PPC

If you’re a local business you need to install the Facebook pixel on your website. It’s a piece of code you insert on your site. It tracks who goes to your site and if installed, you can show ads to these visitors later on. Even if you don’t run Facebook ads at the moment, install it so it can start gathering data. Plus it’s free!

In the video below, I’m going to go over how to install the Facebook pixel on your website. And then below the video you’ll find a step by step.

Links: (Facebook Pixel Helper, Google Tag Manager Training)

Below I’ll explain the following:

• What is the Facebook pixel and how does it work?
• STEP 1: How To Grab The Facebook Pixel
• STEP 2: Install And Test The Facebook Pixel On Your Website
• STEP 3: Test Your Pixel With Facebook Pixel Helper

Let’s get started.

What is the Facebook pixel and how does it work?

The FB pixel is a piece of code that you put on your site and it tracks if someone visited your site or not. You’ve all had this happen to you before:

• You check out a product on Amazon and don’t buy it.
• Later on you jump on Facebook to (waste) spend some time and see an ad for that product. Creepy!
• Then you head over to weather.com and see an ad for that product again! Really creepy (the second round of creepiness is from Google’s pixel)!

Yes this is creepy but very effective. It’s called remarketing (or some call it retargeting). It is a way to advertise to someone after they have visited your website. They went to your website one time, didn’t turn into a customer or lead so you then show them ads to come back.

The reason this is so powerful is that they raised their hand and have interest in your local business. Yeah they didn’t turn into a customer the first time around but that doesn’t mean they won’t the 2nd, 3rd or X time around.

The crazy thing is it’s so easy to implement. I worked for 2 digital marketing agencies in the past and it blew my mind that we didn’t set this up for each and every client. But that’s another story for another day. 🙂

If you’re running FB ads and don’t have this pixel installed then you could really be missing out on getting in front of those interested people again and again. It takes around 6-8 touches before someone makes a decision and converts to a customer. 6-8! (salesforce.com)

And yes big brands with huge budgets like Amazon do this but there is no reason you can’t do this for your local business.

STEP 1: How To Grab The Facebook Pixel

You need 2 things to advertise on FB, a business page and an ads account. I’m not going to lay all of that out but here are 2 links to help you get started:

Facebook business page setup
FB ads account setup

Let’s navigate to where the pixel is:

1. Go to Facebook Ads Manager and if you see 2 accounts, pick the one you want to work in. You can also get to ads manager by going here:

2. You’re now in Ads Manager.
– Click the 3 lines in the top left hand corner.
– Hover over All Tools.
– Click on Pixels.

3. Let’s grab the pixel code.
– Click on Create Pixel and name it.

4. You’ll see a popup window and click on Manually Install Pixel Code Yourself.

5. Scroll down to Step 2 and copy and paste the code into a notepad file.

STEP 2: Install And Test The Facebook Pixel On Your Website

Now that we have the code, let’s install it on your site. I use Google Tag Manager for this. Also with a bit of warning, if you don’t know how to jump into your site and touch the code, you may need to have a developer do this. It’s very easy to do. If you pay a developer don’t pay for more than 1hr of time.

You can manually install the code on your website but I recommend using Google Tag Manager to do this. Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a free tool from Google and it manages all of your pixels and tracking code. It’s very easy to use once installed. That way when you want to add Google or Bing’s pixel code, you just pop it into GTM.

Installing The Pixel With Google Tag Manager
Let’s jump in and do this.

1. Sign up for Google Tag Manger here https://www.google.com/analytics/tag-manager/.
2. Type in your Account Name and click continue.
3. Enter your website URL and click Web. Click Create and read their terms.
4. Copy the code to a notepad file and save it to your computer.

The first piece of code needs to go into the head of your website on all pages. The second piece needs to go into the body of your site on all pages.

Insider Tip: Like I mentioned above, if you need to pay someone to install this on your site it should take less than an hour of time. Don’t get overcharged.

