How to scale Google Ads with small budgets

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00:00don't over over complicate things don't segment out too much I've seen campaigns of accounts with 10 year old budget and like six campaigns that's not going to to work all right GM and welcome back to the PBC Mastery podcast um today I have another special guest here Geert or as the International Community calls him Geert Groot um Geert is a yeah he's a he's a cool guy you're a cool guy Geert what I respect about you is that you in the PPC Hub you're always sharing um a lot of things with people helping people behind the scenes um sharing your insights um and you specialize in um getting results really good results with low budgets for local mostly local clients and that is super interesting to me because I never really worked with those types of clients and it's cool to see that you have really cool approach es which I can't wait to dive into um for how you have I I before I thought it was 80 now it's already like hundred different clients that you're managing so uh yeah I think it's going to be a good conversation um but before we dive in Geert could you maybe tell us a little bit about yourself H and tell us something about yourself that most people don't know wow uh thank you for the introduction um yeah what most people don't know is that next to Google Ads I'm volunteering uh every week at the Friday morning at a dayare for people

01:38with Autism uh near my house and so we are gardening woodworking just having fun and helping those people out so that's something most people don't know yeah how long have you been doing that almost two years now I think uh very cool man must be nice to balance that with all the Google Ads work in your head and number crunching and stuff and then just doing something like that yeah it's really uh giving back to um to community and uh it's a whole lot different compared to Google Ads and yeah I've told some people if if Google Ads will stop working for me then I'll make the the switch to uh to something like like that so a whole different different thing very cool man very cool so you do that every Friday morning for a couple of hours yeah yeah for four hours I think yeah very nice man very nice all right well that's cool um so next question here what is something you believe about Google Ads that most people disagree with that manual bidding will still work in accounts H interesting especially the Google Reps don't believe that but I do very nice okay I want to definitely dive

03:16into that um in a sec so Geert yeah you um you specialize in local businesses mostly could you maybe talk a little bit about how yeah what your client portfolio looks like and how you decided to work you know with this type of client um I've started to work with these type of clients at my former job and I really liked the the fact that you uh do business of you you talk with the business owner so it's a a very short line to uh manage expectations and um discussing the accounts and and once the accounts are set up it's not changing a lot so you don't have to spend hours and hours per month in in a small business account you don't have to over manage them MH and that's why I can manage a lot and a lot with a lot you mean how many clients yeah I thought it was about 80 but uh it's a it's 100 now that's crazy so then the question is how are you able to manage 100 different accounts or 100 different is it yeah I guess is it 100 different clients or do some clients also have multiple accounts H some have has multiple but that are only two or three clients who have multiple accounts so

04:54it's yeah so it's technically like let's say 100 different clients all mostly small budgets local how are you able to to do that because when I at my Peak when I was working at an agency I think I had like 10 or 12 different clients and that was already a lot and as a freelancer now obviously I'm doing much less because my time is more spent on PPC Mastery and less on freelancing side um I only need one or two clients in order to maintain my skill set um but when I was um full-time freelancing I had five or six clients that was a sweet spot for me so how are you able to manage 100 clients yeah I think because I I cut out all the meetings uh of most of them um not on purpose but I uh in my experience the small business owners don't want to meet every month to discuss what the cpcs are what the impression share is and so I don't do a lot of meets and and that's something that saves you a lot of of time and next to that I have a lot of automations in the account with scripts and uh that's helping uh as well yeah and so if they if you cut out those meetings how do you keep them up to date yeah I've told you this before I I don't report a lot because again uh the the uh the clients

06:33I work with they they don't care about the metrics or the uh they just care about the result and if the the phone keeps rainning if the the lead forms are flowing in then yeah they are happy and busy enough and don't want to meet and discuss end endlessly PPC metric yeah that was a a big eye opener for me you mentioned that in the PPC Hub uh last year at the at the start with one of the first round tables we did that was a huge huge surprise for me and uh yeah why not I mean if the those business owners yeah they don't care about Click Share impression share how many Impressions you're getting they just want to know okay am I getting leads that's enough yeah um so could you give some examples of the type of clients that you you are working with so um what type of business businesses are they uh could be a taxi driver a taxi company uh you can imagine those don't have different uh Services every month it stays the same yeah and and the keywords say stay the same maybe you do some ad testing in in that account but yeah you just have to make sure that the phone keeps raining um could be a uh how do you call that a Driving School uh that offer doesn't change a lot either maybe sometimes a a uh how do

