Podcast: Clicks, AI, Profits, & Psychology: Unveiling the Secrets of PPC Marketing with Aaron Adamson of PPC Profit Pros

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Original Podcast Published On: Drew Schlosberg’s Spotlight on the Community

Recently, I was interviewed on the #spotlightonthecommunity podcast, the US’s longest running podcast at 17 years, hosted by Drew Schlosberg, co-hosted by Kristin Fogle with special invitation from Charles Parisi of Cloudcast Media. It was a lot of fun! Great questions and wonderful experience at the Mission Federal Credit Union Studios right here in San Diego. Looking forward to coming back soon!

Transcript

I’m Drew Schlosberg, and you’re listening to another edition of Drew Schlosberg’s Spotlight on the Community show. We are so thrilled to have in the studio with us today Aaron Adamson and he is the founder and CEO of PPC, ProfitPros. How you doing, Aaron? Couldn’t be better. Nice to be here. Thanks for coming in.

Joined as, I shouldn’t say as always, but getting to be as always, by my co-host Kristen Fogel. Kristen is the executive director of San Diego Writers, Inc. If you want to get involved in writing memoirs, biographies, everything, you’re going to be involved with, Kristen’s organization celebrating your 20th anniversary next year, right?

Yeah. True story. Don’t you have a, is there an event coming up? Jilly, Jilly Bean Hall was telling me about it recently. Isn’t there coming up? We have a few events coming up. Yeah. We have an author’s and artists event that she’s probably referring to at the end of October, which is part of our fall for writing conference.

So that’s a really good time for people that don’t know us to take a free or a low cost . Writing session. Very good. Kristen’s been a guest on my show for a while. She said, I think I can do what you can do, . I said, I guarantee you, you can do what I, what I can do. I know you have a, question for Aaron.

Yeah. I just wanted to get into the mission of your organization. Sure. So, PPC Profit Pros we’re an agency and we’re focused on maximizing the profit. of companies through pay per click marketing. We use what I’ve created, it’s called the Profit Max System. And that’s a mix of the top AI technologies, exclusive access to one in particular, and advanced strategies that I’ve put together across the last 20 years of my marketing career.

really working with some of the biggest brands in the world before opening my agency in 2020, working with Volkswagen, Microsoft, TD Bank, Glaxo Smith Kline, Procter & Gamble, Tourism New Zealand, and so on. So lots of big names. That’s amazing. So can we, can we boil it down for those of us that are not as tech savvy maybe?

Can you talk to me about pay per click and what this means and, you know, a little bit about why it’s important? Sure. So, pay per click marketing, if you’ve ever done, a search on Google. Which I have. Thank you. And Google’s the most used, website in the world. So not surprised. Yeah. Right. And, and 91 percent of the world’s searches with Google, you’re gonna see ads at the top.

Yes. They look like text, little text boxes. And those are pay per click ads. Okay. Simply put, they, you, the, the advertiser, pays every time somebody clicks on those ads. Got it. And then below those are the free listings, the organic listings. So, we focus on the top there. Okay. Yeah. How do you focus on it?

What do you do? So, we basically have, We, you know, we put together and figure out what keywords people are using when they’re searching for the products and services that, that my clients are offering the world. And that’s why search is so, search ads are so powerful because, and, and we, we focus on there’s two kind of flavors of pay per click marketing.

There’s, there’s, search pay per click and there’s social pay per click. So in the, In, in the social realm, you’ve got really people that are more or less browsing. And in the, in the, in the, pay per click realm in search, people are actually searching with keywords. They’re, they’re trying to conjure out of the universe the, the things that they want.

Something specific. Yes. Okay. They want right now. Right. So that’s, that’s serious power. And the vast majority of people find what they want to buy. By searching for it and, and to, you know, like I said, 93 percent of, of, of the search traffic is in Google. And in fact, there’s 8. 5 billion searches every month.