WordPress users: I use WordPress for all of my websites. I insert the code manually but you can give this plugin a shot, https://wordpress.org/plugins/duracelltomi-google-tag-manager/.

HTML & other sites: If you use another platform other than WordPress ask your platforms support team if they have an add-on for Google Tag Manager. A lot of them do! For any HTML site users out there, just copy and paste the first snippet of code in between the head on each page and then right under the body tag for the second piece of code.

Now that you have the code placed, let’s setup the FB pixel inside of GTM.

1. Click on Tags and then the red New button.
2. Click inside the Tag Configuration box and then click on Custom HTML.
3. Pull up your FB pixel code and pop it into the Custom HTML box.
4. Click on the Trigger box below your Tag Configuration box and click on All Pages.
5. Name it by clicking inside the Untitled Tag field. I usually name mine FB pixel.
6. Click the blue Save button.
7. Last step is to publish your new tag on your website. Click the red Publish button and follow the publish steps.

To see that your new beautiful pixel, click on Workspace and then Tags. You’ll see the tag here.

STEP 3: Test Your Pixel With Facebook Pixel Helper

I HIGHLY recommend you test your FB pixel with the free Google Chrome Extension. Follow these steps to make sure your pixel looks good from Facebook’s eyes.

1. If you don’t have Google Chrome download it here https://google.com/chrome/.
2. Then install the FB Pixel Helper.
3. Pull up your website in Chrome and look for the Facebook Pixel Helper icon. If your pixel is installed correctly it should look like this:

If you’re green congrats! You are now collecting an audience of visitors on your website. I recommend visiting a few pages on your website to make sure the pixel helper icon is green on all of them.

Next up, let’s create a custom audience. Whoop!

Setting Up Custom Audiences In Facebook

You’re a rockstar. You grabbed your pixel, installed Google Tag Manager, popped your FB pixel in and tested it. Now we’ll setup a custom audience inside of Facebook. A custom audience is an audience we will create inside of Facebook that you can now advertise to. The audience we’ll create are users that visited your website.

So it goes:

– Visitor goes to your site.
– FB pixel tracks that they went there.
– It then adds that visitor to your audience in FB.
– You can then show FB ads to that visitor.

1. Jump back into Facebook and go to your Ads Manager, https://www.facebook.com/ads/manager.
2. Expand the menu and click on Audiences.
3. Click on Create Audience and select Custom Audience.
4. Select Website Traffic.
5. There are some more advanced things we can do here like exclude certain pages on your site or exclude conversions but for this training we will collect all of your website visitors. A few things:

– Make sure your pixel is selected.
– Keep at it 30 or bump the days out to 180.
– Name your Audience. All Website Traffic is a good name.

6. Now click the Create Audience button and then Done.

And that’s it! It will take some time for Facebook to populate your audience. You might see Audience too small or Populating. That’s totally fine. Come back in an hour or so and you should see something.

What exactly is happening?
Let me dive a little deeper into this. Your site now has the Facebook pixel installed so if someone visits your website, FB is tracking that visit. If they can match that person to a profile on Facebook then they will be put into your audience. This audience will build overtime so if it’s too small to show right now, don’t worry. It will build if you get website traffic.

Now if you get zero website visits a day to your site it will take longer. BUT if you are running Facebook ads then those users that click on your ad and go to your site, will be put into this audience. The time-frame we set is 30 days (or 180 if you bumped it out). What this means is that visitor will stay in your custom audience for X days. So after X days, they will no longer be in the audience and you can’t show ads to them.

Even if you aren’t running ads, install the pixel. Because if you do decide to run ads, you’ll be ready to go!

Need help or any questions? Let me know in the comments below!

I come from a heavy SEO background but love PPC and have been using it more lately. I’ve worked for a PPC only agency and really learned what to do (and not to do) with clients. Recently I have changed my Google Ads strategy because I think people over complicate things. Like WAY over complicate things. Things like pivot tables (barf), thousands of keywords, dozens of ads, the list goes on. To make a campaign work on Google Ads you need a few simple things.

