Dolly Delong: Today on the podcast, I am so excited to welcome Donnie Connolly. who is the founder of pandas on fire digital marketing. So I’m going to give a little bio about him and then he can come on and he’ll give you a more fun bio. So So this is the more formal. After 13 years of working in the high stress world of tech sales, Donnie decided to take a big leap and found his own company in hopes of taking ownership of his own time. Now his wife, Emily, who is a good friend of mine. Who has been running her own successful copywriting business for over five years. Emilwriteswell You all should know her really well. Originally from Nashville, Emily and Donnie are currently traveling the world on a family gap year with their six year old daughter, Charlotte. So Donnie, welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to have you on and like I inserted in this bio, like you all should know that, Emily, if you are an OG listener, Emily is, has been on the podcast several times. She is my go to copywriter and she, she just is so much fun and she is a wealth of knowledge and information. So. When Emily told me that Donnie had opened up a business about Google ads, I was like,I’m curious about working with him. And then of course, Donnie, you know, this, I was very scared about investing in Google ads.because I had really bad experience with Facebook ads and I just did not know. anything about ads and how that all worked. And so I assumed it would be the same thing, with Google. And so it has been a wonderful experience working with you.
Donnie Conley: Oh, that’s I’m, you know, I joke with you that really, all of the business that happens in my household is actually because of you. so, we, we, when Emily started her business, in 2019, Dolly was her first, first ever paying client. And then, uh, you have been my, my,And we call you the guinea pig, right? Because we kind of test some things out and, and we’ve had some, you know, I’ve been really pleased with kind of how it’s gone. but you, you’ve been kind of my first client as well. So really, you know, we owe a great deal to you and it’s just been a thing that has been, know, it’s, it’s honestly, it’s been really fun. kind of striking out on my own and trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing every day.
Dolly Delong: Yeah. Well, I’m curious to know what. Made you interested in starting a google ads business because you have all of this background in sales and tech tech sales and you We’re really high up in your company And so i’m just curious what made you like transition into this role.
Donnie Conley: it’s funny because as a salesperson, you spend a lot of your career fighting with marketing. like a lot, right? Cause you’re just like, bring me better leads. And then on the marketing side, they’re like, Hey, maybe do a better job closing the leads. But I did a lot of work in that role, even though I was a salesperson, I did a lot of work with the marketing groups, at Dell. And I found that I enjoyed Kind of that piece of the, you know, understanding customer psychology and trying to figure out like how to help businesses grow. So I’m a huge nerd, which is important to note for all of this. Right. So I like to try to solve problems and. Was looking at different things within marketing, right? Almost something complimentary to what Emily does. Cause, cause there’s a vision for us where it’s like, Hey, we can, if we can have kind of complimentary skills, like she can help me as I grow my business, I can help her. I don’t know what I’m gonna do to help her. She’s, she’s crushing it. And I’m, you know, I’m, I’m very early on, but I can, I can be here for moral support or, you know, can do some jokes, whatever, it’s fine. But what really interested me about Google ads as I was learning more and more about marketing was it very much kind of fits my skill set, right? It’s very data driven. It’s very,you know, it’s, it’s, it seems overwhelming at first because there’s all of these things, but once you actually learn it and understand it, it’s not nearly as technical as it seems. and it, I like being able to kind of just point to results, right? Point to, you know, I love the numbers. There’s so many, there’s too many in the dashboard, frankly, where there’s so many things. You can get overwhelmed with what’s good, what’s bad. But I like having all the information, because I like the idea that like if a business owner comes to me and they invest in, you know, both the advertising and they invest in my services, I can point to it and say, Hey, this is, this is what you’re getting out of this. Right?
Dolly Delong: Yeah. Okay. Well, that kind of like naturally leads me into our first question. Like, cause I know like the meat, the heart of this episode is going to be like paid ads with using Google ads. And so for, for those of us listeners,even myself included, I lean heavily into organic marketing, but. In 2024 kind of was a good transition year for me to again test the waters of paid ads and i’m so glad again, I cannot stress to listeners enough to The fact that even though I had a bad experience with paid ads, with meta ads, I was like, okay, I’m going to give it another shot. And I’m going to work with somebody who actually knows what they’re doing with Google ads. And so that’s where Donnie came in. I know we’re seeing in a new year, 2025. And so can you explain like, Why people should consider Google ads in 2025, because I know Google has had a lot of changes in 2023, 2024. but, but why should people consider moving towards Google ads?
