How I Would Launch a New Campaign From Scratch In 2026 (Episode 509)

[Music] Hello and welcome to the paid search podcast. My name is Chris and today I'm going to tell you how I would launch a new campaign from scratch in 2026. So this is actually a bit of a deeper dive than you might think. It's not just the settings I would choose. I'm talking about specifically if I were to create a business, if I were to create some kind of product service, something like that. There are three things that I would use in my decisions of how I constructed a campaign in relation to my business to make it successful. So this is going to be a bit of a unique discussion today because it's going to get into business decisions and how I might pose my proposal to my clientele and how I might situate my offer in a way that makes it really appealing to the Google Ads system. So stick around for that. I have three things to go through. It's going to be a little bit shorter episode today I'm thinking and you know but I'm going to try and pack in as much as I can during this short time as I always do. If you appreciate this kind of podcast that is entirely devoted to one topic like as we're talking about today, Google Ads, as we always do. Be sure and subscribe. I put these episodes out every Monday and then doing it for a very long time. This is episode 509 which is pretty incredible. So let's let's do this and I have to think my sponsor for making all this possible. If you haven't heard about my sponsor Optio, they are a wonderful online management system to help you get more out of your marketing. They have grown to not just get Google Ads campaigns to the next level, but they're now offering services for LinkedIn, Meta, Microsoft, and TikTok. This is a tool that utilizes the power of AI to take a system that used to be focused on optimization recommendations. Right. They would recommend things that you could do to improve your your your Google. Now it's a system that can not only recommend improvements that you may never see on your own, but it can help you to analyze the results of those improvements. There's there's buttons to help you analyze data. Get quick answers across all of your marketing channels. Very quickly. This is a special offer exclusively right here. This is a new tool that they're launching and you can try it for free. Try it before anyone else at optio.com/psp. Use the chat box on their website to tell you you heard about it right here and you'll get that exclusive offer for 28 days for free. That's a 28 day free trial optio.com/psp. Okay, let's get into it. Let me tell you the three ways that I would approach a new business, a new campaign. Maybe maybe maybe it's not even a new business. Maybe I have my same business I've always done, but how can I frame my business in a way that makes it more likely to be successful in Google ads? Okay, and I'm going to give you the three things right up front that I'm going to give you descriptions and explanations about what all of it means. So number one is I'm going to offer something unique in my business. Number two is I'm going to provide value for high funnel searches. And then number three is I'm going to abuse the conversion tracking system in order to optimize my Google ads campaign faster. Okay, those are the three things. Right, so no mystery. If you know all of that and you're like, yeah, I do all that perfectly. No problem. Then you can skip this episode. But I assure you, I'm going to give you very practical examples for all of these with clients that I work with that are doing these things that that actually work really well. And what we can learn from those clients and how they're succeeding from it. So all right, number one, offering something unique. Now you might be selling the same widget as the next guy. You might be offering the same service as the next guy. But hopefully in these six examples that I'm going to give you, these are businesses that have taken something that's been done a million times and are putting a different spin on it that makes it pretty successful in Google ads that makes it a long term sustaining product that they're able to sell in Google ads. And I've been working with these companies for some of them longer than 10 years, very long time. Okay, so here we go. So here's how I would essentially take my business and repackage it in ways so that I'm offering something unique that's not just the same thing that everyone else is doing. Okay, and in the purpose for this, you know, I'm not, this is not a business podcast. But let me explain why this is important. This is important because how you pose your service is important in whether people are going to contact you or not, right? If I am selling cabins, you know, I'm selling a retreat, you know, this is a, a private secluded retreat. And that, you know, that's what I have. I have a little piece of property and I'm selling these small little homes, little cabins in the woods. Okay, that's been done. Lots of that out there. That's not necessarily unique. Right? If I instead show that in fact, this is very unique because these are truly private cabins in the woods. They're actually private. You have your own private cabin that is quiet. It's in a unique place. It's not right next to something else. That would be unique and you would put that information forward. And that's something that a client I've worked with for a very long time has been doing. This is a unique retreat. And in the ad copy on their landing page on their website, they're they're they're making it very clear. This is truly private. This is actually secluded. Whereas many times that's not the case. So that's taking something that is done many times and making it a unique opportunity. So I have, five more examples in multiple industries of how this can be accomplished. So that's that's the first one. Another client that I work with is a civil engineer. Okay. So someone who can offer a wide variety of services for engineering in the residential arena. Now, here's something that he has done that makes it a really unique opportunity. He's selling his services online for a specific need that some people have. They might need to get something done that only an engineer