08:13a promotion or an action for a driving uh lesing uh package but yeah it's not not changing a lot um yeah those kind of businesses gardening MH constructing uh all very local and small budgets yeah could be 500 300 a month W yeah and um what I think is really cool about about you and the things that you're sharing is that even with such small budgets you are able to really maximize the results so I think that's super interesting because Bob and I uh for example in the Google Ads masterclass a lot of things that we teach are for clients with a little bit more budget you know um you need a lot of data in order to uh do the advanced tactics all that stuff um but I think you have a really good fundamental understanding of Google Ads and what you must do to drive results even with those low budgets so I would love to dive into that because um that's interesting to a lot of people because a lot of Google ad Specialists also have these smaller local based uh clients so from your experience what are the key components of successful Google Ads strategy or successful Google Ads campaign for those local small clients with smaller budgets and how is that different from the ones with bigger budgets yeah what I do in the the small accounts when I I start an account uh I start with only a couple of uh keywords

09:55that are uh not too broad uh I I use exact uh I use local keywords so for example if I have a a driving school in a uh a city I will only go for driving school in that City or Driving School uh and not for driving lessons in uh or uh learning to drive just the the main keyword Driving School in that that location and with the small budgets those keywords get the most conversions I see and it could be a furniture store as well and then you go for furniture store and not for buying chairs in or buying a table you you want people to visit the store and when people want to visit the store they start the search with uh furniture store in that location they don't start with uh buying chairs or buying a couch those people are in my opinion more searching for information and inspiration and when they're ready to buy they'll go to furniture store in the location then when the goal is store visits you have to use that approach I think so really for for local relevance is is key and you keep it small in the beginning with keyword so

11:35exact and then you use manual CPC with that yeah yeah I aim for a a high impression share to start with and from there uh I keep in contact with the client when we just start to uh to track if if store visits increase and if leads increase if phone calls increase uh at the time then we start and when that happens you know you're on the right track yeah and uh So speaking of that so your conversion tracking um I guess that must be in place really well with local leg gen um what types of do you do you also use offline conversion tracking for example or is it more like the basic basic ones yeah when people have a like a WordPress website I'll set up up myself uh if it's more complex I'll use another freelancer to to set it up for me because I don't don't have the time to spend hours figuring out how how it will uh will work but the basic things and uh in WordPress the offline conversion tracking is uh is very easy to set up so I use that and uh and how does that help you the offline conversion tracking with these clients uh for some it only helps to to give them Insight in what is uh the value of Google Ads in the in the sales process um I have a company in in

13:17renovations uh but it can take a a great Val for for people to convert so most of the time we go over the 90day window but but it still gives uh the client a a good Insight in in the value of the ads so even you can't stare on the uh on the value in the in the account you know you're you're doing something right because you see the value after the 90 days yeah so it's also for yourself to to sort of prove that it's working do do you see that there's um challenges there with small clients that that they're not really convinced about whether or not Google Ads is actually working for them no that not really not really that it's not working but I have challenges in getting back the the data from the small businesses because they have to maybe go into WhatsApp to go back in the history of the uh of the calls or the the conversations to check if if a certain lead has become a client and that's costing them a lot of yeah time to to figure out and to to look back in in the data so that's the the main challenge but when uh when a proper CRM is in place then it's getting a lot easier but most small businesses don't have it don't have

14:56exactly that was going to be my next question how often do you see clients that they actually have it no and if I share a spreadsheet they don't it's it's kind of sad they don't know how to uh work with spreadsheets so it's a challenge then it feels so so normal to us right to be able to use a Google sheet or Excel yeah and if I tell them about maybe Google ad scripts they look like they're seeing water burn yeah what uh what's a script a script um that's like a movie that's and you you make movies with Chad GPT or what not yet not yet hey guys real quick if you like this episode don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss anything in the 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 yeah so um U the next step is then that I would love to understand is how you if you have you know your your campaigns your keywords everything set up how do you do the bid management for the clients do you just stay with manual CPC or after a certain time and conversion amounts do you switch to Smart bidding yeah but I I see conversions coming in I'll start testing smart bidding again manual and sometimes it P picks up but if it doesn't I'm happy to stay with

