Question 1

What Should My MER Goal Be & Why?

Accepted Answer

Can You Remind Me What MER Is?

It’s essentially a business’ overall ROI from its media spend. (Media spend is usually synonymous with ad spend in the world of small eCommerce businesses, unless you print flyers or have other promotional expense that will scale as the business scales).

It stands for “Media Efficiency Ratio” and it divides the business’ total, gross revenue by its total media costs.

What Should My MER Goal Be?

The simple, two-step answer is this:

Step 1:

How many times does your profit margin go into 100? That’s your break-even MER.

By the way, we're using this calculation for profit margin = (Net revenue - Costs) / Net Revenue

Costs should include anything that will scale with each additional sale (i.e. COGs, fulfillment costs, & taxes)

Step 2:

Want to make more than just break-even so you can pay your bills? Tack on an extra 10%-30% and that’s your MER goal!

But Why?

The best way to understand why is with an example.

Let’s say an eComm business has an average profit margin of 30%. This means one third of the revenue is kept while two thirds of the revenue goes towards paying for COGs & fulfillment.

So, step 1:

Thirty goes into one hundred 3.33 times. So the break-even MER for this business would be 333%. Meaning this business needs to make 3.33X more revenue than what is spent on ad spend in order to break even.

When this business spends $10 on ad spend and breaks even, it means they made $33.30 in revenue (which is a 3.33X return). But remember, this company’s profit margin averages 30%. That means they only get to keep 30% of the $33.30 they made, or $9.99.

They are breaking even at about $10 spent and $10 made.

Now, step 2:

Let’s say they want 20% more than that to cover their bills. Then they’d go for a 353% MER (a 3.53X return).

So when they spend $10 on ads and make $35.30 in revenue (which is a 3.53X return), they get to keep $10.59 (aka 30% of $35.30).

Now they’re breaking even plus making an additional 59 cents each time they bring in $35.30 in revenue, which they can use to cover overhead and salaries.

Why Don't I Want My Goal To Be Higher Than That?

The higher the return you want to make on each sale, the less of the market you'll be able to capture.

This happens because, if you want a higher return, then you need to spend less and make more. The problem with this is that Google Ads is an auction system, and the cost per click is pretty "set." Meaning, whatever your competitors can afford to pay for a click, is what you need to also be able to afford to pay for a click. But if you want a return that's significantly higher than what your competitors are going for, then you won't be able to pay for a click that costs as much as they can.

Sales funnels always have folks at the "bottom of the funnel" who have their wallet-in-hand, and folks at the "top of the funnel" who aren't ready to buy yet. And so the people who aren't ready to buy are going to be more expensive. They'll need to click on 2 or 3 ads before converting. Some of them won't ever convert, etc. There's also people who will have a lower average cart value than other people. So, if you tell the algorithm "I only want the ones who are cheap to acquire and who spend a lot of money with me" then you're cutting out part of your market.

This is why a high goal will limit your ad spend & stop the account from growing. You won't be able to scale sales & the business will stay small.

Shouldn't I Factor In Repeat Purchases (Returning Customers)?

If you have returning customers making repeat purchases, it makes it easier for you to hit your MER goal.

But it doesn’t change your MER goal.

Keep in mind: Those customers will come back after some amount of time, so the MER will go up when that happens. This makes the MER goal an easier target for a business only after it’s able to get those repeat purchases in.

The positive consequence of this is that you get to grow your ad account (increase budget) & grow your business (increase sales/revenue) more quickly (and, eventually, more vastly than your competitors can). Have a higher repeat purchase rate than your competitors? You win the game! You have more power to win in the bidding/auction system that is digital ads, because you can afford to pay more to acquire a new customer (higher CPC) since you’ll get more revenue later from each of them.

Question 2

How long will it take to see results?

Accepted Answer

Technically, you'll start to see results right away; however, it takes time for a campaign to "normalize" to the point of understanding how it will perform long term.

You're probably aware that we are very transparent about how long it takes to see results from your PPC campaign. Our goal is to provide you with realistic expectations, rather than selling you the moon. This is for the benefit of both agency and client to ensure both a highly effective and professional working relationship.

Important update to the "90-Day Rule of Thumb"

In the past, our rule of thumb was 90 days for a campaign to be fully optimized. This meant that after 90 days, we would typically have enough data to know whether or not the campaign would work long term.

With the introduction of Performance Max, the 90-day guideline no longer applies in most cases. Instead, it takes roughly 45 days just to see what we've built and how it's going to work.

