Cal: Hello everybody, Cal Banyan here, Cal Banyan Hypnosis Etc. and I'm back again with our new co-host Erika Flint. Erika is going to show us in this episode how she is using Google Ad words to build her hypnosis business practice and how you can quickly get started doing the same. Let me introduce Erika real quick because as you know she's new to the show and just done a couple of podcasts with her and see Erika is a certified consultant hypnotist with a practice in Bellingham, Washington only since June of 2013. Before being a hypnotist, Erika worked with -- in the high tech industry of Silicon Valley for over a decade as a software engineer, as a professional problem solver when she realized how interested she was in the greatest computing device available the human mind.
After she received her initial hypnosis training she become certified as a 5-PATH® through our Distance learning course and is now looking forward to going through our Week of Power in May at the Banyan Hypnosis Center here in Tustin. I believe she is going to be a rising star in our profession, I am very impressed with this lady and she's -- and I said, you know what I'm going to get her on our program and I think she's going to, not just inform but also inspire.
Now one thing you might find interesting like when I was doing Celeste Hackett's podcast, I'm here in Tustin, California and she's way up there at Bellingham, Washington - the beautiful and scenic Bellingham, Washington and I looked up on the internet and found out that she is only twelve hundred fifty-nine miles away, give or take and that's by motorcycle so that would be a lot of fun. How are you doing Erika?
Erika: I'm doing great Cal. Thank you, thanks for the introduction. Yeah, not too far away, that would be fun.
Cal: Yeah you can ride your bicycle south and I'll ride my motorcycle north.
Erika: Yup, yeah we can meet in the middle somewhere.
Cal: Well I don't think the middle, that wouldn't be fair.
Erika: I would have to leave a lot earlier than you.
Cal: Alright, so go ahead.
Erika: Alright, well let me introduce Cal. Cal is a hypnosis celebrity, because of his fame in the profession and not just because of hundreds of hypnosis training videos he has produced today but because he has received almost every award and recognition in the profession. And his books have made him an authority in the subject of hypnosis and hypnotherapy.
Cal Banyan has appeared on radio and television promoting the use of hypnosis as well as one of my favorite books, The Secret Language of Feelings, which I give to almost every single one of my clients. He is the authority when it comes to hypnosis that works and he's the person experts in the profession of hypnosis turn to him for education and guidance. He's the trainer of some of the very best in our profession and he's still teaching, he's still speaking, writing, seeing private clients, and making public appearances. He has had a profound effect on me and my profession of hypnotism last year when I got my original training in hypnosis then I went out got my 5-PATH® certification from Cal and then I felt ready. Ready to see clients and that's exactly what I did.
Cal: Wow, what a great introduction. You know what and you are going to be in the May Week of Power class, is that right?
Erika: That's right.
Cal: And I just want to tell everyone out there that we got a couple of spaces available and if you want to be in class, well, actually Erika is going to be online so she's not going to be onsite. She's going to be online because we have live Online interactive students and we have also Onsite students and so you can also do that. Alright, so we can get right down to it. Let's get right down to it. How are you going to set this up and what are we going to get accomplished today?
Erika: Well what we are going to do today is I'm going to talk about what is Google Adwords; because there's a lot of, you know Google Adwords is a paid search by Google but there is a lot to it. Now, you can get really deep into and it can be really complex and can take you a lot of time. There are companies out there that spend millions of dollars every year on paid search with Google. There's other companies out there that their whole job is to help other companies with paid search, so this is a -- it can be very complicated so I am going to make it easy today. I'm going to share with everyone what I did, how I got started and give you some tips on how to use Google Adwords for yourself so you can increase your business and bring in some new clients.
Cal: You know that is what I really like about this in you -- when people graduate from their certification course, they got to make that change from classroom to clients and, of course you got to have some clients to do that and you got to have a website to do that and if you know what you are doing with Google Adwords, you can turn on the spigot of clients, so please go ahead and roll onto it. And are you going to speak a little about exactly what Adwords is compared to, like regular search results?
Erika: Yeah, definitely because Adwords is a paid search, so when you go to Google, okay, we are talking about Google here, you go to Google.com. So Google still has sixty-seven percent of the entire search market. Okay,they are still the leader,Yahoo and Bing combined they still only represent about twenty-five percent I think. So Google is still the master of search, okay so you go to Google, you type in a search term, you press enter and you get some results on your page.