You need the perfect:

• Keyword
• Ad & Ad Extensions
• Landing Page
• Offer
• Tracking
• Negative Keywords

If you have the ingredients above, you will get a higher quality score, lower CPC and in the end, a lower cost per conversion. Most of my clients are local type businesses. I’ve worked on ecommerce campaigns and the main difference and issue is not having control over the landing page. So when reading this, keep in mind that I’m talking non-ecommerce businesses but it can certainly be used for ecommerce too.

Keywords

This isn’t meant to be a keyword 101 type article so I assume you know how to use the keyword planner in Google Ads. When working with a client I jump into the keyword tool and do some research. I make a list of keywords that I think will work. Buyer type keywords. With local businesses sometimes it’s limited but I come up with a group of about 10 keywords.

I then break them up into SKAGs (single keyword ad groups). So it looks something like this:

If some of the keywords are very, very similar I will include them in the same ad group. But I start with only a few ad groups and this is where I think people go wrong. They build a massive campaign and it’s too damn hard to manage it. Start small and simple, then build it out.

For the match type I include exact, phrase and broad match modifier for each keyword. I know there are reasons to break that out even more but this works for me.

Ad & Ad Extensions

Since my ad groups are based around a single keyword or very limited keywords my ads are going to be super relevant. Yes I have broad match modifier keywords in there so searches are going to be more broad but they will still be based around that keyword.

In my ad I include the keyword in the headline and I only create 2 ads. YES 2! Not 3, not 10. Two. I create the same exact ad but with a different second headline. Below are two examples of ads:

The reason I do this is that if you create 2 completely separate ads, with different headlines and descriptions then you will not know what to test. Sounds simple but when I worked for one agency we would create 3 completely different ads. And we never knew what was working/not working.

From day one I use the call and callout ad extensions. I will use sitelinks too but only if my landing page includes multiple links.

So let’s recap.

You create a group of about 5-15 keywords and group them into very tight ad groups. Then you create 2 ads for each ad group with only a different second headline for each ad. Also you come up with some call outs to use.

Landing Page

This is where it all falls apart for most agencies or SMBs out there. They build these HUGE campaigns and do not build landing pages for their clients. Now I get it, some clients don’t want to use a landing page. So sometimes there is nothing you can do but you should 100% use them or at least tell your client that we will start with your website, but then we should split test a landing page down the road.

I’m not talking about leadpages or clickfunnels. Good tools but a landing page should not look like a landing page. It should look like a website. I build custom HTML landing pages for my clients. We design them so it looks like a regular website. They have a navbar like a website and you would never know it’s a landing page.

Here’s an example of one:

Again I’m not going to point out each element but phone number that’s clickable, forms and CTA’s all over the place. But blend them in! Don’t be obnoxious.

The Offer

This is SO darn important. Everything can be perfect but if the offer stinks, the potential customer will continue on to another site. Even something as simple as a free consultation could be a good offer. It doesn’t sound sexy but with the correct copy, you can make it sound better. And it all depends on the niche.

Also make the offer above the fold so someone doesn’t have to scroll down to see it. I’ll usually include a part of the offer in the ad too. So if it’s a free consultation you can end the ad with, Call Today For A Free Consultation!

Another tip is to look at your competition, or even similar businesses in completely different areas that aren’t local competitors. If I’m working for an attorney in Boston I’ll search to see what attorneys in San Diego are doing. I’ll also look at their competitors but you’ll get a lot of good ideas from non-local competitors in different locations. Look at the ones that are spending money on Google Ads. I don’t suggest you click on their ad but you can manually type in the URL to see their website and offer.

Tracking & Pixels

Your tracking needs to be dead on. Both agencies I worked for back in the day didn’t care enough to setup tracking and that’s a shame. How can you run a PPC campaign and not track it? Doesn’t make sense to me. And while you are setting up tracking you might as well setup the Google and Facebook pixel so that you can setup retargeting ads. If you’re not running retargeting ads right now that’s ok, but setup the pixels so they are collecting data from day one.