Essentially, Day 46 is now Day 0.

This new campaign type is seven campaigns in one—Search, Shopping, YouTube, GSP, Discover, Display, Local, and Remarketing—and all of them are being optimized at the same time. Once Google has gathered and analyzed the available data, then we can start to see how the foundation we've put into place will perform over time.

Put simply, it takes time to successfully optimize a campaign and position it to scale. But more often than not, being patient during that initial learning period pays off in the long run.

How do we "Optimize" the campaign?

When you hear the term "optimization" that means that we are going to work towards generating more conversions for less cost per conversion. These results will be more frequent the more data that we collect.

We work off of a base 100-point data set when performing optimizations. What this means, is that when there are 100 points of data for an action, whether that be impressions, clicks, conversions, or simply the most appropriate data point for a particular campaign, we make a decision on what to do with that asset.

For example, if we see a group of keywords in an Ad Group that all have 100 impressions, we are going to look to see what has the highest Click Through Rate (CTR) and place more spend towards those higher-relevant keywords. Then, once each keyword generates 100 clicks, we are going to look to see which keyword resulted in the most amount of conversions, and place more spend in the keywords that have generated the most amount of conversions.

There are many more data points that are taken into consideration when talking about optimizations, but this will help you understand how optimizations work in the most basic form.

We also listen to every phone call that is generated from the campaign to ensure that when the phone rings, its a relevant person ready to talk to you on the other end. The results of these phone calls, directly affect the optimizations of your campaign, since we manually count those as conversions so we can identify which campaign is generating the most amount of relevant phone calls.

What You Can Expect In The First 90 Days

Within the first few days of the campaign launch, you will experience real results, however, it will not be the most optimized results. The conversions may be a bit more expensive in the beginning, or they may not be as frequent as you may like them to be, but rest assured, with each passing day, the campaign is going through changes to see those results increase. The first second month will be better than the first and the third month will be better than the second.

We will be reaching out to you very frequently and checking in on the quality of the conversions, plus giving you insight as to what optimizations have been made and what future optimizations we are planning to make in the near future.

Each month, you will receive a detailed report, extracted directly out of your AdWords campaign that we will review together. We review all data together so that you can offer your feedback regarding our strategies. There may be times where we rely on you as a subject matter expert and we truly value your input.

In Summary...

While there are very few campaigns that launch perfectly optimized, we do need time to assess where the conversions are coming from and make changes to the campaign to spend more ad spend in the Campaigns and Ad Groups that are performing well.

Our goal is to deliver to you a very high performing campaign within the first 90 days.

If you have any other comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to click on the chat button in the bottom-right corner of this screen and reach out!

Question 3

How do you track leads who call my business?

Accepted Answer

Most agencies will count a call that lasts 45 seconds or longer, for example, as a conversion. But we try to minimize false leads by hiring a designated team to listens to the calls that come in from an ad and give it a score. This also gives us the added bonus of helping us to uncover any issues that might be negatively affecting conversion rates during the calls (like an automatded answering machine that is confusing people, for example, or low quality leads who are asking for something different than what your business sells, etc.).

We use a platform called Call Tracking Metrics to help us record incoming calls and determine which were true leads.

What Is Call Tracking Metrics (CTM), and Why Do You Absolutely Need It?

Record, measure and listen to the calls your advertising efforts generate in real time! All phone call data is seamlessly linked to your Google Analytics, making it easy to define your exact ROI from your ad campaigns.

Here's how it works:

We generate a tracking number that will magically appear on your website instead of your real number only when someone has recently clicked on an ad. We generate another tracking number that will appear on the mobile ads as an ad extension, and ad leads will click on this number directly from the ad on their phone and their phone will dial the number, which will, of course, redirect them to your real number.
When either of these scenarios happen, someone from your business answers the phone and engages the prospect in conversation. The call will be recorded. We have a call rater who listens to every call, determines whether the person who made the call is an actual lead who is expressing interest in your product/service, and then rates it as a lead or not.
We are also able to see some very useful information about each call:

What page of your website the individual was on when they called
What keyword they used to land on your website
Which campaign generated that user
whether users were experiencing a challenge when attempting to place an order. So, that is a great QA check.

After that, we will import any of the leads who made the call from the website into Google Ads to attribute the conversion back to the day the person interacted with the ad(s).
If the call was made from the ad extension on the mobile ad, then it will be automatically counted as a lead only if the call lasted 30 seconds or longer. Google does this automatically because there is no functionality to import them (since they made a call directly, there is no tracking ID number, which is called a GCLID).

