You're welcome back. We're glad to know you're still there. It's the breakfast on plus TV Africa and right now we're looking at the fact that Nigerians are groaning as higher fuel prices shrink incomes and worsen poverty and to help us talk with about that is Mr. Shagun Shokwiton principal partner Woodridge and Scott and he's here in the capacity of public affairs analyst. Good morning and welcome to the program sir. Good morning I do hope you slept well I'm asking you this. We do hope you've woken up well and today is going to be a wonderful day. Now fuel prices have gone up in fact in some places it's bought as far as high as 700 Naira but officially so to speak it's like 617 Naira there about 650 617 just fluctuating between those prices. Well let's just take your comments as what you think the lifestyle of the people would be now as the fuel prices have gone up and there's a likelihood it will still go up. Welcome to the new Nigeria is the person that I'd like to say you know to everybody I mean this is the way it's likely to be for the near future and I say this because I do not see any type of engagement on the part of Nigerians that would make the government to have everything in the past you know you wouldn't have this quantum of an increase before you would have heard from organized labor civil society students groups professional bodies and protests and strikes would have been you know the song of the day but we in the new Nigeria for some reason everybody is approaching the matter from a point of view of helplessness you know so it's a new Nigeria and I think that to address the point that you make about adjusting because this is our reality I think it's important that people begin to think all they can do to survive this of course we've spoken extensively about the proprietary you know the necessity of this decision it's a completely different conversation but that decision has been made and we need to think together on what to do to survive and you find that people as usual as human beings you must survive so people are already taking measures some people have had to leave their jobs because simply because the salaries that they were being paid in in those jobs no longer cover the transportation costs sufficiently to leave enough for other things you know transportation costs has risen up to as much as 80% of some people's salaries 60% you know and all of that and it has those jobs became more sustainable so people have had to leave and you and I know trekking is no longer an exercise it's no longer a fitness activity or a lot of Nigerians now you know people have to try to work to and fro walking distances as much as 15 kilometers 10 kilometers 20 kilometers both ways every day in the scorching heat sometimes you know so those are the adjustment that we are making and I want to suggest that if you if you own a car aside from the obvious and natural reaction of limiting how often you go out your driving pattern and your driving style might need to change and you know this is a very serious conversation you you could save as much as 50% of your fuel consumption by simply making very minor adjustments to how you drive sudden acceleration sudden braking consumes a lot of fuel maintaining a steady pace you know through your trip not necessarily not going fast you can go fast without consuming a lot of fuel but just maintaining a steady pace and save you a lot if you have a car that has an onboard computer that gives you the reading of your fuel consumption use it make sure that that is what is displayed on your screen as you drive because to tell you how many liters per kilometer that you are using and these things now it's no longer just a nice gadget to have in your car it could very well be a survival tool because it could save you as much as 50,000 Naira maybe even 60 maybe 100,000 Naira per month depending on your on your on your lifestyle and your movement pattern so you know these are just some little tips there's so many other things that we need to do just to adjust to this new real estate and like you say we need to remember that these prices are likely to go up again you know once exchange rate settles at any at a range that is higher by 50 to 100 Naira from what we have today and once cool dog prices move higher from the 80 dollar there about that we have today there will be an adjustment again upwards there's a possibility of an adjustment downwards but you know your guess is as good as mine as to which one is more likely to happen and I think it's also important to point out that even though the NMPC says that the market have been liberalized and its market forces that are play but you find that prices pump prices are still being adjusted at the prompting of the NMPC we have to keep an eye on this something does not add up we claim that the oil marketers whether majors or independents are the ones that are now importing petroleum products and that prices are being set just by by the cost that they incur in doing that and yet it is NMPC that leads the way in establishing price increases why so this is a question that we would is it because they are for now still the largest importer or are we still in some sort of regulated market even though we claim that we have the regulated so there's still a lot of questions that we need answers to as we go along this journey yeah well the issue of fuel price hike seems to have swallowed the issue of dollars just about yesterday or so we hear that the Naira or the dollar sold for about 800 and something Naira and it fluctuates like that from 750 which is almost like a constant now to 800 back and forth like that we're not even looking at the dollar which also because I see that in Nigeria everything hangs on fuel and the exchange rate but now fuel is swallowing the dollar we don't we are not talking much about the dollar is it that we are comfortable or do you think we it's something that we should keep talking about and you think there is a solution that can come well as far as the value of the Naira is concerned and the exchange rate of the Naira to other currencies especially the US dollars we it's it's a it's again you know it's a new journey just started this to operate this new policy this new regime and we have to wait to see how the market settles like you say right now we have a lot of volatility yesterday the dollar closed at 860 Naira thereabouts the day before it closed at 744 in the official markets you know so that that swing a hundred Naira swing in just a one-day period tells you that volatility is a big problem it tells you that the market has not settled it tells you that there's a lot of speculation and there's still a lot of doubt instructive in all of this is the fact that the unification of the exchange rate the abolition of the multiple official rates you know policy has been in operation now for over a month so we shouldn't be talking about volatility and you know you know the markets are very dynamic and the market usually would settle within a decent amount of time not months so this volatility is suggestive that there's a problem in the mechanism and in the mechanics of market today I have repeatedly advocated that if you want to float your exchange rate you must also be willing to remove as many exchange control restrictions that you have in place if you feel to exchange rate and you do not remove those restrictions supply will not match demand and the only way will be up as far as the price or exchange rate is concerned we have done the one we have not done the order enough so we have floated the value of you know the mechanism for determining the value of the night against the US dollars but the extreme cash controls that we have had for decades in the foreign exchange markets have not been lifted we've done a few so for example the restrictions on the use of local Naira debit cards for international transactions have now been lifted that restriction was put in place by the former well the suspended CBN government in the early days of the baria administration and onwards the restriction kept getting tighter and tighter until it was no longer allowed at all that restriction has been lifted now so that's an example of one good response from you know from the authorities which regards to exchange control but there's still so many others that need to go in order to encourage the holders of liquidity to bring their money in and that has not happened if we don't do that then the likely direction of the exchange rate will be up okay well we're talking about the poverty that people have been subjected to because of the hike in fuel prices and all that we're blaming fuel price hike but the poverty is going round and it's coming from multiple sources and heating Nigerians really hard but there is this news I don't know whether we should be happy about it or be sad about it because we know that the FAAC are going to share the 1.959 trillion Naira you know this is like like triple what was shared in June so the states the local governments the federal government they are going to share this money 1.959 trillion and the last time money was shared it was a 786.161 billion Naira that was shared in June so this time around this is there is so much money that will be shared by the street government is that something that we are supposed to rejoice over that you think that so much money coming to the states will will cushion the effect of these as fuel subsidy removal will cushion the effects we are facing as Nigerians now because of the price hike in the in the in fuel and so many it will remove some people from poverty that we are crying this morning that people are now falling into well it's very interesting you know that you bring this up because I'm discussing with a friend yesterday look it's important to note yes the removal of the subsidy will have an impact on the fiscal policy of government and availability of revenues perhaps hopefully and perhaps that may be what we are seeing however it is important to note that typically by pattern July if you check the historical records of FAC allocation which you know usually be published has been published in the days of the minister was your word your weather July has always traditionally traditionally in the highest so for example whilst previous months last year around 700 billion 600 billion Naira was shared by FAC in July of 2022 FAC that was shared FAC allocation that was shared or disbursed was 1.2 trillion July you know as against 1.01 trillion in June of that same year so look let's not make sensationalize what needs not be sensationalized we do not know yet what the effect of the subsidy removal has been we know what to expect but whether what we expect is what we will see and the impact of what we see eventually if it don't if we do see it we do not know what that impact will be until we experience it and I think that the point still needs to be made that as fantastic as it is to create this additional revenue buffer for government the revenue is useless to the people if they do not feel the benefits in their lives as quickly as possible if their lives as a result of additional revenue has become significantly harder in a manner that perhaps is avoidable that is the conversation that I think we need to have it's very good to increase government revenues because government can then do more but is this the only way to achieve that is there a better way is there an easier way is there a way to achieve that without impoverishing