Here are the tools I use and how I set it all up.

1. My first step is to setup Google Tag Manager. It’s a dream to setup tracking and pixels with GTM.
2. Then I’ll setup Google Analytics (that is if they don’t have it setup already). If they do I have them add me as an admin of the account.
3. I then make sure they have thank you pages for their forms. All of my landing pages already have ty pages so that’s not a problem.
4. Then I create a goal for each thank you page in GA.
5. Then I use CallRail (my go-to call tracking tool) and setup the client with call tracking. They have instructions on how to setup a goal inside of Google Analytics. You can find it here. You’ll also have to insert the code from CallRail onto your site but now that you have GTM setup, it’s simple.
6. I then import all of these goals (forms goals and call tracking goals) into Google Ads so that they show as conversions.
7. My final step is grab the Google Ads pixel and the Facebook Ads pixel and set them up in GTM.

BAM! Tracking and pixels are setup. It baffles me that so many digital agencies won’t take the 1-2hrs that this takes to get it setup for every client.

Negative Keywords

So your campaign is running and things are looking ok. But you are not getting the conversions you want. You need to add negative keywords to your campaign. These are keywords that your ads WON’T show for. So if you are an attorney in Tampa you do not want to show for an attorney in Dallas. So you would negate the term Dallas.

You wouldn’t think this happens often but people type in weird stuff. Trust me! I like to go into a campaign once a week and add negative keywords. Don’t overthink this, just do it.

And there you go! Follow these steps and your campaign will kick butt.

If you run an agency and work with local clients, I can bet your clients have been pitched Yelp advertising at some point. When a small business owner hears the word Yelp, most of them have horrible thoughts about the company and you might hear a few curses about their experience. My client recently came to me and was pitched by Yelp. He asked if I should do it.

My response was that you need to test a traffic source in order to see if it works. It could be Facebook ads, Google ads, Yelp ads, banner ads, any type of ads. You should put some money aside and give it a good test for a few months. He had a few extra bucks to test and decided to give it a try.

WARNING: This is just one company’s experience with Yelp ads. It could be completely different for your clients. My point of this post is to give you a complete Yelp advertising review and maybe you can get a few helpful tips if your client decides to advertise with Yelp.

If your client hasn’t been pitched by Yelp and you don’t know how their advertising program works, it’s basically a PPC campaign for their platform. So they toss an ad up, and then if someone types in “austin electrician” or “austin dentist” or any business into Yelp, their ad will appear at the top in Yelp. When a user clicks on that ad, it goes to their Yelp profile page.

The Contract

I’m not big into contracts. With my review software ReviewRail it’s month to month. With client work it’s month to month. I don’t like contracts myself so don’t use them. Yelp does. They lock you into a 12 month contract. When I first spoke with my client about Yelp I told him to get a shorter contract. You don’t need 12 months to see if paid traffic isn’t working. I said shoot for a 3 month contract and at most a 6 month. He’s pretty darn good at bargaining and got it down to 6 months.

Yelp’s Advertising Prices

The deal they gave him was about $450 per month in ad spend plus a $150/mo coupon for more clicks. So a total of $600/mo would yield around 120 clicks. The cpc (click cost) was around $5.00. Like any type of paid ads the demand in an area will bring up the price. The coupon made me feel a bit weary about the whole deal but hey, if they were going to give him more of an ad spend, great!

The other part of my clients deal was that he would be able to upload a video to his Yelp profile and also he would get some CTA (call to action) buttons. I’ll explain how the video has been somewhat of a nightmare later on.

Tracking was a concern to me and I told him that we need to track this campaign. With a few thousand over a few months, we can get an idea if it’s working.