Donnie Conley: So the best thing with Google ads is that you are always because of the way that first of the way that Google search works and also just the way that like the when you hone in on the targeting, you’re capturing people who are searching for exactly what you want them to be searching for. Right? So with meta ads, I mean, you can target people. You’re almost more doing like demographic targeting a little bit more where you’re like, you know Find me someone who we talk about the look alike audience and that stuff, right? But it’s find me someone who kind of represents an ideal customer for me That person might not have any interest in your services. Whereas with Google Ads Like you are capturing, like use your photography business. For example,
Dolly Delong: Yeah.
Donnie Conley: if someone is searching for, we are looking, we are looking for people who are searching for Nashville photographer or like family photos in Nashville, those types of things. So those, we know that those people have interest in what your service is. Now the, the whole thing is yes, you have to have. a good offer, you have to have a good landing page, you have to, you know, you have to convert the lead,you know, once it even comes through to you. But that’s the biggest advantage that I would say is that it’s just quite simply, instead of kind of, you know, when you’re like swiping through Instagram or scrolling through Facebook and you see an ad for a t shirt, right, you might want that shirt. It might be good ad targeting, but you also might not. You might just kind of blow past it and don’t even pay attention. But if you Are searching for, you know, a t shirt and an ad pops up that kind of reflects that exact thing that you’re looking for. You’re going to be much more interested. So even though it’s cold traffic, you have, you know, based on the fact that they’re searching for this. You have their interest from the very beginning.
Dolly Delong: So your, like, we’re going to like distill this question down even more, like your argument for Google ads for a person who’s on the fence, like, okay, I want to invest some money this in 2025, where should I start Facebook meta ads or Google ads? What would you say to them?
Donnie Conley: mean, I’m going to give a classic corporate example and say, well, it depends a little bit. It depends on what your offer is, but if you want leads, like I feel like most people, most businesses, you just want leads. You want people reaching out to you who want to work with you and you can kind of sort out if it’s a fit, if it’s not, if the, if the product is right for them. I mean, there’s all, obviously your listeners are going to cover a lot of different types of business. With Google Ads, you are always, no matter how small your niche is, cause, cause you can have very small, very specific things where you’re like,you don’t have a huge audience, but you’re really good at what you do in a small niche, the big niche, whatever it is, people are searching for that people all over the world, frankly, are searching for that every minute of every day. And that’s the way for you to get in front of them is by advertising on Google. So you don’t have to have a huge. Spend because even like I will get into it a little bit. I’m sure Google wants you to spend a lot of money on
Dolly Delong: Yeah,
Donnie Conley: Right. And you gotta be real careful because they’re very happy to take your money,surprisingly. So, you know, if you’re just saying, Hey, I want. Leads. I want people to, whether it’s a lead magnet, you know, some sort of freebie, whether it’s just a services page, like we do for your photography, where it’s quite literally like,Hey, contact me and let’s see if, if we can book something. Whatever it is, you know, it’s just a much better source than chasing after kind of the idea of a person, the way that you do on, on meta.
Dolly Delong: I love that. Thank you for sharing that. And I love that you’re like, it depends because I would be the exact same way. Well, it depends. so merging that into budgeting. Okay. So I will share with my audience, When I started working with Donnie, right now, while we’re recording this, my budget for marketing is 300 a month. And Donnie knows that. And so I let him know that okay, this is 300 a month. I know like for listeners who are like, Oh, that. It might not be that it’s more approachable versus thinking of ads. Oh, you have to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars every day to get a lead. Like you can start lower, 10, 15 a day. And so what, how would a, what’s the first step a business owner should take before launching a Google ads campaign? When they’re defining their goals and also keeping their budget in mind
Donnie Conley: Yeah, I think one of the first things, like the better you know your business, and how much a lead is worth to you. that, that goes a long way in towards understanding your budget, right? If you know, okay, on a monthly basis, I get 30 people who fill out the form. I, I book projects with 15 of them. Um,and on average, they book for. 100 a project, right? And I’m just doing this to have big round math, right? Then essentially in that case, you book 1, 500 of revenue off of 30 leads. So a lead is worth 50 to you on average.