more Nigerians if you have poverty at you know you have already 130 million Nigerians living in multi-dimensional poverty you have an unemployment rate of over 30% if you add on the employment of over 50% you know is this the time to do this where you then push more people below the poverty line push more people into the job labor market you know because they simply can sustain you know their jobs and all of that you know so I think that that's the commission we had celebrating an increase in factor location for me now is superficial okay while we wrap up because this actually will be the last questions as we wrap up they the National Assembly has said that the president should lift embargo on unemployment do you think this is a solution to the poverty that is ravaging the land now I mean we're talking about a federal government that pays 30 million dollars 30,000 minimum wage how can that solve the problem and plus how many people can the federal government is not employed what is the workforce of the federal government you know so asking the federal government to lift embargo as a potential solution to what we're experiencing now is a mood point it's it does nothing we need coherent policymaking from government to address the issues that are being created by the policies of the same government that is what we need at the moment and right now I'm afraid we're not seeing enough of that even the policy of removing subsidy appears as we have seen with the back and forth and the flip flopping not to have been implemented in a coherent manner and in fact has not been implemented in line with the plan of the government itself you know so that is what we need to speak to asking government to lift embargo on unemployment again is very superficial okay we'd like to thank you Mr. Shokwiton for coming on the program thank you for your time you're welcome yeah we've been talking with Mr. Shokwiton principal partner Woodridge and court consulting and we'll we were talking on the fact that people are falling into poverty because of the the hike in the fuel price and so many other issues that are making Nigerians to become poorer and poorer he provides some solutions and we do hope that everybody will be patient enough and we'll also think outside the box to make sure that you regulate the way you live your life and then you wait for the solutions that may come in a short time or not too long a time in our lives let's leave to see that Eldorado for Nigeria as we are hoping we'll take a short break when we return we'll go to the next hot topic stay with us


Guys Merlin has just made a development. Okay, Merlin Merlin the only other time he climbed up anyone was George's dad and instead of him like being Destructive because like he wants to chew the base board so instead of that like he walked over and Chose George like me and George are here, and he chose George Yeah, you told him don't don't key that no, but you sent me over to deal with that And I said to George boy you could tell him to and then George is like I'm dealing with birds here. I'm like him dealing with birds is like watching these two Like they're like they're not doing anything. They're just like a jizzy Song but you better fix the Alexa Alexa. It's not here because Jersey broke it try to turn it on Do it again, but do it from your stomach so not from your throat stomach yeah, so you breathe in and Listen to the difference is why my voice hurts because I'll get lazy, right? And I'm like you sniff so good, right? Sounds good Come on like what's wrong with us you push you use your stomach I don't know why you are using like your chest You see how normal probably breathe right? But when you see you got to be from here, so you're gonna push to the air is why when I sing with the birds I sound so bad because I'm just like I don't have the patience to like control all my air like that But you sound like if you did you could like at least not strain Was I strange do it again ready? You're just trying to get me out of this thing. No Come on project the whole work What do you mean? I know I'm done. This is over. No, I don't need to be on film doing this Jersey guess what I heard thinks your singing was fantastic George, how was Jersey singing? Better than mine for sure Where you have yeah, did daddy liked your song he says he wants you to sing every night Well, she does sing every night actually Yeah, yeah, you want to go to bed? Shall we go to bed? Oh, yeah, and I thought I should do this for those of you that are insecure Cuz you're like your house is so clean I mean well it is cuz I keep it clean, but like that just means I have to stay up now And it's probably like already 11 and clean it, but like look So how was my start it was not like that I don't go to bed without it all being Good night birds. Does anyone want to say anything? Love you. Yeah. Oh, there you good night code. You gotta go to bed now Sandy and the cup. Oh my god. We've seen him drink out of a cup. That's it This is your cup buddy. I mean you will share this cup and you'll be the Coca-Cola bird Coca-Cola I knew he would do that just now for some reason after I gave him that thing He's got it down a snow pea. What is it called? Yeah, I give him Here's the definition of seven-up go start from here. Oh my god. Oh My god, who did this and when?


So hear the word of the Lord, Judges chapter 6 beginning in verse 25. Now it came to pass the same night that the Lord said to him, said to Gideon, take your father's young bull, the second bull of seven years old, and tear down the altar of Baal that your father has and cut down the wooden image that is beside it and build an altar to the Lord your God on top of this rock in the proper arrangement and take the second bull and offer a burnt sacrifice and get the wood of this image which you shall cut down. So Gideon took ten men from among his servants and did as the Lord had said to him because he feared his father's household and the men of the city too much to do it by day, he did it by night. And when the men of the city arose early in the morning there was the altar of Baal torn down and the wooden image that was beside it was cut down and the second bull was being offered on the altar which had been built. They said to one another, who has done this thing? When they had inquired and asked, they said, Gideon the son of Joash has done this thing. Then the men of the city said to Joash, bring out your son that he may die because he has torn down the altar of Baal and because he has cut down the wooden image that was beside it. But Joash said to all who stood against him, would you plead for Baal? Would you save him? And who would plead for Baal, plead for him? He put to death by morning. If he is a God, let him plead for himself because his altar has been torn down. Therefore, on that day, he called him Jeru Baal saying, let Baal plead against him because he has torn down his altar. This is the word of God, amen. Amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you for the blessing of being together on the Lord's day and hear Lord tonight. The blessing of being together in an evening service where we can gather together to praise you, to sing hymns together, to pray together and now to listen to your word preached together. It is a tremendous blessing to be in Christ by faith, Lord. And then to be given such a blessed opportunity of being together with the church and sitting under your word preached. It's just a joy and we're grateful to you for it. Thank you for blessing us in this way. I thank you for this time together tonight to study this text. And to spur us on to be faithful, singularly devoted to the Lord our God. Tearing down the idols in our heart and building up the new man, which is being renewed day by day in our sanctification. Help us by your spirit, Lord, to do that. Help us to be faithful to you in these things. We love you in Jesus' name, amen. Well, the title of our sermon tonight is Bear No Rivals. We're in Judges chapter 6 verses 25 through 32. The historical account of Gideon in Judges chapter 6 began with a sobering reminder about the reason for the severe circumstances that have befallen the nation of Israel, the circumstances that they now find themselves in. That begins in Judges chapter 6 verse 1 where the Bible says that the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. And so the Lord then delivered them into the hand of Midian for seven years, just as he said he would, and the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel. Now the evil that precipitated this just judgment of God is the evil of idolatry. And I was thinking about this. Psalm 106 gives the record here of Israel's entrapment, their continuous or persistent difficulty with idolatry. Listen to Psalm 106 beginning in verse 34. The psalmist said, they did not destroy the peoples concerning whom the Lord had commanded them, but they mingled with the Gentiles and learned their works. They didn't drive out the Canaanites who were in the land, but they left them in the land and they mingled with them and they learned their works. Verse 36 says they served their idols which became a snare to them. We see that here in Judges chapter 6. They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons and shed innocent blood.  Thus they were defiled by their own works and played the harlot by their own deeds. Therefore the wrath of the Lord was kindled against his people so that he abhorred his own inheritance. And he gave them into the hand of the Gentiles and those who hated them ruled over them. Their enemies also oppressed them and they were brought into subjection under their hand. Many times he delivered them, but they rebelled in their counsel and they were brought low for their iniquity. That's where we are now in Judges chapter 6. Many times in his patience, God has delivered Israel and they rebelled in their counsel and they're brought low in their iniquity. Now we see the Lord giving them over to the hand of Midian for seven years. Now after seven years of the judgment of God, after seven years of severe oppression, the people begin to cry out to God. Cry out to the Lord for help. And so the Lord then sends them a prophet, his prosecuting attorney you could say, to remind them of his word to them in Judges chapter 6 verse 8, where the prophet preaches, thus says the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of bondage.   Do not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell, but you have not obeyed my voice. It's a tragic description of where they are. So we find Israel now in a devastating and a destitute condition. In verse 6, they were impoverished or they had become small. Literally, the Midianites are starving them out. And the nation is dwindling. They're being starved out by the Midianite menace that would sweep across the land, ruining their crops, stealing their livestock, but Psalm 106 again in verse 4, now with a testimony of God's patience and God's mercy.  