16:38manual because it it's it still gives the most control in in your CPC and you can do so with portfolio bit strategies uh to because those clients they they maybe have a budget about € 10 EUR a day mhm if you don't cap smart bidding then just one click true yeah yeah and that's not something that works well with my clients if I have to explain that yeah yeah exactly so um it sounds like the setup on the setup side it's actually quite simple you have to go have really good conversion tracking you have really simple campaigns with simple keyword targeting that is highly relevant simple manual CPC bidding um don't over over complicate things don't segment out too much I've seen campaigns of accounts uh with 10 EUR old budget and like six campaigns that that's not going to to work yeah that's that's I think that's the probably the key like keep it simple um so in terms of optimization then what do you do and I would love to dive into the automations as well because I know that you're always working with scripts and creating your own stuff that's super cool um but in terms of optimization how do you prevent over or under optimizing with so little data you know with so many different clients yeah first of all

18:18in every account I have the descript by Nils Rooijmans uh the change history script because uh every client has the the Google Ads app and if they apply something not on purpose then I want to know because I want to understand what what happens in the account and U most of them after a couple of months no they don't have to push buttons in the app or in the the account so that's a lifesaver but on optimization I I get an an email for every client every day with the metrics about 2 Days 7 days and 30 days with an Excel inep sheet with the the Search terms and in the sheet I can select the Search terms to to exclude or to add so I don't have to dive in the account to manage this the search queries and the keywords that's a time saving thing and if I see in in my mail in the report conversions has dropped in the last seven days or last two days uh depending on the account I know I have to dive in and to investigate further what's wrong and what's not not working anymore so you have how many different scripts do you use in on average per per account

19:59um for reporting I think two or three and for management uh it's depending on the account uh I have a script that auto excludes all uh exact terms in DSA campaigns so when I add a search term and in my campaign I don't have to go to the DSA and exclude that so that saves time but on some accounts I have scripts custom scripts to Auto exclude certain words containing certain phrases in in the words so I think three or four per account and you have created the some of them you've created yourself right yeah no not myself I I I got the ID and Chad upt yeah got the made the SC because I don't people think I can can make scripts but I really can't I have to go back and for to afford to to ChatGPT and uh test a lot and then when it's working I I'll use it in my accounts very interesting so how how does that work you just have a conversation with Chad GPT and then uh you try and it's not working you go back and then repeat yeah bang my head against the ball and and and and wait till the Des script is ready again test again and go back again and then ah I forgot I want to do

21:40this as well and give another prompt and then yeah and yeah it's a great time saver and it's a bit challenging to to get the script right but if it's working it can save you and lots of time yeah and lots of headaches yeah for sure so you just to recap you have the change history script yeah um the reporting script reporting yeah which ones uh what else uh the uh excluding in DSA campaigns so if I have a DSA campaign running uh I have that script as well um and then some some custom Scripts depending on the account and most of them are AO Auto excluding certain uh Search terms and as an example I have a flooring company uh and I saw a lot of Search terms coming on in with water stains on uh uh on the floor or Vine stains or chocolate stains uh all all different type of stains and in English you just exclude stain and stains but in Dutch you have V flck it's one word v Fen wine FL Vine Fen and you can't imagine how many type

23:22of fleen there are in Dutch language so I made a Chad GPT made a script for me that when the string contains flag it excludes and I think in that list there are about thousand different Search terms wow already and wow interesting you can apply that on any account where this is happening super interesting man and I think for you I always feel like when you are talking about these scripts like oh yeah I'm just using Chad GPT I know I can't code I just asked Chad GPT but it's it's really sick how you're how you're building those things and it's actually special because this is this is why you can manage so many clients at once because you have those automations in place um and and even for me if I wanted to build a script with Chad GPT I I still need to know where to begin and how to instruct it what to create you know so um yeah maybe if next I'm in J jpt just type in make me a Google ad script see what what it brings you and then you can refine it yeah and then you say I want to do this with the script and then yeah it's Auto generates the script for you so it's not that difficult the most of the time it's fine-tuning and having the idea yeah and what I tend to do when I I or I'm doing things multiple times a

25:02week in a in a Google Ads account I I start thinking how can I automate this how can can I make this easier and more time efficient and yeah most of the time a script can help with that yeah also for your campaign creation right yeah that's a nice one as well yeah yeah and it's really uh I I don't like writing ad copy that much uh because I'm not that creative I mainly look at the landing page and then I'll figure out to to make an ad of that but chat upt is a lot better in creating yeah compelling ad copy I think and I've set up multiple uh campaigns this way and they're yeah getting a great click through rate and conversions as well so yeah people say jgpt doesn't work for ad copy but it can yeah yeah I I I think so too and at least give you Direction and some inspiration but uh I think it's also it's also good um in terms of landing pages actually that's a that's a good one to ask about because um I can imagine that with local clients they just like small business owners maybe they create quickly a landing page

