Chris Dreyer:
For those of you listening, you know that legal SEO is my thing. I like it so much, I built an entire company around it and I’m guessing that if you’re here, you’ve got more than a passing interest for marketing as well. The industry of Google ads and optimization is still relatively new, after all Google Search Engine only launched in 1997. However, over those 24 years, some highly skilled individuals have emerged as market leaders, including today’s guest Steve Ginsberg.
Steve Ginsberg:
Google’s constantly making changes and evolving their platform and the features and functionality and you can spend and waste a lot of money really quickly if you don’t have all your ducks in a row.
Chris Dreyer:
Today, we meet Steve Ginsberg of Legal Marketing Arm, who shares his expert advice for personal injury attorneys who want to take their Google ads game to the next level. We discover the real cost of pay-per-click ads, why ABC is the new AB testing, and how you can hone your strategy to withstand the pivots of the Google algorithm. That’s coming up on The Rankings Podcast, the show where founders, entrepreneurs, and elite personal injury attorneys share their inspiring stories about what they did to get to the top and what keeps them there. I’m Chris Dreyer, stay with us. Steve Ginsberg began performing digital marketing for law firms back in 2002 when the industry was just getting started. But, how did he get in there so early? Was it incredible foresight or just really good luck? The answer is neither! Steve started in search engine marketing because he was working for one of the precursors of the entire field, the good old Yellow Pages.
Steve Ginsberg:
So my first job out of college was I was a Yellow Pages rep, so personal injury, um, and it’s always been, you know, one of, if not the most competitive marketplaces, period, let alone for attorneys. And so when you think of a new phone book coming out, and in those days, unlike Google, where it’s obviously an auction and you’re literally bidding and paying to be in those top spots for Google ads, um, in those days you were basically grandfathered in, right? So the first attorney that had the first, uh, double full page ad – we used to call it a double truck – and so when our phone book came out, we literally had PI firms, they came to our office and guys were willing to pay more than other firms. It was almost like the original auction. Right? And so we held a lottery. We held an actual lottery where ping pong balls were drawn, and that was my first kind of foray into local online marketing for attorneys. And Google didn’t launch Google ads really to the public until the end of 2001, beginning of 2002. So for a long time, the Yellow Pages was still very viable and it was a big source of new leads in cases or for law firms. And then for me, it was just kind of a natural transition from print to digital.
Chris Dreyer:
You really saw just kind of the change that was happening when you went from print to pay per click. So, I want to highlight a couple of things before. So, you were one of the top 1% of new business revenue at Hibu and then you jumped over to Reach Local and you’re the number one consultant of the year out of 1100 employees. How has that transition? What were some of the keys to your success there? And then ultimately, why did you strike out on your own for Legal Marketing Arm?
Steve Ginsberg:
Yeah, I mean, well, I was essentially a sales rep, right? I mean, I was on the sales and marketing side. And in those days, there was a separate department…they had software, they had a system in place for actually managing and executing the campaigns. But in my twenties, reaching out to local businesses and working with them to do their search engine marketing, because of the fact that I’d always worked with attorneys in the Yellow Page days, that was really kind of my niche and those were the businesses that I seek to partner with when I was at Reach. I think when I left, they were a, you know, maybe a half a billion dollar run rate business. They had grown pretty substantially. And the reason I ended up leaving and going out on my own… I just think it’s really, it’s very difficult to scale a digital agency. I always say that it’s easier and a lot of ways to scale a law firm. Not that it’s easy to do that, but it’s easier to scale a law firm because in a lot of ways, you can rinse and repeat the same processes, right? Whereas with internet marketing, even if it’s a PI in St. Louis and a PI from, and in New York, um, that go after the same type of cases, you can’t just rinse and repeat the same keyword strategy in the same ad copy. You can’t have the same landing pages. Every firm is a little bit different. So once the company went public, um, and really all of the financial data and the gross profit margin and all of that became public and you saw, you know, how much of a law firms budget was really going to Google and Bing or Yahoo versus the company, I knew that there was a much better fit. Um, and that, and I think, and I know you can relate to this too. I just think, um, especially with PI in markets where it’s so competitive, it’s hard to have a big sales company as your marketing partner. And I think attorneys really appreciate the sort of boutique, agile, nimble companies that can make changes and adjustments and optimizations quickly that aren’t just going to pass you off to a junior account manager and use the same plan of attack as they are with other firms. It just doesn’t work that way, and it’s too competitive. So yeah, I think that’s really what ultimately caused me to want to go out on my own, and be able to provide high quality leads and cases for attorneys and do it without a lot of the red tape and all the other things that kind of come with some of these massive sales and marketing organizations that just don’t always have the law firm’s best interest in mind.