Here's the most important piece: After we listen to the conversation to access whether or not the lead was good or not, we go into your Google AdWords account and score the lead. This gives Google a lot of great data to work with.

If the lead was of poor quality, Google will limit the amount of times the ad gets shown to the same type of person.
If the lead was great, Google will show your ads to similar people who fit that leads profile.

End result? You get more conversions for a better cost.

***Please note that we pay for your Call Tracking Membership when we manage your advertising campaigns. The only cost to you is the monthly cost per number (In the US it is usually $1.50/number) and the cost per minute, which is usually less than $0.05 per minute.

Here is a screenshot of all the information you can receive about where exactly a call was coming from.

**Testing Your Magic Number*Once you or your vendor has setup the magic number on your website, you can test it to make sure it's working. Here's how: Open an incognito window and go to: [place URL here]/?gclid=test (i.e. yourwebsite.com/?gclid=test). You should see the magic number instead of the real number.

Question 4

Why is Google Ads reporting different numbers than Google Analytics?

Accepted Answer

Google Ads and Google Analytics handle the same data very differently. And for good reason: The two platforms have very different focuses.

Google Ads is focused on tracking 100% of the people who interacted with it and attributing those interactions to a sale.

Whereas Google Analytics, on the other hand, is simply a tool that has been developed to show you what's going on on your website...This means it's more focused on tracking where users came from immediately before converting.

Google Analytics doesn't care that the direct traffic will be high -- and that many of those conversions attributed to "direct traffic" could have interacted with Google Ads at some point on a previous session/day/week/month.

Google Ads does care about that. Because Google Ads wants to show you ALL of the conversions that it helped convert.

The reality is, before a customer converts, they usually go through multiple sessions first – they might click an ad, come back to your site the next day, and purchase on a different day.

Because of this, your conversion data can & will look differently depending on the platform you're using at the time.

Think of the platform like a lens for data interpretation: Google Analytics cares about sessions and Google Ads cares about ad interactions.

Google Ads and Google Analytics show different data because their purpose is different:

Google Ads is trying to show us which ads are profitable, when, why, etc.

Google Analytics, on the other hand, is trying to show us the most straightforward picture of what exactly happened on the site and when.

If you'd like to understand the technical details of how this works, read on...

The Two Platforms Use Different Technology To Keep Track

The two platforms have different levels of tracking capabilities to recognize the same user across different channels, devices, etc:

Google Analytics measures session data using browser cookies. This is all it needs, since it's only looking at data that happens within a single session.

Google Ads measures session data using browser cookies, too. But it also uses IP address, session ID, and even WiFi. It also can recognize Google users if people are logged in on their phone or their Chrome browser and connect the dots that way.

With that said, Google Analytics’ method of storing data can often cause about 15-25% decrease in conversion value compared to Google Ads. In other words, Google Analytics drops data.

The Two Platforms Attribute Conversion Data Differently

If a user clicked on an ad, didn’t buy, and then came back to the site directly the next day to purchase, Google Analytics will likely mark that person as “direct” traffic.

Even if the user clicked your ad, the credits would still go to “direct” traffic because it’s the last action the user took before converting. Why? Because Google Analytics uses the Last Click attribution as its default attribution model.

Depending on which settings your ad manager chose, Google Ads can use several different attribution models.

If a user clicked on an ad a month ago but only converted today, some or all of today's conversion will appear a month in the past – it all depends on the attribution model used.

As you can see, the two platforms almost always end up attributing conversions based on different rules (and attribution models).

Keep this in mind when using Google Analytics:

It is a tool that has been developed to show you what's going on on your website. It only sees where users came from immediately before converting, which means its direct traffic will be high since many people who interact with a paid ad will come back to the site directly when they're ready to convert.

If you’d like to explore this further, here is our chief account strategist, John Moran, on the subject:

Question 5

How Long Google Ads' Learning Phase Takes

Accepted Answer

You launched your Google Ads campaign. You have a ROAS goal you want to achieve and a daily target budget to support it.

But after a few days (or weeks), you noticed that you’re not hitting your ROAS goal…

And worse, Google isn’t spending enough to reach your ad budget.

What’s happening?

One of the most common mistakes people make is setting a ROAS goal and expecting Google to reach it right away.

By doing that, they’re not only slowing themselves down from hitting their goals, they’re also preventing Google from spending their target budget.

