Question 1

Is there any spillover from paid ads to organic search ranking?

Accepted Answer

On average, you will see about a 10 rank jump in organic search rank after you start running paid ads. Part of this is because Google counts all traffic to the website as “traffic.” Which means anyone who clicks on an ad gets points towards traffic. In Google Search Console (in the “Performance on Search Results” report) you can see organic search performance for the site. Compare the last 3 months with the previous 3 months to see the difference in average position, average CTR, total clicks, and total impressions.

Question 2

How can we get the product rating stars to show up on the ads?

Accepted Answer

The product ratings will begin appearing on Shopping Campaign ads whenever your business and the product itself qualifies for the program. Google is a bit vague exactly how to qualify...The rule is to gather a minimum of 50 reviews across the store before submitting the form to apply to participate in the program, but that is where the hard & fast rules end. In this article they say, "Reviews and star ratings may not always show. We’ll show star ratings when our system determines that the information is accurate and relevant for shoppers’ needs." Which means they are leaving it up to an algorithm and the parameters are left a mystery.

The only way to get reviews that aren't made directly in Google to appear in the ads is with a reviews aggregator app. Here's an article explaining this and offering a few alternatives. And here's Google's comprehensive list of approved 3rd party aggregator apps.

There is a section of your Google Ads account where the seller rating stats will begin to populate once the ads are showing the stars. The only way to know whether the ratings are showing is to occasionally check recent dates in this section. Here is how to get to it: Click on "ads & extensions" and then "extensions" and then scroll to the bottom of the screen and choose "automated extensions." The "Seller Ratings" row will populate with data on days when the ratings appeared in the ads.

If you aren't receiving enough reviews to qualify for the program or to keep the stars actively appearing on your ads, here is a tip: Use your review app to create an automated email series that asks customers to review. Schedule a large amount of emails and be very direct about wanting a review. Make sure to set up a trigger inside his review platform to stop the emails as soon as the person leaves a review. The automated emails have to be sent out of his review platform to do this, of course. He said he sends emails that say things like: reviews are so important, we're a family owned business, your voice matters, if you can’t give us a 4 or 5 start review please let us know so we can make it better, and even "we’re not going to stop asking until you review." Sounds pushy, but effective!

Question 3

How do I know the cost per aquisition of a client if Google Ads is only bringing in leads?

Accepted Answer

If your Google Ads account is gathering leads (as opposed to revenue), then it will be important to manually determine the cost per aquisition of a customer. Cost per aquisition, or CPA, is your bottom line, after all.

Getting to the bottom of this number is not always straightforward, but it is always worth the effort.

THe goal is to look through your recent sales and leads, and then to try to determine the average conversion rate of a lead that comes from Google Ads. That way we can apply the conversion rate to the performance reported by Google Ads in order to determine the CPA of a customer/client.

Here is an example of the math equation that needs to be done:

If your CRM/sales reps are able to find 19 leads that originally came from Google Ads in the past 4 months.

And 8 of those leads converted into a customer/client.

Then, 8 converted leads out of 19 total leads is a 42% conversion rate from Google Ads.

If Google Ads is reporting 63 leads in the past 4 months and spent $20,000 in ad spend to do that, let's apply the 42% conversion rate to those numbers:

42% of the 63 leads gathered by Google Ads is 26.46 leads that were converted into clients, theoretically.

$20,000 spent on ads divided by 26.46 clients means each client cost $756.

Now that you know each client cost $756, you can ask yourself: Is that a profitable amount to spend aquiring a client based on how much revenue clients bring in over their lifetime with the business, on average? If so, then it's probably time to start talking about increasing the monthly ad spend to begin scaling how many leads are coming in each month.

How to find the leads that came from Google Ads

Leads that submit a form will need to be tracked using UTM parameters. This will need to be done ahead of time, so that the contacts in your CRM can be identified as having Google Ads as their source.

Leads that call your business won't have any UTM parameters attached to their contact record (and, in many cases, won't have a contact record unless the person who answered the phone added them into the CRM). In this case, we can send you a list of names & phone numbers from our call tracking app, and then you can manually match up your recent sales/new customers/new clients to the list.

Question 4

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 5

How should we prepare for the holiday season?

Accepted Answer

It's best to get a head-start on any promotions you are planning for big holiday seasons (like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, etc.).

For Black Friday & Cyber Monday, specifically, we recommend chooseing a site-wide discount. Your competition will be fierce, so it's a good idea to choose as steep of a discount as possible. If you need to temporarily hit a higher ROAS (return-on-ad-spend) in order to make this discount profitable, then we can easily do that.

Make sure any promotion you are offering in Google Ads is also offered in your other marketing channels. It's best to keep things synergistically across all platforms.

If your business is eCommerce, then you are probably running shopping campaigns. Shopping ads can promote discounts, special offers, free gifts, etc. right on the ad.

We can also promote the special deal directly in the text of any search ads that are running.

It can also be beneficial to create some images to support the promotion. We'll use these in the display campaigns to remarket to folks who visit the website during this time periot. A square version and a 19:1 ratio would work best, but Google has a long list aspect ratios they support, so more sizes means we are eligible to appear in more placements and therefore give the algorithm more opportunities to show the ad.

Google and all other ad platforms always experience a large increase in traffic during November and December. It can be a good idea to be flexible with the budget around this time -- meaning, if the audience size suddenly increases dramatically, then we will likely be able to spend more on the ads while continuing to meet a high return.

Question 6

How long will it take to build my campaigns?

Accepted Answer

10-12 business days.

Question 7

What is the difference between Google Smart Shopping and Google Shopping Ads?

Accepted Answer

Traditional Google Shopping campaigns are only directed at users searching Google for a product to buy. This user sees the ads on a search engine results page.

Google Smart Shopping, on the other hand, is a step up. This outbound-heavy campaign uses algorithmic targeting to show ads to a very specific user. This user has shown serious interest in a specific product through their past search activity.

Question 8

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 9

How often do you make changes to a campaign?

Accepted Answer

A very high spending account may need daily or even hourly changes. For accounts with smaller budgets, there may not be as much maintenance involved.

Similarly, this depends on if we’re achieving our goals or not. If we are, we may make slower optimizations (to not deter the performance of the campaign). If we aren’t hitting our goals, we make more frequent optimizations until we start achieving them.

On average, we generally make changes in an account every 3-7 days (again, depending on how much activity the campaign gets and your specific goals).

Too many changes harbors an ecosystem where it’s hard to keep track of the outcomes; making changes too infrequently means competitors may outperform your campaign.

Question 10

When should I consider using Remarketing?

Accepted Answer

Hold off on remarketing in the beginning to test the quality of the traffic in the campaigns, and if a campaign isn’t performing well then you don’t want to limit the ad spend by pushing customers back.