Chris Dreyer:
And I, what I’m hearing is, yeah, it’s that moral code. And probably you had this deeply ingrained in you and you wanted to compete and be the best at something. And when you see someone that’s doing average work and there’s a lot of churn, even though they’re successful at kinda the moral code kind of triggers some things there.
Steve Ginsberg:
Absolutely.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And I also want to highlight you have personal injury. Marketing specifically, one of the reasons why I really wanted to have you on this show is you’ve been doing pay-per-click for law firms for what… 15 years? And we’re really going to address some of the things that, that you’ve developed in regards to your skillset, to be able to generate a better ROI because of that experience. But, um, before we dive into some of the granular details, what are, let’s just start really high level, what are some of the benefits of personal injury law firm using pay-per-click?
Steve Ginsberg:
When you market on Google, you’re essentially investing to line up, if you will, in front of people that are actively looking for your services. And so SEO obviously takes time and it takes effort and once you start ranking the way that you rank your law firm clients, it becomes very residual and it can be a massive ROI. I think with pay-per-click a lot of times you hear that you can sort bump the line in some ways and jump to the top of Google, but there’s a lot of moving parts to it. But yeah, I think just generally speaking, really since the Yellow Page days, there’s really no other inbound marketing channel that’s as direct response as people that are searching… we used to say, even in the phone book days, they’re searching with their wallets open, right. They’re looking to buy. Obviously, you know, PI is contingency based, so they’re not coming out of pocket with a retainer, but yeah, you’re basically paying for warm leads.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And I think that’s why it’s so powerful in that Google’s whole revenue model, they have a lot of intent, hiring intent, versus branding plays and all those things are great.
Steve Ginsberg:
Right. I’ve heard even recently, within the last month I was on a call with a client and they were like, well, isn’t, pay-per-click kind of just set it up and you’re good to go and I don’t really need a deep expertise here? And I’m like, well, maybe if you’re in a non-competitive market where you can actually, you know, even if you make some mistakes, still generate the ROI. But you’ve got to really know your stuff when it comes to personal injury marketing, because I’ve seen prices anywhere from 300 to 600 dollars a click for auto accident queries.
Chris Dreyer:SO WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF WORKING WITH A PROFESSIONAL AGENCY AND EXPERT LIKE YOURSELF VERSUS TRYING TO DO IT IN-HOUSE YOURSELF?
Steve Ginsberg:
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think it’s really part of the brilliance of Google in a lot of ways, right? I mean, the reason that last year they did 167 billion or something from, just from ad revenue and one of the reasons so many businesses invest a big portion of their budget onto Google is because Google makes it easy for anybody to set up an account, to put your credit card on Google, to maybe bid on a few keywords, right, a few ads. The fact that it’s a self-serve platform, I think that encourages a lot of people to test out Google ads. And yeah, you have some firms out there that try and run campaigns on their own. So, so on one hand, can you potentially run pay-per-click campaigns and manage and optimize them in-house for yourself? You certainly can. But in firms that I’ve seen successfully successful doing it in house, usually have a team of folks because there’s just, there’s so many moving parts. The easy part is setting up the campaigns pick and a handful… car accident, lawyer, for example, auto accident attorney…obviously those bottom of the funnel, low hanging fruit keywords, if you will. Really, the hard part is not setting a high bid on car accident lawyer, but you know, one of the many moving parts with really getting the most out of your PPC budget is, well, Hey, you have to avoid bidding wars, right? Because, you’re right, some of the markets where you get one or two or three guys that are just going to outbid each other, and then suddenly you’re paying, you could be paying a couple hundred dollars more just to get a click. So, avoiding bidding wars is a big part of it, but then the testing and managing keywords testing different match types, I think, um, I mean, there’s a lot of nuance, but the overall keyword strategy needs to be a lot more comprehensive and blended. The difficult and challenging part with it is really, um, obviously testing and seeing what works for every single firm in their markets. But then getting the conversion data and trying to really optimize bids and budget on not just the keywords that are driving traffic, but the ones that are making the phone ring. And then you take it a step further, which is probably a separate conversation because not every law firm uses CRM, but looking at the quality of the lead and we may be able to generate leads at a low cost, but are they the type of leads you want?
