Cal Banyan: Hello, everybody, Cal Banyan here. Cal Banyan's hypnosis, et cetera. Our co-host for this episode is Erika Flint. Let me tell you, Erika in the last episode talked about why we should be using Google AdWords to start getting us some clients. Today she's going to show you step by step an introduction on how to get started. Start running ads in Google AdWords for hypnosis clients and how those clients start walking through the door, calling on the phone, and that kind of thing. It's a very important podcast today.
Let me tell you about Erika. I have her file right here. Erika is a certified consulting hypnotist. She has a practice in Bellingham, Washington and only has had her practice since June 2013. She's building her clientele. She's on her way to being full time. Most of that promotion has been done online. She's going to share all those insider tips, tricks, and techniques with us.
She's originally a computer person. Before being a hypnotist, Erika worked in the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley for over a decade as a software engineer and professional problem solver. She realized how interested she was in the greatest known computing device, the human mind. After she received her initial training in hypnosis and hypnotism, she became certified in 5-PATH using our 5-PATH 2.0 distance learning course. Now she's coming to our May class for our Week of Power to continue to sharpen her skills.
One last thing, I really believe that Erika is going to be a rising star in the profession. I got to know her on our discussion groups for 5-PATH and also at the National Guild of Hypnotist convention. I said, "This gal has got it going on." I said, "How would you like to do some podcasts with me?" Because you know, it's good to have someone with that new perspective on the show, that enthusiasm, the discovery of learning about hypnosis, learning about 5-PATH, and getting clients and watching them change and succeed. How are you doing, Erika?
Erika Flint: I'm doing great, Cal. Thank you very much. Let me tell you about Cal. He is the hypnosis celebrity because of his fame in the profession and not just because of the hundreds of great hypnosis videos that he has produced to date. It's also because he's the authority and has received almost every award and recognition in the profession, and his books have made him the authority on the subject of hypnosis and hypnotherapy. One of my favorite books is "The Secret Language of Feelings" which I like to give to all of my clients. He has appeared on both radio and T.V. promoting "The Secret Language of Feelings" and hypnosis and hypnotherapy.
He is the authority when it comes to hypnosis that works. I can attest to that. The hypnosis that I learned from Cal in 5-PATH actually works really well. That's what I used when I first started seeing my clients. He's the person experts in the profession of hypnotism turn to for education and guidance. He's also the trainer of some of the very best in our profession. He's still teaching. He's still speaking. He's still writing. He's still seeing private clients and making public appearances. It's really good to be here today, Cal.
Cal Banyan: Wow, thank you for that, Erika. Now I'm excited. Last episode we talked about why people should be doing the Google AdWords thing. We told them how to get signed up. Now you're going to tell them how to get that first ad out, right?
Erika Flint: That's right. Last time, we ended with, how do you get started? Getting your Google account set up, your AdWords set up, getting Analytics put into your website, then linking Analytics with your AdWords site. Let's just say you've done your homework and you got all that ready to go. We're just going to assume that.
Now what do you do? You go into AdWords and you're going to create your first ad. Let me tell you a little bit about how Google organizes AdWords because it can be pretty complicated. As you can imagine, there are companies out there that sell tons and tons of different products. They try to make it easier for large companies to do this, so for you and I to go in there if we have a small business, we still need to navigate all of this, right?
The highest level is a campaign. A campaign is where you set your budget and your overall settings. If you wanted to have a campaign for stopping smoking and you wanted to spend a certain amount of money, then you wanted to have a separate campaign for weight loss and you wanted to spend a different amount of money, or you wanted to have a different target audience, you would want to create two different campaigns.
If you're just getting started, Google recommends you might only need one campaign. Pick one target audience. Set one budget. Just go with one campaign to begin with. You can just start there. So you have your campaign. When you create your campaign, there are a couple of tips that I have for you. There are a lot of options there. You'll see when you go to the website.
Here are the four things that I recommend that you select when you're just getting started. Unless you know better, this is probably what you want to do. You want to select search network only. You don't want to do anything other than that because search network is when you go to google.com and you type in search and the results come up, that's a search network. The displayed network, which is the other option, that is where you'll see things like in Gmail. Have you ever seen that, Cal? I don't know if you have Gmail, but sometimes Google puts advertising in other products like Gmail.
Cal Banyan: Oh, absolutely, sure. Also, people will sign up for Google to place ads on their websites, too, same thing.
Erika Flint: Yeah, that's right. I recommend that if you're just getting started, only go with the search network. We briefly touched on this last time. If somebody is actually searching for hypnosis or weight loss, they are motivated to click on that link and come see you. If they just see an ad on a webpage or an ad in their email account because you have the words "weight loss" in an email or something, they might be less likely to just click on it, okay? I recommend going with search network only to begin with.
