clients um and working less hours in accounts um you will look more at the strategy of the business um and I think you can learn a lot of skills about about business wise and about cero for example but definitely uh Less in the account and less hours and I think even the rules are um 10% of the Google Ads budget goes to the marketing agency for example I think those rules maybe need to change because it's just a different task that we're getting of course it's maybe a higher level of thinking so you can ask more money for that but those rules that were created I don't know if they apply anymore to be honest so on oh sorry yeah because I I see some companies just asking High fees still and they can't really do a lot of things in the ads account and maybe I'm missing some things that they're doing on the um on the background but I've seen it a few times happening now and I'm like I don't know if it's worth to pay that much money because you can't work in account

14:50all day anymore yeah um so what are you doing to to keep yourself uh future proof and and to stay relevant and help your clients on this more on the business side of things so first of all for me it's important to just um get new clients and to um make sure that I have a flow of clients for example as a freelancer that's why I also started with creating the content so that's one thing that's really important if you are a freelancer just stay active and it's better maybe to say no and that you know that clients can come to you then that you just um only work on clients you also have to work on your business so that's the first thing because even after a few years some clients go away that's normal maybe they hire somebody else or they um have a new employee that's going to do Google Ads and you can learn Google Ads to them for example um so that's the first thing and the other thing is I will just keep looking at updates and also at companies and how they grow and why do people buy these things for example that's really important also to get a good understanding of the company yeah and how how do you do that um getting that good understanding of of your client's company business just asking a lot of questions looking into the data what products are selling um just doing research in Google for example but also just asking the right questions and keep asking the questions because sometimes uh the business employ the business owner will say something else after a few months so keep asking questions good questions uh stay sharp um and also look at competition

16:29yeah that's uh that's solid and yeah I think I I totally agree that it's super important now to um look Beyond just Google Ads and help your clients with their their offers and and and maybe even sales um anything that you landing pages anything that you can do to um yeah help them outside of just just Google Ads so that's solid um so I would like to talk about uh LinkedIn for a sec yeah you're you're growing so fast um but before that um there's actually one thing um uh that a lot of people are actually uh wondering from you how do you stay up to date with everything in the BBC world so um I've created a system with uh I just have a sheet with um a lot of sources that I just would check two times a day um every every evening I would check it and every morning I would check it and for example examp if I see three new news items I will plan them in for for example 7:00 8:00 9:00 or maybe midnight or in the morning um so I just have my sources I just have a big tab that I will check every day so some people may see that I check their LinkedIn profile every day or their website even that's just to check if there is uh any news um and what you see is that a lot of people just only post some new items and then I will just grab all the news items and post them um so that's really the way and during the day I will also check LinkedIn a few times of

18:05course and what I like about how you share your updates is that if you see someone share something before you then you will give them the credits um I think some people are also just trying to take credit for just reposting someone else's work and I think what you're doing is is nice because you always give credit oh this was found by this person and then um maybe you give your own observations or you just share the news update I think that's uh that's awesome so then on on LinkedIn um yeah we all know how fast you are growing like it's crazy when I I think when I had around 30 or 35k followers I think you were somewhere around 20 and then we both started to grow I was like around 40 you came closer closer closer and then at some point you flipped me and you had more followers and then now you're getting like I don't know maybe five 10,000 new followers per month um so you're gr like crazy um probably the biggest active uh account in in all of the PBC industry so that's super cool to see um so I would love to know from you and for anyone who is maybe not posting on LinkedIn as much um how has LinkedIn impacted your career as a Google Ads specialist and what can other people learn from that um in terms of how it might be beneficial to them so yeah LinkedIn has has meant a lot a lot lot for my career um getting clients I I think if I would not have uh used LinkedIn um maybe I would just went back to a regular normal job just a 9 to5 uh because I did not get clients my