can provide. Like for example, stamped approved plans from an engineer. Right. And people are people don't want to, you know, establish a relationship with an engineer and have them come, you know, to their facility or, you know, whatever their home and and and and that is really beyond the scope of where they're looking for. They just want someone to look at their plans and approve them and get them stamped. Right. And that's how they're searching. And guess what? It works great when you say instead of saying, I'm an expert engineer and I can help you with all your grand engineer plans that you have. No, no, you missed the scope. That's what every engineer would say. Instead is just, I'm an expert engineer and I can stamp your print plans. Right. Now there's more to it. Right. It's it's not just, you know, a rubber stamp, bam, bam, bam. But that's what's presented. And you know what? That's unique. That's unique. That actually gets people to say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm looking for. And guess what? In Google ads, I can build campaigns and find people that are looking for that one thing. And you say that one thing is what I do. Right. That's all my ad copy. That's on my website. Another example is dumpsters. Right. Everybody probably has utilized dumpsters at one point or another. And particularly in the residential sector, it can be very competitive because, you know, everybody might be cleaning out a, you know, part of their home, cleaning out an attic or a garage. And you need a dumpster, maybe doing some home construction, remodeling. You need a dumpster. Okay. The big thing is they're all certain sizes and they cost 500, 600 dollars, you know, in order to utilize these dumpsters. But what this client has done and as they've gone. specifically towards the people that are looking for a deal. And they offer dumpsters that are, I think, small is like 10 yards, seven yards. I mean, they're real small. And this is essentially a, a, a disrupting factor in the market. They can actually sell the cheapest dumpsters in this specific radius. And it works great because there's actually people that are searching for cheap dumpster rental. And you can say we have cheap and they can put the price right in the ad copy, right on the landing page because they disrupt, they beat the prices of everyone else. So this was this was a service that was designed to be a disruptor in the market. Wonderful. Right. You can see how decisions made in the business translate to a motivating factor for people to contact you through the Google ads, through your website. So hopefully all these are making sense to you and the gears are turning here. Let's do another example. Junk removal, a million of those companies, right. You could search junk removal near me, you know, junk, junk removal services. I mean, there's going to be a billion, right. And what makes this client different is they found out, hey, people have junk cars on their property, right. They have cars that don't run, maybe cars that do run and they're old. They're basically not useful for anything except scrap. So a junk removal company shifted its tone and now just literally advertises to buy cars. It's no longer car junk removal or junk removal and then what they really want is cars. No, it is, I want to sell my car for cash and they've created this market that is, is, is works phenomenally well. I've worked with this client for a very long time and they've experienced massive growth because they went from a generic junk removal, which tons of people advertise on that. And now they've put a solid corner on the market for car junk car removal, car removal. You know, people that buy cars for cash and it works great and they don't have to pay the crazy prices for junk removal against a ton of competitors. It's something unique. They've offered something unique. They've taken something that's very generic and offered something unique out of it. Personal training, right. Tons of personal trainers. Lots of different spins on personal training. You can get personal training in gym, you can get personal training, you know, just at one facility that all they do is personal training. But this client specifically does personal training at the client's home. So they come to your house and do training at your home. So personal trainers near me, right. Tons of searches for that. But there's not nearly as many searches for someone who wants at home personal training. So it does lower the opportunity. It doesn't mean there's a ton of searches for this. But when there are searches for elderly that maybe need help at home to be able to exercise and move and have some kind of personal training service at home or busy moms or wealthy neighborhoods that can afford and have their own gym. Lots of opportunity there. So personal training at home. So it took something very generic and moved it into a private specific example. Okay, last one. Last one. I hope these are bringing up ideas for you. So Vets. Everyone who has pets is going to need vet service at some time or another. And there are times when, you know, you just need convenience over price. You need something where you can just have a bit more of a personalized service for maybe something. Okay. This vet is now a mobile vet where, and this is what's unique is it's a very small facility. You can speak directly with the vet, the doctor that provides the services. And that doctor will come to your home to provide those services. So this is entirely unique. It offers an edge over all other vets that are like, yeah, come over to us book an appointment. And you know, we'll bring you in with the pet. You got to load your cat into your carrier. And then of course, go to the ER because the cat's absolutely ripped your arm off as you're trying to shove it into the carrier. Instead, maybe the vet comes to you. Maybe you forego being ripped to shreds by your cat and the vet comes to your facility. And beyond that, you can actually speak to the vet. So all of this, all of these examples, right? You may do not, none of these may be relevant for you. But the main point is that you offer something unique and that uniqueness travels down in the ad copy and a landing page. The