The next recommendation I make for the campaign is to narrow it down by location. That was really helpful for me when I first started. I could narrow it down to my target location, right? I could just advertise in my local area. That helped quite a bit in keeping the cost down. I don't want to advertise to people in Seattle or Vancouver, British Columbia. That would be a lot more expensive for me to do that. The cost per click would probably be a lot higher.
All right, the next thing that you want to select is called the bid strategy. You can pay a higher amount if you'd like. You can bid to pay a higher amount for your click if you'd like, if you want to appear at the top, but I don't recommend doing that, especially if you're just getting started. Set that to auto and then select the budget that you want to pay per day. Right now, I think I'm paying something like $4 a day for a couple of my different campaigns, but I haven't ever reached that amount. I'm pretty happy with what's going on so far. You can adjust that as you go along.
The last thing as far as a campaign goes, don't select any of those extensions yet. That's what I would say, Cal, when you're getting started with a campaign, those four things. There's a lot to know. There are a lot of other things that you could select, but that's what I would go with.
Cal Banyan: I'm wondering as you're kind of explaining this if you can use an issue as an example as you're doing it, like the stop smoking or lose weight or getting over fears or whatever it is. You'd say, okay, you do this and this and this, and that's where you'd put that. Would that be something you could do?
Erika Flint: Yeah, of course. For an example on the campaign, I'll give you an example. We have something here in Bellingham called the Bellingham Bay Marathon. We have Ski to Sea. I have a campaign that's all about sports performance, but I don't really want to advertise that year-round. I just don't want to spend the money, okay? I will advertise that in a campaign for only certain times of the year so I can turn that entire campaign off. That is one case where I would separate the campaign.
If you're talking about exactly where I would fill everything in for me, I select the search network only. I have just kind of a basic campaign which is for my business, Cascade Hypnosis Center. If somebody were to type in the word "hypnosis in Bellingham, Washington", they might just get a very kind of generic ad that comes up that says, "Sleep better, lose weight, stress-free, get started now with hypnosis." Something like that.
When it gets down to location--this is really cool--I typed in my ZIP code here in Bellingham, then Google pops back up Bellingham, Washington, or Whatcom county. Whatcom county is the county here. Whatcom county has a target audience of I think it's 200,000 people. I selected that. Then I also added Skagit county and Island county. Google makes it really easy to pick out your location. You can pick by city or ZIP code, anything like that. Then, again, I just don't select any extensions.
Cal Banyan: Perfect. We have two kinds of advertising we do, or marketing that we do. One is local for clients and then worldwide for classes. People who come to our classes, probably one-third are from the immediate area, then two-thirds are from outside of our state and outside of the country. Google can be very useful that way, too, but you have to be careful when you start doing these nationwide promotions because they can get a whole lot of clicks and eat up your budget real quick. That's why the best way to get started with this is with clients in your local area. I'm 100% behind what Erika is saying. Proceed.
Erika Flint: Okay, now underneath the campaign, once you have your campaign set up, which is your budget and your settings, your target audience, your budget, your setting, your ad type. Then you have an ad group. Google recommends, and I think this is a great idea, to think of an ad group like you would with a web page on your website. You probably have a stop smoking web page, let's say, which is not the same as your weight loss page. If you have that separation on your website, which is you do both of those services you probably should have two separate pages for those, then you'll want to do the same thing with an ad group. You'll want to have a separate ad group for weight loss and a separate ad group for stop smoking and then a separate ad group for stress and anxiety, that type of thing.
You'll have one ad group, like I said, per web page. That might be one way that you want to break it down when you're looking at your website. You know what? I just started with one thing when I started. I had one ad out there. I put everything there, or one ad group.
The next piece of advice is to create at least two different ads and see how they do. This is one of the best practices that Google recommends. You have to have at least two ads, more if you can, and see which one performs better over time. Let it go out there and point to the same page and figure out which one works better. Part of this is constantly going back, looking at AdWords results, and seeing how well you're performing, getting rid of the ones that people aren't clicking on.
The next thing is that you want to create a really good ad. After you create your ad group, the next thing you're going to do is to create your ad. Cal, I'm sure that you have a lot of input on how to create a good ad. We could probably spend an entire episode on what words to use. But I'll give you a couple pieces of advice as far as Google AdWords goes. Your ad is going to match up with keywords.
When you create an ad group, there are two things you create. You create the ad itself and you create the keywords that go with it. When somebody searches for those keywords, your ad will appear. If your ad has the keywords in it that the person searched for, they will be bolded. The client is much more likely to click on your ad if you use the same keywords for your ad in the advertisement itself. Do you have anything to add to that, Cal?
Cal Banyan: No, that sounds really good. One of the things is, you've just got to be precise, concise and not too wordy. How many characters do you get, 40 characters or something like that?
