Question 1

Should I Always Listen to Google’s Suggestions?

Accepted Answer

Google’s suggestions don’t take the entire picture into account.
They are usually focused on making more money for Google, and focused on hitting the high-level bid strategy’s target (which it perceives as the campaign’s main goal) at all costs.
There can be consequences to overstretching in one area in order to hit the bid strategy target.
Here is a video explaining a campaign’s “Limited by Bid” message & suggestion. The video explains why it’s best to ignore it in this case.

Question 2

How can I track chat leads? Which chat apps are compatible with Google Ads?

Accepted Answer

If you use a chat app on your website, and you want to see how many leads come through it after interacting with an ad, then we would recommend using a chat app that allows for lead tracking.

Lead tracking means we have the ability to verify the person chatting is an actual lead. Some chat apps simply mark every single chat message sent by a unique user as a lead, even if the person is trying asking a question that doesn't express intent to consider purchase. For example, if someone chats in to say "can I get a refund?" then we would not want to tell Google Ads that this person was a lead. There are two reasons why this is not ideal:

We would see an inflated number in the Google Ads performance reports/dashboard
We would be telling Google's algorithms to optimize it's targeting based on incorrectly marking that chat user as a piece of conversion data

If you are considering using a chat app that doesn’t allow lead tracking, then we would recommend not basing optimization decisions off of chat conversion rate. We can make this happen by setting up the conversion action & tracking, but not including those chat conversions in the "Conversions" column of the ad performance. This is because a chat conversion would be counted the moment the lead clicks to write their message, but this type of conversion isn’t a direct indication of success.

You have the option to swap out the chat app with one that does allow for conversion tracking with Google Ads.

Some chat apps have a team of customer support reps (like OctaChat or LiveChatInc. With these you don't pay unless it's a verified lead and the reps have gathered their contact information.)
Some allow you, the business owner/employee to man the chats yourself (like PureChat).
Some offer chatbots (like ManyChat)

Question 3

Why are we selective before excluding a product from shopping ads?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes when the budget is limited, having too many products in the shopping ads means the algorithm has trouble gathering conversion patterns, which can lead to low performance.

It becomes harder to optimize because each conversion on each shopping ad or product is too spread out across the weeks or months.

So the answer is to temporarily exclude products until the algorithm can get the hang of things. Then, with scale later on, those products' shopping ads can be re-included.

While it's nice to hone in on products that work, we are very selective about excluding products just because of low performance. Here’s what usually happens when we exclude products.

When we turn off a product ad that might have been getting lots of web traffic (spending the budget), people start to look at related products, see remarketing ads for those products, and end up buying them.

It seems like the product that was getting all the clicks was losing money but it was actually acting like a highly targeted TOFU (Top of the Funnel) ad to bring traffic to the site & feed the product ads which seem like they're performing well.

(Quick note: TOFU or Top of the Funnel is a marketing strategy we use to attract cold audiences and increase brand awareness. Learn more about TOFU here.)

So, if we exclude a product, it can cause a domino effect where another product stops performing, and then we exclude that one, which causes another, etc. etc."

Does excluding my product mean it won’t be purchased?

Just because we exclude a product, doesn't mean it won't be purchased. It just means it might not work well as a shopping ad & the money could be better spent on other shopping ads to bring people to the site...but those people still might buy these products.

Question 4

Can I add a logo or text to my product images to show in the shopping remarketing ads?

Accepted Answer

Google doesn't allow any logos or text on a product image. They call it a "promotional overlay." Most of the time when a logo is added to a shopping image, we get disapproved for "promotional overlay." Even though that is not the case, Google will still flag it as such. We add the logo to the responsive ad for shopping, but sometimes there is not enough room to display it depending on what digital property your seeing the ad.

If a promotional overlay is detected on a main image, that product will be disapproved because it doesn’t meet the image requirements. Here is their article all about this.. Google automatically detects any logos or words and automatically disapproves it.

The Smart Shopping campaign has a remarketing aspect to it. This means it will follow recent website visitors around the web and show the product that they looked at. These ads can often appear simple with very little text, however Google's algorithms have determined that this is the best way to remind interested leads to come back and complete their purchase. These are dynamic (which means that Google's algorithms decide whether to show a logo, what text to include, etc. based on the person they are showing the ad to and the space they have available).

Question 5

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

Accepted Answer

Website speed can affect ads because it can cause a higher bounce rate (this means people might be more likely to click on an ad, get impatient while waiting for the page to load, and close the tab). It usually isn’t an urgent issue because it doesn’t make a huge impact, but if you are wondering whether your website is fast enough, here is what you can do:

Use this website speed analyzer tool.
Enter your website URL.
Pick a server closest to you.
Click "Start Test"

Once you get the result, look at the Load Time. If it is less than 2 seconds, then you are all set! We have found the conversion rate is unaffected as long as the website loads in 2 seconds or less. If it is more than 2 seconds, contact your developer to see what can be done to speed things up.

