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We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

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Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#81

Post by scottLobster »

shripadk wrote: post #43

Left a comment on the IndieHackers page. Keeping a copy here for those who aren't reading the comments section. I have noticed this a lot in various websites I have helped in ad campaigns. Their biggest problem is their landing page. Just like this article uses lots of jargons to explain simple concepts, their landing page reflects the same. For those of you wanting to know more about landing page optimization just w…

My go-to example is Robert DeNiro's line from The Irishmen: "You like steak? I deliver steak. I could deliver you steak."

Granted there was some mob subtext to that line but the world would be a better place if people strove for that level of simplicity in their messaging.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#82

Post by lmkg »

davedx wrote: post #76
dangerface wrote: post #53

Op had some good tactics but an ass backwards strategy. Should have let the agency do the thing they where paid to do. > Lesson #1: Test and trim keywords sets before hiring an agency to scale things This isn't how agencies work. You did the keyword research and testing yourself and then paid some one else to do it again. I work in an agency, I won't work with you if you do this, because you will get the same results…

Some great advice here, thanks for posting it. Regarding this: > ads don't dump to the top of your funnel they dump to landing pages designed to convert that demographic. What do you mean exactly? Isn't a landing page the top of the funnel by definition?

From the user's perspective, the funnel can have several stages before they even arrive at your website. E.g. becoming aware they have a problem, researching the problem in general and what approaches have been tried, deciding which type of approach is applicable them, comparing different products. An organic search is likely to be in one of the earlier phases, but a paid search campaign can target keywords indicative of later phases, as well as different value propositions.

This user-centric idea of a funnel is different than the website-centric view of the funnel where you start with a landing page and end with a lead form or purchase. The phrase "Customer Journey" usually gets bandied about to refer to the former, although it also often gets bandied about without referring to anything at all.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#83

Post by ryguytilidie »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #67
shripadk wrote: post #43

Left a comment on the IndieHackers page. Keeping a copy here for those who aren't reading the comments section. I have noticed this a lot in various websites I have helped in ad campaigns. Their biggest problem is their landing page. Just like this article uses lots of jargons to explain simple concepts, their landing page reflects the same. For those of you wanting to know more about landing page optimization just w…

> Don't get too fancy with your taglines. People don't have time to understand what you are saying. People don't like fancy terminologies except for what is popular. It's worse than that. And it's my pet peeve about many startup landing pages these days. It's not like people don't have time to understand - there's nothing there to understand ! "Full stack adaptive delivery" is a near-meaningless phrase. It can be con…

I do recruiting consulting and it blows my mind how every time I ask a startup how they differentiate from other startups and what specific advantages they want me to discuss, they give me a bunch of meaningless phrases. Its like founders are being taught a different language that they think provides value but makes no fucking sense.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#84

Post by gdubs »

threeseed wrote: post #23
StevenRayOrr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When doing my own writing, I try to remember a quotation from Kenneth Hudson's The Jargon of the Professions: > The best minds in any profession are never guilty of jargon, expect when they are very tired. Pedestrian minds are drawn towards it automatically and to the most frightening extent. Jargon, one could suggest, is the natural weapon of highly paid people with very little of any value to say. It is a sad and i…

The target audience is other founders. And so just like you wouldn't remove the jargon from a medical journal not sure why you would want to in this case.

In every field there’s usually a few brilliant minds who can boil complex ideas down to simple words. Even if your audience is very technical, they’ll still appreciate when a writer takes the effort to find the clearest way to say things, keeping the “jargon” to the bare minimum. The eraser is the writer’s friend.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#85

Post by roelschroeven »

mc32 wrote: post #77
TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't get too fancy with your taglines. People don't have time to understand what you are saying. People don't like fancy terminologies except for what is popular. It's worse than that. And it's my pet peeve about many startup landing pages these days. It's not like people don't have time to understand - there's nothing there to understand ! "Full stack adaptive delivery" is a near-meaningless phrase. It can be con…

Exactly this. So many times I have to spend ten minutes digging into what some of these companies actually do. It’s highly frustrating. Give some examples of what you do. Explain it in simple language. Don’t rely on conceptual language because it doesn’t tell me what your offering does.

