- This year I've spent tens of thousands of pounds
with Google, using their pay-per-click
to get customers for my business.
Here's the question though,
is it easy to do or is it difficult to do?
Well in this video, I'm gonna tell you all.
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Now I've wrote a few books on Google,
checkbooks, because that's how much I've spent
with Google over the years
and I've made some big fat mistakes.
In fact, I used to own a party shop.
What I learnt with that party shop,
was unlike this product,
which I'm gonna talk to you about in a minute,
I was selling a commoditized product
that you could buy elsewhere,
and it was just into a price game.
And I sort of realized that actually,
you put advertising money into Google,
you would get instant sales
but can you actually make money out of those instant sales?
I've discovered a similar thing on Amazon.
I made a video just last week about that,
you can watch it by clicking here.
The truth about selling on Amazon
and how I've done £35,000 on Amazon
but only had £1500 worth of cash enter to our bank account,
as Amazon take its fees, as it takes advertising stuff
and it goes on and on, and then you gotta pay
for the bleeding products.
Years ago, I was spending like £25,000 a week
on Google PPC, to generate about £35,000 worth of sales.
I was losing money by the time I'd paid for the product.
Now I'm flirting with Google again
because I actually make these, these are my products.
I make loads of teddy bears, made over a million teddy bears
and I'm selling them on Amazon,
and for the first time ever, we are now starting
to sell them profitably on Google.
And I'm gonna bring Dom on in just a moment
who's my head of web, to go through exactly
how much we spent on Google and what you need to do
to make your website profitable enough
to put advertising pounds, pennies, dollars into it,
to get a return on investment.
Because I think it's a minefield
and here's something that I will say to you.
If you're thinking about building
a super successful website,
you've got to invest in someone, a human,
to manage the website for you,
to manage the Google pay-per-click,
the uploading of the products, the words,
the descriptions, the photography,
all of that stuff, you need someone full-time.
Don't think that you can just shove a website
on the internet and expect sales to come.
It's very similar to what most people do,
is they open a shop and imagine
if you didn't staff the shop.
That's the very similar thing that I see websites,
if you're gonna open a website,
you gotta have full-time staff just managing the website,
not just delivering the stuff that you sell on the website.
Someone that's really looking after it,
if you wanna drive sales forward.
And that's something that I've learned in real perpetuity,
over my career as a business owner.
It's time to bring Dom on,
to tell you about what we've spent,
how we've done it and is it profitable?
And here he is, and here he is.
Now look, I wanna just come clean on this,
I don't understand the Google empire like Dom does
and I think I would have got some terminology incorrect.
Just before we came on air, Dom explained to me,
there's Google ads and Google shopping,
what's the different Dom?
- So you've got Google search,
Google shopping and Google display.
- Wow and googly woogly.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- But we're placing ad spend on Google shopping
and Google ads, that's right?
- Yeah, Google search ads.
- And the difference is between those two.
- So search under the for like terms,
so you usually do for like brand terms
is quite a good one 'cause it's quite cheap
but you might say, I don't know, phone cases
and then your ad will appear at the top.
- And then those pictures of them things,
that's actually Google shopping isn't it?
- Yes.
- So what's more advantageous to do over the two?
- It depends on your product I would say.
- For us, these is what we're selling on Google,
these little fellows, do you think Google ads
or Google shopping is right for us, or both?
- For wholesale, I would say Google search ads,
for retail, nothing.
- Nothing, see now this is why I wanted to make this video
because one of my questions I was gonna ask you Dom,
does Google ads work for every business?
- No.
- And I think we have categorically proved that
in this exercise that we're about to share with you.
How much have we spent on average per month on Google ads?
- So for Google shopping, in October we spent £244.58.
- Yeah.
- We converted £64.95, so that's a loss of £179.
- Wow.
- November, the spend of 152,
conversion value £52, loss of £99.
December to date, you spend £530,
conversion value £95.92, with the loss of £434.
- Well, that's a complete, it's a complete,
you'll have to bleep this out Charles, it's a complete.
(beeping)
So it doesn't work for our business does it?
- No.
- Now the other thing that I would always say,
if you had high returning customers,
so if you were spending £50 to get a customer
but then they would buy from you every week.
