Q: What is the best way to test my existing conversion action setups

The best way to check that a conversion action is working/set up: Login to Google Tag Manager (GTM) (https://tagmanager.google.com/?authuser=1#/home) and go to your account and enable the Preview Mode If you refresh (or access a webpage) after you've enabled the Preview Mode, on the bottom (or on the right side) of the webpage you'll be able to see GTM data (tags which fired and which didn't) Complete the contact form and you'll be redirected to the Thank You (TY) page. On the TY page, verify if the Google Ads Conversion tracking tag fired, If it did, everything is ok. Testing The Landing Page Used In The Ad - If you want to test the landing page URL, it’s best to Google the brand name and click on the ad. Yes, this will spend money (although the CPC for the branded campaigns is always super low), but it’s necessary because of parallel tracking. Parallel tracking is complex, but it has to do with the fact that there’s the actual URL and then there’s the version of the URL with UTM parameters added to it (if you set those up). Sometimes, the UTM “tracking template” version of the URL can work without the actual URL working...which is dangerous, because it might give you a false positive if you just click on an ad from inside the account.

Question 1

What if I have a small budget of $500 monthly?

Accepted Answer

Accounts with small budgets (~$500) can be extremely difficult to optimize because there’s often not enough data to recognize patterns.

For example, if a keyword got 1 click last month and 1 click this month, should we increase the bid for that keyword? Well, 1 click is not enough information to make an educated guess.

In this case you may need to manually edit the budget twice per month because you want to spend the majority of it in a short amount of days and then pull back.

Do not turn on monthly budget because then it will spend that money evenly throughout the month, which isn’t ideal.

Question 2

How do I use landing pages?

Accepted Answer

It used to be standard practice to create a designated landing page that would “squeeze” people into a sale because it focuses on one product, there’s no menu, no distractions, no alternate buttons, etc.

This is not recommended because on average people view 2.8 pages before converting.

So, this means a new visitor who lands on the website’s product page, might also view other products or view the homepage or the contact us page before going back to their original landing page to purchase/convert.

Question 3

What is the best ad copy strategy to use for search campaigns?

Accepted Answer

The recommended approach for best ad copy strategy is to use 2 Expanded Text Ads & 1 Responsive Search Ad.

Every search campaign’s ad group has these 3 ads inside it.

The expanded text ads give a structured ecosystem to try out the two sets of headlines/descriptions you think will work the best, and then use the RSA ad to give you insights into which ad copy is most effective.

Effective copy can be a better click rate (which helps with the quality score) or a better conversion rate.

After there have been 100 clicks on the ads, then you can begin making changes to optimize the expanded text ads based on those insights.

Question 4

What is the best way to test my existing conversion action setups

Accepted Answer

The best way to check that a conversion action is working/set up:

Login to Google Tag Manager (GTM) (https://tagmanager.google.com/?authuser=1#/home) and go to your account and enable the Preview Mode
If you refresh (or access a webpage) after you've enabled the Preview Mode, on the bottom (or on the right side) of the webpage you'll be able to see GTM data (tags which fired and which didn't)
Complete the contact form and you'll be redirected to the Thank You (TY) page.
On the TY page, verify if the Google Ads Conversion tracking tag fired, If it did, everything is ok.

Testing The Landing Page Used In The Ad - If you want to test the landing page URL, it’s best to Google the brand name and click on the ad. Yes, this will spend money (although the CPC for the branded campaigns is always super low), but it’s necessary because of parallel tracking. Parallel tracking is complex, but it has to do with the fact that there’s the actual URL and then there’s the version of the URL with UTM parameters added to it (if you set those up). Sometimes, the UTM “tracking template” version of the URL can work without the actual URL working...which is dangerous, because it might give you a false positive if you just click on an ad from inside the account.

Question 5

What if a campaign is not spending all of the budget?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes businesses would rather gain more impression share than hit a super high goal because the goal might be more profit than they really need and they want volume/scale.

For example, if you are targeting ROAS, then the campaign prioritizes that ROAS over spending all the budget, which means you’ve reached audience capacity and your options are either:

Find a new/wider audience with different keywords
Lower the bid strategy goal

Question 6

What does "Proven ROAS" mean?

Accepted Answer

A campaign that has proven ROAS means that it’s ROAS is or was at whatever number you need it to be at in order to make a profit.

For example, a 100% ROAS means you spend $1 on ads and get $1 back.

This is never a large enough number because the business will undoubtedly have other expenses beyond just ad spend, so this campaign has not proven it’s ROAS.