It reminds us, doesn't it, that as high as are the heavens above the earth, so great is his mercy toward those who fear him. God is merciful. God is gracious. Here he is again, merciful and gracious to the nation of Israel. So it is mercy. God then raises up Gideon now in Judges chapter 6 to deliver his people out of the hand of the Midianites. Gideon is visited by the angel of the Lord, the pre-incarnate Christ, and at the time, Gideon's faith is virtually non-existent. Gideon responds to the angel of the Lord. It reminds all this happened to us. God hasn't shown up for us like he did for our fathers. He's forsaken us. He's left us. Abandoned us. Abandoned his covenant with us, and he has sold us into the hand of Midian. It was then that moment of faithlessness, you could say, that Gideon has a Copernican revolution, a perspective-changing, life-altering, pride-unraveling encounter with the one true God of Israel. Gideon's undone. Right? He's undone. He lays his offering upon the rock. Fire comes from beneath and consumes the offering, and at once Gideon sees the holiness and majesty of God, the exceeding sinfulness of his own sin, fears for his life, and what does the Lord do? The Lord speaks peace to him. Peace, Gideon. Don't be afraid. It sounds like conversion, doesn't it? It sounds a bit like conversion. We see our sinfulness, we see the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the Lord speaks peace to us through the gospel. We turn to Jesus Christ in faith. What does Gideon do? Gideon builds and alter there to the Lord, and he names it, the Lord is peace. It's beautiful, isn't it? The Lord is peace. Now, while the Lord is speaking peace to Gideon at the wine address, there is the general stench of a putrefying sore coming out of OFRA. The Puritan Richard Rogers refers to it as an open wound. There's no true healing in a wound, right? Unless the disease is dug out. Unless it's cleaned out. Unless the corruption is cleansed. Unless the pollution is cleansed out of the wound. Remember, you were a kid.  And what would your mom do? Where's the iodine? I can't remember what the other stuff was called. You pour it in the wound, it fizzles. She'd say, that's how you know it's working. It's cleaning out the wound, getting rid of all the dirt and grime that's in there, so that the wound can heal. You slap a band-aid on it, because it feels better with a band-aid, and in a couple days the thing is back to normal. There is no true healing of a wound unless it's cleaned out, right? Unless the corruption is cleansed out. The disease is dug out. The gangrenous limb must be cut off, right? The cancerous tumor must be excised. And now, in this reality, it's in this circumstance that Gideon finds himself, and now Gideon's profound faith is about to get its very first test. Look at verse 25. Now, it came to pass the same night that the Lord said to him, take your father's young or prized bull, the second bull of seven years old and tear down the altar of Baal that your father has and cut down the wooden image that is beside it.  Cut off the gangrenous limb. We've got to cleanse this wound so that healing can come. Right? There was one bull in verse 25. We're not talking about two different bulls. We're talking about one bull. This bull, by the way, was a bull seven years old. Interesting, the bull has made it through the Midianite oppression. The seven years under Midian, and this bull is still hanging around. So you could tell why this was a prized bull. Actually, the word second there in verse 25, a traditional translation of this is that that word second is from a different root that means prized. It means highly valued or exalted. This is actually one bull, a bull of seven years, that was a prized bull or a highly valued or exalted bull. And notice with me, regarding this, it was wasted in verse 25. It was on that same night Gideon offers the offering. Fire consumes it. He has this encounter with God and on that same night Gideon is charged with going and tearing down this altar and cutting down the wooden image beside it. That same night. Now, the Lord essentially said to Gideon, the time has come for judgment and where does judgment begin? Judgment begins at the house of God. Judgment begins at home. Judgment begins with you. The time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God. Go tear down that idolatrous altar that your father set up in Ophra. In other words, you're my singularly devoted servant now. My single-hearted servant. You're no longer a double-minded man, toss, two and pro. You're going to be my single-hearted servant. I call for a single-hearted devotion. There's going to be no halting here or faltering between two opinions between Baal and between the one true and living God of Israel. God brooks no rivals. He will suffer no rivals. You shall have no other gods before me, the Lord says. Baal must go. Baal must go. Cut down that cancerous tumor. Go and tear down that altar. These are those bridges. You see, this was an illustration, isn't it? Of what is often expected of the new Christian. When someone newly comes to Christ, what communion does light have with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? It's time to cut off that which offends. It's time to cut off that which ensnares, that which enslave. You've got to tear down idolatrous altars that you've built up in your heart.  Tear those things down. Old worldly structures need to be torn down. How do you spend your time? Who do you spend your time with? The old man must be put off is what he's saying to Gideon here. The old man must be put off. Why? Because a new man has to be put on. You put off the old man? Because why? We've got to put on the new man. Paul would say purge out the old leaven because you are a new lump. Gideon you could say is a new lump. He's got to purge out the old leaven. Israel is about to be delivered. Purge out that old leaven so that you can become in him a new lump. So in verse 25 Gideon is to tear down verse 26 Gideon then is to build up look at verse 26 the Lord says to him and then build and alter to the Lord your God on top of this rock in the proper arrangement take the second bull or the prized bull and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the image which you shall cut down. In other words it's not simply enough it's not enough to simply tear down the idolatrous altar it's not enough to tear down it's not enough simply to stop you could say it's not enough we must build and alter to the Lord our God in the place of that which was torn down you see there's an illustration in this isn't there a good example for us think with me how unimaginable it would it be for Gideon to have built in verse 26 without first tearing down in 25 it would be crazy to imagine that right Gideon is going to go build and alter to the Lord while his family is back at home bowing down to an altar for Baal an asherapole in the backyard how foolish and empty would it have been for him to tear down in verse 25 without then building up to the Lord in verse 26 this thing would have been lacking we've got to tear down and then build up it's not enough to tear down the idolatrous altar we have to build and alter to the Lord in its place Ephesians chapter 4 verse 18 lost people having their understanding darkened being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart who being past feeling themselves over to lewdness to work all uncleanness with greediness but listen to verse 20 but you, you've not so learned Christ if indeed you've heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus verse 22 that you put off concerning your former conduct the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lust and be renewed in the spirit of your mind the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness this is practical isn't it you tear down and you build up this is what we are to do this is the life of the Christian Peter says it this way in 1 Peter 2 verse 1 Peter says laying aside all malice laying aside deceit laying aside hypocrisy, envy and all evil speaking anymore babes what are we to do we are to desire the pure milk of the word that we may grow thereby if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious we are to lay those things aside we are to desire the pure milk of the word that we may grow the new man right we may grow thereby what do we do then we lay aside or we tear down sinful time wasting we tear down sinful time wasting and redeem the time in godly pursuits whatever is sinful time wasting you've got to think about your own life your own circumstances and determine what that is what is it that is sinful dissipation to you tear down sinful time wasting and redeem the time it's not enough to tear down tear down sinful time wasting and redeem the time in godly pursuits lay aside your complaining it's not enough to lay aside the complaining what must we do we must put on contentment put on gratitude put on joy lay aside anger lay aside and put on patience put on compassion put on understanding put on love lay aside the lusts of the flesh put them off tear that idle down and put on hunger and thirst for righteousness we're to tear down and we're to build up we're to put off the old man the law has the same concept in mind doesn't it the law of god itself has the same concept in mind in scripture we find attached to prohibitions are commandments of duty attached to prohibitions we find commandments of duty in other words the first table of the law doesn't merely enjoin us to have no other gods before him make no carved images take his name in vain or remember the Sabbath but the first table of the law also commands us to love the Lord our God with all our heart all our soul all our mind all our strength all the time it's not enough just to simply take off we must put on you shall not murder compels us to preserve life you shall not steal compels us to work hard with our hands and to give sacrificially this is the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount this is the life of the Christian put off and put on tear down and build up the Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed us from bondage to our sin we have died to that old life in him and what we are raised to walk in newness of life those old idolatrous altars erected in your heart to bail must be torn down and build and alter the Lord your God on top of this rock the Lord says but that requires obedience requires obedience to God's Word sometimes it requires courage but always always requires obedience always obedience Matthew chapter 7 in verse 24 the Lord says this therefore whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them what's that? that's obedience right? whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them I will liken him to a wise man who built his house upon the rock and the rain descended the floods came the winds blew and beat on that house and it did not fall for it was founded on the rock but everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them that's called disobedience everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand the rain descended the floods came the winds blew and beat on that house and it fell and great was its fall so what then is expected of Gideon? what's expected of Gideon? obedience obedience is expected of Gideon he is to tear down that idolatrous altar and he is to build an altar to God on the rock you could say for Gideon that it's faith filled obedience right? raw obedience is not what it's expected he's expected to trust the Lord and do what the Lord says trust and obey for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus and obey faith filled obedience is what is expected of Gideon how is it that we accomplish this feat putting off the old man putting on the new man how are you going to tear down those idolatrous altars in your life and build to the Lord our God faith filled obedience trust and obey trust and obey well how does Gideon then