You know, once someone's bought Gerald the giraffe,
they ain't gonna buy another one every week of the year.
If it was a food shop, for example,
like Sainsbury's, Google, you'd spend £50
get a customer, knowing they were gonna spend
on average, two, £3000 a year and over their lifetime,
and you could spend, I don't know,
you could spend a couple of hundred grand
over your lifetime with your supermarket, couldn't you?
- Yeah.
- And so that's not gonna happen for us.
- Well you got your high ticket items,
they'll be quite good.
- Yeah, so if you were selling, I don't know,
hot tubs, garden rooms, sheds, holidays.
So is there any way that we can make Google ads work for us?
- I think wholesale possibly, getting a wholesale customer.
We got one in November, which I think ended up
spending 12 grand with us.
- Did they though, did they come through Google?
- Yeah.
- Absolutely cold and didn't re-check that out, who is it?
- We got one inquiry for a wholesale account
and that came from the Google ad.
- What was the business, do you know?
- I can't remember, it's Northern Ireland.
- Oh well, if they're Northern, maybe that has come through.
'Cause I'm always skeptical if they sort of know us.
- He might of, he might of heard of the brand,
what's why it's a bit of a gray area with the Google ads.
- So my question is to you then Dom,
if you've got a website and you're sending stuff
for 20, 30 quid like us,
Google definitely doesn't work for us.
How can we get customers
using the internet if we're not Amazon?
(laughing)
SEO.
- For retail?
- Yeah.
- I would say SEO, social, just having to build
your brand name up so people know.
Like Build-a-Bear, everyone knows Build-a-Bear.
- But we're Teddy Tastic.
- I think influences, social media,
think that's the only way
and then building the Amazon base and hopefully.
- One thing we have discovered
and we do strongly believe,
although we can't back it up with evidence.
There is now more direct search terms
on Google for Teddy Tastic, isn't there?
- Yeah, we've certainly increased, definitely.
- We can only ascertain that to selling on Amazon.
People finding our products on Amazon,
seeing that it's branded by Teddy Tastic
and then searching Teddy Tastic in Google.
I do that on eBay all the time.
- Yeah.
- 'Cause I've never bought anything direct off eBay.
And so maybe that's.
- By this stage, I think that we've noticed
a organic increase in sales, haven't we?
- And you always say this don't you.
I feel like we might get struck off YouTube for saying this
'cause Google always say.
- Don't quote me on this.
- Yeah, don't quote me on this.
Google always say don't they, it's your line.
- Yeah, so they always say that paid advertising
does not affect organic rankings, but I think it does.
- Well I think it does.
- Spend money and then recklessly, organic sales go up.
- And that's happened to us hasn't it?
- Yeah.
- So our organic sales are the strongest
they've ever been, aren't they?
So we hardly sold anything on this website B To C,
'cause it was all a wholesale business
and then 'cause of the pandemic, we thought blimey,
we got half a million pounds worth of stock,
we actually had half a million pounds worth of teddy bears
and teddy bear clothes
and teddy bear shoes in our warehouse,
but because all the visitor attractions
that we supplied, closed down during pandemic,
I said to Jenky our commercial director,
we've got to convert some of this stock into cash.
So we worked really hard to become B2C website.
Number one, we went on Amazon,
'cause that's the obvious thing to do.
We've now uploaded to Etsy,
that's been really slow hasn't it, Etsy.
- We're still getting a couple through there.
- A couple through there, a couple through there
and literally, a couple is what it is.
And then, we said right, let's make the website better.
We spent ages on the website.
Now I was gonna say the thing
that you didn't pick up on,
I think it's really important
you have good photography, isn't it?
- Oh yeah.
- We've worked really hard on the copy,
the words around describing your product.
I saw a really good thing on LinkedIn.
Someone's got a pack of mince pies is £1
and then you can describe the same pack of mince pies,
'cause this is the festive period,
shortcrust pastry, butter mince pies,
made from homemade sultanas and blended with spices.
It's the same product, just using some words.
Now you can sell that for £2,
and then they went on to say,
even more description and then you could sell
that same pack of mince spies for £3.
And I think where we worked really hard
on the descriptions of our products, we've seen a rise
in sales and the photography.