Wow. And another interesting fact is that, 91 percent of brands don’t have any presence, presence presence in the free listings below those pay per click ads, so that makes those ads extremely coveted, you got to do a really good job marketing brands in that space. So how hard is it to get companies to understand this, relatively new way of marketing, correct?

Well. I mean, new, and this wasn’t going on in 1870, by the way, so not that I’m aware of. That we know of, yes. I mean, we have to look at the records. Right, exactly. It’s, it’s really not hard. In a sense, it is getting, it’s interesting because search pay per click has kind of been around the longest, in a way, and the social medias have grown up around them and, and they’ve got, they’ve, they’re getting the sexy attention, the, the, the TikToks and the, and the Snapchats and that sort of thing, but, people are still browsing around in those, those spaces, those social spaces.

It’s really kind of hard to get brands to go, you know what, search PPC may be something it’s old and you might see it as old and tired, but it, it is the way and the most profitable way that you’re going to get your stuff sold. Right. now were you always interested in marketing? Did you go to school for marketing or, or you were a, a, you know, forensic scientist and said, I want to get into something else.

Maybe you were a forensic scientist. When I was a kid, I, I had the biggest newspaper in, in my town. So, and I guess, well, where was I’m Canadian, so this was in Toronto area. The Star or the Globe? Toronto star, yeah. Okay, beautiful. Yeah, my mom was a Canuck. Passed away several years ago from Regina, Saskatchewan.

📍 Okay. The prairies. Exactly. Still said, Oot and a boot. even though she came to the United States in 38, I love the Canucks are the best. You guys, is your family still from Toronto? Yes. Yeah. I, I’ve just been here eight years. Is that, yeah, yeah. T. O. is great. So you delivered the star. Okay. Very good. Yes.

And that’s how you got fascinated by this. You, well, I got very good at, at signing people up, at between nine and 14. Did they pay? They used to, yeah, they used to take me to subdivisions and drop me in and create routes for kids. Did you go to Scarborough? Were you, is that one of them? Markham. I grew up in Markham.

Markham. Okay. All right. Very, very, very good. So that got you interested in this, right? Well, yeah, and, and then, I did a Bachelor of Science in Perceptual and Neurophysiological Psychology. I figured that, didn’t you? I thought that’s what he would do, didn’t you think? Yeah, we should do a mind reading segment, you and I, what people did before.

Exactly, I’d be so far off on that. So does it sort of tie together a little bit? It does. Because I know it sounds really convoluted and strange, but to study the, you know, the scientific study of human behavior, is fascinating and hugely helpful in marketing. But marketing is very mathematical these days, it’s digital, so, and science is, is using data.

So what I do is, is, is half data. It’s half understanding and putting data together and seeing what the story that data is telling us is. And, yeah, and that’s really kind of how this kind of my marketing career started. Yeah. You know, when you talk to folks about, you know, what makes them successful and whatever it is, it’s because I follow data driven things, you know, I actually look at the data for God’s sake and didn’t think this thing came from some Ouija board or whatever the case may be.

Data actually means stuff, doesn’t it? It does. It does. And sometimes… Interesting science hypothesis sometimes are kind of the stuff of Ouija boards. Right. Because you’re coming up with this stuff from the universe saying, I think the universe works this way or works that way. Right. And I was saying, you know, our opinions or hypotheses are, while interesting to us, are irrelevant.

What matters is the data coming that the market is telling us. What do they want? 100%. And those marketers who understand that, and, I worked for the newspaper for many, many years. I’m not sure if you knew that. And, I look back in the day, we, you know, we sit there and go, in my area was in marketing and public relations.

And all of a sudden we see a change in the. Why are they doing this now featuring the current section? Well, the editor was in the frozen food section and was talking to three people and they liked the peas and that’s what we’re doing. So he changed what we’re doing in our feature section because somebody, somebody, is that not true or not?