Dolly Delong: Yeah
Donnie Conley: If you know something like that, then you can kind of go in and figure out, okay. I can spend X on advertising. I can kind of figure that out. But if you don’t know that you can kind of just get in there. I mean, I wouldn’t do less than like the, the 10 a day. you know, like you do, I think that’s a good entry point, right? Because you’re like, you don’t want to go too much lower. The math just gets kind of complicated, but I think you start there and kind of just see like, how does this work?Right. is this generating me? And then once you kind of let things run for at least a month to maybe three months, realistically, then you can look at, okay, maybe I have a proof of concept here. Maybe I can, I can actually start to kind of turn up the budget. Cause that’s the other thing. It’s even if you, even if it’s going well.Just, you know, that doesn’t mean that tripling the budget is going to triple the results. So you always want to kind of go a little incremental on the increases, right? We, you don’t want to just okay, well I spent 300 and I, I booked a thousand dollars of client projects. So I’m now going to spend a thousand. That doesn’t necessarily always, you know, it doesn’t scale linearly. Right. So that’s what I would say is like knowing your business, having a feel for Okay. How, how often you, you know, kind of convert leads, that goes a long way towards setting the budgeting.
Dolly Delong: I think that really helped me with you explaining that to me in 2024 when we started working together you explained that to me so well in our initial meeting And you had me like lay out My packages like what is your Maximum capacity every month so you asked me those questions. You’re like, what is your maximum capacity for, for family photography clients? what is your average, what are all your packages look like? So you did have me lay out that foundation. So I wasn’t just like going in with, well, one, an unrealistic expectation, wow, like Donny’s going to help me get 80 leads a month. that’s unrealistic
Donnie Conley: That would be sweet. that is, yes, that is, that is unrealistic.
Dolly Delong: So unrealistic. And also I have to look at my capacity. can I serve physically 80 families per month? No, like on average, 80, 80 clients is how many clients I serve over the span of a year. So then I had to break it down per month and. And so that, just having that initial call with you gave me, okay, this is what I want to aim for. And this is where I’m going to start off with instead of me coming in, this is going to be the magic, you know, like the magical formula. And I going in blindly, like you helped me define some parameters.
Donnie Conley: I think that’s really important too, because for me as a business owner, it’s so important that people have realistic expectations when they go into something. Cause like it’s tough, right? I mean, whether it’s, whether they’re working with me or whether it’s just somebody who I’m helping kind of set it up on their own, you’re still putting your own money in there. And we all know how hard you work for every dollar that comes into your business. So it’s hard to part with it, right? You don’t like to, you don’t like to spend, you know, the, your profits. And when you do, you want to make sure you’re putting it into something that’s going to generate more for you. And so that’s why it’s you know, having the, having the realistic expectations and understanding that like, yes, it’s not going to be a thing where we’re just going to turn it on and thousands of people are going to be coming from all over, you know, I mean, maybe again, that’d be awesome. If it is, and, and. And in some, in some instances, especially like e commerce or something like that, that can happen. Understanding that,you know, I guess like getting the feel for what can I expect? That’s always so important to me because that’s there’s no worse feeling in anything. This is, doesn’t just apply to business, but like when you kind of get involved in something and you think it’s going to go one way because it wasn’t really made clear to you, That’s no fun when it doesn’t go that way. Right. That’s not good at all. So
Dolly Delong: Yeah, I love it. So, okay. So like after a business center has defined, let’s say they did the groundwork, they know what their, what their budget is going to start off as they know, like realistically what they’re looking for, like their campaign. Then the next step is I’m guessing keyword strategy. Correct.
Donnie Conley: yeah, yeah. More or less. Right. Yes.
Dolly Delong: so how, how would you, could you walk us through how you would walk a customer through how to create an effective keyword strategy for Google ads?
