Today we're gonna chat about why you should not be buying leads. The natural progression. When someone needs something at the time of need, they, the large, vast majority of people go straight to Google and type in the search box whatever they need. If it's red shoes, if it's a plumber, if it's a new vacation spot that they want to go to this summer, they go to Google and they type in whatever they need. And then they look at the choices that Google presents them with. This is just the natural flow of how people search for things right now. And yes, there are Bing and Yahoo and some other search engines, but the large majority of people go to Google. Now, when you set up a search ad campaign, you are putting text or banners out on the web for anyone or anything to click. So by putting that up, you're actually putting a target up, first off, for bots to click on when they're scouring the web to collect information. And guess what happens when that bot actually clicks on your ad? It charges you money and sometimes it charges you 20, 30, 40, 50, sometimes even up to $99, which is up in the northern area of the country when someone's looking for a plumber. Now you only want people clicking or finding you if they actually need your service. So giving money away to Google for automated software clicks is not going to grow your business. In fact, it's not even gonna get the phone to ring, there's no form fills that are gonna happen, it's literally going to be paying for a click that doesn't mean anything. So first off, search ads are. Going to be very expensive. But if they're not handled properly, they can absolutely be a money pit with no leads to show for it. The other thing about search ads is if you don't know how to set them up correctly, when you're setting up a broad match search term, or setting up a keyword in there, it could be broad match where Google literally will rearrange the keywords in order. And it will also associate each word with any word that's related. So for example, if you put plumbing company, in there as a broad match search term, you may actually show up for furnace repair or furnace company or fur, or fix my furnace. Now why Google makes the association like that we have no idea. It's because it's broad. It's like, "Hey, Google, show me for any variation that could ever possibly be associated with these words in any order, at any time." So if you have broad match keywords, you're going to be paying for certain clicks that probably is not going to result in a sale. We actually had somebody that paid for 22 clicks for, as I said, furnace fix. And they're a plumber. So you wanna make sure when you're doing the search ads to make it effective or to at least dial in the conversions properly, you wanna make sure that you have a phrase match or exact match. Now, yes, that's going to limit the amount of clicks that you get and impressions that you get, but it's also going to be honed in very tightly on the market that you are trying to service. Now, the best form of advertising right now on Google, if you are going to do advertising is local search ads or local service ads. The LSA section at the top, Google guaranteed a lot of people know it by many different names for that section, but you pay per lead. Which is a very, very good exchange. You pay $50, $60, $30 depending on the area you're in, and you actually get a qualified guaranteed lead from Google of someone that needs plumbing service, and that's what they guarantee to you. So it's a very good exchange for your money. That is the only section that we would recommend. Especially if you are just starting out or have no idea how to run ads. The absolute best bang for your buck is going to be organic search results ranking for tons of keywords relevant to plumbing and making sure you show up at the top of Google for someone at the exact time they need your service.