Chris Dreyer:
How much should I spend is the biggest question most personal injury attorneys have when it comes to both ads and lead generation. Most people don’t have an unlimited budget, so I wanted to know what Steve would do to get the maximum bang out of the proverbial buck.
Steve Ginsberg:
We were just looking at some campaigns last week of a client and partner of yours, and they were taking the approach of bidding really low, but that’s kind of what we call bottom fishing because yeah, on one hand, it’s good, you want to obviously try and maximize the budget and get as many leads as you can for the budget. But I think one of the tricky things with PI, and this is where the bid management really comes into play is if you’re bidding too low for personal injury searches and your ad is too far down the page… like, if you’re below the fold and you’re not in those top spots, oftentimes you’re going to get people that find by the time they get to your website or landing page, they may have already reached out to two or three or four or five other attorneys who told them you don’t have a case. And so there’s a fine line between bidding low enough to be able to maximize your CPL and CPA, and bidding aggressively enough on the right keyword variations to degenerate… you know, sometimes it’s worth paying a little bit more per click or per lead, if it’s going to be a higher quality case and you can convert those. And then the other side of the argument really is how is your conversion rate on your website or your landing pages? Are you doing what you can to maximize that traffic? It’s not just about keyword and bid management and getting the right traffic at the right cost, it’s about converting those visitors. And there’s a whole host of other things that go into it, but that would be, yeah, I guess that would be my response to can attorneys try and manage pay-per-click in house. They certainly can, but it’s really challenging. And you know, we always say Google or our first employee has been with me about 10 years , and he always says, Google will eat your wallet if you’re not very careful. And it’s true. Google is constantly making changes in any evolving their platform and the features and functionality in there where if you’re not really meticulous and careful and if you’re not constantly split testing and trying to keep up with Google, then yeah, then you can spend and waste a lot of money really quickly if you don’t have all your ducks in a row, for sure.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, let’s jump right in. And you really took it high level right at the beginning and I love it because I know many of our users listening are top attorneys, they’re elite personal injury attorneys, they’ve been in the game, they’ve experimented with pay-per-click, maybe they haven’t found the right agency or the right person, but it’s definitely a good channel if you work with the right partner. And there’s a few things that you mentioned as it specifically relates to the optimization of campaign, the ad copy. Right? So you got to have copywriting skills, the landing pages. So you’ve got to have designer dev with some creative components, you’ve got to have good UX, so you gotta have a CRO type person. Then you gotta have daily management because if you just set a bid, you get in these auction wars, these auction battles, and you can overpay. So there has to be daily management there, and there’s all kinds of management. Let’s talk specifically about the conversion side of things. So, let’s just jump right into high-level what makes a good landing page for pay-per-click?