respond to this in verse 27 it came to pass the same night Gideon himself didn't wait Gideon didn't waste any time either the lesson in that is don't delay don't delay don't wait be obedient faith filled obedience trust the Lord and obey him tear down the altar build a new one verse 27 so Gideon took 10 men from among his servants and did as the Lord had said to him amen Gideon that's right that's the right response but verse 27 because he feared his father's household and the men of the city too much to do it by day he did it by night but some verse 27 might fault Gideon for being fearful here or for lacking courage they might fault him but Gideon had the faith of the curse to obey God didn't he had the faith to obey the Lord Dale Ralph Davis explained obedience is essential heroism is optional obedience is essential let's not fault Gideon Gideon obeyed the Lord courage or heroism sometimes we need the little courage don't we heroism here is optional he did it by night but he did it amen thank you Gideon now Gideon's concerns are well founded and his father's household and the men of the city found out what Gideon had done when the men of the city arose early in the morning there was that wicked idolatrous altar of Baal torn down and the wooden image that was beside it was cut down and the second or the highly valued bull was being offered on the altar which had been built so they said to one another who's done this thing and when they had inquired and asked Gideon the son of Joash has done this thing then the men of the city said to Joash bring out your son that he may die because he has torn down the altar of Baal and because he has cut down the wooden image that was beside it one said concerning this section of text that the worst weeds have the deepest roots here the men of the city these aren't Canaanites living in Oprah or the covenant people of God these are Jews and they are irate that their altar to Baal has been torn down worst weeds weed of idolatry has the deepest roots but not unlike the Roman Catholic church who has killed many protecting her idols not unlike Islam who can only seem to press forward through violence by protecting its idols here the men of the city Israelite men, covenant people of God rush in to kill the one who would dare to strike at their cherished wooden pole their idol right? they're the real criminals in all this and they're looking for some guy who is the criminal they're looking for a criminal they're the real criminals and without asking or wondering why this has been done they're simply out to hang the guy that did it and the gun that he may die so blinded by their sin blinded by their sin they can't put two and two together they're not connecting dots here and the death that is warranted for any idolater in the law the death that the idolater deserves is now the sentence that is passed on the idol destroyer they're going to sentence Gideon now to death for destroying this altar their false idol that Gideon was living at home and look by the way fathers are responsible for their households who do the men of the city go to? they don't go to Gideon they go to Joash, Gideon's father what do they say to Joash? bring out your son that he may die dads, you're responsible for your households the men of the city go to Joash bring out your son that he may die because he is torn down the altar of veil and he has cut down the wooden image that was beside it how did Joash his father respond? verse 31 Joash said to all who stood against him and Joash proposes two questions he's not concerned about his prize bull but he's not concerned now about the altar that's been torn down Joash is concerned about his son and almost at once Joash sees what's going on and he's allied with his son Gideon in his righteous cause the first question that he asks is this would you plead or would you stand up in defense of veil? would you plead for veil? are you his defense now? as if veil needs someone to defend him the second question is this would you save him God, little G needed his people to deliver him? are you going to plead for veil? are you going to save him? or can veil, if he's a God can veil plead for himself? there's a note of sarcasm in Joash's voice Joash's questions and you can hear in Joash's questions where his thoughts already are on the subject Joash is already allied with his son Gideon let the one who would plead for him be put to death by morning in other words you're coming to the one who is contended against veil saying put him to death if you're going to presume to plead for veil then let you be put to death by morning let the one who would plead for him be put to death by morning if he is a God let him plead for himself because his altar has been torn down in other words Joash shames them he shames them if he's a God let him plead for himself the altar has been torn down if he wants to defend himself if he wants to assert himself against the one who did this let veil do it you don't have to do it for him now interestingly or incidentally who raised up this defense in the city for Gideon at the end of the day it wasn't Joash but God did it God did it for Gideon in Joash's heart quickly through Gideon's father the former idolater the one in Oprah who was worshipping that idolatrous altar just like the other men of the city that idolater sees the light it's not unlike a Damascus road experience you could say Joash at once a former blasphemer, persecutor an insolent man now sees more clearly and there's no waiting here on Joash's part either he's not like wait a minute guys let's take our time let's deliberate a little bit about this he immediately comes to Gideon's aid there's no waiting here on Joash's part either Joash just stands up in defense of Gideon obeying the Lord obeying the Lord's cause he does not delay to come to the right side of the matter and take a stand for righteousness verse 32 proves that point therefore one that day he called him Jerobal saying let Baal plead against him because he has torn down his altar now Jerobal that name means literally let Baal contend against him Jerobal let Baal contend against him this was a memorial to his son he named him this as a memorial to Gideon and meant to cause Baal shame in the process now think with me for a moment Gideon now called Jerobal as long as Jerobal walked this earth he was a walking testimony against Baal someone would say there's Jerobal in other words this guy is still walking around Baal has done nothing to lay a finger on him and as long as Gideon walked around as Jerobal it shamed that foolish stupid deaf dumb mute fallen idolatrous Baal that pagan idol he was a walking testimony of shame the shame of Baal later it was interesting with the Israelites that there were several names in the Bible that had Baal as a last portion Jerobal was one example the Israelites would later replace the name Baal with another suffix you could say Bosheth and if you keep reading in Scripture later Gideon would be called Jerobosheth the word Bosheth means shame so they replaced the name of Baal with the Hebrew word for shame to heap shame and contempt upon the idol Baal as a later Gideon would be called Jerobosheth we can learn a lesson from that too can't we? we need to heap shame upon our idols heap contempt upon our idols heap contempt upon our own idolatrous hearts right? heap shame upon them if you have some idol alter at your house you need to do not delay do not delay and tear that thing down if you have some idolatrous alter that is waiting there for you on your computer go home and tear that thing down don't wait obey the Lord trust and obey if you have some idol altar built up in your heart do what it takes obey the Lord trust him tear that down and then build up and alter to the Lord our God on the rock who is the Lord Jesus Christ and worship him there do you see? tear down and build up God has called us to a single hearted devotion a single hearted devotion and he's called us to that single hearted devotion by faith in his son we have our hearts as Calvin says are a factory for idols a factory for idols we're so prone to leave the Lord our God the one that we love we're so prone to run off after the idols of this world we need faith in the Lord Jesus Christ trust and obey trust and obey there's no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey single hearted devotion he is the one the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who has conquered our enemies so we can go forward victorious and triumphant in him tearing down building up amen let's pray Father in heaven we are grateful to you Lord that you by your spirit give us the strength and when we need it the courage to tear down and to build up thank you Lord that by your spirit through the means of your word we put off the old man with his deceitful lusts and we put on the new man in righteousness by Jesus Christ our Lord we are renewed in our mind and we can by your spirit through your word be sanctified and be more and more and more progressively separated from the presence of sin in our lives we thank you Lord for the strength that your spirit supplies to help us do that very thing Lord please convict us to cherish sinful idols in our lives sinful idols in our heart that we understand that we are a factory for idols and we are so prone as the Israelites were in this day so prone to idolatry so prone to lay hold of idolatrous lusts or lay hold to idolatrous pleasures or leisure in this world idolatrous worldliness or idolatrous complacency or help us to tear down the altars that we have erected to these worthless false idols in our lives in our hearts and help us Lord to build up and alter there to you and to worship you and to praise you through faith filled obedience as we live for the Lord Jesus Christ who has redeemed us from such wicked and foolish things help us Lord to live for you earnestly, fervently, devotedly single hearted devotion Lord to be by your spirit and we thank you Lord that you have promised to help us in this very thing. We look to you expectantly for this help and aid by your spirit God please be with us as we live for you may it be to your praise and glory we pray In Jesus' name, amen


Going beyond our galaxy, Hubble captured two nebulae inside this small Magellanic cloud situated as to appear as one. Intense radiation from the brilliant central stars is heating the hydrogen in each of the nebulae causing them to glow red. This is part of a study to understand how interstellar dust is different in galaxies that have a far lower supply of heavy elements. The small Magellanic cloud has between a fifth and a tenth of the amount of heavy elements that the Milky Way does. Because it is so close, astronomers can study its dust in great detail and learn about what dust was like earlier in the universe's history.


Hello, my name is Michael and in this video I'll be demonstrating a new feature of Gaffer's Viewer which is that the rotate tool and translate tool can make objects target or aim other objects. So if I select this object here and then switch to the translate tool, if I hold V and click it will move the object onto the surface of any geometry that I click on. This works on simple geometry as well as more complex surfaces. If it is a point-based object like a light or a camera and I switch to the rotate tool, if I hold V and click these objects will point at any surface that I click on. Again, this works on simple geometry as well as more complex surfaces.