Now, the page search is everything across the top. You will see a little yellow box and it says "ad" next to it. Everything along the side and there's things on the bottom, now you don't always see paid search on every single page. It depends on what you are looking for, but you often will.
Now the other types of search results that you can see on your page are called organic search results, okay. Those are natural search results. You still want that, okay? That actually is extremely important so you want your website to appear in the top at the number one spot if you can for search results especially the terms that you care about, right? If you are trying to be the hypnotist in a particular location or if you are trying to, you know, if you want to be the best hypnotist that deals with a particular area or issue for example, you want to appear at the very top and that is an organic search and you increase your organic search rankings. The ranking number one being the best it shows up at the very top by using something called Search Engine Optimization and you know people have been doing that for a long time and that's also you know that could be a topic you and I could talk about you know many, many episodes I'm sure that if you've heard of search engine optimization before, right?
Cal: Oh, absolutely, in fact in doing this, I just typed in hypnosis and then for my town, I come up number one, number two, number three, five, seven, nine. Yeah I'm doing something right there.
Erika: Very good and that's really interesting that you point that out I was going to -- I was going to mention this later but since you did I'm going to mention it now. The cool thing about Google Search with Adwords is one of the reasons I really want to use it is because you can localize it, so for me it was really inexpensive to just say, oh, I want to reach a target market of Bellingham, Walkin County, kind of like my surrounding area right? Like, say within sixty miles and so, that is who my target market is. You know I'm not going to see people where you’re at Cal, right? They are not going to come all the way up here and so that's one really great thing and it made it inexpensive for me, so if you type in hypnosis where you are sitting and test, you will get a different result then what I will see sitting here in Bellingham.
Cal: Yeah, exactly, so one of the things is, however, if you do a really good job of getting results for clients. First, you got to get the first clients but then it starts working by referral and people will fly past a dozen, a hundred, even a thousand other hypnotists to get to you but it all starts off with getting that steady flow of clients through paid advertising for one client or another, right?
Erika: Right, you got to get somebody to come through your door the first day right? And that is, I used Google Adwords to get my first client. I did and I think probably my first couple of clients, I used Google Ad Words. Of course, I asked all my clients like, how did you hear about me? And I have things set up so I know people are coming to my website that's usually in Google analytics. You want to make sure that it is set up. So Cal, I did want to ask you how you got your first client because I'm curious.
Cal: Oh well, that was back in the day 1996 when I went full time and we got our first clients through the Yellow Pages but the Yellow Pages is pretty much dead, except in some very small towns and with some particular populations like if you are surveying the elderly some of the elderly will still want to use the Yellow Pages as opposed to going to the internet. By the way, what's so important about Google, is that Google is where people go to find some of the solutions to their problems. They might be at work or whatever and they got something bothering them. They’re going to go to the solution center, which is Google and that's why you need to be on Google as opposed to like Facebook, we will get to Facebook , an episode or two down the road, but, people go to Facebook to socialize and have fun and stuff like that but, they go to Google to find answers to problems, right?
Erika: That's right, and Google, when people go to Google they are looking for something right there, right then, okay. Sometimes on Facebook , people are going to socialize, now they might see something about your company there but maybe they are not interested at the moment, right? They are right in the middle of chatting with their friends. When they go to Google and they search for hypnosis or they search for lose weight or stop smoking or whatever it is they are searching for and your company, your ad, your website comes up. They are ready to call you right there and thinking about it, so that's where you want to be.
Cal: That' right, they call up with their credit card in the hand.
Erika: That's right. Well, I want to mention another really important aspect of Google Adwords that is important to understand, so the primary model for Google Adwords is paid per click, so okay, so it's the acronym PPC, what most people you will see have that written down, so that's what that stands for and that means you only pay when somebody actually clicks on it, okay. So now another term I want to -- that I want to share so that we are kind of using the same vocabulary is, impressions.
Okay, so when your ad is displayed when somebody searches for something, uses a particular search term. And your ad is displayed, it's called an impression. And then when somebody clicks on it, okay then is when you’re charged and that is actually how you can calculate what's called your click through rate, so number of impressions -- you will have your number of impressions and then how many people click on it, right? And so that's one really nice thing because you are not actually paying for anything until somebody clicks on it, which is a very good point to bring up, because guess what ? When they click on it, they are going to go to your website so you better have your website up and ready to go right, Cal?