And here’s why: Your campaign needs to undergo the “learning phase” first.

It’s that initial time period where Google gathers all the data you’ll need to successfully optimize your campaign and position it to scale.

In this post, you’ll learn about all the different factors that might affect your “learning phase” and how to deal with them so you can reach a point where your campaign looks profitable and scalable.

But first, let’s answer some of the most common questions asked and get them out of the way.

An important update to the "90-Day Rule of Thumb"

In the past, our rule of thumb was 90 days for a campaign to be fully optimized. This meant that after 90 days, we would typically have enough data to know whether or not the campaign would work long term.

With the introduction of Performance Max, the 90-day guideline no longer applies in most cases. Instead, it takes roughly 45 days just to see what we've built and how it's going to work.

Essentially, Day 46 is now Day 0.

This new campaign type is seven campaigns in one—Search, Shopping, YouTube, GSP, Discover, Display, Local, and Remarketing—and all of them are being optimized at the same time. Once Google has gathered and analyzed the available data, then we can start to see how the foundation we've put into place will perform over time.

Put simply, it takes time to successfully optimize a campaign and position it to scale. But more often than not, being patient during that initial learning period pays off in the long run.

How do we "optimize" the campaign?

Optimization means the “things we do to improve a campaign’s performance.” We do that with either one or both goals in mind:

To bring your cost per conversion (CPC) down
To increase your return on ad spend (ROAS)

To reach our goals, we stick to a proven process, go through the learning phase, and make optimizations. Here’s a just few of them:

Implementing data-driven strategies
testing different assets (e.g.keywords, copies, landing pages)
Adjusting the ad budget
Listening to every phone call

These are just a few optimizations we do from the start. The conversions may cost a little more in the beginning, or may be inconsistent. But as your campaign goes through the learning phase, you’ll see results.

How long should we stay in the experimenting & learning phase with our Google Ads account?

The experimenting and learning will slow down a bit after the campaign is fully optimized, but it is important to never stop making changes to the campaign. With live bidding, you often won’t use automated bidding strategies because they won’t optimize performance.

For example, if you tell it to automatically focus on getting the maximum amount of conversions, then it will set the bids in order to get the most amount of conversions, which favors cheaper, poorer-quality traffic because it is not focused on the quality of those conversions.

You could potentially set a goal for the automation to target a specific cost per click, but you don’t have enough activity to use that feature because you would need to have a conversion or two every single day for it to have enough data to form patterns. So, use Manual CPC with enhanced CPC enabled, which means you set the bid based on what you think the keyword should be worth to you, how many clicks per day, and if there are conversions for that campaign.

You could probably not touch a campaign for a month and it would likely perform relatively systematically, but as new competition comes in, old competition falls out, people increase bids or increase their budget, you need to hop back in there and make those adjustments.

So, how do you get past the learning phase and more importantly, what are some of the factors that affect your campaign from moving quickly?

That’s exactly what you'll learn today.

1. State of the Ad Account

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/CDPbaOjSgr/Google%20Ads%20account%20historical%20data%20.png (Google Ads account historical data .png)

No or inaccurate historical conversion data

If you recently launched a brand new account, it won’t have any historical data. Google doesn’t know your target market and it doesn’t have a data-driven and well tested algorithm yet to find your ideal customers.

Unlike an older account that has at least 2-3 months of consecutive and recent historical data, a brand new account takes longer time in gathering enough data.

“But what if my account is about six months old?”

If it’s at least 6 months old but there’s no recent historical data in the past 2-3 months, the algorithm might have already changed, like:

target market
competitive landscape
price points

Which only means one thing—it’s outdated. Unfortunately, that’s worse than a brand new account with no historical data. Here’s why:

Let’s say you were running a campaign and your conversion was set to count “everyone who visits the product page.”

Whether the person who visited your site only viewed the product, added to cart, or bought the product, you counted it as a conversion. This gives you a false conversion value that actually hurts your data.

Instead of having real data, you now have to fix and refocus the algorithm first. And that can take longer than having no conversion data in the first place.

Not running sacrificial campaigns (inbound)

If you’ve been checking out our videos and blogs for awhile now, you probably already know how much we LOVE Smart Shopping.

The problem is while Smart Shopping is pretty darn powerful, it’s kind of a slow learner especially in the beginning.

That’s because it’s still gathering data to figure out what an interested lead or customer looks like.

