Google Ads for Funeral Homes 101: Part 2 – Ad Creative & Maintenance

As a follow-up to the previous Google Ads episode, Rob breaks down the structure of a Google Search Text Ad and his strategy when writing those ads. He also explains the keyword pruning process and cautions blindly accepting Google's Recommendations. For more information about Funeral Results Marketing, check out our Funeral Home Website section, Cremation Arrangement section or Digital Marketing Services section on our website or contact Rob at [e-mail] or at 1-800-810-3595. See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome back to the Funeral X Podcast. I am Rob Heppell and I'm joined with my Funeral Results Marketing business partner, Jake Johnson. Hey there, Jake. Jake Johnson: Hey Rob. Rob Heppell: Hey, I know last time we kind of went deep into setting up your Google ads account and that's only about... Well, it's less than half of it, but I think it's a good solid half for people trying to understand how it works. And I hope that by giving them some of this information, they won't make some mistakes that I see there, or probably our ultimate goal will be for them to just have us do it. Jake Johnson: Well, I think it was awesome. I think there's so much to talk about in it and how it when done right, how it helps and then to understand also when it's going right but you haven't in the last episode, the negative keywords and things that you discussed. You can feel like you're having lots of success but you're spending too much getting it. So I think it was some great comments there and I look forward to diving further, man. Lay the knowledge. Rob Heppell: Okay. Well, and again, just so that we're... Just to frame this, this is basic stuff. We can get into down the road, very intricate things where you're pulling in a ton of different conversions and that conversion tracking. Generally speaking, you need a solid foundation, so we're going to just cover those things and... We're today too, we're going to really cover to make sure that Google's not stealing money from you and putting it solely into their pockets. Then what today we'll focus on is the ad creative, so creating the ads that people see when they search. And then we'll talk about keyword maintenance and account maintenance and recommendations. Folks have to realize that an ad is just one part of the process. So our path to success is going to first get in front of the person looking for a funeral home or a cremation provider, and that's what the ad does. So by all the things we talked about in the last episode, we now are at least up to the plate. We've got a chance to get in front of these people and the ad is going to move them to the next step. So part one is having the ad. Part two then is wherever we send them, so the landing page on the website. When they're on that landing page, there needs to be a compelling offer. So we don't want to get them too confused, don't put them on the homepage of the funeral home website because there are too many things going on. There are obits, there are directions, there are donations, there's about us and all that and pre-planning. If this for at-need when someone's typing in funeral homes, Phoenix, Arizona, there's a good chance that they're looking for a listing of businesses. Just like I like to say... And before it used to be great because we could be so granular. We could put funeral home and bid less on it than funeral homes because funeral home, usually is attached to Johnson Funeral Home, singular, whereas for funeral homes, usually it would be funeral homes in Scottsdale. So just if I wanted to go out for Chinese food and there's a specific restaurant, in Victoria, I would type in Golden Palace, Chinese restaurant, singular. And if I wanted to, I don't know where to go so I might type in Victoria Chinese restaurants, plural. Now, unfortunately, Google doesn't really allow us to be that granular because they say, "Well,