How We’re Tracking Conversions

Tracking the campaign isn’t easy and I still haven’t fully figured out a solution. The way the campaign is working is that:

1. Someone views his Yelp ad on Yelp.
2. That ad brings them to his Yelp profile page.
3. They either take an action or continue on to his website.
4. They can also click to get a quote on his Yelp listing which is an internal Yelp form.

To track phone calls we have a seperate phone number for his Yelp page. For all you SEO pros, I know. The phone number should be consistent with his other citations but it’s fine. We’re using CallRail and we can filter the Yelp number in CallRail to listen to the quality of the calls. The problem is that if someone follows this path:

Yelp Ad -> Yelp Profile Page -> Website -> Conversion

there is no way to distinguish paid Yelp traffic from organic Yelp traffic. Therefore we do not know if that conversion came from a Yelp ad.

I thought maybe adding a URL parameter would help but it doesn’t. Plus when someone clicks on their site link on their Yelp profile page, they are taken to a Yelp redirect page and then to their site.

Ahhhhhh! Yes very annoying that Yelp doesn’t have a solution for this. If you happen to have a solution to this problem please comment below.

My client emailed his Yelp rep and still hasn’t heard back about a solution. I will update this post if we get one.

The CTA Button

Included with his campaign was a call to action button on his profile page that directs the user to his website. We are directing them to a landing page created just for Yelp traffic. The CTA button does stand out on his page which is nice but again, it’s hard to track conversions from it. We do have his call tracking number in place and it’s listed on the CTA.

The Request a Quote Button

A paid listing also gets a Request a Quote button on the ad listing which you can see below.

This button goes to a Yelp form (image below) and by default, it will send the same quote request to other paid Yelp advertisers. I don’t like this. I get that it could be beneficial to the user to get a quote from more than one company, but I feel that isn’t fair to the advertiser. The least they could do is by default, deselect the other companies. And then if the potential customer wants more than one quote, they could tick the box to do so.

The Video (Sagga)

Also included with his campaign was the ability to add a video to his profile. Cool. I think that’s a nice feature. My client has a great video and all is good.

Except that it took them about 2 months to place the video on his page. It was supposed to go live within a few days after the campaign started. This isn’t a huge deal but it probably takes about 3 minutes to add that function to his account. There was a lot of back and forth with the Yelp rep about adding the video and getting it live.

Is his Yelp marketing campaign working?

This part is going to shock you. Short answer… yes!

From the date of this post the campaign has been running for about 2 months and they have spent around $800. Listening to the quality of their calls they have about 6 decent leads which isn’t bad. What I find interesting is a lot of his current customers use his Yelp page to call his business. I imagine they Google his business, go to his Yelp page since it ranks high and they call his “Yelp” number.

Here is a quick breakdown of his lead cost compared to Adwords in the same exact timeframe:

Yelp: 6 leads $133/lead (total ad spend $800)
Adwords: 12 leads @ $125/lead (total ad spend $1500)

There is more volume in Adwords but as you can see, Yelp ads aren’t doing all that bad. Plus they get a decent amount of Request a Quote leads. The problem is they are finding these leads aren’t that great. Out of 15-20 requests, they get 1 reply back which sucks.

The LTV of his customer is 10K+ so spending a hundred or even a few hundred on decent leads works for his business. Now if your clients LTV is $500 then Yelp ads might not work and I feel that’s why a lot of companies dislike them and their advertising platform. Plus it’s hard to track so I don’t think people really know what their true ROI is with Yelp ads.

Yelp Tips & Final Thoughts

If your client has some extra money to test different online tactics, I would give the Yelp marketing platform a try. Trust me, I don’t like saying that because I’m not the biggest fan of Yelp but if it works, then it’s a good investment. A few tips:

– Talk them down to at most a 6 month contract.
– Setup phone tracking at least. Unfortunately it’s hard to setup any other type of tracking.
– Ask if you can get a coupon thrown in .
– Listen to your calls to see the quality of your leads.

If you have any questions or comments, post them below.