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Wasteful Wednesday with Wil Reynolds #6 – Keyword of the Week “Names” Part II

Watch Episode 6 on "Names" Part II:

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Read the Transcript of Episode 6 on "Names" Part II:

What's up friends, Wil Reynolds here for another Wasteful Wednesday, where I find a little thing that I've seen in some PPC accounts and share it with you so you can drop those CPAs and be the PPC hero that we all know you are.

Today we're going to talk about Names ... yes, again!

ICYMI: Watch Wasteful Wednesday Episode 3: "Names Part I" to catch up!

Names are a problem, especially with your brand. So in certain verticals -- especially Insurance and Banking -- where people have large retail locations, where people are looking up the names of the people that work at State Farm or Wells Fargo or whatever they might search for different names of people that are in the bank.

That's way different than trying to get somebody to sign up for a checking account. The intent is different. Let me go show you what it looks like when a brand does not negate out the names.


Keyword of the Week: "Names"

Ex. Wells Fargo

Query: "Betsy Duke"

I searched for "Wells Fargo Betsy Duke", and Wells Fargo has an ad.

Now this one's really out there, because it's in Spanish, I don't know why I'm triggering Spanish ads.

However, the most important thing here is I'm looking for information about Betsy Duke at Wells Fargo, and this isn't going to be the right ad to get me there.

This is actually an ad about their checking accounts.

Query: "James Quigley"

I wanted to show you that when I searched for "Wells Fargo James Quigley", I'm getting another Spanish ad ... but I'm looking for this person, something about this person, and this happens all over the place.

Ex. Liberty Mutual

Query: "Amy"

If I look at Liberty Mutual and I just type in the name Amy, look at all these suggestions Google has.

You can see these different companies insurebetter.net, BruceBoydArt.com, etc. these folks are showing up and paying for clicks. Yet I'm probably looking specifically for a person here. I can see the same thing happening to State Farm too.

Query: "Vince Ovecka"

I look at somebody local to me -- make sure you keep in mind these addresses, I talked about that before -- Vince Ovecka. You can see that when I searched for it, there's no ads here, but when I go to that second page, ads.

I know some of you are going:

OK Wil, do people really search for the word Mike or Vince [with company names]?

I don't know, but every time I've checked a client that looks like this, [the answer is] yeah. By negating those names, the next month's CPA looked a little bit better.

When you stack up all of these Wasteful Wednesday tips, you end up being the freaking PPC hero.

Key Takeaway

My recommendation as always:

Don't believe a word that comes out of my mouth, pull your own data, look for the top names [and tell me what you find].

If you find you're not a fan of the CPA and the ROI for those name queries, go ahead and Google "top 5,000 names in the United States", and just negate all of those.


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Wil Reynolds
Wil Reynolds
CEO & Vice President