Steve Ginsberg:
Yeah, that’s a good question. Well, there’s a lot of elements of a page which have been proven to convert. And I think, let me say this just design is typically subjective, right? You may like one thing I may the way something looks, but with landing page design and with web development and UX user experience, there’s data, right? There’s statistics. There’s been AB testing now for many years to where there’s proven empirical evidence that shows certain elements of a website or a landing page or a mobile site have been proven to convert. So, I would say it’s less is often more with personal injury are on the landing page side. I think obviously on the SEO side, you need more content, you need to build more links, you need to be the subject matter expert in the authority on personal injury. But with pay-per-click I think because you’re paying to drive that visitor there, and I think also because with personal injury, because it’s contingency based and they’re not asking for money up front, I think that allows for personal injury firms to have more of the less is more approach to where you don’t need navigation and menu bars to 100 other pages on your site. If somebody’s Googling, looking for a for a slip and fall at attorney, you obviously want to drive them to a page on the attorney’s site that speaks to slip and fall. But, oftentimes less content is more because the goal is to get them to call, right? The goal is to get them to convert, to call, to fill out a form, a to live chat if you’re using live chat.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, and Steve, I just wanted to highlight that for our audience, so the optimization techniques for pay-per-click are directly contradictory to SEO. With SEO, you want long form content, you want these really robust pages that answer tons of questions, internally links to all these pages to get Google, to crawl the page and to rank it for multiple keywords. Pay-per-click, you literally want a contact form. If you can get them just to go to the contact form and you have maybe just a little bit of copy to entice them to go through. I mean, that’s the difference. So, a lot of times they’re like, well, should I just do pay-per-click and drive it to my SEO landing pages? The answer is empirically no, you should not, because the strategies of how you would optimize the landing page for SEO are completely different to pay-per-click I just want to jump in there because I get that question a lot.
Steve Ginsberg:
No, I’m sure you do. Yeah. A hundred percent it’s um, yeah, it really is. It’s quite the opposite in a lot of ways. So yeah, so less is more, I’m trying to drive that call to action. We always shoot for the phone call. First we try and push the phone call the most. If we had to rank them, I would say phone call, then live chat, then the web form submission. Not that there can’t be really quality form leads, but usually if it gets somebody on the phone, they have a higher likelihood of being a potential client. But, so, so yeah, a lot of it’s just focusing on the call to action. I think the messaging and I hate to keep going back to the Yellow Page days, but think about a Yellow Page ad, right? A rectangular ad or a double ad. Those were really the first landing pages, right? You have your headline, your sub headline and your social proof, which, whether it’s case results, testimonials your accreditations and awards, things like that are super important. And usually with web marketing, and I think specifically with mobile, because mobile 70, 80 percent-ish of all Google searches now are happening on a phone. So the way that you have to optimize a mobile landing page versus a desktop and tablet, landing pages different. Right? And so the above the fold, right where you land on mobile is a lot less real estate than it is on a desktop version or a laptop version. So again, there’s a lot of moving parts, but the less is more, I think, just that instant credibility. A lot of the conversion process, I forget what the number is, but I think you might know this, but I think they say you have like what, like 0.6 seconds there’s 0.2 seconds or something when you land, when somebody lands on a website and it’s usually subconscious, right? It’s that first interaction, that first glimpse of this site, and you have to convey that credibility, which is like having things above the fold, like whatever it is, social proof, accreditations and testimonials, they need to feel right away that, okay, this is obviously a credible firm because people can bounce really quickly. They can leave a website or landing page and in a second, right. The back buttons right there. So you have to capture their attention quickly, but I think just high level, yeah, you don’t want to inundate them with content, right? You want to give them enough content that it shows them that the firm is reputable and that they can help them, but not overwhelm them with content to where they kind of have that cognitive overload to where they may just leave.
Chris Dreyer:
No, absolutely. That’s a million takeaways there in terms of optimization. So I kind of want to transition over to something that’s a little bit more, I guess, controversial, but it’s very prevalent in the PI space. So when you see individuals bidding on competitors names, if you’re an individual fear, personal injury law firm, what, if anything, can you do to prevent your competitors from bidding on your name?
