Google Ads Basics: Should You Target The US First?

Kasim: 00:00:11

Hey everyone, Regina here with starter PPC.

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I want to go over a question that

we get asked a lot, which is, should

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I expand my business to the U S or

should I start by targeting the U

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S and then add other countries, or

should I add, should I target other

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countries and then add the U S this

comes up a lot because, you know, we're

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working with small businesses, right?

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Starter PPC, we only work with

budgets of 5, 000 or less.

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oftentimes these are new businesses

that are just starting out and

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they're trying to decide, should I?

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Go after the market that is this huge

country with a large population and

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a lot of commerce going on, or is

it better to kind of start small and

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grow into the big players later on?

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I want to just kind of walk through How

I think about this and maybe it will

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help some of you guys who are trying to

decide whether to go big or start small.

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this is the company that it came up,

that this question came up with recently.

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They actually sell hosting, email

hosting, domain hosting as well

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as website edit website design.

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Actually, they have some

services in there as well.

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right now they're targeting

Nigeria South Africa and Kenya.

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So they actually started with

those countries, which is

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where they're based out of.

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And they were asking us, is it the

right time now to expand to the U.

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S.?

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the first thing to know when

you're expanding to the U.

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S.

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is that usually the cost per

clicks are going to be higher.

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And there's actually a way to determine

that using the keyword planning tool.

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if you go over to tools and settings and

you go over to the keyword planner up

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here, you can basically just punch in

your website and Google will pull up.

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The average cost per click and you

can based on the keywords used on your

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site and then you can toggle between

countries, click on discover new keywords.

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That's usually the best when you get

to this page, click on the tab called

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start with a website, and then you can

just punch the website in right here.

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Click use the entire site or if you

have different services and you're just

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trying to look at One of your various

services you can punch in a specific

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page like a services page on your site

And it'll just read the keywords from

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that page in this case I'm just gonna

use the entire site because I just

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want to get a general overview for this

business as a whole, how much is the

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cost per click going to be on average.

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So you can see here that it's defaulting

to South Africa because the, because

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the domain is actually a South African

domain, but you can toggle between

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countries by just changing it right there.

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So before I move away from South

Africa, let's see what it thinks.

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So we've got top of page bid

estimate, low range and top of page

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bid estimate high range, Because

the cost per click is going to be.

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A range.

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So, and these are rough, rough estimates.

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, I wish that Google averaged these for us.

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If you want to get an average, what you

can do, and look, there's 2, 000 pages of

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keywords in this case, is you can download

the keyword ideas into a spreadsheet,

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and then you can create a row at the

bottom that will average them for us.

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since I don't want to do that

right this moment, we're just

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going to kind of glance through.

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24, okay, all the way up

to, wow, 200, 230, 153.

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this is a crazy wide range.

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Some industries are just like that.

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Hosting tends to be a

very competitive industry.

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And then you can obviously swap out

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the country for the United States.

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Make sure you remove the

old country if you want to.

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See only data from this

one country, of course.

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Wow.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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So instead of 24, 27 on the low range,

we're now getting 140, 174, 180 on

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the low range for the United States.

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These are very expensive cost

per clicks in this industry.

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You guys, this is highly

unusual, very expensive industry.

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And it makes sense, right?

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Because you're selling

hosting, you're selling.

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Oftentimes monthly website

hosting, monthly email hosting,

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and it's a recurring subscription

revenue that you're going to get.

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that's why in this industry you

can afford to pay a lot for a lead.

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That's why cost per clicks are very high.

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And then the high range in the U.

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S.

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is now 560, 600 544.

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So you get the idea.

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Keep that in mind, right?

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Different countries are going to have

different average cost per click.

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Now, even though you know this to be

true, it doesn't necessarily mean the

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United States isn't going to work for you.

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Right?

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you could target the United States

and find out that, oh, actually the

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conversion rate in the United States

is actually Higher than it is in

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this country, for whatever reason

the opposite could be true, right?

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In the United States, there

tends to be a lot of competition,

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especially in this industry.

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So you could find that you target it.

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Not only are you paying more

per click, but you're now

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getting a lower conversion rate.

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unfortunately, a lot of this is

guesswork and you won't know the

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answer for sure about whether it's

profitable for you before you try it.

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what I usually default to is this

This knowledge that I've learned

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over the decade that I've been in the

marketing world, which is when you're

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a very small business and you're just

starting out, you're going to have more

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luck targeting a very well defined.

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Niche group people and then expanding

right to a wider group of people.

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I apply that same knowledge to the

country targeting in Google Ads.

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If you're targeting a smaller country

with Less competition, and then expanding

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into the more competitive space,

that's probably the smart way to go,

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because by the time you expand into the

bigger space where you now have a more

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competitive market, a wider market of

people you have to appeal to, et cetera.

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You probably will be a little bit

farther along in your business.

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You'll probably have more of

your ducks in a row by then.

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And what I mean by ducks in a row is,

I mean, by then you'll have a website

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that has been tested and honed in

on the best things that are working.

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Right.

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You'll have that conversion

rate optimization that has

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happened on your website.

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Maybe you need to get some

email automation in place.

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maybe you need to take some hire some

help to help with some questions via the

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support ticket bubble, the bubble on the

website, the chat bubble maybe you need

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to hire someone to help answer the phones

because you're not answering them fast

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enough, all these things that are very.

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Slow for small businesses

to, tighten up and get going.

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Those things are more forgiving in a

country that has less competition than

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in a country that will be expecting

you to hit the ground running.

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whenever a client comes to me and

says, should I expand to the US?

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I come right back to them and say, well.

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That depends is what you're doing working

or is your business kind of hemorrhaging

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money because if what you're doing is

working or if it's even close to working,

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I would say stay focused on what you're

doing every time you start something new.

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It's going to be an investment,

an upfront investment.

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It's almost never going to be like.

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Aha, now I'm rich, right?

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It's usually like, okay, we're going to

do 90 days where we don't expect a profit.

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In fact, for 90 days, we were fine

with losing money because the algorithm

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needs to learn this new location.

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We've now had to add some

budget for this new location.

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Cause we didn't want to turn off

our old location because we don't

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want to lose all that data, right?

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All that conversion data

that we've been gathering.

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Otherwise we're just throwing

money out the window.

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If you turn off those campaigns.

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that's usually what I say back to them.

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Like if your business is hemorrhaging

money and you're like, okay, I can

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afford to do another big test before

I, give up on this whole idea.

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Then give it a try.

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If what you're doing right

now is working, why change it?

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Why change what works, right?

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Just try to grow and max out.

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The market in where you are

simultaneously put all your ducks

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in a row in your sales funnel.

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So you can prepare to enter a

bigger market someday and expand.

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That's my advice to you guys.

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If you have any questions or comments,

you can head on over to starter ppc.

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com and there's a little chat bubble.

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You can ask us anything

that you're wondering.

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We work with businesses that

have budgets of 5, 000 or less.

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E-comm e-commerce lead generation

businesses, it doesn't matter to us.

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We we are basically a sister company

of starter P p C, so sorry, we're

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sister Company of Solutions eight.

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we have the resources of a

bigger company, the strategy from

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a team of people that work with

bigger budgets to basically apply

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to what we do at Startup P P C.

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And we would love to work with you.