26:40themselves and uh and and it's like highly not optimized to generate leads do you create your own landing pages for for those clients or how does that process work I don't create them myself I refer them to a developer who can or a web designer who can and uh I have a couple in my network that are really great and not that expensive and yeah that that works great for me and my clients and most of my clients have WordPress websites and uh the developers I work with are really really great in creating good lenders for for those clients yeah and then do you do you still involve yourself in the in the discussions about okay maybe not necessarily the development of the website but uh of the landing page but how the form should look like the title the headline stuff like that yeah the forms I tend to to keep short and uh not too difficult in in a lot of questions or uh it's up to the the client to convince the uh the one that sensing the form to to take take the off but I I I think then you have a a form with 20 fields that will scare away the people on the page Especial for for local Services you don't have to uh receive a lot of information from from the uh visitor like the the driving

28:20schools it only needs a name a telephone number and maybe an email address and then you're yeah you're basically there for that service you don't need the the date of birth yet you don't don't need the address you don't need the the city you just want to know who is it how can reach you and then send in the form and let the the client call the uh the visitor and that's again so so don't over complicate things yeah that's probably the the core message if you're working with small clients even with big clients anywhere anything you do just don't over complicate it um yeah with the the big lions most of the time they have a like a sales department uh that's handling the uh the leads and the sales department wants every every single thing they can know about the client want in the in the form so they can do the the sales call more efficient I think and I think you lose some uh conversions that way you mean if you what do you mean you lose conversions because uh people don't want to fill in a a very long form so oh like that yeah yeah yeah and with the small budget you don't have a lot of

29:59conversions so you have to make it as easy as possible for people to contact the the client yeah true and then usually it's just the business owner themselves that pick up the phone and make the calls yeah yeah and I like that as well because when we start with uh with accounts with small budgets um most of the time when we when the account runs like a month the business owner will let me know okay this is going well my phone is ring uh ringing or leads are coming in and I also make sure to check lead quality uh like the construction company when the when I see a lot of leads I'll go called the owner uh asking about the quality of the leads and it will happen that Google will go after small uh small orders like fixing a window instead of renovating a a whole house and and the goal is to to get those Renovations and not fixing a window or a door and when the the smart bilding of Google uh figures out it can get a lot of low uh value conversions but those are easy to get it will go after those and you can see that in In Search terms but most of the time you will hear from the client as well okay I'm getting a lot of calls but not for the service I

31:37want to offer so you have to dive in the search terms and go exclude the the queries that drive those low value conversions yeah yeah High relevance is is so important yeah and and so you can see that in in the conversion itself but you have to keep in contact with your client to ask if if the uh the quality is is yeah is good enough and do you have any um this is maybe a cool Final question here is do you have any um cases well not necessarily a whole case study but examples um of a client that you help that came to you they they were really small and and Google Ads were worked really well and and you saw that their business really took off and it was really nice for the business owner um because you're working directly with the business owners maybe had you know positive impact on their business their life Etc do you have any cool examples to share um I'm working for a car rental company who started out with uh about €300 EUR budget and now it's I think 10 times that and yeah we we use offline conversion Imports for that as well call tracking and along the way we added a few things to to measure as the conversions and uh yeah that one is scaling and still scaling and uh growing bigger and

33:15bigger um and yeah some time ago I I started working for a dark a darkg school I think you know that one and I think uh what I get back from the client uh it's it's really working for for that uh this client is my sister yeah you put the bar High you sent me your sister to to work with uh with Google Ads and I was like oh now now miles is is watching what I'm doing but I think it's it's working for for that uh that client as well and it's really low budget m not not not really high but I think good conversions are going uh going on there and I'm hoping to scale that one as well yeah yeah it's nice it's the as you said like I think you started working together last year since somewhere after summer or so maybe in Q4 or Q3 um and my sister is is really happy working with you and um the results are are great they speak for themselves and uh it's really cool because I um she's she's still like in a startup phase and I knew that she was not she didn't have a lot of budget to spend on Google Ads but they when they started they had like a the smart campaign with no tracking just all trash I was like miles what have you done yeah exactly no I didn't even I know I didn't even manage anything but I

34:54was I thought oh yeah you need to work with because this is his specialization and yeah few months later it's uh it's going really well so kudos to you otherwise I had to kick you out of the pepc Hub of course of course found the mem or not just go get out of here tired yeah n Jokes Aside man um cool so I think you shared a lot of great insights I think yeah we we we could talk for five hours about running Google Ads for a small uh small client and there there's obviously a lot of things that we haven't mentioned yet but let's move on because I have a few rapid fire questions for you and uh as I said I haven't shared these with you um it's just I'm going to give you uh two options and you choose one of the two no explanation no it depends no it depends is illegal okay so just this or that so let's start um pmax or standard shopping this is very standard uh bmax for Legion yes or no no Google has advertisers best interest in mind agree or disagree disagree broad mats yes or no only when you exclud and yes okay okay yeah no yeah go ahead explain explain yeah only when you've excluded enough uh shitty