Steve Ginsberg:
Yeah. Great question. Um, the short answer is if your firm name is trademarked and part of the trademark database, Google won’t allow other competitors to bid on your name, but obviously most PR firms don’t have their names trademark. So the real answer is, yeah, because your firm name is a keyword, it does allow other competitors to bid on your name. I think the reason that you see a lot of attorneys doing it, and usually what they’re doing it with other personal injury firms in their market who maybe they invest a lot in TV and things like that. And so you’re sort of piggybacking off of another firms, advertising and people that are going on Google searching for them. And I think with PI, whether it’s the demographic of an average personal injury client or whatever the factors are. Oftentimes even if someone’s seen a TV ad for years, by the time they get to Google and they don’t always know, sometimes they’re someone bids on someone’s name and they click and they call, I mean, I’ve listened to phone calls where PI attorneys have signed up cases of people that Googled another firm and they ended up calling and they don’t even realize, I don’t think, that they’re actually not calling that firm. And then sometimes they tell them, well, this isn’t for me, and then sometimes they’ll hang up, but sometimes they start to build the rapport with the intake person and it can work. Obviously the downside is it can upset people, right? It can cause you know, other attorneys to say, well, why is this guy bidding on my name? I’m going to bid on his name and I’m going to maybe click on his ad or whatever it might be. So, it’s a personal preference. Not every attorney is comfortable doing it. Um, But it’s one of those things where, especially with his competitive general MVA motor vehicle accident related keywords can be oftentimes bidding on competitor names can work, but it’s gotta be the right situation. And usually if you’re going to test it, it makes sense to test it on a firm’s name who really does a lot of other advertising to well to where they’re granted enough in their local market. That it makes sense to, to try.
Chris Dreyer:
You know, I have a really funny story. Back in the day I was working at an agency in St. Louis and we had, it was the Habush vs. Cannon case, and I was the pay-per-click specialist back in the day, because that was one of the first cases where the individual is bidding on the other firm’s name. Yeah, and that kind of set the precedent for this whole strategy and it was really interesting. At the time I was scared out of my mind. I thought I was going to get sued and go bankrupt. But, um, anyways, that was really interesting, but I wanted to bring up this tactic. I saw an interesting strategy by a firm, one of the largest personal injury firms in the US, that said that subject email said alleged use of X, which was their firm name in Google ads. It came to our attention that firms are bidding on our name. Can you please add our name as a negative keyword? So it came across when I read the email, like they were essentially telling the individual that they needed to stop bidding on their name, but they weren’t actually indicating they weren’t directing it, it was kind of a way alleged use, but it was indicated brought to our attention. Um, but it was a kind of a clever method to be proactive, to get other firms in your market to, to add their firm as a negative keyword. Can you kind of speak on this a bit?
Steve Ginsberg:
Yeah. I think in that case, especially if that firm, if it’s not a trademark name and there’s other people out there bidding on it, I think, um, yeah, I’ve seen people call an email or send a cease and desist and stop, even though they’re not technically breaking the rules if it’s not a trademark. But, that is interesting actually being proactive and asking them to not just stop bidding on it, but to add their keyword as a negative, just in case maybe somehow it’s a similar term, broad matches to that name. Maybe that from whoever it is, if they invest a lot into Google and PPC, SEO, TV, radio billboards, maybe that’s just something that they do to try and get people to stop, even though they technically can do it. Um, but yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of somebody actually suggesting to negate that their business name as a keyword, but it’s an interesting thought.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, it’s really interesting cause one of our clients got an email like that and forwarded to me, it’s like, hey, add this from as a negative keyword. So obviously it works. And another thing, I had a question, this is just me personally. Google recommends testing three ads at a time, but to me that never made sense because every time I look at the data, there’s like one ad that gets 10 impressions and they is quit showing it and I’m like, well, really you didn’t give that ad enough impressions to actually even get enough data to understand if it was something that could convert. So is this just another thing of Google, trying to get you to spend your money versus doing the two ad setup or what’s kind of your thought process on just the ad copy?
