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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)

#61

Post by Dwolb »

trimboffle wrote: post #14
trimboffle wrote: post #9

This is such impressive blather that I’m now convinced I know nothing at all about modern sales and marketing. It may as well have been written by an ancient alien civilization for all I understood. Probably we’ll hear something very like this when SETI receives a signal from another star system.

>>> Thanks to developers’ trust in our core infrastructure and their recommendations, we’re fortunate to have a constant and growing inbound flow of leads and net negative churn, meaning the value of usage-driven upgrades outweighs the loss in revenue from subscription cancellations. I’m glad they clarified what “net negative churn” means, that really cleared things up.

Every business basically has 4 ways revenue increases or decreases month over month.

New customers spending new money (net new)

Current customers increasing spend (expansion)

Current customers decreasing spend (contraction)

Current customers leaving (traditional churn)

Net negative churn means when you add up the bottom three, revenue has increased.

Another way to say it is you don’t have to add new customers to keep growing revenue.

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

#62

Post by ryanwaggoner »

trimboffle wrote: post #24
threeseed wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty basic stuff for a SaaS company. Might be worth watching some of the YC Startup School videos to get up to speed.

Ah yes, “YC Startup School“ where dumbos like me may learn the basic things, thanks I’ll seek it out to come up to speed.

Wow, you are really bitter about your inability to comprehend a pretty basic article that was not written for you.

Suggestion: unless you’re already a doctor, don’t crack open a medical journal. Your head might explode.

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

#63

Post by ses1984 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #59
ses1984 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, if I saw "file system as a service" I would also bounce immediately becuase who needs that? I have a file system, it comes included in every/any os that matters. How does filesystem as a service help me?

You're probably not a target audience. A "file system as a service" is a thought that would probably pop in your head if you faced the problem they're trying to solve.

I think the target audience has business problems not file system problems.

File system as a service doesn't tell me what business problems can be solved with this.

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

#64

Post by ameister14 »

code4tee wrote: post #33

There is a winter coming for the online ad model when more people realize, as this author has, that most online ad spend was probably a total waste. That combined with the increasing crackdown by the consumer on blocking data tracking raises serious questions on the long term viability of the business models of some big players in the industry.

What the author realized was that they should have gone about it differently, not that ads are a waste in a general sense. Their post-mortem had real recommendations that would have helped them had they followed them from the start.

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

#65

Post by shripadk »

franciscop wrote: post #47
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…

As someone who is trying to learn and some day launch something like this, thank you so much for this advice! I've been known to complicate descriptions on my OSS packages but still achieved moderate success, so I'm thinking on how to convert this knowledge into revenue and these comments are super helpful. Question: how do you manage to both keep it simple but relevant for SEO? Isn't SEO a lot about keyword stuffing…

> Question: how do you manage to both keep it simple but relevant for SEO? Isn't SEO a lot about keyword stuffing?

SEO should be as natural as possible. Keyword stuffing actually has a negative impact on your Quality Score (if you are running Google Ads) in the long run. Do not forget that Google is always optimizing its algorithms. What was possible before isn't possible now. And what is possible to do today isn't possible to do in the future. Don't start by gaming the system. Start by doing it as natural as you can. Optimizations can always be made later on (if required). From my experience I have seen that SEO works best only if it has relevant content tagged along with it.

Sometimes, you might be in a niche where you don't even need to do any optimizations. And most products/services fall under this category. Just like you do not prematurely optimize your software, there is no need to do the same anywhere else. Even marketing.

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

#66

Post by aguyfromnb »

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…

>If they can't understand what your business proposition is in 5 seconds you have failed landing page optimization.

Are these people searching through Google for a company like yours though?

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

#67

Post by TeMPOraL »

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 construed to mean just about anything. It would fit just as well on a logistics company page, or on a sticker on the side of an ICBM.

I wish people would just say what they actually do.

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

#68

Post by kyle-rb »

simias wrote: post #34
trimboffle wrote: post #9

This is such impressive blather that I’m now convinced I know nothing at all about modern sales and marketing. It may as well have been written by an ancient alien civilization for all I understood. Probably we’ll hear something very like this when SETI receives a signal from another star system.

It kind of reminds me of people discussing stock using what looks to me like numerology. They don't really focus on the underlying company or what it does, they mainly look at the stock graph and use more or less complicated models to try to predict future performance. Sometimes they actually have no idea what the company does. I feel a bit the same way reading this article. There's a lot of talk about conversion rat…

I think focusing on conversion rate is fair in this case. I would think Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is more for conversions and less for brand awareness.

Their example query of "file upload php" is someone who's looking for a solution right this second, so it's not unreasonable that they would sign up and try out the service right this second.

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

#69

Post by kartickv »

ses1984 wrote: post #63
TeMPOraL wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably not a target audience. A "file system as a service" is a thought that would probably pop in your head if you faced the problem they're trying to solve.

I think the target audience has business problems not file system problems. File system as a service doesn't tell me what business problems can be solved with this.

This is an insightful yet very short comment, a combination I rarely see.

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

#70

Post by shripadk »

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…

Exactly. I was being polite. I concur with everything you said.
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