Cal: Absolutely, mine has been up and ready to go since 1996.
Erika: Wow, yeah that's been a long time. Yeah, you've probably made some changes to your website and that.
Cal: Oh yes, oh yes. Constantly tweaking. Well now, I have several websites, so people say, oh, I learned about you on your website. I have to find out which website that is. Or we can use the Google… what's the tool you were talking about before, where you can track where your clicks came from?
Erika: Yeah, that's analytics. Google Analytics. Yup, yup.
Cal: Okay, proceed.
Erika: What was that?
Cal: Proceed.
Erika: Okay, so the other reason that I like Google Ad Words is because it's really easy to get started. So when I was ready to go and I had my website ready. I put an ad out there and you know you can write it yourself, okay, it's really easy. They don't really give you that much space so you have to be particular in the words that you use, but, you can have an ad created in probably five minutes, okay? You choose the landing page where it goes back to your website and then you press, you know we are going to go into this in a little more detail in the next -- in the next session, but, when you are ready to save it, in less than 24 hours your ad can be out there on the internet and sometimes it can be even faster than that. It can be immediate, it depends on when exactly your ad is, but you don't have to -- you don't have to, you know do all the extra stuff for print advertising like you know you don't have to have a graphic artist create things. You don't have to send your art work to the newspaper, right, or anyone or a magazine or anything like that. It can be ready to go really quickly, so in less than a week, I had my first client.
Cal: You know back in the -- back in the day when I was doing Yellow Pages, it would be months before my ad would come out and then there was something wrong with it, too bad. If there is something wrong with an internet ad, you can fix it just like that, right?
Erika: Yes, and that's a really good point because you definitely don't want to have anything wrong with any of your ads and you know it is easy to get started as I mentioned before. What I really like about it is the cost, now I really want to mention it's not a -- it's not always inexpensive for every location if you live in an area that is highly competitive and expensive to do business and there's lots of competition with other hypnotists or other you know weight loss or stop smoking programs depending on what you are looking to advertise for. It can be more expensive so I've got feedback from some other hypnotists saying that it was unaffordable for them to use Google Adwords, so you are going to have to try it out for your area and see what works for you.
However, there is still an opportunity for you to do something and it's called the long tail of advertising and that basically, just means that you are using a very unique, a very specific search term that is not very common, so that your ad will appear at the top of the page, you use that term and you can still drive customers to your site and it can be affordable, so that's one option if you do live in one of those areas where it's really expensive.
Cal: So that would be like the difference between just saying hypnosis and your town and now where you’re competing against every other town but, if you go to like, hypnosis for weight loss and go after that keyword, then that's more of a long tail, is that right?
Erika: Yes, except that I don't know if hypnosis for weight loss would be long enough. I would say you might need to do something even longer, even more specific but, that's what's great about the tools that Google provides because you can do research on all of these things. There's the great keywords analysis tool that you could use to understand it, you know how many other people have been searching for these keywords in my area? So not only does Google provide you with the ability to advertise, it gives you access to understanding what are people in my area searching for? Are there people looking for hypnosis for PTSD? Are there people looking for hypnosis for all of these other things so that you can understand your market better. That's another really great reason why I like using Google Ad Words because it comes with all of these analytics that you can use to understand your clients and your audience.
Cal: Now, I was just here on the internet and it looks like the Google Adwords or the keyword tool has been replaced with the keyword planner, are you aware of that?
Erika: Oh, yes, the keyword planner. I haven't used it yet. You know they are making a lot of updates so I think they can be somewhat similar but, yeah, thanks for pointing that out Cal, they did re-name that.
Cal: You know that's the way of the internet, you know as soon you learn how to do something, you kind of got to keep up with it because things change and if you notice -- you folks out there watching, you check out anything that we are suggesting we do on the podcast, if you notice there are some things changed, just leave a comment in the comment space below the video and we will keep everyone up to date. Alright, Erika go on.
Erika: Exactly, and you know, if you have a question about something too, and want more explanation. I would be happy to answer any questions of things. You know, because we are not going into too much detail here today right, Cal? I mean we are kind of skimming the surface.
Cal: Well, yeah, today we want to talk about why should we do it and maybe we can even tell them how to get signed up so that next episode we can show them how to really get start doing what they need to do to get those clients coming through the door, right?