I often resort to taking a look at the Wikipedia article about the company, if they have one, and usually that tells me in a few lines the no-nonsense version of what the company or product actually does.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#86

Post by chrshawkes »

What more companies should look into is YouTube advertising. You have many youtubers including myself who get paid from multi-billion dollar companies every month to deliver their message to a highly targeted niche market. It's a better alternative to Ad Sense and you'll get quadruple the impressions for a similar price. The landing page is what it is though, if it doesn't capture the customers attention, that's the fault of the company paying to advertise.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#87

Post by TeMPOraL »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #83
TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't get too fancy with your taglines. People don't have time to understand what you are saying. People don't like fancy terminologies except for what is popular. It's worse than that. And it's my pet peeve about many startup landing pages these days. It's not like people don't have time to understand - there's nothing there to understand ! "Full stack adaptive delivery" is a near-meaningless phrase. It can be con…

I do recruiting consulting and it blows my mind how every time I ask a startup how they differentiate from other startups and what specific advantages they want me to discuss, they give me a bunch of meaningless phrases. Its like founders are being taught a different language that they think provides value but makes no fucking sense.

I'd love to know where they learn that.

In my university years, I used to invent such ridiculously overblown phrases for simple things I did, as a form of mockery of corporate culture and my general pastime. But at some point I did realize that these phrases are hashing functions - like the ones you use in a hash table to put objects into buckets. So for a particular thing I do, say "adding colors to terminal applications", I could invent a bunch of nonsense phrases - "enriching the user experience of advanced software", or "delivering visual artistry to professional digital media" or whatnot. It was fun going in this direction, and we'd have a good laugh - but a person seeing just the output could never arrive at my original input, "adding colors to CLI apps". It was one of infinitely many things I could hash under the same phrase, and they could never know which one I did.

So in my eyes, if you're trying to explain something to someone, then using these phrases is essentially equivalent to taking MD5 of what you wanted to say and pasting that hash.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#88

Post by ksahin »

scottLobster wrote: post #81
shripadk wrote: post #43

Left a comment on the IndieHackers page. Keeping a copy here for those who aren't reading the comments section. I have noticed this a lot in various websites I have helped in ad campaigns. Their biggest problem is their landing page. Just like this article uses lots of jargons to explain simple concepts, their landing page reflects the same. For those of you wanting to know more about landing page optimization just w…

My go-to example is Robert DeNiro's line from The Irishmen: "You like steak? I deliver steak. I could deliver you steak." Granted there was some mob subtext to that line but the world would be a better place if people strove for that level of simplicity in their messaging.

You made my day with this quote thanks!

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#89

Post by colechristensen »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #83
TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't get too fancy with your taglines. People don't have time to understand what you are saying. People don't like fancy terminologies except for what is popular. It's worse than that. And it's my pet peeve about many startup landing pages these days. It's not like people don't have time to understand - there's nothing there to understand ! "Full stack adaptive delivery" is a near-meaningless phrase. It can be con…

I do recruiting consulting and it blows my mind how every time I ask a startup how they differentiate from other startups and what specific advantages they want me to discuss, they give me a bunch of meaningless phrases. Its like founders are being taught a different language that they think provides value but makes no fucking sense.

The emperor has no clothes... there is a skill in speaking in an optimistic way using a series of intentionally vague words which smart people feel bad about not understanding so they just pretend they do and think positively about a product because for the life of them they could not articulate why the pitch/business/product didn't have any value. There's nothing to argue against because "I don't know what you're talking about" is an apparent argument against yourself.

I'm going to start a business selling a quantum leap in synergy paradigms. Begin with the tagline, move on to a landing page, and after that's nicely done, get a group of people together to brainstorm what the company actually does.

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