Steve Ginsberg:
So the amount that an attorney or any business pays per click on Google, it’s dictated mainly by two things. Your bid, obviously. What you’re willing to pay per click and then your quality score. So, Google has what they call a quality score for every keyword that you’re managing in your ad-words campaigns that’s a number out of 10. The higher your quality score is, the lower that you actually have to pay per click. What determines your quality score? There’s several factors, but the main two would be your click-through rate. Right? Google obviously wants to show ads in the top spots that they know are getting traffic and making Google money, and then the relevance of the ad and the landing page to that query. So, Google made it official it’s guess it’s been maybe about a year and a half ago, because it used to be where you could run one or two ads in an ad group and test it and it didn’t have an impact on your quality score. Google says, now that if you don’t have three ads minimum in an ad group that it’ll actually dock your quality score. So, it’s become part of the quality score algorithm. So, if an attorney has an agency that’s running their pay-per-click campaigns definitely suggest that. But to your point, you brought up what I think is maybe it even more important point they’ll start to serve the ad more that gets more traffic, right? They don’t care about the conversions, they want to show the ad that they’re seeing get more traffic. But the default setting in Google ads is to steer the budget towards higher performing ads. So the right thing to do because of what you just said, if you don’t set the ad to rotate indefinitely at the beginning, where they do a straight split test or an ABC test with all the ads. Then Google will automatically, even if it’s a couple of days in, and it’s a tiny sample size and they see that one ad got a few more clicks, they’ll immediately start steering the budget there. And a lot of people make that mistake. Google says, hey, optimize your ads for the ones that get the most traffic and people try and do it that way but you have to rotate them indefinitely to start to get a real sample size and to get statistical significance on what ads are really working better, not the ones that Google is just gonna steer budget to right away.
Chris Dreyer:
Couldn’t agree more. And I just kind of want to hear your opinion on that, and I didn’t know that about the three ads and how it affected the quality score. So, I was kind of being stubborn, wanting to do to 50% of the traffic goes to one 50% of the traffic goes to the other, you got the winner. The winner stays and then you’re just a new challenger, almost like a restaurant does a burger challenge.
Steve Ginsberg:
Yeah. The AB test. And now you got to ABC tested and you have to adhere to the Google gods and play their game and do it the right way. But obviously if out of those three ads, if for one of them the click-through rate and the conversion rate is lower than obviously you want to swap that out with another one and try and continue to beat the performance of the other ads. But yeah, that’s something that’s maybe a year and a half old that is supposedly a Google doesn’t actually document the quality score. It’s part of, it’s always a little bit ambiguous, but our reps have told us that’s part of the algorithm. Now that you have to have three ads. If you want to have the best chance of getting a good quality score and a lower cost per click.
Chris Dreyer:AND I WANT TO HIGHLIGHT JUST A COUPLE OF THINGS. WHEN YOU’RE SAYING YOUR REPS, YOU’RE SAYING YOUR ACTUAL GOOGLE ASSIGNED REPS TO YOUR AGENCY, RIGHT? AND THAT’S ONE THING THAT WE NEED TO HIGHLIGHT FOR OUR AUDIENCES BECAUSE WHEN YOU DO MANAGE A CERTAIN BUDGET, YOU’LL HAVE A GOOGLE ASSIGNED REP THAT HELPS YOU OPTIMIZE ACCOUNTS AND GIVE ADVICE AND LET YOU KNOW ABOUT NEW PRODUCTS THAT AFFECT THE GOOGLE ADS PLATFORM. SO IT’S A BIG ADVANTAGE THAT SOME INDIVIDUALS JUST DON’T HAVE. SO I WANTED TO HIGHLIGHT THAT. AND THEN I WANTED TO JUST REALLY BRIEFLY JUST KIND OF RAPID FIRE ON PERSONAL INJURY, NEGATIVE KEYWORDS. WHAT’S JUST LIKE THE BRIEF 80, 20, WHAT ARE SOME NEGATIVE KEYWORDS THEY WOULD WANT TO START WITH? AND LET’S LET ME PICK UP, LET ME HELP YOU OUT HERE. LET’S SAY ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.