Boots on the ground. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I go, is there any data behind that? Well, we’re going to find out. That’s fine. We’re chatting with Aaron Adamson. The Founder and CEO of PPC Profit Pros, I’m Drew Schlossberg. You’re listening to our edition of Drew Schlossberg’s Spotlight on the Community.

It’s one of the nation’s longest running community podcasts now in our 17th year, we are broadcasting from the Mission Fed Studios in Scripps Ranch and Mission Fed doing wonderful things in San Diego, continuing for 60 years. Joined by terrific co-host Kristen Fogle, Executive Director of San Diego Writers, Ink, you know, I still want to stay on this topic of, you know, the data and, and, and so forth.

how much is this evolving this whole field that you’re in, especially when you bring in AI? it’s a great question, Drew. it, it is, it’s amazing and, and it’s been evolving for, Into AI longer than people think and in certain ways like I work with a software called Skai for the last 12 years and it used to be called Kenshoo and I brought it in when I was at a company called Flight Network in Canada to test it against a software called Marin that this company was using, basically these technologies, sit on top of the bidding systems of say, Google Pay-per-click.

Right? They have their own bidding systems, but, and a lot of people rely on that and don’t realize there’s any other way to do it, but it’s kind of like, their bidding systems tend to make Google or money. And so these other bidding systems that help bid these ads into position, they’re like a watchdog layer.

On top of it and wrestle the Google’s bids into submission for if you do it right for profit maximization for your client. So that’s actually made a partnership with Skai. I used to use it with with some of the biggest brands in the world that could. They’re the ones that could access it. It’s very, they have a very high barrier to entry.

So I made a partnership. I’m on the client advisory board with Skai and, and so I’ve gotten to, to be quite connected. And when I made PPC Profit Pros, I, I decided I would only do it if I had Skai in my back pocket for small and medium sized companies to give them an unfair profit maximization advantage.

I think that’s great. We’ll come back from break. We’re going to continue the conversation, with Aaron Adamson, Founder and CEO of PPC Profit Pros. I know, Kristen has some questions for you on maybe some of the challenges, that are going to be, you know, faced moving forward. I know you have a very cool health care client testimonial.

I want to hear from that. And we always save some time at the end, Aaron, for what our listeners can do to help, support your efforts. So if that sounds good to you, we’ll be right back. Sounds good. Thanks. We’ll be right back after this break.

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📍 I’m Drew Schlosberg and you’re listening to another edition of Drew Schlosberg Spotlight on The Community Show we are now the nation’s longest running community podcast in our 17th year broadcast here in the Mission Fed Studio in Scripps Ranch at Mission Fed. As many of our folks in San Diego County know, we’ve been doing great things for more than 60 years.

We are back with Aaron Adamson, Founder and CEO of PPC Profit Pros. I’m joined by my co-host, Kristen Fogel, the executive director of San Diego Writers, Inc. Kristen. Yeah, thanks so much, Drew. let’s talk about that story, this healthcare client, where your technology really helped them out. I’d love to hear about it.

Sure. Sure. so. Their name is Compass Behavioral Health and they are experts in what is called DBT or Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which is being considered as the most efficacious therapy for helping teens that are at risk of committing suicide. And so, she was interested in, in having PPC Profit Pros help her to get, get the message out across the country to the, the families of these teens that are in trouble. Right. and. Obviously do so profitably. Mm-hmm. , to help her grow her, her, business. And, and we’ve been able to do that. And, I was just on a call with her the other day and she said that, that, the decision to hire PPC Profit Pros was the best decision she’s made, so far this year

so that was wonderful to hear. Well that’s, you know, chilling and, and, and heartwarming and we all know that, it’s, that probably crisis, area here, not just with, you know, kids, military is seeing just a huge spike in suicides, matter of fact, we had a major general on the show not too long ago that works with an organization, their goal is to reduce military suicides by 50 percent in about five years. offline, I might you give you his name and I bet they could probably benefit from you. Yeah, that was a stellar, interview in, in that area. when you see those, testimonials, and so forth, obviously very, very, heartwarming.