keywords are catering to that type of need. Right. So the vet service, you don't just advertise vet near me. It would be mobile vet services near me or something like that at home vet services junk removal. No more of that. It's a sell car for cash instead. Instead of just dumpsters for rent near me, it's cheap dumpsters for rent. Right. So that's the idea. These companies didn't always start out like this. They realized this was a need. This was a niche and they shifted how they presented their services. All right. So that's number one. That's number one of how I would build something brand new from scratch in Google ads in 2026. I would need some kind of new edge to what's been done a million times before so that I don't just copy what everyone else is doing. I am different. All right. So here's the second one. I'm going to provide value for high funnel searches. That's number two. So number two is this. There are people doing searches that have a problem and issue some kind of question on Google. These are often ignored by advertisers because they rarely promote qualified searches. All right. Now I'm going to give you three examples of what this looks like in the real world. I have a client that I work with that provides an online tool and online calculator for people who have wrecked their vehicle. Right. So there is a diminished value of your vehicle after you wreck it and you need some kind of way to legitimately calculate the new value of this vehicle so that for insurance purposes and selling it and all this kind of stuff. So people need that and that's not who knows where to go to get something like that. Well, I do. You search on Google. You go online and search and this client offers an online tool and online tool of course is something that needs some support and needs help. They need some additional information so people put all their information in and they get that free estimate. They get that diminished value estimate for their vehicle. But you know what? There's more opportunities to sell something beyond just that. They don't need just the value. They need more than that. So that's a great lead in to a high funnel search. It's a problem. It's an issue. You can offer them something for free and potentially sell them beyond that point. So everybody gets something out of it. Another opportunity. There are delivery routes. You're driving on the road and you see trucks all the time. There's constantly delivery trucks on the road. And what you don't realize is these routes are sold to individuals and they will buy these routes and be paid to run these routes for bread delivery snacks and drinks and all kinds of things. These are route delivery services that are sold and purchased in a market. And where do you go if you want to see how you could buy one of those? How can you find a delivery route that you could purchase? The free service that this client is offering is an online database of delivery routes with prices literally on their page. You know how useful that is for someone who's actually looking to get legitimate idea of how much a route would cost them if they want to begin a business of delivery services in their area to buy a truck and all this kind of stuff to have a few contracts to deliver to each of these facilities. It is an online database. So the people that are searching for how much does it cost for a bread delivery in Pennsylvania. Boom. Someone can find that information for free right on this database. And this immediately of course makes it likely that someone will just click contact to make an offer on this delivery route right there on the page. they've become a facility by which can bring these leads in and kind of be a middleman for this. So great opportunity there. They are providing value for a high funnel search, a problem and issue. All right, and last one, this one is very specific. It hits home because this is me. I'm gonna give you an example of how I provide value for high funnel searches. There are people that have questions about their Google ads and they're searching for Google ads. So what they really want is not some boring dumb PDF that is 10 pages long and is just a list of problems. It's never solutions, right? Audits never have solutions. They always just have problems saying, this is bad, this is bad. And it's very difficult to understand the severity, you know, wow, this is awful, all these bad things. And these are nowadays generated by AI, they're generated by online tools and they're next to useless, right? Most of the time this audit is just a PDF that they look at and they're like, oh, that looks bad. I don't know what should I do, right? Well, I provide audits and actual human real person audit of an account. And it's done in such a way that is not a PDF. It's actually a video audit. This is what I've done for many, many years. I do a video audit. It's about three, five, seven minutes long depending on how much I need time to explain everything. And this video audit helps you understand from a fellow human how your campaign stands up. Hey, these are some problems. It's not real bad. I think generally, if you focus on this, this is probably a good idea to improve things. But here's my thoughts in a real quick video. This is a high value kind of offer for something that is from a high funnel search. Someone who's looking for a Google ads audit from a real person with no bull crap. So this is something that has provided value for me for many years. And by the way, if you're interested in that, that is something that I offer. As long as I haven't done an audit for you before, it's a one time thing. But yeah. And by the way, you can find out more chrisshaffer.com if you're interested. So that's it. So so far I've talked about two. I have a third one coming up. Number one, if you remember, offer something unique. Number two, provide value for high funnel searches. All right, so I'm gonna go into number three, which is abusing the conversion tracking system in order to optimize your account faster. And before I get into that, remind you again, optio.com/psp. They make this whole podcast possible. I would not be able to take time out of my busy schedule if they did not sponsor this podcast. So I