So if you’re only using Smart Shopping, it’s going to take a very long time—you might as well take that vacation you kept cancelling while waiting for Smart Shopping to scale. (Hey, that’s not a bad idea! ;p)

The trick is to run it alongside other additional campaigns like branded, remarketing, competitor, display, or even YouTube. We call these sacrificial campaigns.

They might not directly bring in profits, but if you’re struggling to get enough traffic that will feed back into your Smart Shopping campaigns and bring more users to your site…

Sacrificial campaigns will help you do the job by monetizing Smart Shopping and feeding it data from other sources.

2. State of the Industry

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/jIUyeXliKC/Google%20Ads%20different%20types%20of%20industries%20.png (Google Ads different types of industries .png)

High CPC (high competition)

“More clicks equal more conversions,” they say. That’s true...until you run out of budget.

See, it’s not uncommon to see a high cost per click in a highly competitive industry. Hopefully, your average order value or your lifetime customer value will be able to balance your expenses.

However, if your clicks are too high and your margins are thin, you have to be very strategic. You might run out of budget faster than you know.

Low market demand

Another factor that can lower your learning phase’s speed is if your product is something new.

While Google’s multi-faceted ecosystem gets over 1.3 trillion global searches per year, it doesn’t mean you can instantly get tons of people searching for your product.

At least not in the beginning or if your product is something new.

Maybe it’s a niche product or a unique product that has yet to be discovered in the market––if people aren’t aware of it, they probably won’t search for it.

This is another reason why using a sacrificial campaign like YouTube is recommended. Not only does it help to increase your traffic, it also helps to increase your conversions – especially if you use remarketing.

3. State of the Business Itself

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/0vvmRxxsFn/Google%20Ads%20remarketing%20.png (Google Ads remarketing .png)

No remarketing audience (low website visitors)

Dynamic Remarketing shows ads to those who previously visited your website or engaged in your ads. Running Smart Shopping with remarketing makes your campaign unstoppable.

That said, if you’re running Smart Shopping without remarketing for a while, it won’t be as profitable because there’s not a lot of existing traffic to convert.

And if you have a small number of website visitors, then it's going to take a long time for the remarketing audience to pixel.

Low ad spend

Low ad spend can result in low conversions. So if you’re spending $1,000 a month, you’re going to get less traffic to the site than if you’re spending $2,000 – assuming your CPC stays the same, of course.

Low CTR (Untested or out of date website design)

Even if you’re using these 5 tips to increase your CTR, and you’re sending 200 people to your site every single day…

If your bounce rate is high and people aren’t converting, it’ll take longer for Google to get enough data to build profiles of your customers. Plus, you’re going to lose more money.

So make sure that you update your website’s design and split test it (if possible) to know which version works best.

4. State of the Products

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/KxcPsHVtPV/large%20quantity%20of%20products%20affect%20Google%20Ads%20conversions%20.png (large quantity of products affect Google Ads conversions .png)

Large quantity of products

The number of products you have can affect the time it takes for the algorithm to reach a point of certainty. Not only that, but the number of conversions for each product determines how reliable the data is.

For the data to be viable (and reliable), the algorithm has to find a pattern first. Think of it like a survey. If you asked the same question to a hundred people, and they all have different answers, then you can’t rely on that data to come up with a solid conclusion.

But if at least 20 of them have the same answer, then you’ll be able to see a pattern – either demographically or psychographically.

Do they all have the same jobs? Do they live in the same city? Do they have the same interests? And so on.

Once you see patterns, you can now create a profile. And based on that profile, all you have to do is tell Google “Hey, this type of person lives in this city, does this type of job, and is interested in these things. Get me more of them.”

Here’s what an account that has a large quantity of products (about 4,000) look like:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/QDA5EfO6Jf/low%20ad%20budget%20with%20large%20quantity%20of%20products.png (low ad budget with large quantity of products.png)

As you can see in the image above, there are multiple products in the campaign. But each product only has one conversion. Even though some of them have a high ROAS, we still can’t rely on that.

The product you want to scale should have, say, at least 3 conversions to get an average going for it to be certain and avoid getting analysis paralysis.

One of the reasons why we’re only getting 1 conversion per product in this account is because the budget was divided and spread out to different products. That itself––having a low budget––limited our ability to effectively test each product.

If you have fewer products, like this account shown below, it would be a lot faster for the algorithm to see patterns.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/CCeO7bLVVg/low%20ad%20budget%20with%20low%20quantity%20of%20products.png (low ad budget with low quantity of products (1).png)

But that doesn’t mean you can only sell a few products. The solution is to place your bets on a target ROAS goal and choose specific products first.