Hello everyone and welcome to today's webinar, understanding the biggest inbound marketing channel in the world. My name is Sarah Gonzalez and I will be facilitating your webinar today. Today we will be looking at why AdWords work, how to build and optimize your campaign and how to report on and improve your results. So today's webinar will be hosted by Jeremy Deca from Click Media. Jeremy has been working on AdWords account since 2006 and is here to provide us with his tips and advice from working with thousands of Australian organizations. How are you today? I'm very well, thanks Sarah, how are you? Good, let's get started, let's get straight into it. Alright, great, thanks for that introduction Sarah. So today as Sarah mentioned we will be talking about AdWords and understanding what I think is the biggest inbound marketing channel in the world. Now if I wanted to tell you absolutely everything there is to know about AdWords we would probably be here for about a month. So what I've tried to do with today's webinar is to really give you the information you need to firstly understand why AdWords is so important for your business and why it's so important to use it and secondly how to create and optimize a campaign that will work well for your business. Okay, so a little bit about me, now I go by a couple of names but when I'm not saving the world and fighting crime I usually go by Jeremy Deca. I've been working in AdWords management since 2006 and during that time I've managed hundreds of campaigns from budgets from anywhere as small as a thousand dollars a month right through to about half a million a month. You can see some of the brands I've worked for there but I've worked for clients as small as you know your local plumber right through to brands that pretty much everyone in the world would have heard of. Alright, so just to look at what today's webinar will cover. So firstly look at why AdWords works and why it's important for your business. Then we'll move on to how to build a granular AdWords account. Campaign once you've actually got it set up and then running experiments in AdWords campaign to increase your performance even further.  So if you could just answer either A, B or C or D what level of involvement do you have with Google AdWords currently?  Great and if you do want to select one of those Yvonne just select on the radio button next to 1, 2, 3 or 4 on your screen at the moment and we can see those live results coming through now. Great. So it looks like most people so far are going with option D so most people have no involvement with Google AdWords which is fine. I'll try to make it as basic as possible just for the people that aren't really too familiar with AdWords but some of the stuff will be a little bit more intermediate. So feel free to ask any questions as we go through the webinar and I'll try to answer them as best I can. I'm just also going to turn off the webcams now so we can focus on the content of the presentation and also for those people who may be experiencing bandwidth issues but as we get started please feel free to type your questions into the box below and we'll turn on the webcams once again when we get to the end of the presentation. Alright so moving on so let's get started with understanding what drives the click. Now when it comes to AdWords there are two main networks that you're going to be getting traffic from. First being the search network which is a proactive user base. The people are actually typing something into a search engine to find some kind of either some information or looking to use a service or buy a product. And secondly the display network which is more of a reactive network so you might have ads being displayed on a blog for example or a news site like Sydney Morning Herald. With the search network there are going to be two main types of people. Firstly people that are looking for a product or service so they'll be typing in things like buy movies online, car service Sydney, professional resume writer. With an AdWords campaign for a business these are the types of people that you really should spend the most time trying to focus on. They're actively looking to use a service or product so they've taken the initiative and these are the people that you're probably going to have the best chance at converting into an actual customer. The second type of people that use a search engine are people that are looking for information. They'll be typing in things like movie session times, car service guide or how to and things like resume writing tips as well. Now those people although they might not be ready to buy a product or user service right away they might be in the future so it isn't worth completely avoiding these people although you do want to have these two types of traffic separated if at all possible because the first type of people that are actually looking to something straight away they're usually a lot more likely to convert into a customer for you. When it comes to the display network now because your users aren't actually looking to something they're just browsing the internet it is important to take a different approach to your ad content. So firstly you want to be highly relevant and you want to try and meet an immediate need that the user might have. So say for example if someone's looking for cheap movie tickets you want to try and address that in the ad same day car service for example. The second strategy with display is really to highlight a really appealing offer. So something free for example is always great to use a value ad so you can see that the example I've given is free five year car service and thirdly maybe even a percentage discount. The reason that you want to try and use these things is because when someone's actually looking for something they're a lot easier to convert but with the display network you're interrupting their browsing and for that reason you've really got to make the ad stand out and give them a really good reason to actually click your ad and hopefully to turn into a customer as well. Okay so where do AdWords ads appear? Now what I've shown here is a few examples of what kind of ads you can use with AdWords and where they appear. The top one in the middle is a standard search ad and you can see a few different AdWords ads there. Now although this is the oldest and probably the most boring type of AdWords advertising it probably is the most important as well. And that should be clear as to how it works. I mean people are typing in something in Google and you're showing them an ad that fits that need. This type of advertising will always be the best converting or almost always anyway. So you should definitely start with this type of advertising and that should be the fundamentals when it comes to your campaign. The left hand side image there shows some PLA or product listing ads and that basically allows an e-commerce store to put their products right into the Google search page. And it works really well for very specific product related searches. So if someone's looking for a five piece dinner set for example that search result would show a bunch of images for products for sale for five piece dinner sets hopefully. This is a fairly new feature when it comes to AdWords. It's only come out in the last few months for Australian users but it's the conversion rates that you see for this type of advertising are pretty phenomenal. And the fact that people are using it right now means that it's fairly low in terms of the cost per click as well. So if you're running an e-commerce store this is an absolute must. I don't take on an AdWords client that's got an e-commerce store without highly recommending this type of advertising. So definitely look into it if you are running an e-commerce store and it's a bit of a hurdle to get it up and running given that Google are pretty strict on the product feeds that they allow but once it is up and running you really see the benefits to it. Moving on to the bottom screenshot in the middle. So this is a YouTube ad. I'm sure you've seen these ads before. Most people find them pretty annoying but they are great for branding. Just putting an ad right before a video in YouTube. Now this usually won't convert quite as well in terms of direct response compared to something like the standard search ads because people aren't actually looking for anything that is watching a video but it is a great way to get your brand out there. YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world after Google so definitely a huge user base and the amount of eyes that you can get over your brand for this type of advertising is pretty huge so it's a great way of getting some brand awareness. And lastly the right hand side screenshot just shows the display ads on what looks like Sydney Morning Herald so these are just some banner ads that you can see at the top right hand side there and also on the right hand side. Again because people are actually looking for something like they are with search usually the direct response conversion rate won't be as great but it is a great way to get your brand out there and to even showcase a particular product if it does need to be done so visually. Just on that Jeremy, so we have a question from John. With these three types is this more expensive than standard ad words? Not at all no. Google shopping ads where you see the actual product in the search results right now for Australian traffic that's actually cheaper in most cases because not a lot of advertisers are using it. We actually went to a Google Engage meeting with a bunch of ad words management companies in attendance and the presenter actually asked the question who's using PLA ads right now and out of about 200 people there was about two people that put their hands up. So yeah even ad words management companies aren't really using these products that much these are right now so for that reason the CPCs or the cost per clicks are quite low. I'm sure that will change but the fact that the conversion rate is usually higher than a standard search ad for this type of advertising the actual cost per sale I think will always be lower than standard search. And also just quickly before we move on in relation to your ads appearing on YouTube and also sitting morning Harold Samantha has asked do you need to coordinate directly with third parties such as YouTube or the age to have your advertisements appear on their site or is it done completely separate? No you don't have to coordinate with them whatsoever so these are all placements that are within the ad words search display network so what you would do is you set up a display campaign for sitting morning Harold for example you set up a standard display campaign set it up in the exact same way that you would have named any display campaign and if you wanted to specifically target sitting morning Harold for example then you could do so in the placement level of your campaign. Okay great let's move on to direct response and what that's all about. Okay so the next slide is showing a bit of a funnel when it comes to direct response first interruption and what this funnel tries to convey is almost the buying cycle for the average user so when you're running an ad words campaign there are going to be people that are going to be at different levels of the buying process. Some people might fit the demographic of the people you're trying to sell to but they won't be looking to buy a product they're not actively running searches and they might not even know that they need the product just yet that this might fit the type of people that could use your product so that would be the people that you'd be looking to target at the top of this funnel and a great way to do that to target these people is via display Display is typically a lot cheaper than search ads to run just because the network is a lot bigger so you've got a lot more choices in terms of where your ads are being shown. With search obviously there's only one Google search engine so it's pretty competitive but with display there's hundreds of thousands of different placements in the network so it's a great way to get a lot of reach out there in the markets but it's not quite as expensive as standard search and that's good because the people that you're attracting won't typically be as ready to buy as people that are being proactive and running a search. You can see that as we get further down that funnel we go more into the ready to buy users and all the way down to the direct response search so that's people that are typing in, you know, buy like shoes, fines and AdWords, agency in Sydney, those kind of searches that indicate they are looking for a service or a product and what you can do to supplement these types of campaigns as well is something called remarketing. Now remarketing is a way of re-engaging with the users that have previously been on your site so you run a campaign, people will come to your site and they might not make a purchase or make an inquiry for whatever reason it might be that they've got distracted, they