very much appreciate them. And it's a really easy product to sell because they do such a great job. I have many people that tell me, Chris, appreciate your podcast. And of course I use optio. So if you wanna join the crowd and find out why this tool is so popular and you can get in on this free offer, 28 day free trial of this highly improved optio tool, you can do so at optio.com/psp. All right, and last one, abuse the conversion tracking system in order to optimize your account faster. What this means is essentially I am going to use call to actions, multiple call to actions, some type of system that will encourage people to take action on my website at a higher rate than they usually would. So not just call me, not just fill out my form and not just book an appointment. I'm gonna do something creative that incites people to take action at a higher percentage rate. Okay, so here's three examples. I work with a company that rents cars to ride share drivers. Now, that's something that is not necessarily abusing the conversion tracking system, but what they do is they track all of their inquiries, whether they're approved or unapproved for that rental. So this is a great system because they're able to get more conversion data. Any action they take, if they're looking to get a price or a quote on a specific type of vehicle, they track that. They track when they fill out the first form, they fill out the second form, they fill out the third form, they go through this multi-step process and they track all of that and there's a value system associated with that. That is how a company can get more conversion value, more conversion data to essentially abuse the system to optimize faster. So if you're gonna use Target Roes, this would be a great way to use Target Roes to tell Google, hey, the first form is worth this much, the second form is worth double that, the third form is worth quadruple that. This is a great system to incentivize better quality leads. So I'm abusing, and I use that term lightly, but I'm essentially using conversion tracking to its maximum potential to train drive lots of data to Google to push that data through as fast as possible, which will help optimize the account faster. All right, number three, I work with a dog training company, so a dog trainer, dog training services that uses a three-step questionnaire in order to answer questions about their dog's behavior. So the first question might be, is your dog aggressive or not, right? Real simple. Yes, no, some simple question like that. It would depend on whatever the person's searching about. And we can use the fact that they filled out the first little questionnaire as a conversion. It's a very low-level conversion, but maybe it's an 80% conversion rate, but then the next one, the next one, the next one, I can actually see that information and assign values and track that and see which keywords are leading to the third final conversion, which is where they fill out their, you know, put their email in to get a something, you know, whatever the final thing is. So this is a way to, you know, very easily get a conversion at a very high rate and then assign values as they go down that questionnaire funnel. And the people that are more serious are going to give their phone number, email, and you know, follow up for potentially getting their dog trained at this facility. So that's another way to abuse the conversion tracking system. And last one, this is a client that I worked with for a while, no longer working with this one, but I had always stuck in my head because I thought it was really great. So there are services out there to offer relationship advice, dating advice of all kinds. This is a real industry out there. And I'm very glad I don't have to utilize advice like this. I've been married for over 20 years, and I'm very glad to not be in the dating industry at this point. But I don't envy those that do because apparently you need to, it's so bad now you have to get advice, which sounds awful. But dating advice in 2026 and what this company offers is a free pre-recorded course. So if you like the kind of training advice and dating advice, relationship advice that this company's putting out, well, you can get a free course. And of course you put your email in. And that's a minimal, maybe it's a minimal ask, but we can get kind of a drip marketing is what it's called to that email address to start pushing out content, say, hey, if you like this course, you might end up liking our paid services. And this is a free way to insight people to download the free course, get access to the free course, which will be a much higher conversion rate, which is, as I said, a great way to abuse the conversion tracking system to try and optimize towards higher conversion rates because there's so much positive conversion signal data coming through. So there you go. That is kind of a business advice, Google Ads advice, of how you can take a regular boring business that does what everybody else does, but spin it up in a way that's unique. Offer something that's unique. Offer something that gets more action on the conversions and the calls and leads and all that, simply because it's packaged differently, simply because it's doing something that's unique. It's providing something for free, or it's offering something that's very difficult for somebody to even pass up this kind of offer, so they take you up on it. And thus give you lots of conversions, leads, value from Google Ads system that can sometimes be very difficult to get that out of. So that. is this week's show. I appreciate you guys listening. As I said, you can reach out to me, Chris Shafer.com. I do offer those Google ads audits to anyone that is interested. You may think, well Chris, I'm sure you're not talking to me. I'm just, yeah, I've only spent, you know, a little bit of money in Google ads. It's probably not worth it. I do offer this to anyone that's truly interested. I just ask that you not abuse the offer. And it is done by me. The video audit is personally done by me. I do look at it and speak directly to what I see in the account. So if you're interested in Chris Shafer.com, otherwise I'll be here next week, and I'll talk to you guys then.