Q: How did you create the estimated projections in the action plan?

Using tools such as Google Keyword Planner , iSpionage , SpyFu , and SEMrush , we craft a keyword strategy. Next, we: Add the total monthly impressions of those keywords Divide that number by a standard 2% click-through rate Multiply that by the keywords’ average cost-per-click This will give you a total amount of monthly leads/sales and cost-per-lead/sale.

Question 1

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.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/TVT39IRGoY/Screenshot%202024-12-10%20at%208.30.47%E2%80%AFPM.png (Screenshot 2024-12-10 at 8.30.47 PM)

**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 2

How important is it to have a fast website and does that affect ads?

Accepted Answer

Your ads are greatly affected by your website speed.

Google will throttle your ads if it decides your "landing page experience" is bad. And the largest indicator of landing page experience is speed.

If your competitors have a faster website than yours, it's likely they'll be able to get better placements at a lower cost-per-click (CPC) than you can.

Slow website speed will also impact the bounce rate on your website (since cold leads are finnicky and just came from search results with a pile of options, so if they are struggling with your website then they might decide to go back and click on the next result from the search results). This lowers the conversion rate.

Here's how you can test your website speed in the eyes of Google's crawl bot:

Use this website speed analyzer tool.
Enter your website URL.
Click "Start Test"

Ideally your score should be in the green. If the load time is 3 seconds or less, you are in the clear.

Once you fix your website load speed, you will notice a drop in CPCs as well as a slight increase in CTR (due to better placements) and Conv. Rate (due to lower bounce rate, as well as higher-intent users who clicked at the top of the page where your better ad placement is).

Question 3

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 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 do I set up UTM Tracking?

Accepted Answer

This means you want to manually store data in your CRM platform which tells you where the contact record originated from.

In order to do this, you will have to set up hidden fields on your landing page, and you will select which words (aka parameters) to store (i.e. “source=google” and “campaign=branded”).

Once you determine those parameters, you (or your vendor) will enter into the appropriate campaigns or ad groups.

You can double check that the UTM settings are set up correctly by clicking on "ADS & EXTENSIONS", then click and "EDIT" on an ad and then click “TEST.”

Intro to UTM parameters training here:

Keep in mind: These UTM parameters aren't quite as good as Google at tracking folks with accuracy. It's simply a piece of text that's temporarily stored in the person' browser cache when they visit the site. If they come back to the site again with new parameters sent, then the browser's cache will be overwritten with the new parameters. If they come back to the site on a different device to convert, then the browser won't push the parameters into Shopify. If they delete their cache & cookies between their first site visit and the site visit that they convert on, then Shopify also wouldn't be able to include the parameters with the sale.

Google, on the other hand, is much better at tracking folks across devices and through any accidental cache deletions or overwritings. Google has people logged in on their phones, etc. etc.

But the UTM parameters should be close enough to accurate to get a quick gauge on what percentage of traffic is coming from where! You can also compare this data with your Google Analytics account in the Source/Medium section.

Question 6

Why is there a discrepancy between Shopify & Google Ads?

Accepted Answer

When you're viewing your Shopify report called "sales from marketing" (not available with all levels of Shopify) to see the total revenue from Google Ads, you'll likely see a lower quantity than what Google Ads reports.

It's not unusual to have a 20-30% loss in conversion value when in Shopify's marketing report when compared with Google Ads.

The lost conversions can be attributed to two things:

Shopify uses UTM parameters, which are often dropped, whereas Google Ads uses a robust tracking algorithm.
Shopify removes conversion value from the reporting if the customer made a return, whereas Google Ads doesn't know about the return so it doesn't get removed from the dashboard.

Here's a video Kasim made on this topic -- Although the video talks about Google Analytics reports rather than Shopify reports, it's still the same phenomenon, because Google Analytics also uses UTM parameters:

Question 7

How to use Local Campaigns to drive traffic to your physical store

Accepted Answer

If you have a brick and mortar business and you’re running a special offer or a promotion, you can use Google Ads to drive traffic to your local store.

By using a “Local Campaign” in Google Ads, you can promote Google Maps listings and track conversions every time someone looks up the driving directions to your store or shares the location with a friend.

Here’s what you need to do:

Update

Update your Google My Business account first. This includes updating information like:

Your cover picture and mention the promotion so people can see the sponsored listing in Google Maps.
Your GMB listing. Add imagery, maps, hours, phone numbers, and relevant links.

Optimize

Talk about your promotion in your ad copy and extension.
Set your keyword targeting to anything around your main keyword (e.g. if you’re selling shoes, keyword target should be “shoes”)

A few things to remember

This campaign tracks conversions differently than the rest of the campaign, which means it will skew the average ROAS for the overall account.

Since the local campaign has its own separate budget, it will make the ROAS look lower than it really is.

But don’t be alarmed. This simply means that the campaign is spending the ad budget without bringing in conversion value that Google Ads knows about.

So our team has to calculate the ROAS manually. Here’s how we do it:

ROAS = conversion value / the total cost from all the other campaigns

For more information on how How To Use Local Campaigns in Google Ads, check out this video:

Question 8

What Can I Afford To Pay For A Lead From Paid Ads?

Accepted Answer

If you’ve been using Google Ads or other paid advertising platforms to generate leads, you probably noticed that among all of them, Google tends to have the highest cost per lead (CPL).

Why?

Because the conversion rates of those leads are usually higher. Google understands the intention of its users and uses their algorithm to actively seek out users who have shown an interest in your product—those who are ready to buy.

According to Unbounce, “50% of people arriving at a retailers site from paid ads are more likely to buy than those who came from an organic link.” Click-throughs from PPC results convert 1.5 times more than organic search results (Atomic Reach). Meaning, in terms of getting higher bottom-funnel conversions, PPC beats SEO.

To make sure you have a well-optimized PPC campaign that generates revenue, it’s crucial to gather conversion data first. Sure, it might take some time. But it’s one of the most important elements in building high-performing campaigns that give you a huge return for every dollar you spend in advertising.

Question 9

When do you update the ad copy?

Accepted Answer

Every month.

Here’s how it works:

After 100 clicks, we compare the performances of two ads.

We keep the ad copy with the highest click-through and conversion rate, pause the ad that didn’t perform as well, and build a new ad to compete against the winning one for another 100 clicks.

This cycle continues on a monthly basis.

Question 10

How did you create the estimated projections in the action plan?

Accepted Answer

Using tools such as Google Keyword Planner, iSpionage, SpyFu, and SEMrush, we craft a keyword strategy.

Next, we:

Add the total monthly impressions of those keywords
Divide that number by a standard 2% click-through rate
Multiply that by the keywords’ average cost-per-click

This will give you a total amount of monthly leads/sales and cost-per-lead/sale.