might be at work there's a lot of reasons why they might come to your site and just leave without contacting you or making a purchase so for that reason we want to try and re-engage with these people and make sure they don't forget the brand or the website and remarketing is a way that you can actually do that so you put a bit of code on your website and from there wherever they go on the AdSense network, moving forwards they will see your ads a lot of the time or whatever frequency you set some people see this as being a little bit invasive sometimes so what you can actually do is set frequency caps on this so that it doesn't bother people too much but that's really up to you as a business owner to determine what that looks like so it doesn't look like you're just stalking people yeah that's right, yeah I know that I've been on sites before where no matter where I go they follow me around everywhere which is a little bit scary and quite annoying sometimes as well but you can do it in a way to try and avoid that just by setting frequency caps okay, so just before we move on I've got a quick question for our audience so why do you think it's important to understand your target audience in AdWords? it's one thing to set up a campaign but understanding the audience is completely different but it's also very important if anyone can just type any responses to this in the bottom left hand corner in the chat box and while we're getting some questions out of people and if you do have a response to this please type it in just quickly emulation back to the YouTube advertising that you were talking about earlier Tron has just asked, I take it that the YouTube is a video that you'll need you'll need to create a video for someone like this yeah, the type of ad that I showed in the screenshot does but having said that, you can also run text ads on the YouTube network you might have seen those when you actually play a video and you see that text ad at the bottom of the video that's a type of AdWords ad as well and so you've got your choices really you can run the search ads that is displayed in that way or you can run the video ads that show before the video but that's all something that's done in the AdWords interface and sorry I did bring up the poll earlier just in relation to your question Neil but I did take it down this is just generating some responses so in terms of why people think it's important to understand their target audience in AdWords we have a few responses so Sylvia said for events that they're planning to run can be the same keyword John's saying so that you can directly tailor your message to them to get the highest conversions and to target ads better search phrases would you say that's what you would be thinking? Absolutely, yeah a lot of these answers are right on the money especially Alison's answer to target ads to better search phrases so the more that you can understand how you're already in searches and their browsing habits the easier it is to put together a keyword list that really matches that and with that you can actually create campaigns with higher budgets for the keywords that you think will work best obviously you want to wait until the data comes in to tell you exactly what works and what doesn't but the sooner you know that the better so it's very important to be inside the mind of your target audience and to know as much about them as possible before you even get started Definitely makes sense and just before we move on to a new section now I just want to answer Yanni's question so how long does remarketing go for? So how long do you follow them for a campaign? You can actually set that so you could set it for a few months for example you could set it for one month it is user controlled or advertiser controlled so it really comes down to what you'd like to set as your preference there I think in order for you to determine what that should look like you need to look into what the average lead time is for your product or your service if you've determined that it takes about three weeks for you to turn a conversion into a sale for example ads are maybe remarketing campaign that tracks people for about four weeks so you could use that as a bit of a guide Okay so moving on to the next section building granular campaigns I'll explain a little bit further down what granular means but I'll just jump straight into it Okay so first off we'll just start with another poll What would you be looking to promote with your own AdWords campaign? So A, products or product B, services C, events or D, fundraising And I'll set this up Jeremy so people can select more than one response as well but perhaps if there's something outside of these four things feel free to type them in the chat box That's right, yeah Information Okay great Well it looks like most people are going with B services Lead Gen campaigns They're definitely a great way to advertise using Google but I became to hear more about the types of services people are looking to promote It's looking pretty even for the rest right now Great, we'll stop that poll then Services came in at 69% Alright so moving on to creating your campaign I think I'll just jump on ahead there Okay so the very first place you want to start when creating your campaign is your landing page or landing pages So this is going to tell you exactly what you're advertising what your selling points are what your calls to action should be and that really dictates how the campaign is set up and what your ads look like as well So things you want to be looking for on your landing page Firstly what am I looking to promote with this campaign So what I've got here is a screenshot of the RedBat conferencing webinar landing page for today's conference and we actually created a campaign to advertise this So using this landing page you can see pretty clearly that we're looking to advertise a webinar an AdWords webinar So that would be really the fundamental of our keyword research trying to find keywords around that type of product or offering and from there we can research keyword themes that are related to that type of service and that's really where we start We start with the actual structure of the campaign which ties in with the next slide So I see quite a lot of campaigns that are managed by either other agencies or business owners and probably the most common mistake I see is people creating an account with one campaign one ad group and one set of keywords and that creates a few different problems Firstly only having one campaign means that you can only create, you can only have one set budget cap for all of your keywords and what most people will see is that from all the different keywords in their account some are going to convert really well and some are going to just get clicks but not really convert into sales or leads So you want to be able to separate those two types of keywords You want to have a campaign for keywords that convert really well with quite a high daily budget cap and then you want to have a campaign or campaigns with the other keywords in them that don't really convert that well but still might be worth advertising and that kind of ties in with that sales funnel as well Some people might not be ready to buy so they're not going to convert as well straight away but it's still worth advertising to those people The second problem with that is that when you have one ad group for all of your keywords it's kind of hard to create a set of ads that target all of those keywords individually You're going to have some pretty generic ads most likely So what we want to do is ideally have a set of ads for every keyword The structure that I actually go with is creating a keyword or an ad group for every keyword and that way we can write highly relevant targeted ad text for each and every keyword in the account So that screenshot there the flowchart actually shows you what an ad words account structure should look like A good place to start would be by creating a campaign for each service or each product but then you also might want to create a variation for high converters versus low converters exact match versus broad match There's a lot of different things you can do with campaigns and campaign names You don't want to be scared to have a lot of campaigns It might actually be very beneficial to have 100 campaigns if that suits your business and your website but definitely stay away from having just one It's the most common problem I see with ad words accounts and it can destroy the return on investment for your campaign completely Keyword research Once you've had a look at your website this is the next place to start with you'll provide for free called the Google Keyword Planner Now, using ad words webinar for example I've typed this right into the ad words keyword planner and after I've punched that in it's given me a bunch of different keyword ideas that might be related to the webinar or there might not be So I've just gone through this list checked the box next to which keyword that I think is relevant and that's built my keyword list Now there are going to be keywords that might be not as relevant as ad words webinar for example if we were looking to advertise this webinar there could be things like ad words tips ad words advice Now these keywords might not be as likely to convert as say ad words webinar for example as the keyword but they're still worth using and for that reason we could just create separate campaigns for these keywords with lower budgets so we're not spending too much on those keywords but we are still getting some exposure there It would be nice if we could only use ad words webinar to get huge volume for just that keyword but the fact of the matter is that there's not going to be all that much search volume out there for that one keyword so we need to go for the other keywords that might not be as likely to convert but still could be relevant and still could get some good results for us Okay so creating ads that work Now the thing to remember with ads is that really this is the first point of entry after someone's run a search or seeing your ad online There is one formula that tends to work better than others and that's using the actual keyword in the headline using a very strong selling point in the second description line and then having a call to action I always recommend having at least three ad variations for each ad group and you could test the placement of those different selling points and the use of the keyword in the ad but the important thing is to just test different things You want to give people a very good reason to click your ad instead of one of your competitors ads but it's also important to get a little bit creative as well especially when you're in a very competitive space In our ads for example you can see the screenshot there I've shown you some of click-click media's adverts that are running Now with these we could have put the fact that we have no contracts in the ads we know we could have put the fact that we have over 30 years combined experience but with our industry it's I dare say one of the most competitive industries when it comes to ad words so we've had to become very creative in what we actually put in the ads to get people's attention and you can see that there in these two examples We've also got an example of a display ad there on the right hand side as well We've tried to keep that pretty simple but also appealing to people So again it's just a matter of testing and seeing what works for your business in particular No one thing will work well for two different businesses So you need to really tailor this to your own business and just keep that constantly test and test different things and see what works for your audience and see what they respond to best Do you have any results on those three Jeremy in terms of which one did work best? These two ads finally enough in terms of the text ads work a lot better than the rest of our ads We have tried putting things like our selling points, our calls to action the fact that we have no contracts and over 30 years combined experience but these ads work best simply for the fact that I think that in our industry it is very competitive and a lot of people might say the same thing So it's important not just to have your selling points but you also want to make sure that your ads are different from what your competitors are doing as well and you really need to stand out because when someone goes to a Google search page and runs a search, they've got a lot of options there So you need to be the one that really stands out Be different Yeah, that's right, you need to be different Okay, ad extensions So ad extensions is a little bit of extra content that you can actually put on your ads I'm sure that if you've used Google in the last year, you've seen these in action Some of the popular ad extensions include call extensions So you can actually put a phone number next to your ad or just under your ad so that people can call without even going to your website And then there's something called site