Donnie Conley: Yeah. So, I mean, the first thing is like any existing SEO stuff that you have, any existing data that you have, especially if it’s an, if it’s an offer, the more we have at the beginning, the easier we can kind of work to refine. But let’s say you don’t have any of that, right? Let’s say you’re just like, Oh, this is a totally new thing and I’m looking to launch it. And need some help coming up with it. I mean, the first thing I always ask, because there’s some things that I know about, right. Whether it’s through my experience of work, whether it’s through my wife’s experience, a lot of stuff I don’t. So the first thing I always ask is we kind of have to kind of have to get in the mind of the customer, right? We have kind of have to think what are people searching for? what do you want? to be searching for, you kind of know where there’s certain things where it’s like, Hey, if someone finds this, but they’ve searched for something different, it’s going to lead to not what I want. Cause the whole thing in this is like you pay when someone clicks on the end. And so we’ve got to make sure that we’re putting this in front of the right people because, like I said, Google’s happy to take your money. They don’t care. They do not care. The more people are clicking on it, they’re making more money. Happy days, right? And you as a business owner, you’re like, well, I got to protect this. kind of just try to think through what people search for, what are people looking for? What are things that like kind of come through and what are things that have worked for you? The thing I would say is Google has simplified some of the keyword stuff to where like three or four years ago, you know, you could have been running like 50, 60 keywords for a given campaign. and using different keyword types, right? Cause there’s broad match, exact match, and phrase match. Exact match and phrase match are like the traditional, the ones that have traditionally been utilized. And then broad match is this weird Google, that’s what Google’s pushing, very heavily. And they, they tell you. we know what is in, what’s going on in customers minds, so just trust us. And, it’s middling results, so it’s kind of a combination of those, but you don’t have to do quite as much. if you come up with that answer of hey, I know what someone’s going to be searching for, that, Plus maybe a couple of other key things where people typically find your website. That’s enough to get started, right? If, if something’s more complex, there’s more complex ways to do it, but it doesn’t have to be 50 60 keywords meticulously researched through Uber suggest or through the Google keyword plan or anything like that.
Dolly Delong: listeners. I really wanted for you to listen in, hone in on that topic alone. Like, or that, like that phrase alone, like you don’t have to have all of your keywords honed in. have a general idea of what your ideal client is searching for, because I’ll use myself case point. Like I told Donnie. Hey, I just like, I know for sure. I want to be searched searchable terms like Nashville family photographer or middle Tennessee family photographer. But then I also knew, and maybe you’ll hit up on this, but like keywords, I did not want to be searched for like a cheap family photographer, affordable family photographer, because those are keywords. I do not. Want to be associated with because I am not a budget family photographer. And, and I know that those are terms that families search for in Google.
Donnie Conley: Absolutely. And that’s, and so then we use that, that’s what’s called the negative keyword list. And frankly, That’s almost more important than the actual main keyword list because even we know that at the outset right where you know, okay Like you you happen to know that because you’ve been doing this for a very long time and you know If someone comes to me and that’s what they’re looking for It’s not, it’s not a fit, so exclude that, right? Just the same as, you know, I have another client who, I don’t want to delve too much into their business, right? But essentially they came to me and said, if someone is searching for this type of course, like they’re going to be, they’re not going to be satisfied because it doesn’t actually match up, right? So With the negative keyword thing we can create it at the beginning, but it’s also super important as you’re going through and you’re finding you can go through a search terms report and see like, how are people finding the ad. And so in yours early days, there are a lot of people searching for like boudoir photography, which. You know, is obviously a thing. A lot of people do just not something that you do. So if those people are clicking on your ad, they’re going to click scroll, scroll, scroll, nothing. Okay. They’re done. We’ve just paid money for that. And we could have qualified them out at the beginning. Right? So that’s the kind of thing where it’s like, having a robust negative keyword strategy allows you to really focus in on like, just show me the people who are in. And so in your case, it’s show me the people in Nashville and in middle Tennessee and we, cause we even went geographically like very specific on areas, which you can do. You can say, I mean, you can do as small as like a,
Dolly Delong: Franklin.
Donnie Conley: you can do. Yeah. You could literally just show it in Franklin or you could show it in Williamson County, but you You could show it in middle Tennessee, but even when I remember we were looking at middle Tennessee, and you’re like boy that includes I think that stretches all the way to Clarksville and out to the West, maybe even to a little past Dixon. Right. And so I know not every one of your listeners is like a middle Tennessee geography expert, but understand that if you’re like, you’re looking at it and you’re like, these people aren’t going to book cause it’s too far for them to drive. So they’ve clicked on my ad and they were never going to book it. Right. And it’s the same with like the pricing. We put price in the ad copy. Right. Because You don’t want the thing where, I don’t know. It’s a weird thing with businesses where everyone’s like always kind of, they’re scared to say the price because they don’t want someone to say no, but if you’re paying for the clicks, we don’t want them to then see the price and be like, what, no, it’s just let them know from the beginning, this is what it costs. that helps you too. Cause you’re like, there’s nothing worse. Then, you know, when someone comes to you and seems like a good lead and then they’re like, yeah, so what do you do for a hundred bucks?