By choosing specific products and putting more budget to test them, you’ll get more conversions. Once there’s a conversion pattern, you’ll have enough data to scale that product.

That can help you get past the initial learning phase.

No GTINs

Let’s be clear. You don’t need GTINs (Global Trade Item Number) in order to scale. As long as Google approves your products, you can scale without having a GTIN.

However, you run the risk of losing all your optimized data without it. And you lose the ability to tap into the existing historical conversion data of your products.

Here’s what I mean.

Any product that’s been sold in the market with GTIN has valuable conversion data. If you’re selling the same product, you can use the same GTIN and...voila! You now have data in your products.

It’s like borrowing someone else’s flash drive and uploading their files on your computer instead of searching for files and doing the work yourself.

The problem is if you’re selling a unique item, you’ll probably need to create your own GTIN. Which means there’s no valuable conversion data yet – you have to create it.

That’s one of the reasons why having no GTINs can cause your learning phase to slow down.

New market creation (a new widget no one has heard of)

As mentioned earlier, if it’s a new invention (a product that’s unique), there might be no audience for it yet. You have to educate people about it first – usually done via a discovery campaign – before your product gets momentum.

5. Purchasing habits of the target customer

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/LxuhukGTcs/purchasing%20habits%20of%20your%20customer%20.png (purchasing habits of your customer .png)

Large conversion lag

A conversion lag means the time it takes between product discovery and product purchase. The larger your conversion lag is, the longer it takes for the algorithm to gather data. Ultimately, it affects your learning phase.

There are a few factors at play when it comes to conversion lags:

Price. The higher the price, the more time it usually takes for a person to purchase it.

Needs. The lower the demand or urgency is, the slower the purchase will be.

Decision maker. Even if your lead can afford the product and he needs it right now, if he needs someone else’s permission first, it will delay the purchase. Those decision makers can be the spouse, boss, or a group of people.

Low average cart value

If your average cart value is low, it’s going to be harder to achieve the ROAS you want. Unfortunately, this will impact how long your learning phase is going to last.

And that’s it! Remember, you have control over most of the factors that affect your learning phase. For those you can’t control, just stick to the process. Test as much and as often as you can. Have the patience to wait and go through the learning phase.

In the words of Leo Tolstoy, “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

If all this sounds overwhelming and you need more help, we got you covered. We’ll review your existing accounts (if applicable) and provide a Google Ads Action Plan for FREE. Get your action plan here.

Question 6

Should I be running video ads and what can I expect?

Accepted Answer

If you want to remind recent website visitors about your offer, running video ads will help. Some videos show on YouTube while others show on the Display network (meaning, your videos can appear on other sites.)

When budget is limited, video ads are best used with Remarketed Audiences––those who have already gone to your site and completed a conversion. People who watch your video aren’t necessarily searching for a solution at that moment. So, using video ads to remind the right audience (remarketed) about your offer can help increase their desire to buy.

Later as the budget grows, adding in some video ads to Outbound Audiences can be a good idea. Especially with impulse-buy products or products/services that don't have a pre-existing market of users who are already looking for it.

What should my videos be like?

This varies wildly depending on the industry, the product/service, the target market, the business branding, etc.

Here are a few ideas to choose from. Our recommendation is to make as many as possible because it's tough to know what will be the most effective until you test it with your audience:

Customer/client testimonial videos
"How to" style videos that address common hesitations or questions prospects have
Business owner "mission statement" videos where the company founder introduces themselves & their "why"
Professional commercial-style videos showcasing a product/service or a category of products/services
Affiliate amateur-style videos where a partner figure recommends the product/service

Here is our helpful 1-minute script template that could come in handy if you plan on making a video soon.

Here is a succinct article that Google created to offer tips and guidance on video ads.

Here are 5 video ad sequence ideas to provide ideas for different video ads:

Tease, Amplify, Echo (3 videos).
The Direct Shot (3 or more 6-second videos).
The Mini Series.
The Follow Up (2 videos).
The Lead-In (2 videos).