36:33terms yeah that's why that's why I have these questions because it's annoying you have to yes or no yes or no um a ARS the automatically applied recommendations bad or good really bad I didn't know because you I I I saw you thinking I was like wait maybe good thank God thank God you said bad um manual bidding or smart bidding manual yeah will all match types except broad be gone in two years yes and the last one is will search and shopping campaigns be around in two yes nice so yeah I so you think uh in two years we only have broad do you think we'll have it um we will see that Google is going to Sunset phrase or even exact sooner than that I hope not but I think they will phase it out and that's why first yeah and then yeah you have to learn how to script uh yeah on on the search terms yeah EXA yeah true true make make broad exact yeah I had a script made make exact exact again so it looks at uh at how many changes in the keyword of in

38:11the in the search term comparing to the keyword and if it's too too high then it will exclude that search term but yeah yeah that will get worse and worse yeah yeah probably just thinking out loud now if Google does get only continue with broad match then manual CPC is going to be rough because broad plus manual that is probably the worst combination yeah well let's hope for you that exact stays around for for a bit longer yeah I hope so um yeah and even okay this is another one then the last one here do you think manual CPC is going to get killed yes yeah I think so but yeah yeah eventually but yeah I I don't think it's fair for the the small accounts because because they just don't have enough data to to learn the the smart bidding yeah yeah age it's kind of shitty because Google has the data they can app that to to all accounts they know what works and what doesn't work but still you have to start over every single time when you start an account so all right so um to close off our conversation I have one final question if you had to share three

39:49golden nuggets about driving results with Google Ads what would that be um wait um they don't over complicate mhm the the campaign structure um make sure your client and you are on the same page on what to track as conversions where to steer to and automate the out of the campaigns because it will save you uh yeah tremendous time on account management and once you you automate you can keep your fee low as well you don't have to to spend hours and hours in in small budget accounts so don't don't overcharge your client yeah that's I think that's a noble thing that you're doing because a lot of people will probably just think okay I'm doing less but I will charge the same or even more um I I'll uh I'll cut my fee if I if I feel like it's not not adding up yeah yeah yeah that's uh that's definitely Noble that's Noble and I have one last advice get rid of toxic clients really fast yeah what are some of the biggest

41:27red flags for you calling every single day uh sending whatsapps every day not listening to to your advice and going against that so I don't think that will will work in the long term of course you you don't have to agree on on all but if every single every single thing you're trying to explain gets uh yeah refused then yeah there's no no fun in working with with that client and it it won't it won't drive to the result you you can get yeah yeah really important the client protect your own yeah the client hes your you for your advice and for your best practice and if you're trying to do that and they shut it off every single time and that's a red flag for me yeah yeah that's it that's a really solid tip because uh a lot of people tend to stay on with clients just because they're paying um but at what cost you know got to protect your own mental health at all times yeah I've shared that last year in the in the PC up as well where I fired my biggest client because it didn't uh didn't work anymore yeah and when you fire big clients yeah you see still a 100 other clients that

43:07are fun working with true yeah true for you literally a 100 different ones yeah and and maybe one more Golden Nugget when you're working with with small budget clients uh get in touch with their web developer because you or see will have the same type of clients and can refer them to you that's how how I get my clients yeah very smart very smart and it works the other way around as well you can refer them if you as you said if you need new landing pages yeah that's uh very smart cool all right Geert thanks for sharing all those nuggets and for all those insights thanks for having me yeah man absolutely you're always welcome to to come back and uh do this again uh where can people follow you Geert LinkedIn and of course in in the PC up uh so uh there is where I share my my insights and and I post on LinkedIn not that much but only one I I feel like and uh I hope people will will get some value out of that yeah yeah I'm 100% I know for a fact that they get a lot of value out of that so thanks Geert for coming on and uh thank you for listening um and watching if you're watching this on YouTube don't forget to like And subscribe all that stuff and um we'll catch you in the next episode

44:44Peace all right that's the end of this episode of the BBC 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 week then don't forget to subscribe and share with the friend 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 newletter 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 and consider joining the PPC Hub which is our coaching and Community platform for experienced Google Ads Specialists 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