Erica: Right, yeah, so the reason that I use it was just because it was so easy and inexpensive for me. You can get started right away. It comes up with all the analysis and all of the tools and then to get started, what you need to do is there are four steps that I recommend to get started. So the first step is to create a Google account so you can do that at Google.com/account and I'm going to share something , you know a lesson learned for me, don't use your personal account to do this. Okay, so I did that a long time ago and I wish I wouldn't have because now I'm going to have to separate everything.
I recommend if you don't have Google Adwords and you don't have analytics set up yet, get a fresh new Google account, not your personal account, something for your business, your business name or something like that, get a new Google account and the next thing you want to do is you want to go to Adwords. That's Adwords.Google. com, you will log in there with your new Google account that you just created, okay? And the next thing, you want to go set up analytics for your website. I really hope everyone is already doing this, you don't need Adwords to benefit from analytics. Analytics tells you so many wonderful things about people that are coming to your website. And Cal, do you use Google analytics?
Cal: Well, actually we do and Marianne, who is our tech person here at the center she answers all of my questions. She looks in there and let's me know what's happening.
Erika: Yeah, it's really important to understand, you know, you put a new web page out there or something happens, you know in the media or something, and all of sudden all of these people are coming to your stop smoking page and you’re like, I wonder what happened? What's going on? Or you know, you can figure out all sorts of things that are going on. One thing to check of course, is to see if there is any errors on your website, right? If you have errors on your website, Google is not as likely to send people to your site and that impacts your SEO results, your organic search results, okay? Alright, so now back to the process there. We had step one, you are creating a Google account and then an Adwords account. The third one, get analytics set up on your website and then, the fourth thing -- fourth thing is what you want to do is integrate and link your Adwords account with your analytics account. So those two are linked and that's just going to give you so much better information about how your Adwords are performing, give you the feedback you need in order to make adjustments.
Cal: Perfect. Keep going.
Erika: Well, that's why I use Adwords. So I don't know Cal, what and why would you want to use Adwords?
Cal: Well, now I have used Adwords in the past, many years ago and it was a waste of my money. And so I focused on over the years SEO - search engine optimization to try to get very good search engine results through organic search but, the problem with the organic search relying on that is, Google will mess with you. They will come out with these updates to their algorithm, that's the way they decide who comes out on top and there-there's a thing called, Panda and a thing called, Penguin which these are updates and here you are you built your whole business around good search results and then Google says, gosh, we are just going to change how we calculate search results and you end up back there on page sixty-four, you are in trouble, but if you understand how to use Adwords, then you can always be on page one or two, how's that sound? That's why.
Erika: Yeah, that's a great point Cal, because you are right, I mean SEO is so important. You always want to be at the top or be the organic search results but you never know when Google is going to modify their algorithm and they don't share exactly how their algorithm works, so it's a lot of people scrambling trying to catch up and make sure their site remains on top. It's really, really important to make sure your website is top notch before you start -- you know it doesn't have to be perfect but pages that you are sending people to with your Google Adwords account, you really want to make sure that page looks really nice and you know of course, be very professional, no spelling mistakes, no errors, nothing like that on your page, right.
Cal: Yeah, you use the term, landing page, so now the landing page in this case, it just simply means when you run your ad, there is going to be a link and you click, the potential client clicks on that and it's where they are going to land and it doesn't necessarily have to be the index page or the home page of your website. For example, if you are doing an advertisement on weight loss and you might send them to a weight loss page on your website or you might even have a whole website set up – now, by saying a whole website that might just be a one page website that just promotes hypnosis for weight loss or for smoking or for fear of heights or for whatever you’re advertising, you can set up these websites just for that with the one page website or it could be to your more comprehensive website, isn't that right?
Erika: Yeah, that's right and you know another intersting thing about that is when you are looking at Google analytics, you want to look -- it's also called like an entry page, what was your client's first entry into your website? What brought them to your website? And a lot of times it will be from Google Adwords and it will be the landing page that you choose, bringing a lot of -- driving a lot of traffic to your website and they might start out at, you know, a page on stress or anxiety or something like that and move over to a different page or something else, right? So you never know what's going to happen when somebody finally makes it to your website.
Cal: That's right. What is our ultimate goal -- our ultimate -- who said it? Was it Gerber or..? He said, begin with the end in mind. I think that's from the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.