Pro Tips:

Since videos are often skippable, it’s critical that you mention your brand or company name and your offer within the first 6 seconds.
For a bigger impact (but not mandatory) show your company logo within those first 6 seconds, and place it anywhere except the bottom right.
Start with a question or shocking statement in the first 10 seconds.
Tell the viewer "what's in it for them" (make them the hero of the story).
Video length and aspect ratio aren't important.
Don't mention time-specific details. Keep the content evergreen, because Google has to re-optimize every time the video is replaced.
Make a handful of videos & let Google rotate between them to find the winner. Don't limit yourself to one video.
Google will create sequences from your videos automatically (i.e. it will show video A to a user and then video B to the same user if it finds that to be the order that gets the highest engagement)

How long should my videos be?

The most important thing is the first 5 seconds because most video ads are skip-able after that. Make sure to include a value statement in the first 5 seconds. As for the final length of the video, it doesn't matter too much!

Where should I host my videos?

Videos will need to be hosted on your YouTube channel.

How will video ads impact my conversions?

Videos are often not clicked on directly. Instead, leads will watch the ad a few times then search the brand on Google afterwards.

This makes conversion hard to track directly, but you should see a rise in the conversion rate of your Branded Campaign and View-Through Conversions report.

How do I keep my audience engaged?

It’s important to remember that if your video ad is not engaging right off the bat, you’ll lose a big percentage of your audience immediately. So if you want to build effective video ads, you need to grab your audience’s attention with a great hook.

4 Tips to getting your audience hooked and engaged:

1. Start from the climax. Drop your viewers in the middle of the action––the most exciting, dramatic, or interesting scene in the plot. When you start at the peak of the climax, you successfully catch their attention.

2. Make sure that the story is relevant to your audience–and specifically made for your avatar. Address your viewers’ wants and needs and make them feel like the story is about them.

3. Use imagery and language (e.g. script) that your viewers aren’t expecting. This helps in disrupting behavioral patterns, beliefs, and any preconceived notions about your story or offer.

4. Keep your viewers guessing. Add some element of surprise to keep the anticipation going. Only reveal enough information that will make your audience curious to find out more.

Question 7

What's The Downside Of A Too-High ROAS Goal?

Accepted Answer

The higher the ROAS, the less of the market you can capture.

If you want to have a higher return, you need to spend less and make more.

Here’s why. In traditional sales funnels, we always have folks at the “bottom of the funnel” (people who are ready to buy) and folks at the “top of the funnel” (people who aren’t ready to buy yet).

Those who aren’t ready to buy are going to be more expensive. They’ll need to click on two or three ads before converting. Some of them won’t ever convert.

There's also people who will have a lower average cart value than others. So if you tell the algorithm, “I only want those who are cheap to acquire and who will spend a lot of money with me,” then you’re cutting out part of your market.

This is why a high ROAS goal will limit your ad spend and stop the account from growing.

The goal should be to choose the ROAS that’s just right (not too high and not too low) and try to maintain that ROAS while growing spend––gathering conversion patterns, optimizing the settings, keywords, product titles, etc.)

For further explanation, check out this video:

Question 8

How we organize and execute our client management process

Accepted Answer

Ever wonder what the team here at Solutions 8 does behind the scenes to get our clients the results they want?

Here’s a sneak peek:

Clear communication, detailed instructions, and exceptional collaboration.

More specifically, our whole process helps our team execute a million to-do lists without sacrificing quality and ad performance. We follow proven SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) that never fail, giving our clients a delightful experience as soon as they get onboard.

The result? Deadlines are met, campaigns are well-optimized, and clients are satisfied. Here’s what the process looks like:

Ongoing Account Management

We always want to get the client updated about what’s going on in their account. The Ongoing Account Management is simply a list of things we do to keep their campaign in top performance. This is handled by the Client Manager (CM), Specialist, and Call Tracking Metrics (CTM) reviewer.

Weekly Check-ins

Our specialists see to it that they identify, capture, fix, and report all issues on a weekly basis. Here are some of the activities that they do achieve this:

Check & Optimize CPA & ROAS Bid vs Target

Our client manager (CM) makes sure that:

Budget is on track for the month. Whether that’s making incremental adjustments or totally increasing the budget to get more and better results, the client manager and specialist work together to make the data-driven decisions.

Client’s goals are reached. To maintain pulse on the campaign’s performance, the CM monitors and ensures that the campaign is getting the lowest possible cost per lead (CPL) for lead generation and a high return on ad spend (ROAS) for eCommerce. If at any point we’re not close to hitting the main metrics (CPL or ROAS), we figure out how to fix it by:

Looking at the total month’s spend and comparing it with the client’s budget. Depending on how long the account has been running for and the data gathered so far, we calculate the difference (total spend and budget) and make adjustments. We also look for other alternatives by;

Brainstorming with all the specialists during weekly meetings. Getting inputs from our veteran specialists help us bring results-oriented decisions.