But you also did some work Dom didn't you,
with these guys that have been helping us,
on the speed of the website
'cause you thought that was important.
- Before we got them involved,
our load speed was around five seconds, which is appalling.
So if you're pumping money on ad spend,
you want the website to be performing the best it can,
so you can get as many conversions as you can.
- Yeah.
- So from that we optimized the site.
We get involved with getting CloudFlare, which is CDN,
which is a content delivery network,
which basically caches your website
and then it delivers everything at faster speed.
So now our load speed is about one second or under.
- But how important do you think that is?
- I think it's very important.
- People on their phone,
they don't wanna to be waiting around for it to load.
They want it there and then.
- Here's the other thing that I've noticed though.
Where Teddy Tastic is one of our most commoditized products
that we sell as a business.
Our day nurseries are location specific.
They have a great reputation,
Marsh farm, we are the only ones.
I don't think we've got a one second load speed
on our other websites have we?
- No.
- But I mean, we've sold like millions
of pounds worth of stuff on Marsh farm.
- What you could argue, is if we improve that,
would the sales go up, probably?
- How do we do that, a lot of work is it?
- Well just get it done.
(laughing)
- I mean I am completely confused by what,
I mean I understand like if I'm on something
and it frustrates me, I don't know who they are, I'm off,
but if I know who they are, I will hang around.
Like if I'm ordering a takeaway,
I'm thinking about my local takeaway,
that I have every Friday night, their website is terrible
but I persevere because I wanna buy from them.
But if I didn't know them, I would just go.
So what do people have to do to improve their web speed?
- Well it depends on the website.
If it's a WordPress website, you'd probably wanna
disable as many plugins that you don't need as possible.
And then you'd need a CDN, 100%.
- Say what it is again.
- It's a content delivery network.
So you can get them from Amazon.
- Yeah, me neither.
- We use CloudFlare.
(laughing)
- We use CloudFlare.
It sounds like it's up in the clouds to me.
Well, so you need all of this stuff like CDN or whatever.
But I mean, my strong advice to you,
is if you are going to sell on the web
and you're gonna do it in spectacular fashion
and you wanna get great return on investment,
you've gotta have someone like you
on your stuff all the time, haven't you?
- You're gonna be competing against Amazon.
- That's exactly.
- They've got a website that loads lightning fast.
- 'Cause what I always describe this
and I said before you came on Dom,
that imagine opening a shop,
spending all your money opening the shop,
that's the same as your website,
but never putting any staff in it.
It would just start looking rubbish after.
- With no tills.
- Yeah, no tills, and that's the mindset
that you've gotta have and gone are the days
where you just put a website up
and it instantly makes money isn't it.
How much have we spent in Google, do you recon, this year?
Just 'cause I think people would be interested to know that.
- Across all business.
- We don't really do Google PPC, do we?
I think we should.
- We have display for the farm shop
and we do search for Twizzle Tops.
- Now that has done well, hasn't it?
Now let's just give them a little bit
of information on that.
On our day nurseries, again,
specific where people really need you.
Like this is where, it costs us about £15 a lead isn't it?
- It was to start with, it's now gone up,
so it ranges between 20 to £40 per lead.
- 20 to £40 pound per lead, but the great news here
is those customers, this is the brilliance of business
when you understand, average customer value,
average transactional value, average lifetime value.
Spending £40 pounds to get customer,
average customer value is £800 a month.
Lifetime value is four years.
So you're spending 40 pounds to in effect,
get someone that's gonna spend 25 grand with you.
That is when Google PPC works, isn't it?
- Yeah, it's fantastic.
- Blows it out the water.
I think what we'll do, we'll do a video
on Facebook ads next, and how much we spend on Facebook ads.
That's coming up in the next video on this YouTube channel
'cause I think people would be really interested in that,
because that is where we do pump a lot of money, isn't it?
- We certainly do.
- I mean, and when I say a lot of money,
I mean like we could have bought many houses
with what we have spent on Facebook ads.
See you in the next video.
Don't forget to check out by the way,
the Amazon video, our £35,000 problem
by clicking here, with the lovely Dom
and subscribe to this YouTube channel
by clicking here and we'll see you
in the Facebook extravaganza next, bye, bye.
(upbeat music)