Dolly Delong: I’m like, nothing.
Donnie Conley: nothing, not a single thing. I don’t want to get out of bed for that. What are you
Dolly Delong: I know, seriously. So I w I, yeah, I want to stress to listeners, like in your keywords, like as you’re researching keywords, what do you want to be found for? And then what do you not want to be found for? So definitely like starting a bank for that and putting that within your strategy as well. Especially when it comes to ad targeting for Google.
Dolly Delong: okay. I had asked Donnie at the very beginning of this episode before we hit record, like, do you mind doing a screen share, so that for the listeners who decide to watch the YouTube version of this, because this will be on YouTube, Can you like walk a business owner through like how, not how to set up, but just like the very basic structure of what does this all look like? Give us like tangible visuals that,so that a, hopefully a business owner can feel a little bit more confident in okay, this is how I take action.
Donnie Conley: Yeah, absolutely. have a manager account to where I manage my client’s accounts through there, right? And that’s going to look a little different. So what I’ve done is I’ve just basically gone to go create a new account. So when you click new account, This is what happens. Now, Google will tell you right here, create your first campaign in a few simple steps. I’m just telling you be careful, okay? Because I, I had a client come to me who did, who followed these very simple steps, and then somehow, without even totally realizing it, was spending 50 a day and getting zero leads. So, Again, Google, thrilled to take the money, not super discerning, right? So like here, you know, we can just do basic, enter the business name, pop in your website. If you have an existing Google business profile, you know, that goes a long way just to even like generating, helping your ads reach higher,but if you don’t, That’s not a big deal. You will have to set one up to,to be able to pay for these. But,nonetheless go through that. We’re going to skip all this stuff. This is, again, like I said, there’s a Google business profile where you will link it and Google will make you link it cause they want your money. you can link a YouTube channel, phone number, all of that stuff.
Dolly Delong: we’re not going to do that,at the minute. Right. And then I have Google analytics set up. So, Oh, can I do a side tangent? So you’re saying it’s important for users to have Google Analytics set up, GA4, sorry, they always change the name, GA4 set up before they set up these Google ads. I, I know the answer to this question, but I just need confirmation for that.
Donnie Conley: Yes, it is. Okay. It is very important. There’s a separate thing called Google Tag Manager where you can kind of, you could, if you had that, you wouldn’t necessarily need to have Google Analytics, but let’s just say yes, right? Because it’s just, it’s easier that way, because setting up Google Tag Manager Is the thing that has made me the most mad in my, you know, 12 months of doing this and just looking at the screen and yelling and like typing in code and just getting more and more mad. whereas if you have Google analytics, you have it set up, you can, you can track things through there without even having to use tech manager, right?
Dolly Delong: Love it. listeners and viewers, I will say this. I’ll throw myself under the bus so that you all can laugh at me. I accidentally deleted all the tags that Donnie had created for me. when I updated my website And I was like, Oh, I did that. And then I felt really dumb. And then I was like, it’s me. I am the problem. I like, cause he was like, Nothing is showing up for your Google ads, Dolly. And I didn’t realize I had deleted them. So you all, even me, like I love operations and systems, but you all, I’m, I made a mistake, but thankfully Donnie caught that. Yes.
Donnie Conley: if, if it was down for two days, then I can tell you, well, in those two days, that’s probably where you got like a beans. We just couldn’t track it. Right. No, I’m kidding. no, but it is the thing where, I mean, what’s annoying about it, right. Is it’s, it’s just the same as the GA four tag or any of these other tags. If you have a Facebook pixel, any of that stuff, you know, in theory it’s meant to be on every page of the website. Right. Right. Right. And so if you add a new page, you create something new. It’s got to make sure to just copy paste it in there. Depends every, every,website software is a little different. Like how you show it. I know you show it. And so it’s like within there. You have to remember to add it. And all that does is just helps you track, right? Because the whole point of this is whatever’s happening is happening regardless. So just because you deleted that didn’t mean that people weren’t seeing the ads. It didn’t mean that people weren’t filling out the form. but it meant that we weren’t able to track it. And if you can’t, if you can’t track it, you kind of like, you’re like, I don’t know what’s going on. Right. Like I, exactly. Right. It’s you’re, you’re flying blind. And that’s why it’s so important to me. I mentioned at the beginning about people being able to kind of. Like really understand how their investments going. That’s why it’s like, Hey, we got to have the tracking. We got to have that right from the very beginning because that helps us know if the answer is like, Hey, we generated one lead for you. Then we generated one lead. That’s the truth. So that’s the answer, right? But as long as we know that and we can measure it, you know, it goes a long way. I understand. So we have actually, this feels like it’s just a setup step, right? You feel like I’m still setting up my account. This is actually creating a campaign. So this is, this is making your first Google ads campaign. So it is very quick to even get to this point. And so you can decide, I mean, this is where the nature of every business. You know, e-commerce yet, maybe you want someone to buy something most of the time, do you want someone to fill out the form? Cause we mentioned you want leads, you know, depending on your industry, you might want to do phone calls. if you’re a home services, that’s very common. We can measure all of these things. I mean, page views, I don’t see that as super relevant for, for the audience because, you know, You know, we want concrete stuff, right?