links as well which allows you to actually put additional links below your ad So you might want to send people directly to your contact us page You might want to send them to a special promotion But I always recommend for a lead general service-based business to use call extensions It's great for people like Plumbers because people might be on their phone They might be in a rush They might be looking to just call someone straight away and get some help So if they can do that without even going to a website then that's a better user experience and it just means hopefully more leads for your business as well In terms of an e-commerce website, site links will always be very powerful And one of the newer ad extensions as well is something called review extensions So if you've got a third-party review somewhere on a third-party website it would be great to actually use that in your AdWords campaign and a little review snippet will appear under your ad It's a great way of promoting confidence in your brand and your business and again, a great thing to test alongside site links and call extensions as well Google have become very good at actually showing you the results of each of these site links now So the data's there All you need to do is analyze it and see what works best for your ads Okay, and this is probably the most important part when it comes to setting up a campaign Conversion tracking Another common mistake I see when it comes to people running an AdWords campaign is that they simply aren't tracking conversions Conversion tracking allows you to put a bit of code on either thank you for inquiring page or thank you for purchasing page And from there, your AdWords campaign will tell you exactly what keywords and what ads and what days of the week, what weeks of the month are actually resulting in conversions And if you have any interest at improving your AdWords results then this is an absolute must You need to know what keywords are actually working for your business not just getting clicks and which keywords are wasting money and just getting clicks and nothing else Okay, so that moves us on to section 3, database optimizations So it's one thing to have a really good campaign set up but it's another thing to have that campaign optimize and fine tune from that point onwards Up until this point you're really just doing a bit of guesswork but once the data starts coming in that's when you can start actually making intelligent decisions to improve your results Okay, so a quick poll How familiar are you with the AdWords interface? So option A, I've logged into AdWords once or twice B, I've often made changes to an AdWords account C, I can use AdWords editor and D, I have no involvement with Google AdWords And I suppose we'll be going into this in a moment Jeremy but is it quite an easy interface to use? Not at first, there is quite a steep learning curve and it's evolved a lot and it's constantly evolving as well I started managing campaigns back in 2006 and back then there were no ad extensions there were really only keywords, ad groups, campaigns negative keywords and not much else So it's gone a long way in the last nine years and they're always, almost monthly, adding new features One of the new features when it comes to display is actually parental status targeting So this just came out this week You can actually run a campaign that targets only people that Google have determined as being parents or people that Google have determined as not being parents Yeah, I know the amount of stuff that they're actually tracking it's getting scarier and scarier actually You can track a lot in terms of age, gender where people have been to before with their browsing habits A lot is being tracked that we don't know about So it's very insightful as well Powerful So there we have 69% for option 4 So I have had no involvement with Google AdWords This section is going to obviously provide people with some more insight on that That's right, yeah, hopefully it isn't too advanced But again, you know, I've got my email address at the bottom of each slide So if you're confused about anything at all you can either ask questions at the end of this webinar or I'd be more than happy if you could email me directly and I'd be happy to help you out with any questions you might have Okay So firstly, auditing a campaign Now this is very important because I've come across campaigns where people have run a campaign and then six months down the track they've realized that their location targeting is incorrect So it's very important to very regularly go over your campaign look at the landing pages that are working which ones are not working quite so well and this is where testing comes into play So if you've got a regular test set up then something you can do every week, every fortnight, every month and just audit these tests and see what's performing and what's not for you Common things to look out for in an audit are what keywords are working and which ones aren't In an AdWords campaign you typically find that only 10% of your keyword lists will be the ones that actually convert So you want to make sure that you are focusing on those keywords that are converting You also want to look at the different ad tests you've got going on and more importantly the actual settings in terms of location targeting and budget as well Okay, so statistically significant optimizations So once you've got your campaign set up there's not a whole lot you can do because there's no data coming in You don't know which keywords are working, which ones aren't So what you need to wait for to happen is for all of the keywords in your campaign to actually get some traffic and that way a bit of a story gets told You might find that you get a keyword that gets 10 clicks and out of those 10 clicks it's got two conversions which is great, that's a 20% conversion rate In that case you'd want to flag that particular keyword as a high potential keyword But when it comes to optimization there is a certain amount of data that you do need in order to be confident that you are being told an accurate story A rule of thumb that I go by for the ad level testing is a thousand impressions for each ad at the very least You want to wait for that before deciding whether or not it's working or not When it comes to a keyword I'd want to wait for either two or more conversions or 100 clicks or more Just to further explain that If a keyword has got 100 clicks and no conversions that's when I'd start to say maybe that keyword is not one worth focusing on but no less than that However, if a keyword has gotten two conversions and 50 clicks that's when I'd flag that as one that's working quite well So where to find the biggest wins? There's a few places that you could focus your attention when it comes to ad words to really get the most out of your management and your optimization One example I've shown here in the screenshot is the search career report So before you go into this report you're only going to see the performance of your actual keywords but your keywords might be very different from what is actually being searched by your traffic in Google You might have a keyword that's set as buy shoes for example but your ad could be triggered by someone looking for shoe repair Sydney just because of the fact that they both include shoe It really does depend on your targeting method and your matching types But for this reason you want to look at your actual search career reports and you can find that in the keyword tab But what we often find with this report is that a lot of searches are irrelevant What we can do there is go through and tick a box to add them as negative keywords If people don't know what a negative keyword is just yet that's fine What a negative keyword is is that it pretty much works in the exact opposite way of a regular keyword If you don't want your ad to appear for any search that includes free then you can add free as a negative keyword and your ad will never appear when anyone includes free in their search moving forward So it's very important to have a really extensive negative keyword list The way to expand that is by analyzing these search career reports Again, you also want to make sure that you're keeping a close eye on the keyword level performance as well in terms of conversions As I said earlier, most of your conversions will come from the top from 10% of your keywords only and the rest will probably waste some money So you want to keep a close eye on that and also landing page testing That's another quick win You always want to test at least two different landing pages on your website and usually you'll find that one will work a lot better than the other So that's one thing you want to keep a very close eye on Because one thing I think we weren't alert early on Sorry, we just assumed that when someone clicked on our AdWords campaign they go to our website but it's really about thinking about how you can... because it's a different call to action, right? Yeah, that's right So one recommendation I usually give to especially service-based industries is to use a special typical landing page for AdWords When you've got a website that has a lot of pages and a lot of content people might get lost and distracted and before you know it, they're off your site and they haven't given you their contact details So one thing that we always recommend testing is testing your website against just a one-page landing page just for AdWords And a lot of the time what you find is that when you're using a landing page it has all the relevant information on that one page your conversion rates can greatly increase So that's one thing that you can test but again, you have to be keeping a close eye on those results because it can go both ways Your website might work better or your landing page might work better but until you get the data in you simply won't know So it's something you have to keep a very close eye on and always test Okay, understanding quality score So quality score is a metric that Google uses to really put a number on how well they think your campaign has been set up and how well it's running Really, to understand quality score all you have to understand is that Google want to get the absolute most amount of revenue out of their search engine as possible So what that means is that if your ads getting clicked on more than your competitors chances are they're going to roll you with a good quality score because for every click on an ads obviously Google get paid a bit of money So say a thousand searches are made on Google each minute they want to make sure they're getting as absolute many clicks out of that as possible for those a thousand impressions There's a few different metrics that determine what quality score is things like keyword relevance, your landing page relevance and most importantly the click-through rate So out of every hundred impressions or searches how many clicks do you get for that And yeah, that's really the best way to explain the actual quality score really it's a Google's way of ensuring the profitability of their ad network which drives 99% of their revenue Okay, landing page improvements Now we've kind of touched on this just a few slides ago in regards to Redback's landing page But when it comes to a landing page there's a few things that you want to really highlight Now what I've mentioned here is that you want to make the key information accessible within about five seconds There's been a lot of research into this and the research shows that if people don't find what they want in about five seconds on your site they tend to leave pretty quickly So the key information would be firstly, the first question I'll ask is does this website offer what I'm looking for So you want to have your product or your service description there Secondly, if you're an e-commerce store for example where do you ship to and what does shipping cost So a good method is to have your shipping information in the header of your website So no matter what page they go to in your site it's there for them to see You might have free delivery, Australia-wide or free delivery over $100 It's something that really just gives some information about the delivery of the product If you're a service-based business you might want to highlight things like we service Sydney-wide or we service Australia-wide or something that localizes a little bit and tells them where you offer it You also want to highlight something that makes you different from your competitors So you might have no call-out fee or free quotes or 20% discount this month Just giving them one extra reason to buy with you or use your service instead of one of your competitors Again, this is something that you always want to test as well So a good way to test what selling points your audience response to best is to play around with what you're highlighting on your learning page and also at the ad level as well Okay, so this moves us on to the next section AdWords Experiments Testing, testing, testing It's the key to improving your results What you