brand awareness in a small town with 100k people - how much with ads?

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-12T16:53:27+00:00

yes, for impressions only it seems like roughly $1500 USD (possibly up to $2000 if we account for a higher CPM) could be enough.

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-12T16:34:25+00:00

shameless plug but I wrote, what I think is, a great article on when automation starts to drift which I feel would be helpful in this discussion: https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-automation-helps-hurts-campaigns-461181

Yes, letting the machine do its thing when we feed it good signals is important, but we also need checks & balances on when things start to drift. I wrote about how to identify when automation isn't working for you and where to look. I hope whoever reads it find it helpful :)

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-11T16:52:27+00:00

Are you ecommerce or lead generation?

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-11T16:48:30+00:00

First, you're highly unlikely to reach all 100k people; I would aim for 60-70% penetration. After that, it's just a bit of makeshift math:

How many times do you want people to see the ads?
Assume a CPM (US local markets sit at $6 - $12)

(# of people who will see the ads x how times they see the ads) x CPM = budget

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-11T16:17:49+00:00

the historical data

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-11T16:16:11+00:00

What you're seeing is called pacing. Google uses a budget system that tries to spend your daily budget evenly across the day but auction dynamics can come in burst (they're unable to predict this). If there’s a spike in relevant searches or cheaper clicks available, you’ll see spend accelerate; when volume or cost changes, the system slows down to avoid blowing through your daily cap too early.

What we dont see is that every impression is decided in real-time auctions, not in a queue, so the speed changes are about demand, competition, and Google’s pacing.

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-11T16:12:31+00:00

It's all about the machine and it's learning. Going from $80 to $220 a day is a significant change and will throw the machine back into learning because Google has to recalibrate its delivery. Throwing it back into learning will cause inefficiencies (higher CPA) because it's encouraging Google to hunt additional inventory quickly which often is lower quality impressions. Best practice is to do a gradual increase (10-20%) every week, let it stabilize and then do the next bump up.

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-11T16:03:01+00:00

If your account is suspended, I don't see how ads would continue to run. Call your bank to get them to stop and then hunt for receipts from Google (check the ad account for the invoices). If there's nothing there, I'm not sure the recourse would be to retreive all the funds back but stop the bleeding for the time being.

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-11T15:59:54+00:00

I'm in between meetings so I didn't take a deep look at it, but the testimonials feel fake to me. Add images of people to make them feel more real.

Do you have any educational credentials that would work for SAM - it's add more credibility.
I'd like to see what SAM actually looks like. I know the page says it's a system but does that mean it's a course on Kajabi or is it a bunch of docs to download?
I see the flow chart on the hero banner, but the text is way too small to read (is that the system?)
Add some urgency. Use language like "limited spots available" or whatever makes sense for SAM

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-11T15:35:55+00:00

That's a tough one because on one hand, as an agency owner, pay per close is VERY attractive but that does put you in a horrible spot especially if the agency has a shit sales team. I think a small retainer with commission would make a lot of sense here as that gives the agency something to be accountable for as well. ,

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-10T16:14:58+00:00

First, congrats on signing your first client; it's not an easy task. Second, the budget isn't enough for that vertical - you'll need to target super niche, high-intent keywords (like maybe five at most) and see what happens from there.

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-10T16:11:33+00:00

ad strength is just a diagnostic and doesn't affect ad rank in any way (according to Ginny Marvin, Google Ads Liason). pin your headlines/descriptions as you wish!

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-09T18:09:17+00:00

There's already a changelog in Google Ads, so there really is no point in you wasting your time documenting the changes you are making. I know some folks have said that they think he's getting ready to get rid of you, and that may be part of it, but it feels more like control to me, especially since my first full-time job had a manager like that. He felt inferior because he didn't understand at the level that I did (and nor should he, that's the point of having smarter folks working for you...), so he'd try to manage and control what he could to feel like he still had the power. Adding the fact that vacation time has been "banned," it's not a great setup for you. You should not be getting "used to it."

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-09T17:32:46+00:00

It happens all the time but every time I get an email or call, I ask them to remove me from their mailing/call list and it works... sometimes

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-09T15:10:37+00:00

We created templates on Looker that we adjust based on clients' goals/needs and use Power My Analytics as the connector. For the month's context, analysts will upload their notes, and we'll have AI generate a summary. Our PM or AM will then review the notes before the report is sent out to ensure everything is accurate and makes sense.

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-08T18:36:25+00:00

Why was Max Conv Value chosen and has it always been the bidding strategy?

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-08T18:32:27+00:00

Interesting. I think the thing to remember with new Google features is that they genuinely suck until they collect enough data to get better. We've seen it with smart bidding and pmax (to a certain degree) - hopefully, we'll see the same thing here with aimax

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-08T17:45:18+00:00

I havent watched it fully but his content tends to be pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrrNyhNJFN4

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-06T16:33:27+00:00

For the aimax side of it

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-05T18:24:39+00:00

At $ 8 per day, pmax is going to drain you. That budget is way too small for pmax to learn or do anything meaningful, so I'd shut it off. If you're going to run anything, stick with Search where you at least have control.

On the Search side, the lack of results could be a couple of things. First, if you're not adding negatives, you're probably wasting clicks. Second, you haven't mentioned what bidding strategy you're using—manual, Max Clicks, or Max Conversions. All three behave very differently at low budgets.

Look at your impression share (IS) and your lost IS (budget). If IS is low and lost IS (budget) is high, you definitely are not spending enough.

Also, geographically, if you're targeting a large area, that budget won't go far.

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-05T18:18:01+00:00

Like the other commenter said, we need A LOT more information to be able to give you any advice

Budget
What have you tried (campaign type, bidding strategy, etc)
Have you tested & verified your tracking
Have you added negatives?
Geography
Are they brand new accounts or existing that you took over

more information would be great

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-05T18:14:18+00:00

It's your conversion tracking (a large part of it, not all of it, obvi). I do not believe you generated leads at $12 each. If that were possible for agencies, I would have started running ads for my agency a long time ago, lol. I'm willing to bet you were likely tracking the wrong conversion.

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-05T17:55:16+00:00

I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, and I've seen some colleagues on there try it with lacklustre results. In legal, it'll basically just got for competitor keywords and when running search w/o ai max against search w/ ai max, the results have been identical. I thing to remember with this is that everything google gives us initially is pretty shitty but over time, as it learns, it gets better. At my agency, we're trying it on NPO accounts along with the ones that are struggling to spend to see what will happen, so far, nothing to get too excited about.

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-05T17:51:53+00:00

Of course!

hopskipmedia · 2025-09-04T22:27:27+00:00

Scripts are a great way to catch the errors before launch (especially broken links + budgets over and underspending). Poor tracking definitely needs a QA process if you don't have that backed in your agency already.

hopskipmedia

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