Erika Flint: I think it's less than that. Not very many.
Cal Banyan: It has been a long time since I looked at that.
Erika Flint: Right, I think it's 35 characters. I'm not sure. But you're right, you have to be really precise with the words that you use. Google recommends that you have some type of call to action. Call now, put your phone number there, click here, that type of thing. Another recommendation that they have is some type of special. Twenty-five percent off, today only, click now. Something like that to get people to act right away. Then you really want your ad to be relevant.
There is something that is really important to understand about keywords. It's called your quality score. Your quality score is based on your relevancy of your ad. Based on the keywords that you are using, Google calculates how relevant your ad is. It uses that as just one of the numbers when it calculates your quality score. It can be pretty complicated but it's really important to understand your quality score because as your quality score goes up, you pay less because Google cares about giving searchers, people that are searching, the most relevant information. If Google believes that your ad is more relevant to what they are looking for, it's going to charge you less and put you higher on the list. So you want to make sure that your ad is relevant to the keywords that you're searching for.
You also have to make sure of the landing page. The landing page is the page that people are going to go to when they click on it. You specify this right in the ad group. There's a space there that will say the U.R.L. and you type that in. That will go to your website. Google is going to look at that page and it's going to analyze it using text analytics and it's going to understand if that content on your webpage is also relevant for the ad. That will increase your quality score. You want to make sure that your webpage is well-written and relevant for what you're searching on, what you're advertising. Does that make sense?
Cal Banyan: Yeah, Google is amazing at this. One thing is the content on the page. Another thing they do is, they can tell if someone goes to your page, is there for three seconds and bounces right back. They'll say, "Oh, that ad is not that relevant." They'll start moving some other ads up higher and drop you down or they'll charge you more to get higher if you're not relevant.
Erika Flint: That's right.
Cal Banyan: It's very good information, Erika. Please go on.
Erika Flint: And you know what? There is a lot on information out there on this. We don't have time today to go into the details of the quality score, the click-through rate and how all of that plays into things. There is a lot of information online if you're interested. I recommend that you have to go out there, you have to create your ad, get started and see how things play out. You have to make sure that your webpage, like I said, has relevant information on it.
Make sure that there are no errors on your page because Google does notice that. They do keep track of if people are clicking through. It's called the click-through rate. When people click on your ad, and just like you said, Cal, if they bounce off your site really quickly they'll thing, "Oh, maybe the ad isn't that relevant." You'll have to pay more for it. It'll go down a little bit.
Once you are ready with your couple of ads, at least two, again, then you can save it. Once it's saved then it needs to be reviewed. They're going to review it just for Google's policies just to make sure that it's safe and appropriate for all ages, et cetera. Once it's approved it will be running.
There's something really important to keep in mind here. Don't go to Google and search for your own site. It's not a good idea because what happens if you go to Google and you use your search terms that you know are there to try to see if your ad comes up, I've done this before and I'm not going to do it anymore. What happens is your click-through rate goes down because Google has just displayed your ad. You're not going to click on it yourself. It's just going to charge you $1.50 or $2 or whatever your cost is so you're not going to click on it. Your click-through rate will go down because your ad was just served an impression but you didn't click on it.
There's a tool that Google provides. The tool is called, let me see, ad preview and diagnostic tool. You want to go to AdWords. You want to use that tool. That's how you can search for your ad to make sure that it's running and see how it works. Have you used that before, Cal?
Cal Banyan: No I haven't. I haven't actually been doing so much of this AdWords stuff in a while, so you're the expert.
Erika Flint: We talked about this a little before with the keyword, there's a keyword tool that helps people with understanding what keywords they could be using so there's a lot of information out there, a lot of tools to help. Of course, Google is really good at that, providing us data. They're all about data. There's a lot that you could get into but it doesn't have to be difficult.
You could go in there, I think I created my first ad in probably, I don't know, 15 minutes maybe, I don't know. Then it was approved less than a day later. I got a phone call probably the next day, I think. It was really that fast. That was just amazing to me because that was just kind of a generic ad that I created. Then I really started thinking about it. Who is my next client? What am I looking for? Weight loss, stop smoking, or whatever, I started creating those ads and adding it to my campaign.
Cal Banyan: That's really great. I imagine that you could do something today that would make your phone ring tomorrow. Then as you're running the two or three different ads you can find out which ad it was that caused that phone to ring. What you can do then is tweak the other ads until you get them working as well, get rid of the ones that are not working, be creative. Look at the ads that are working and say, "What is it about that ad that is making it work?" So it's a little bit of tweaking. It's kind of a dance back and forth. You can't see clients all day long. It's kind of nice that we have the mixture of seeing clients and also doing some marketing. Fall in love with marketing and your business will flourish, right?