400% ROAS is a general rule of thumb for the minimum number you should be aiming for if the business doesn’t know it’s exact costs & you therefore can’t calculate an exact ROAS metric.

This is because 400% lets you break even if the business has a 25% profit margin. You get to make at least 4x your money back to break even. If you want to cover an agency fee, then they’ll have to get to 450% ish.

Find current ROAS: All conversion value / cost

Find minimum, break-even ROAS: If 60% profit margin, figure out how many times 60% goes into 100% (60/100 = 1.7). Then, add two zeros to turn that into a percent and you get 160% break-even ROAS.

***Pro tip: If you are an e-commerce company, set up a custom column in Google Ads to display ROAS in a % format (fyi, if you don’t set this column up, you can look at “conversion value/cost” column which gives you the same ROAS number but in decimal format).

Question 7

How do I decide whether a campaign can spend more even when it doesn’t say “limited by budget”?

Accepted Answer

If you have extra ad spend to work with (or if you pause another campaign and need to allocate its budget), check out the impression share (IS) lost to see if an existing campaign can take on the new spend. If (IS) is lost due to budget OR due to rank, then it most likely can. This is due to the cyclical nature of bids:

Rank determines your ad’s position in the results.
Rank is affected by bid.
Bid is set based on what the business can afford (for example, [Max CPC] = [Break Even CPL] * [Conversion Rate]).
Higher Bid = Higher Ad Position = Better Website Visitors = Higher Conversion Rate (clicks to leads) = A Higher Bid can be afforded. So, you can sometimes raise the bid in the anticipation that the conversion rate will increase by guesstimating what it will increase to and “putting the cart before the horse.”
If NOT Smart Shopping campaign - you might temporarily switch the campaign to a manual CPC (with enhanced CPC enabled) bidding strategy if it was using an automated bidding strategy before, because the algorithm most likely isn’t intelligent enough to push the max bid in this way.
If Smart Shopping - it’s not possible to switch to manual, so here are some other options:
- Give it more budget in order to get it to increase the bid
- Before increasing the budget, make sure the product feed is optimized by including a lot of optional information that helps with rank. Be sure to optimize your feed during the eCommerce setup process.

Question 8

Can I have multiple smart shopping campaigns in order to sell in different countries or one smart campaign with all countries selected. Please whats best practice in your experience?

Accepted Answer

Yes! Best practice for multiple countries is to actually create a new feed in GMC for that target country, then, use a new Smart Shopping campaign to target that country, or, a specific geographical area in that country

Question 9

What to Expect With Competitor Campaigns

Accepted Answer

Competitor Campaigns:

These campaigns tend to have a shorter sales cycle.
They are also known to drive more branded search (because someone shopping a competitor’s site, might come back to Google after not finding what they were looking for, remember your name, and type that in).
Don’t expect to have a high quality score on campaigns like this because the content on the site will never have the keyword (the competitor brand) in it.
It is almost always a trademark violation to put your competitor’s business name into your ad copy.
If you do not have a direct/obvious competitor, some nuance needs to be taken into consideration:
- For example, you might want to target a big brand who steals most of your business, but since the big brand sells more than just the products that you sell, you will need to target keywords that include both the competitor’s name and the product.
- Sometimes this is the case with smaller competitors, as well, in which case try both strategies (target just the competitor’s name and also the competitor + product as keywords).

Question 10

What are Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) Campaigns? When should I use DSA?

Accepted Answer

DSA Campaigns are used as learning experiments - You may choose to build dynamic search ad campaigns because they help you learn what ad copy & keywords to use in the other campaigns, in case you missed any important and effective words. Adding new words to the other campaigns can be helpful to optimize -- and it can be especially helpful if you’re hitting a spend ceiling and would like to raise the budget. It’s a way to identify, rather than guess, which keywords to target.

When to use - These campaigns are 100% created by the algorithm based on the words used in the landing page -- the algorithm decides what ad text and what keywords to use. These are only good for websites that are extremely specific and have content centered on a set of keywords.

How to use - Give the campaign a small budget. These campaigns have the ability to spend a lot of money very quickly, and DSA campaigns usually have a lower conversion rate than other types of campaigns, so it’s okay to let it be in the “limited by budget” status.

Optimize - When you’re ready to see it’s results, go to the DSA campaign and click on Search Terms. Sort by impressions to see which terms have a high amount of search volume. From there, find the ones that are actually getting clicks. Use those terms in the other campaigns.