CTM Review

Every time a lead calls from an ad extension or from the client’s website, we track it using a platform called Call Tracking Metrics. Our CTM Reviewer listens to every call to identify whether they’re good, bad, or low-quality leads, and manually scores each call. This process also helps us uncover any issues that might be negatively affecting conversion rates during the calls and gives us enough data that we can use to make improvements.

All call leads that we received in the previous month are imported into Google Ads and sent to the client.

Monthly Check-ins

After all the weekly check-ins, our specialists meticulously go through a detailed 14-point checklist to make sure that nothing slipped through the cracks and we’ve done everything we can to optimize the campaign. We send a detailed report to the client every month.

Schedule of Communications and Optimizations

Once the onboarding is complete, our client manager takes care of the client’s account–from campaign creation to scaling–and walks them through the next process in each phase of the campaign.

Weekly Check-Ins

When an account is new, the CM provides useful information– the things that they’ve been seeing, learning, and testing–on a weekly basis for the next three months. This helps the client understand what’s happening, why they’re happening, and what we’re doing about them.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Recommendations

The CM works with the specialist to perform a site-wide website audit to uncover what it needs based on it’s product/service, target customer, and the client’s goals. Inch by inch, the CM looks for details (even the smallest ones) that would greatly increase conversion rates–from the website design, call-to-action buttons, text size, to the titles, descriptions, and content of individual pages.

Bi-Monthly Updates

Every other month, the client receives insights about more growth opportunities in different areas:

This is done every other month because for new accounts, it usually takes at least 60-90 days to understand patterns and get solid, realistic data to use for the long run. That’s why the insights that we’re going to share aren’t based on “common tips and strategies” that anyone can find on the internet. Instead, they are personalized insights based on proven methods that we have improved over years of consistent success and from the optimization results we have made on the client’s account.

Question 9

Can you provide some guidance on image ads?

Accepted Answer

There are two types of image ads: shopping ads & display ads.

Shopping Ads

Shopping ads are only relevant to you if you sell physical products online & are planning to run shopping campaigns. The images needed for these campaigns are imported into Google Ads directly from the product image on your eCommerce site.

This type of images are relatively straightforward:

Make sure the product is clearly displayed & takes up the majority of the image.
Ideally have a plain background. It can have a subtle pattern, a shadow, or a gradient, for example, but it shouldn't distract from the product itself. Light colored backgrounds tend to convert at a higher rate on Google Shopping. We recommend going to shopping.google.com (or you can use isearchfrom.com if you live in a country that doesn't have Google Shopping yet) and doing a few quick searches to find your competitor's shopping ads to get a sense of what will catch the user's attention & what won't.
Any text in the image must be text that's on the product itself or it's packaging. If you add a logo or a call-to-action to this image, Google's bots will crawl the ad eventually & disapprove it.

FYI if the first image (the primary image) on the product listing is less ideal than one of the other images, our team can override the product image directly in the product feed. This way we can use the best image for the shopping ad in Google Ads while keeping your favorite image as primary on the product landing page.

Display Ads

Display ads are typically used in remarketing campaigns (this means it only shows to website visitors & YouTube channel viewers) and also be in outbound campaigns (meaning it will show to cold leads).

Here's what you need to know:

Question 10

Why do you charge a 10% fee?

Accepted Answer

Nearly all of our costs are based on how much we spend (this includes click fraud prevention, vendors, and software and monitoring tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, iSpionage, SpyFu, and SEMrush).

So, we simply cannot scale profitably without a benchmark set against spend.

More to the point:

**The larger a campaign gets, the larger the workload to manage. **

As data-driven marketers, everything we do is based on data-driven optimization. Every dollar spent is a data point and every data point requires action.

The more you spend, the more work involved in managing and optimizing the campaign.

The benefit to both of us is you'll never choose to spend more without a high-performing campaign. So, the system ends up being meritocratic in construct.

And, because we charge a base, plus a small percentage (unlike many high-end agencies that simply charge a much larger percentage across the board), our campaigns become more profitable as a percentage as you grow.

As far as the agencies that don't charge a percentage fee…

They're actually showing their hand in doing so.

In fact, we would bet every single one of them is using automated bidding tools to attempt to manage your campaign through the use of "AI" — without the expenditure in human capital.

Still concerned about the fee? Let’s talk about it.

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