Is there a certain client that is more amenable to what, the concept you’re bringing in? Do they have to know anything about, you know, you know, digital marketing, or you can just take a Rube like me who barely knows how two tin cans and a string work, to, to, to focus on this. You know, really, and you can use the word rube when you talk about me , , really, any, you know, if, if, if companies have people that are searching for their services in, in decent numbers or their products, you know, we can help them.

You know, and, and often what we’ll do is we’ll put together a projection for them, a profit projection, and very detailed spreadsheet that we’ve developed, and they love it. It’s, it’s, and they, and we, and we ask a few, questions and learn a bit about their particular business and then we plug it into our modeling.

And we show them and we, sometimes we go, you know, this isn’t actually going to work for you and I’m sorry, we can’t help you. But lots of the time, you know, most of the time people are looking for those services and products and we plug it in and, and, you know, the numbers look usually quite good.

Well, obviously with your, your success rate on it and good for you for saying that, that sometimes things just don’t fit, you know, and. I appreciate that, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely on it. Kristen, another question you have, for Aaron. Yeah, I mean, kind of riffing off something you said, though, I think that you’ve been talking about kind of these medium to large companies, but like, I run a small organization, it seems like PPC would, you know, be something that even smaller organizations can use. Can, you know, smaller organizations use your services or their resources for them to learn more about how that benefits them? Yeah. So, there’s a there’s a certain threshold of, of, of size of business, that we’re, that you sort of have to meet.

Yeah. There’s a bar with, with our services because we’re using AI software technology and there’s a data sufficiency test that we sometimes need to do if it’s a little small, to make sure that, because we’re making decisions on, at the keyword level and extrapolating to all the keywords and on, on profit maximization, there needs to be enough volume of data.

Got it. Typically, we find that happens around five to ten thousand at the low end of spend per month. Yeah. On the media. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Good to know. Mm hmm. Another interesting thing. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. Sorry. Is that for every, on average, for every dollar spent in PPC, Mm hmm. 2 comes back to the, to the advertiser.

That’s great. Yeah. Well, listen, with that return on investment, you know, I’m not quite sure anyone wouldn’t want to do this, to say the least, in this area. How much do you focus on companies, that are in countries in the Middle East or in the far West and the far East, or is it pretty much here?

Well, since, you know, I’m from Canada, now in the United States, it’s been more focused on, on North America. Right. But, absolutely, Mexico, you work in Mexico? haven’t had any, any, opportunity yet. Okay, yeah. We are, we have a, a global license for the, the software that we, that we leverage.

Yeah. So, there’s really nothing… holding us back from working in other countries of the world. Yeah, it seems to me obviously, you know, it’s better than anybody and these markets have been opening up for a while now, you know, and of course, people are taking advantage of it as they should. You know, whether it’s, you know, China or, you know, Singapore, I mean, pick a topic on this thing. It must be a pretty rich audience out there when you guys are ready to do that. It can be, yeah. What would be the drawback, language? Languages. Yeah. I mean, we, we need to, and we can do that. We, you know, we can hire, specialists. Right. it’s a, it’s very interesting, you know, this market nowadays, you know, you, you can pull from different countries and get specialists, in, in PPC marketing that speak the language that you need.

Right, 📍 right. And you can do so quite, quite easily. So, yeah, there’s, there’s huge opportunity. The world is really shrinking. It’s marvelous. Yeah, and it seems to me, I remember, at the UT, we were, you know, delving into some type of new type of technology, you know, and, sometimes the United States thinks it’s ahead of the game, and you find out you’re about number 25 in the world over here.