19:43I I was too young to have a good uh offline Network I didn't know the right people um so I always say you need to have an offline Network or an online Network or both even better um but I knew there were a lot of chance online um so yeah without LinkedIn it was just just 9 to5 and um I would just recommend everybody to start posting and um don't look at other creators that are already posting every day or maybe they are posting um yeah just really Advanced content just if you're not posting just start with one post and then maybe two and then three and then just work on it um and you can even you know start with news items or more uh Evergreen content just maybe you're just scared to give your opinion in the beginning because a lot of people in your head you're thinking like oh people are going to think something about me when I pose or they can react negative on this but start small and then just grow um that's the most important thing for me did you did you have that voice in your head when you started so maybe some people are going to think something about it yeah yeah 100% and that's why I waited so long um and then the the pain of not having enough clients and not working enough was just yet was too much pain to be honest and then I was like I need to do this and nobody else is going to give me clients MH um so I gave myself an ultimatum of one year to just post every day learn everything and if I would not get new clients I would just go back to 9 to five job I so that was my goal nice and how long did it take you to get that first client I think it was maybe two

21:21months that's also that's also another thing um I didn't went viral in one one week two weeks weeks three weeks four weeks of course some people saw me the mistake that I made was writing about news you still get clients but other client so business owners maybe who are more into Google Ads will search for your content ppcs will search for more your content but that's a big thing when pcers think that they need to post uh just like me about news uh but your ICP is not uh news items normally so and ICP is ideal client profile right yes that's correct and uh it's more about what Google Ads can mean for a company for example and which mistakes they are making um and not about new shiny objects um um so I think that a lot of pcers post uh too much uh stuff that is for ppcs yeah yeah interesting interesting so what is then you you mentioned talk more about the the issues and challenges that business owners have but U well what do you recommend to new people who maybe are thinking about okay I want to also get more clients on LinkedIn or build my personal brand or whatever it is um what advice can you give them in terms of how to get started how do they think because a lot of people don't know they think that they don't have anything to to talk about H they maybe think that they are not qualified um and they just don't know what to post so why would you say to those people so first of all of course if I would say uh create a branded campaign

22:59every ppcr would react on my post like uh yeah of course um that's what I always do a lot of business owners don't understand that so if you create a network with more business owners and write for them they will value that content and you do not need to think about other bpcs because you're not writing for other bpcs you're writing for the business owners so just find some subjects that are interesting for your for your Target ICP and right for them and you do not need to care about other pcers because you're not entertaining them to be honest um another thing is that I would create uh enough content to plan it in the future so that you get that consistency because maybe you forget one time and then you're like ah no um I'm a person that forgets to write content um I will just focus on other things um just try to stay consistent create some content um yeah for example when I went on vacation I went away for three weeks uh I just sat down one uh Saturday afternoon I created I think 21 items um plan it all in and I just had enough content for three weeks and of course when I was on vacation I could still check one hour a day and still post everything but I already had planned everything so I knew if I would have one day off for example no stress it was already planned yeah yeah smart um and how how did do you think people can get in in build a network of these business owners as you said um because yeah you're you're always going to attract other people

24:37series as well but how do you find those business owners on LinkedIn or how do you make sure that they can find you so you have different strategies for example you can just um search for them and really really good searching so not General searching I just add them look at the profile are they active are they liking stuff um do they get new connections do do they have a good picture do they have a good headline because when you add them um you maybe want to talk to them in the future and if you're just adding an inactive account that's just one invite that is just you just threw it away right so that's more a sniper tactic just really look at the accounts like what companies do you want to attract are those small companies are those big companies um who are you talking to is it the business owner is the marketing manager um really have a good Target ICP and focus on them and also look at the feedback that you're getting who is liking you who is watching your profile who is adding you those are all feedbacks that you get from the system yeah and then you add if so let's say for example you see someone a business owner um you see that that he visited your page um do you add them and then send them a DM or how does that work from there on depends on how eager you are to get sales for example if you if you have a bit of time for example I would say you do not need to maybe message them directly maybe just because when you add them they will accept you and this is what I heard and I believe this is true um the first week for example they will see your content a bit more for example so normally I myself would not send them a message directly even in the beginning I would just wait