Erika Flint: Yeah, that's right. That's a really good point, Cal, because it really does need some maintenance but it doesn't have to be too long. You could spend maybe an hour a week doing this once you have your basic ads out there and they're doing well, they're generating some calls, a couple calls a day, dozens of calls a day, whatever it is that you're looking for. And whatever your budget allows, too. You go there and you check on things and you tweak some things. You want to make sure that you're also going in and looking at Analytics. Now that they're merged you can take a look and see the behavior of your clients and you can really get a good idea about what's happening.
This is also going to help you when you're thinking about other planning. All of this analysis helps you when you're thinking about planning and growing your business. What areas do I want to expand in? Should I teach a class on self-hypnosis? Should I teach a class on stop smoking? I have so many clients coming in. It can help you answer other questions for your business based on the traffic and everything else that you're getting from the web.
Cal Banyan: You know, as I'm hearing you on the second episode talking about this, I'm thinking about, what do I care that the viewers get from this? That is, you know, there are all these little details and stuff. You can bring up the Google AdWords website and play the video or the audio that we're recording right now and let Erika talk you through it.
But I think the most important thing is, Erika is proof that it's worth learning this stuff. It really does work. I was just watching a discussion going on at the NGH network, or I think it was LinkedIn, the national hypnotists group there. They're talking about what advertising works, is anyone using LinkedIn or Facebook or Google. Over and over it was like, "I tried it but it didn't really work for me." What the deal is, now you know because of what Erika is sharing, that it is worth learning because it does generate clients when you do it properly. How is that, Erika?
Erika Flint: Yeah, that's right. Google is still the number one search leader. Sixty-seven percent of market share of search goes through Google every day. If you haven't done this before, don't bother trying anyone else yet. Just go to Google. That's where you're going to get your clients from. You can do it. In 30 minutes you can probably have the whole thing done and just let it run for a little while. Spend another hour on it a week. You can just let it go and the clients will come in.
Cal Banyan: Perfect. What else do you want to tell them?
Erika Flint: That's about it, Cal. I know that this something that's been working for me so I'm just going to keep on doing it. As I add new services or things that I'm doing, I go back and tweak things but I don't really spend that much time on Google AdWords right now. I probably could spend a lot more. It's kind of like, if you have more time to put into it, go for it. You'd probably get better results but maybe you don't have as much time. It really depends on what you do have time for because you could really go into a deep dive in Google AdWords for sure.
Cal Banyan: One thing I know for certain about the internet and Google and all these kinds of things is that things will change. I want to give you my favorite resource for learning how to do stuff on the internet. Do you know what that is, Erika?
Erika Flint: Google? I don't know.
Cal Banyan: Actually, it's the second largest search engine on the internet which is YouTube. YouTube has the second number of searches on the internet. I went to YouTube, typed in YouTube, then I did AdWords tutorial 2014, and bam, here are these tutorials that are coming up on my computer screen. They're recent, one month ago, four months ago, six months ago, two months ago, these tutorials that are recent. This video is still going to be on the internet one year, ten years from now, one hundred years from now if there's still an internet. Once it's on the internet, it stays there.
With YouTube you can type in AdWords tutorial 2014 or 2015 or whatever year it is and see what the latest stuff is. These experts will talk you through how to do it in the latest possible way. Anything that's worth learning is probably on YouTube. How do you feel about that, Erika?
Erika Flint: I think that's a great point, Cal. You're right. If you know where you can go to get the greatest information, then that's really all you need. Just put in a little bit of time, find it, learn in, and then you can go do it. Things are constantly changing so you're right, you have to go find the resource where the information lives and then learn how people are doing it now and what the rules are. We talked about this before, but Google changes things all the time so you really have to be up on it.
Cal Banyan: The technical stuff changes but you gave them some information that they can't get on YouTube, until this video goes on YouTube. That is, Google AdWords works for getting clients for hypnotists. All right, wrap it up.
Erika Flint: All right, well I'm really happy to be here today. If you are a new hypnosis professional or want to be a hypnosis professional, you can do it. You can get started. You can go take some classes and use Google just like I did to get your first clients and be happy as a hypnosis professional doing the things that you love. I hope that you do that. If you have any questions about Google AdWords or any questions for me, just contact me. I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Cal Banyan: Beautiful. Erika, just like Brenda, just like Celeste, these are people who care. I care, they care, we want to see the profession continue to grow. We want to see confident and competent hypnotists out there helping people change their lives for the better.
I hope to see you in class. We have a class coming up in May for the advanced education course. Then we have, in July and October, the whole kit and caboodle certification course, ten days here at our center. You can do it onsite or you can do it live over the internet. All right, that's it. Thanks for coming back with us. Please share us, like us, whatever you can do to help us get the word out because we really want to change the world one client at a time. All right, that's it, Cal Banyan signing off.