should be testing So things like ad testing Seeing what ad variation your audience response to best Learning page testing So what selling points does your audience like better than others What different call to action What's the performance of those different calls to actions And what different match types works best for your business as well There are a few different match types to use in terms of keywords In AdWords, there's exact match Broad match modifier, broad match, phrase match These are all things you can test to see what drives the best results And exploration campaigns So this is another thing you want to test as well every now and then You might find that you're getting some great results with your current campaign and you're just not sure what to target in terms of keywords What we like to do every now and then with our campaigns once they've reached that mature stage is just coming up with a few different pretty out there keyword ideas And it's fine to do that as long as you keep the test very tight very controlled and having a campaign that's separate to the rest with a very tight budget And that way you can just get a feel for how these different keywords convert You might find that they actually work really well and that'll be a whole new keyword area for you to explore in the future It's important to run these tests to keep going out there for additional exposure And using AdWords experiments There's actually an in-built feature in AdWords that allows you to run real-time experiments You'll find this by going to your campaign tab then going to settings There'll be a little button at the bottom that says start campaign experiment For example, you might have a landing page that's just being created and you want to test it against your website So you can use this feature to create a 50-50 split test send half your traffic to your website and then half your traffic to the new landing page Once you've done that you'll be able to analyze the results very easily in your reports and see whether the control is working better or whether the experiment is working better And from there you can make a decision very quickly on what you want to run with moving forward Okay, well that's about it for today So just to wrap things up Firstly, know your audience before you try to sell to them This is very important Secondly, put the time into designing a campaign being as granular as possible So not just one campaign or one ad group You want to have multiple campaigns to be able to dictate where your budget goes and what keywords you focus on Thirdly, data dictates almost everything So you want to use the data that's available to you to make intelligent changes changes to your campaign And fourthly, if it's worth thinking about, it's worth testing Great Okay, we're going to go to some questions now just from the audience and we're just going to move that slide just so people have your details And we've also got an exit survey on the right-hand side So if you can please complete that and let us know your feedback that will be much appreciated So Alison and I think Linda's also asked a similar question in relation to Google grants and we spoke about this before the webinar actually So when charities have a Google grant which means they get free ad words is their interface and everything exactly the same and what is the difference between a normal organisation and a Google grants account? Sure, well it was quite some time ago that I last run a Google grant account but back then it was exactly the same so there shouldn't be anything different at all The only time that an ad words interface will be different is for people that use its AdWords Express which is a very simplified version of AdWords That's the only time where the ad words interface will change So if you've just gotten a Google grant it really just means that Google are paying for your advertising the interface should be exactly the same Great And any more questions please feel free to type them in the bottom left-hand corner in the chat box and also just in relation to Quick Click Media as well So they've got a blog which is sent how often is your blog sent Jeremy? Almost weekly And also you've got an AdWords audit tool which I've used before as well and it's a different way of analysing your AdWords accounts That's right, yeah Okay, well that pretty much wraps up for us I'm just going to go into Alison's question Is there anywhere to get training on Google Ads and what's the approximate cost? So this really depends on what level of training you want and how long We offer training at Quick Click Media and there are also a lot of online resources you can go to as well to get that Show me an email if you'd like My email address is Jeremy at clickclickmedia.com.au I'd be happy to point you in the right direction just based on what level of skill you're at currently and what you're looking to get out of the training And just to remind us everyone we'll send an email within 48 hours with a copy of the on-demand recording and also details on how you can contact Jeremy directly and link straight to the Quick Click blog to get any further information But I'd personally like to thank Jeremy Finally we've got you on a webinar we've been trying for some time now for presenting today and also just to quickly mention our charity spotlight for doing Red Pride which is an organisation that we work with and does some amazing things To build awareness and exposure for our charities we'd like to just talk a little bit about them and here are some links to their website and also how you can get involved how you can find out more about them as well and here at Redback we'd like to promote our charities as much as possible so if you'd like to get involved with our charity program please feel free to let us know and thank you once again Jeremy and everyone thank you for your feedback we'll be sending out the recording shortly other than that enjoy the rest of your day Thanks Sarah, yeah it was fun


Attacking the adductors. He's going to be working on kind of that. Hey everybody, it's Eric Johnson for Airtate Throws Nation. Thanks so much for checking out this video. What we're going to do is we are going to go through our warm-up routines. One of the things that we normally talk about with our young throwers is that they tend to pride themselves on not running. That's one of the things that we see with our throwers doing and we need to know that our throwers need to do an extensive amount of warm-up. Warm-up is going to help with some general fitness level work capacity, but it's also going to develop coordination and that's going to be a really important thing. Obviously get thoroughly prepared for training whether that's hitting the gym or hitting our throws in the ring. So one of the things we're going to do today is we're going to go through our four warm-up routines that we discussed and we're going to have Jason demo our basic first movement. And the first thing is just going to be we're going to be doing side shuffles, skips, hops, hip rotations, lunges. We're going to do all these sorts of things. We'll set up usually anywhere from six to ten exercises and we're going to repeat those things two to three times. So the warm-up should last anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes so that the athlete is breaking a good sweat. Okay, so Jason's going to start out. We're going to do a real simple routine. He's just going to kind of come from here. He's going to kind of go back and forth. So we're going to start out with a side shuffle, real simple, and he likes to incorporate his arms, which is good. And what you want to see is your athletes getting tall. A lot of times the athletes come out of basketball and they do the low kind of shuffle side shuffle. And we're going to do more of a rhythmical up-down elongated movement. Now the next movement we're going to do is a simple skip. We're going to have Jason kind of just hopping up and he's just going to get a good little pop up and he's going to be utilizing the arms, engaging the core, working the hip flexors, working through the feet. Super easy, super effective, and again it's just working general coordination. You're going to notice your athletes are going to be out of position. A lot of times you're going to see their feet externally rotating and what you're trying to do is maintain good vertical lines, good strong posture as we're doing these movements. Next thing we'll do is a karaoke. Okay, so go ahead. And so what we'll do is we'll again have Jason working on attacking the adductors. He's going to be working on kind of that rotation, creating that separation that we'll actually kind of see in our rotational throws, even if our glide shot. And now the next thing we'll do is we'll just do a backward hip rotation. So Jay is just going to go walk right into one hip rotation after the next. And so you're going to see where he's going to kind of create a big circle. So he's going to go backwards and then what he's going to do is move forwards into the throw. Okay, so he'll come around, you get the idea. And so this is kind of your breather moment. B skips again always require a little bit of more coordination. So you're going to see how he's going to be here. And there's a little extra extension. So is he hops, he's going to be doing that, getting that hamstring engage. And here he comes back. Good. Now there's really no limit on the amount of movements that you can do. What we tend to do again, we tend to keep it around six to eight. And then we're going to repeat that. So we probably go about 25 meters. So it's 50 meters per. If they do that, if you're doing eight, right, you're doing 400 meters of that, you do that two to three times. You're going to have a really good physical warmup. So again, this is just a good variety of movement. Again, the variation just helps your athletes break a sweat, work coordination, get the hips moving, the feet moving, the shoulders moving, work on coordination, tighten the core. And that's really what our primary focus is. We want to get that good warmup for to prepare for good training sessions in the weight room and in the ring. All right, guys, thanks for watching. Next exercise coming up.


We are continuing to check in on our Titans family and we are now joined by Rashawn Evans. Rashawn, hi, it's good to see you. What have you been up to this off-season? I mean really just trying to, I actually just recently got a dog that's been taking care of him, pairing duties right now and right now just really just trying to do what I can just working under my own home garage. You know obviously the virus in itself has kind of you know enabled a lot of people so it's enabled me as well just you know being able to get out on the field and doing some of the normal stuff we would do leading up to OTA's right now. Why did you decide that this off-season was the time to get a dog? I actually was about to get him maybe two years ago but I wanted to take some more time to you know kind of get started in it you know Nashville and the team and then finally I was kind of like I'm ready for a dog. You know I did it right after this past season I was like I'm gonna go out there to California pick them up pick them up from California, flew them back in and ever since then we've been in love a little bit. You've been working out in your garage a little bit. What kinds of things are you doing to try and keep your body in football shape as best you can?  My last question for you is what message do you have for Titans fans who might be watching this right now? Just you know just be patient the season the season hopefully the season will come you know in the meantime don't don't be afraid to go back to look at some of those amazing games we had last season which was probably one of the you know best seasons I've been a part of in my career to be able to go from two and four to AFC Championship games under that Titans organization as done in a while and you know just being able to for everybody understand that hey we're here with you you know we want to get this season started as fast as possible and to be able to see those fans out there understand so you know just just stay on my I mean if anything really just lock into the Titans feed Titans profile on Instagram you can check out mine and check out some of the other places what we're doing for Sean it is so good to see you hopefully we'll all be back to business soon. No doubt.


This paper compares five different methods for calculating environmental flow requirements, EFRs, and finds that the VMF and Tasman methods provide the most accurate estimates when compared to locally calculated EFRs. These two methods allocate more water to EFRs during low flow periods, allowing for greater flexibility in water allocation. This allows for other water sectors such as irrigation to withdraw up to 40% of the flow during the low flow season, while still maintaining reasonable ecological conditions. This article was authored by A. V. Pastor, F. Ludwig, H. Bemans, and others.