26:15they can see my content a few times they know um what I'm about what I'm talking about and then I can send them a message one or two two weeks after for example um so that's one strategy that you can do you you can check who's looking at my profile but you can also just search for them in the search bar or you can uh react on their post and create a small relationship there and also other people will see your reactions and that's also really important reacting on other posts yeah um so what are the benefits of that just everybody sees sees you reacting so you're just you're you're just stealing some Impressions from somebody else's post for example and if you're sharing good good insights um people will have a better image of you for example so I love how Bob for example sometimes he posted funny stuff on my uh post and his reaction would get more lik uh than my post but in the at the end I'm still getting more Impressions and yeah people just know Bob is a funny guy you know he's really chill he's really relax okay maybe I will invite him for a podcast or when he creates stuff I know um he is a good guy for example so that's also good for his image yeah smart and I guess if you comment on business owners uh posts they probably have a network of other business owners who can also see that right yes exactly yeah very nice so um in the early stages of uh starting on LinkedIn I think that's probably the um most difficult stage because going from

27:53zero followers or let's say around 100 you know most people have some friends from school from back in the day and a few hundred connections um going from that to 1,000 I think that's the hardest uh step so do you have any tips on how to grow in that early stage yeah so like the giveaways can really work but if you're not really active I think LinkedIn can block you because they will see normal activity and then really high activity because I don't get blocked on LinkedIn um at the moment and I think that is because I'm just really active and the system thinks that oh that's just Adriaan he's really active um but I think that can work um free giveways to grow quick in the beginning um yeah and just more complex content maybe but that could also be a bigger step to create content but if you're just showing other content and you go in your own lane for example like Thomas did uh Thomas Isa did he created the picture with his head and he would only do certain updates at he uh he found himself for example and that was just unique in his way and he grew really quickly yeah um so to grow really quickly I think you need to do you you need to give more effort that's just it fair enough and um so what are you doing now in terms of your own content I know that you're posting a lot of news updates I see you post more video uh you know giveaways conversion tracking stuff how do you decide for yourself what you are posting and um what is your your person approach your content creation look like so some

29:31people maybe have something like I will do one personal post I will do one video I will one tip um but for me it's I just have ideas in my head and I want them to go out of my head create things maybe sometimes I want to learn things myself or um want to see how something is working and then I will just make a video of it um so I do not really have a general guidance of okay I will post uh this thing or that thing um I will just post every update that I see and normally I will do uh one video a day for example or one um one PDF a day for example yeah cool awesome I think that was a really good insight into how you use LinkedIn and how people can can do that and I'm sure that we could talk hours about this on on on how you can leverage LinkedIn but I guess the summary would be anyone can benefit from it because you attract New Opportunities I think if both of us um would not start posting on LinkedIn we wouldn't even be on this podcast now together no and the funny thing is that I'm even uh I'm just leading that traffic to my website for example and people maybe will say oh but what if they remove your LinkedIn I still have my website and you for example have the newsletter still and that newsletter is filled with PPC specialist so you could also use LinkedIn to get traction on your own channel and to create an audience on your own channel channel so if you're in a position like I don't want to invest in LinkedIn because yeah it's just a channel and maybe in five years it's another Channel and it's linked in here to stay um you can just use that traffic to uh get a community

31:11somewhere else yeah yeah really smart man there's so much value on LinkedIn still I think that's probably the only Channel where you can get so much organic reach even though it's decreasing for some people it's still so so much more than on on X or on YouTube Just organically is yeah maybe not shorts but it's crazy the best day the best day to begin is was yesterday and the day after is just today really it's it's it's crazy how much Impressions you can still get and I think you know with Instagram in the beginning it was also you were following people and following people and you want to get in the feets of people um and yeah with LinkedIn right now there's still so much Impressions that you can get and I think also a lot of people don't post on LinkedIn it's maybe a few perc over so you can get a lot of eyes on you and um I I would just recommend everybody to use it and even business businesses that I help with Google Ads I will tell them oh are you using LinkedIn I can also help you with LinkedIn if you want organic LinkedIn yeah yeah organic I would just give them tips um and yeah if they want I can create some content for them but but normally I will just give them some tips some list for example um I I even helped companies with uh direct messaging um adding people for example yeah very cool man very cool so um before we uh round this up I have a few rapid fire questions that I want to ask you so it's just uh this or that um no it depends and no don't elaborate on your answer okay yes the first one is pmax or standard