Steve Ginsberg:
PI. Well, so from running PI campaigns for a long time, we have a library of hundreds and hundreds of negatives that are in there from different markets. Man. I mean, pro bono is always one that comes to mind, even though with PI it’s contingency based so they’re not paying, but we typically make pro bono negative. Insurance. You have to be careful with the word insurance. And so a lot of times you get people Googling about maybe their auto insurance or what have I be and there’s a lot of nuance there because we actually do bid on, in some cases, insurance company names, right, the actual names, especially insurance companies that tend to have bigger policies with other keyword modifiers, but oftentimes car insurance, things like that you want to usually make negative in certain ad groups. There’s so many and a lot of times it’s competitors kind of per our conversation. Just now you get a lot of people that, you know, if they’re not, if that’s not part of their strategy, if a PI firm in St. Louis, if somebody Googles Brown and Crouppen Personal Injury Lawyers St. Louis, you may want to make Brown and Crouppen negative if you’re not Brown and Crouppen and you’re just trying to get people that are looking for attorneys. So competitor names, but man, there’s a lot, but really every, because every market’s different. That’s part of optimizing a campaign is looking at the queries, looking at the search term data and adding negative keywords as they arise as you start to see them.
Chris Dreyer:
Right. That’s great. I just briefly wanted to touch on that because I think that’s an important strategy to optimize a successful personal injury campaign. So, coming to a close here, Steve, we have a three for three segment. It’s just a quick fire round, so go with your gut. If someone asks you three quick questions, which habit contributes to your success.
Steve Ginsberg:
I would say consistently learning, right? Our industry changes so much, like I’m constantly reading, watching podcasts, watching YouTube videos, subscribing to all the Google blogs, just kind of like you probably follow Matt Cutts and some of the SEO guys. I mean, a lot of it is really reading a lot and staying on top of trends and changes in the industry. So, I think constantly learning and trying to make ourselves better and always trying to remain that subject matter expert. I think I would say that’s probably the habit that comes to mind.
Chris Dreyer:
Cool. And, uh, which entrepreneur do you admire the most?
Steve Ginsberg:
Am I allowed to say you?
Chris Dreyer:
No, don’t use me!
Steve Ginsberg:
I mean, I look up to guys like Steve jobs and Elon Musk and people like that, but if I’m being honest and again, it may sound cheesy, I would say my dad and my grandfather. In fact, we had a family business and my grandfather started it, my dad and his brothers ran it for 35, 40 years, and they just, they’ve always been an inspiration to me. They took an approach and this was 40 50 years ago, and so the name of the business was CWC, it was Closeouts With Class. So they used to go and they would go to the trade shows, right, the big ASD show in Vegas. And they would go to these shows and there’d be all these millions of people there in these booths. And my dad and my grandpa would show up in tuxedos, they would wear tuxes just to be goofy and to, you know… but for them it was always about integrity and class and treating customers with the utmost respect that, you know, I hope that’s not too cheesy.
Chris Dreyer:
Oh, I love that. I love that. That’s wonderful. Love that. And then last question here, if you had to recommend one business book, which would it be and why?
Steve Ginsberg:
But my first dog goes to the original Perry Marshall Google ads book, but that’s probably a, I wouldn’t call that a high level business book, that’s one, I’ve read a bunch of times. It’s a. Google ads specific book. God I, what was the…, The 22 Immutable Laws of >marketing? That was a really good one. That was an old school book, but I think still has a lot of, um, a lot of applications today. I love that Elon Musk book; those are the few that come to mind.
Chris Dreyer:
So many great tips from Steve today. Google ads can be overwhelming for some people because it really is as individual as your firm and your goals. The best results come from using a data driven approach, which means not just collecting information, but also the very difficult job of analyzing and attributing that data. There’s always something more to learn. And I love speaking to experts like Steve, who are so generous with sharing their knowledge. You’ve been listening to The Rankings Podcast. I’m Chris Dreyer. A huge thanks to Steve Ginsberg for all of that actionable advice and you can find more info as always in the show notes. And we want to hear from you. How’s the new ABC testing working out for your ad campaigns? Drop us a review and let us know about your experiences. Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you next time.