I mean, and I know you’re smiling because it’s so true, right? and, you know, when it came with cell phone usage and we were first starting to use it, and we were so far behind, you know, folks like China and those back, and we’re just, like leap years away. We had about three decades to catch up to their minimum maybe it’s part of our hubris, which, we lead the world in hubris. I think, this country does that could be wrong on that. but, it would seem to me, you know, your opportunities would just be huge, in these other areas. It, you know, it, it’s really limitless. It’s borderless and, it’s, it’s phenomenal. Really the mechanisms of what I do work everywhere because global, like Google, for instance, is ubiquitous. People are searching. What’s really changed over the years is obviously the move to the phone. And you know, 50, 60 percent of the, of the searches and the websites people are looking at, they’re doing so on their phone. And, you know, that’s, that’s made people have to approach the art and science of how they put themselves online. They have to think about themselves on a small screen. How’s this gonna come across? Right. Well, it’s fascinating you bring up the phone. We had a guest on here that, called Learning Upgrade. I’m not sure if you were a co host at the time on this, Kristen. No, those were in the before times. This was in advance. This was BK before Kristen. Okay. And she makes me say that all the time. And we didn’t have a show before I got involved. But this guy is a genius. This guy is really so smart. And they have found a way to use the phone, with those classes that, cause a lot of people have phones now, that can raise reading levels by the activities they did only through the phone by like three grade levels in a year. And it was fascinating. Wow. Wow. Learning Upgrade if you have a chance to Google them. And it was, they’ve been doing this stuff for, you know, a while and, but you talk about the phone because, that’s everything is going to this computer that we have in our hands all the time. Exactly. Yeah. And is there anything holding back the phone because they’re not powerful enough now or the technology in the phone is, is getting up to this?

Oh, it’s more than capable. Yeah. My 14 year old son explains to me just how capable it is, and he keeps, makes sure my tech is up to date, and, and it’s, yeah, there’s more power than we need in that thing now. Exactly, and my 29 year old looks at me with disdain and goes, really, why don’t you just go back to the rotary phone?

All of our listeners are going, they’re Googling rotary right now. What is that? I’m not sure if Isabel knows what it is, she’s sitting in us as stem cell expert listening to this interview. you know, Kristen always likes to ask a question about our listeners and what they… we can do, right? Yeah. You know, what, what can the listeners do to support your efforts or learn, learn more about you? Talk to us about that. yeah. So if people are curious, if pay per click marketing is right for them, if it could be profitable for them. They can just, we’re happy to take a free call. Just go to PPCProfitPros.com, upper right corner, Book-A-Call. There’s a button there. Great. And take a few seconds to put in your email name and phone number and we’ll hop on a video call.

We’ll, we’ll, we’ll show them a projection even from you know, somebody else and, and, and if that looks interesting, we’ll get some, some of their custom information and we’ll show them what their situation looks like. Excellent. You know, I’d love to do this, yeah, and it’s something that, we just thrive on, on our, Spotlight Show and that is, learn about the company like we’ve done today, but we’d love to have you bring in a client, and maybe the one you deal with Orange County that have benefited from what you’ve done, and there’s two fold on that. One, they made some money, which is why they’re in business, but look at what they’ve done with the, teen suicides in this aspect of it. I’m not saying we have to do them, but if you think there’s someone that would love to come on, that one is obviously something that would be very interesting to our, listeners.

we’d love to have you come back. Drew, I, I, I love the idea, and I, and I’ll definitely ask the woman that runs that. And, I think that’s a lovely idea. Yeah, wonderful. We just would love her to come in studio if she could, but it’s not that far of a drive, so. No. Yeah. Exactly. If, we’ll tee off online on that and I’d love to have that.

You know, Aaron Adamson, what an absolute honor chatting with you. We’re going to look forward to having you come back for a return appearance. I’m honored. Thank you. Very good to be here. You bet. Aaron Adamson, the founder and CEO of PPC Profit Pros. I’m Drew Schlosberg, joined by my co-host, Kristen Fogel, as you listen to another edition of Drew Schlosberg Spotlight on the Community Show, the nation’s longest running community podcast now in our 17th year, brought to you by Mission Fed Credit Union, doing great things for San Diegans for more than 60 years, hope you enjoyed the show.

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