32:49shopping pmax oh uh Google Ads has advertisers best interest in mind agree or disagree disagree BR Ms yes or no yes uh a ARS automatically applied recommendations bad or good bad manual bidding or smart bidding smart bding okay two more um will all match types except broad be gone in two years no we'll still have phras in exact yes okay and the last one is will search and shopping campaigns be around in two years yes cool nice all right then um I have one final like one last question to close off the episode if you had to share three golden nuggets about driving results with Google Ads what would that be or maybe even LinkedIn um uh because I know that you are such a thought leader on that side as well three golden nuggets that you want to share expand what is working Test new things and I would say this is more this has more to do with test things just don't because something does not work today maybe it will work next week just give it give it a chance so it's really expanding things um yeah quit quit which what what is not working and keep testing keep testing new things uh just find things it's I'm not doing the same

34:27thing as I was was doing in the beginning to be honest I will just test things and maybe it's luck that something is working and I will just expand it but if it's working I will I will use it yeah cool awesome uh very nice so where can people follow you Adriaan uh they can follow me on LinkedIn Adriaan Dekker they can follow me on Instagram Adriaan Dekker uh they can follow me on Tik Tok also I think Adriaan PPC I don't I don't even know to and on Twitter I think it's on Twitter it's also Adriaan PPC um but yeah I'm most mostly active on on LinkedIn I have my own website Adriaan Dekker there is some delay in the news sometimes but uh I'm trying to fix that part uh to get more uh a good news overview there um yeah and I still have the newsletter for example Onin yeah definitely subscribe to that guys 100% recommend that and you also have you you're building out your you have a LinkedIn template Google Ads optimization checklist and new newsletter and where can people find those yeah so on my website you can find my template that's a big list uh that I will update with new videos uh new PDFs um new tips because Google's changing things all the time um and also all the settings you can find all the settings with documentation with the link to Google um and then besides that I'm also building a paid newsletter where I will do a deep dive into the news item because it's takes so much time to already write about all the news items and I still think there is a gap in how

36:06do you really Implement all those news items what do they mean where can I find the source um I'm even thinking about maybe creating some videos about for example new futures um and and walk through them uh there's still a gap and it just takes so much time um that I was thinking how can I um still uh give enough time to this and make it work for me so that's why I started the PID newsletter and you can also find that on my website cool and that's aliand decker.com yes yes still. NL okay just Google for it and you will find it um all right man well thank you for coming oh by the way is it a monthly or Weekly Newsletter what's the Cadence so every week so for a month um yeah you just get it every Sunday and it it's just a deeper dive you you will have to search for things really yourself anymore so I will just tell more about it yeah cool awesome well I recommend everyone to sign up because as I said you are my primary source of of news insights I love how you have um shared your value always um on LinkedIn also in in Discord you've done that for a long time and now in in the PPC Hub as well um it's really cool to um to see that so thanks for coming on the on the podcast and feel free to come back anytime thanks for having me and would love to come back cool all right everyone thank you for listening and catch you on the next episode Peace bye-bye all right that's the end of this episode of the PBC Mastery podcast I hope you enjoyed it and if you don't want to miss any future episodes we're going to be back next

37:43week then don't forget to subscribe and share with a friend family member or a colleague uh cuz that's the only way we can grow this show now there's two more things I want to share with you if you want to take your Google Ads game to the next level the first one is if you want to get advanced Google Ads tips delivered straight into your inbox on Mondays and Fridays head over to PBC mastery.com newsletter to subscribe to our newsletter called the PBC Edge and next to that if you want to really really really take your skills to the next level and become the best Google ad specialist you can possibly be then consider joining the PPC Hub which is our coaching and Community platform for experienced Google Ads specialist you can find everything about it on PBC mastery.com hub and with that said I'll catch you in next week's episode Peace