Dolly Delong: So can I ask a question for submit a form? could that also be like filling out lead gen, like email marketing, like a, lead magnet.
Donnie Conley: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And understand that that is just a, that’s kind of a box you have to tick just to move on that doesn’t necessarily dictate, cause this is what’s crazy about this setup. is they make you create a campaign before you can even get into your account home page. And technically speaking, right? This over here, this is called a performance max campaign. That’s not a type of campaign. That’s that’s what Google’s default setting for ads. That’s not a type of campaign I would recommend anyone to do. Unless they have been running Google Ads for a while. If you’ve been running it for a while, you’ve got a bunch of conversions, you have a lot of data. If you’re like someone who’s been doing this and you’re just trying to optimize further, I mean, frankly, you probably know about this, right? But understand when you get in here, this is what they’re guiding you to do. And so, you see this question here, right? It’s asking, hey, what are some things people use when searching for your products or services, right? So this is along those same lines that we were talking about earlier. Now, I’m gonna type digital marketing. I am in Spain right now, which is why it says location Spain. You can pick whatever location you want. And, You know, like I said, you could even do a custom location all the way down to a zip code, right?
But if you wanted to just say, Nashville, Tennessee, include, done, right? So we’ll just go with that. And then, again, Google’s going to try to just make everything for you with, with AI. And some of that is helpful. But some of it’s not. So this is where you get into and I’ll probably, I’ll, I’m going to skip through this part because this is kind of like more in depth and it’s going to kind of take us a little too far. But, I mean this is essentially the structure of a Google ad, right? It’s it comes up when people search. It’s the stuff that comes up where it says sponsored, the stuff that comes up before the actual organic search results. So, That’s all it is, right? And so, within this, there’s ways we can do with headlines, the actual ad copy itself, you know, we, you add images, like so in the case of photography, yeah, we want to have an image where people can see a small example of the,of someone’s work, but essentially, that’s what we’re looking at. I’m just gonna keep this, I don’t know, what issues do I have here? This is going to be a really good ad. It’s going to convert huge. Yeah.
Dolly Delong: gonna bring you thousands of leads right here.
Donnie Conley: maybe, yeah, maybe millions. Maybe this is it. so many issues.
Dolly Delong: your point. This is your point where, yeah, this is a Genesis story, right?
Donnie Conley: All right, let’s, in all seriousness, I’m trying to, I’m just trying to get past this bit here because this is just like in the waste people’s time.
Dolly Delong: listeners and viewers, this is exactly why you need somebody like Donnie to guide you through this. Because I would be like, No, I’m not doing this. This is so frustrating.
Donnie Conley: it is very frustrating. and I’ll give a shameless plug for myself. if you decide you want to work with somebody, Then, I just go into my account, I add your customer number, your Google Ads customer number, and you get to skip all of this. Right? So, with that said, it’s just, it’s making me add so much nonsense here, it’s kind of, The truth is, is that it’s like we skipped these Performance Max campaigns anyway.cause like I said, we wouldn’t recommend it for someone who is new to
Dolly Delong: To Google app. Yes.
Donnie Conley: Alright, so Have I fixed these? Alright, so, now it’s gonna have you set your bid strategy. You decide, do you want to focus on just getting people to fill out the form? Or do you want to focus on I was talking earlier, if you know how much a lead is worth, then you can do that. Most of the time, especially early days, like you’re just gonna do this, focus on
Dolly Delong: So for listeners who aren’t watching and just listening, like he, Donnie just took us to a screen called set bid strategy, and there was two options. Either you’re focusing on conversion or focusing on conversion values. And so he selected conversions.