Erika: That's right, you got to understand what do you really want your client to do, right? So are you wanting them to call you and…and set up a session with you or you wanting to sell them some product, right? So, you need to be thinking about that and that comes into play when you are talking about you know how do you create the ad right? What does the ad say? Because that is what is going to drive them to click on it. You want to give them an actionable item in that ad to call now, click here, something like that, call us today and they click on it and they get taken to your site and then you want to have something for them to do. What is -- what is your end goal?
Cal: That's right, make it obvious, I read -- I believe the title of the book was -- I don't remember the title of the book. It was something about terrible web design and one of the things that stuck in my mind from that book was the phrase used over and over again, don't make them think, don't make them think. If they have to think and figure stuff out, they are just going to hit the back button. You want to make things very simple, very obvious, you know in your Adwords, you might call today for free consultation, hypnosis consultation or stop smoking and when they get to the page it says here's how to get your free consultation, see if hypnosis is right for you to help you stop smoking so that continuity of message that continuity of call to action is much better then just dumping them off an index page where it says, stop smoking, lose weight, blah blah blah, all these different things, because they start having to think and struggle and they might just hit the back button and you've lost your fee that you paid for the click. By the way, what about -- how much are you paying for click right now?
Erika: Oh geez, it depends on what the search term is. So, I have a couple of different search terms, right? And some of them are more expensive than others but it's -- it ranges from I think a dollar fifty to little over two dollars.
Cal: Right, and so folks, you know why do we do these things? We do these videos because we care. We want to see the profession grow, we want to see you grow in the profession and the thing is, when you are helping people when nothing else has worked and that's who our population is. They tried the doctor, the counseling, the self help book, the guru whatever it is and you, like last episode was about charging enough money for what you do and if you are doing say, two hundred dollars a session and you’ve got five sessions that’s a thousand dollars to help them with their lifelong problem and that's like a great value for them. You can certainly pay a dollar a click and in fact, you can have -- you start working the math here and find out, gosh, maybe I'll have to have to people click on my ad fifty times before they finally book, well that's perfect. Now you know that for every fifty dollars you pay in advertising, you are going to make nine hundred and fifty dollars and this is also going to be important when you get -- when Erika gets to bidding, because once you start you have these numbers. You know how much that client is worth to you in the long run and so you know how much you can bid and bidding has to do with how well you move up the page too. Erika, you kind of need to wrap it up, we have run long on this one.
Erika: Alright, well that was about all I wanted to say, Cal. I think I had one last question for you, so maybe you can answer this real quick. How much do you recommend a new hypnotist spend, you know as a percentage of their overall budget on marketing on something like this?
Cal: Oh gosh, well it has to do with you've got to -- you don't want to spend more -- it's kind of like gambling and you don't want to spend more than what you can afford to lose because sometimes, there's a learning curve as like learning to play poker. That can be a very expensive thing if you are not being tutored or coached or you’re reading about because you know you lose a hand, you lose a hand, you lose a hand and in the meantime, you hope you are learning how to win, so you know, I would say that a hundred dollars a week would be very reasonable if you are trying to go for full time and maybe more than that, depending on how much you are making.
It has to do with, if you are in an area where you are able to charge a hundred dollars a session opposed to two hundred dollars a session. It is kind of sliding like that, so we don't have to do it anymore but we used to spend like almost three thousand dollars a month on advertising back when we were in Minnesota. We were doing Yellow Pages and things like that and so just for round numbers, if we were doing thirty thousand dollars a month in client revenue, then there you go, three percent. Three thousand is about ten percent, how does that sound?
Erika: Yeah and you know, you can anticipate if you spend more when you are just getting started because you won't have that referral base, right? So you are going to have to put some money out there, you are going to have to invest in order to get some of your first clients in there, right?
Cal: Perfect, perfect. Alright, wrap it up.
Erika: Alright, well I'm Erika Flint, I'm very happy to be here today and tell you about Google Adwords and I would love to answer any other questions you have about Google Adwords and anything else with your hypnosis practice.
Cal: Erika, thanks for being with us. I am so excited about hearing the next one. You know, I think everybody's motivated, they want to go get, set up their account so that next week when we get the podcast out, they can know exactly what to do, run their first ad and by the way, before we click off here, we got a class coming up in May as I said before, that's our Week of Power, it's for people who are already certified and then, for you folks who want to come into the profession, you haven't been certified yet, we have the NGH Approved Hypnosis Certification Super Course. We have one starting on July 14th and another, October 13th. I want to see you in class. This is Cal Banyan. Signing off.