Donnie Conley: exactly. And the point there is that if you basically say all conversions are equal to me, because this is the other thing, is that like when you actually go in, you actually create what you’re measuring for conversions. let’s say that you had two products, where you had a basic one and a higher end one.
Dolly Delong: Yeah.
Donnie Conley: if you’re running the same ad, now, in theory, right, it would be better to break that up into two separate ads targeting, two separate campaigns targeting those two products. But let’s say, you know, you did that in one. And you said if they fill out form A, That to me is worth, you know, 50. And if they fill out form B that to me is worth a hundred dollars, then with that conversion value, it’s going to prioritize people filling out form B. Whereas if you just said, Hey, these are the same thing. These, these mean the same to me. I don’t care. Then that’s the initial choice of conversions, right? So. and then here we set the budget and so immediately you see, I mean, it’s funny because like I said, I’m in Spain, so I’ve got euros, but,immediately Google’s recommending me to spend 18, uh, euros a day. Now I could, it’s also recommending 52, as a possibility. And you have this lesser one here, 710 and even see here, see how it tells you Google is telling you right here to raise it to at least 18 euros a day, which is basically 20 US dollars, right? So they’re trying to tell you, Hey, you need to spend at least this, or it’s not worth it. And so what I would tell anybody here is just ignore this. Set your budget, whatever you want it to be, right? Whatever you’re going to spend, the worst case scenario for you when you set your own budget is like, you know, you spend the money and you don’t get the results that you want, but you have kind of full control that you’ve made that decision. Do not let this website make it for you or it will, it will just, it will just spend, spend, spend. And what’s funny is we’ve gone through with all of this, right? And essentially we’ll say that we’re done at this point, creating a campaign. I would actually tell you, to not do any of this and to not create a performance max campaign as your first campaign. Maybe that’s another conversation for another time, but the downside to creating a performance max campaign is. No, I think you may have seen where we just entered in Hey, they asked, Hey, what are people searching for? Right. it uses a lot more AI targeting for things and on a low budget, it’s going to, it’s going to get, it’s going to bring you really weird clicks, clicks from places where you’re not quite sure why they’ve come through. so I’ve said a lot. But just understand that this is how you do it. It is quite simple to set it up. Be mindful of the budget, but also You know, maybe I’ll have a video or something to show just like how to do a regular campaign.
Dolly Delong: I did want to pull back a little from this and confirm with Donnie that two things. One, when a business owner is setting this up for the first time, do you recommend they have their logos and their images that they want to use like on file for easy access and like copy that they want to use for easy access that leads to that specific landing page?
Donnie Conley: I would say Yeah. And like a lot of times, like I said, if you have a Google business profile, you probably already have some of this stuff either in your Google drive or, or not. Right. I mean, I just was doing this kind of on a test account. So it like, it just looked,I didn’t have anything there. Right. But I think if you, if you have it, right. Then yeah, you can set it up pretty easily. Like they, Google will based on the landing page URL that you use, it will scan it and it will try to kind of auto generate some headlines or, descriptions, things like that to kind of be, so it’s like we use your family’s page. Right? For photography, it sees the text that’s on there, and it will try to create an ad for you. The problem, I mean look, the problem with AI generated anything, right, is it’s good, it sounds weird, and I think most of the people who listen to this, have personal brands and they kind of care about how they come across. if you’re just like, Hey, I want clicks. I don’t care. I don’t want to spend any time on this. Let AI generate the whole thing for me. It’s going to be easier. You could do it a hundred percent, but you know, if you care how it shows up, I don’t think that the Google AI is near at a point to where it’s, Some things you can’t tell if it’s written by AIDs, you can, 100%. Because you’re just like, that’s not a phrase that a person uses. S
Dolly Delong: The humans would never say that. Okay. That is good to know. And then the second thing I wanted to ask you is how often does Google ads change their like inner,I don’t even know, restructure their interface. Because what is being shown now, could it, could this change the layout change in six
Donnie Conley: It I’ll say that Google did a big interface change in 2024. And they actually did the thing that’s always so unpopular in software, where they forced people who had been on the legacy interface, they finally forced them off of it, for the most part. So I would say it’s unlikely to change in the short term, obviously in the long term, sure. If you’re watching this video in 2028, it’s probably changed. but, I would say this because the amount of kind of time and effort that went into them changing the user interface this time around, I wouldn’t think
Dolly Delong: Okay. All right. So I knew, I know that that would probably be a, like a, a user or a, viewer’s question as they’re watching this, as they’re consuming this. So Donnie, you gave us, you gave my listeners and viewers a lot to chew on and to think about and as we wrap up, because I know like we could just talk about Google ads and Just like campaigns and tracking and keywords forever and ever and ever. Cause you have a lot of wisdom when it comes to this area. But just to wrap up,let’s go back to the question for listeners who might be like on the fence, but they’re still hesitant about investing in paid ads. What advice would you give to encourage them? Just let’s give it a try for 2025.
Donnie Conley: I mean, I would say that like, If you have these great resources, cause this is the thing is I’ve seen, I’ve seen it firsthand with, with Emily’s business. I mean, it’s funny because her very first kind of like big resource that she made was, it was like an ebook, but it was, it was a brand voice type of thing and it became the structure for stuff that as her audience grew and grew. Became a thing people would pay for but at first like we’re just kind of trying to build this audience You got instagram a little bit here email here and there like building the audience is hard, right? and so what I would say is If you’re willing to invest because that’s that is what advertising is, right? You are investing This is not money that you’re just throwing at something to not get anything out of the whole goal It’s like I’m putting this in and it’s going to bring me more now. It’s gonna maybe you know, maybe I You know spend 300 and make 600. So I I’ve only, I’ve netted 300 instead of like business owners. We just want as much profit as possible. Right? You’re like, I don’t want to spend any of it, but you have the ability to reach so many people and you can get leads very consistently. And so even if you look at it and it’s not even if you’re just, even if you’re just doing something simple, it’s like growing the email list. Growing the subscriber base for, for things like that has a lot of value in and of itself because once, I mean, as you, you know, as you talk about often when you’re talking about launches or other things, like just get people in the boat and that has a lot of value to it. And then you can kind of create things to, to generate more for them. even if it’s just a simple goal of I want more people in my audience. you are able to get to people who are searching for you. They might not know it, they might not know you, but they’re looking for what you have to offer. So, that’s what I would say.
Dolly Delong: love it. And thank you so much again, for, for coming on and sharing so much with my listeners and with my viewers and, listeners. if you, I want to strongly encourage you, if you are on the, if you’re ready to, invest in Google ads for your business in 2025 and beyond Donnie, how can they work with you follow you connect with you? what would their next steps be?
Donnie Conley: Yeah, so they can reach out to me. I am on Instagram at, pandas on fire marketing, which I had to remind myself, cause I just changed my Instagram handle. I don’t know, like I said, an hour ago, cause the old one was annoying me. So pandas on fire marketing on Instagram. And then,I set up a link, for the podcast listeners and viewers, uh, pandas on fire.com slash Dolly. And so from there, like I can, we can do something if you’re somebody who wants to just do it yourself, but you want a little bit of help at the beginning. You just kind of want somebody to help set it up. And then you’re like, Hey, I’ll, I’ll manage it myself. happy to do that. Or if you want to say, Hey, set it up for me, run it for me, give me the leads,and I’ll close them down. We can do that too. Right. I also will do a plug. I’ve created, I’ve got a resource, kind of going through a lot of the stuff we talked about today, called three easy campaigns. You can start today. I think that link will be in the, in the show notes as well, just for people, people just want to, if you want a quick checklist on like, all right, I want to go through this. I want to set this up, you know, I got three different options that you can have up and running because you can have it up quickly, very quickly. you know, it’s a thing that seems like a lot and when done wrong, it can be a lot, but it’s also, you know, you could have it going 10, 15 minutes and you can be showing ads to people.
Dolly Delong: Well, thank you so much again. And listeners and viewers, this will all be in the show notes or depending upon where you’re watching this, it will be linked below this video. And Donnie, thank you so much again. I’m so excited for what 2025 is going to offer for you because You are so smart when it comes to Google ads. So I’m so excited for you. So listeners, thank you for watching all the way through and listening all the way through. feel free to DM me or Donnie and let us know, what. aha moments you experienced in this episode. And then if you listened all the way through, don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. because, and, and also write a review and let, let me know like how these episodes are helping you out with the backend of your systems and workflows and SOPs for your own business. And then until then, I will see you all next week with a brand new systems and workflow magic episode. Until then stay streamlined and magical.You amazing muggle you, and I’ll talk to you all next week. Bye.