Question 6

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 7

Why is my cost per click so high?

Accepted Answer

Having a high CPC (Cost-Per-Click) usually stems from competiting against many other competitors going for the same targeted keywords.

We can break this down for you by going to your "Auction Insights" and showing you what competitors are targeting the same keywords you are, and where they are on the SERP (Search Results Page) relative to your position.

Generally, here at Solutions 8 we aim to give you the highest ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) possible. This means we target keywords that are most likely to lead to conversions (Phone Calls, Purchases, Form Submissions, etc.).

If these profitable keywords also have high competition and high CPC, we need to "play the game" and bid competitively to appear near the top of the page to attract the most likely to convert customers that are looking for your products & services.

Our initial strategy is to start with targeting the bottom of the page until we can gather enough click-through data and conversion data to identify patterns.

Once we have a sense of which keywords are going to be effective, we might decide to bid competitively one a handful of them to appear at the top of the page, since we'll have the data to make us confident that it will be worth the risk to purchase those expensive clicks.

Question 8

Why don't my ads appear at the top of the page when I search on Google?

Accepted Answer

First page, top of page, first position CPC bid can be very expensive in competitive industries. A high CPC and low budget would take a while to make a conversion (get a click, make phones ring). So, shut off more expensive high quality keywords that you want to test now or later so they do not eat up your budget early on.

Start by aiming for a lower position (say #2 spot) with keywords that are high quality (related to ad relevance, landing pages, click through scores, etc.) but have lower CPC. Over a few weeks, you will learn and gather data on the quality keywords with good conversion rate and CPA.

Then you can begin to optimize. Bid more aggressively on quality keywords for top of page position and shut off keywords that have not been producing results. Reallocate that money to keywords that are producing results which will gain those type of conversions more quickly.

When you use a low budget and spend less than what you believe you should bid because your campaign has good quality score, good ad relevencey, good landing page experience and good expected click through rate, you pay a lot less than everybody else would to get a good spot and generate leads. Taking this smart approach allows you to see how things will progress.

As you test more aggressively, use Enhanced CPC which will help increase conversions. Enhanced CPC tells Google to enhance the bid (that it can spend) up to 150% of your current bid to get a click. So a $10 bid will turn into a $25 click if Google sees a conversion can come from it.

You could see your max bid is set at $10 'enhanced' but your average CPC may be $18 and you are getting good conversions and placement. Take your $10 bid and turn it up to $20 and you will get to see a predictive indicator of where to start to spend more money/increase bids without increasing the budget.**

So, start small, generate leads, see where conversions come from without asking for more budget or stretching too thin in the right amount of time.

You can get more aggressive by adding more ad spend to accelerate the process (get phones to ring and buy data) and then you can start to back the spend down in line with a targeted monthly spend.

Summary:

Start with lower price and page listing
Shut off expensive waste
Get click then that's a great keyword to use as a predicitive indicator to more aggressively bid
Start to scale
Optimize
Convert quicker

Why wait to do SEO until after Google Ads Campaign? Because from your Google Ads Campaign(s) you can identifiy strong keywords and search terms with the best conversions, highest volume and lowest cost. Then use that as your keyword strategy to back link, create content, etc.

Question 9

What are some high-level recommended campaign bidding strategies?

Accepted Answer

Bid Strategies

Step 1: Non-Shopping Campaigns: Start with manual CPC with eCPC enabled (because eCPC is the option that uses a bit of Google’s automation, but is mostly manual). This is nice because you can control the bids, but it’s not very scalable because it’s high maintenance, and because a machine will do it better than a human ever could. After you have around 100 conversions with high frequency (like a sale every other day, for example), at this point we’ve given the algorithm enough data for it to pick up where we left off and make it better. Now you can switch from eCPC to a smart bidding strategy like Target CPC. It leverages the data that you’ve already provided.

Shopping Campaignss: Start with a regular Shopping campaign before switching to a Smart Shopping campaign, because regular Shopping campaigns are inbound (meaning people are searching for the product when the ad appears) whereas Smart Shopping is outbound (meaning Google will try to show it to the type of people who might be interested), so the Smart algorithm can’t do outbound well, and therefore will never prove ROAS, without plenty of data. So, start with Shopping campaign using Manual CPC (usually w/enhanced enabled unless you have super low profit margin and you're trying to prove concept)

After 35 - 45 days of gathering consistent conversion data (aka converting at a normal cadence with a reliable pattern), then pause all shopping campaigns & replace it with a new Smart Shopping campaign using Maximize Conversions (which is the only bidding option). After 35 - 45 more days if the campaign isn’t hitting an acceptable ROAS, you can turn on the optional ROAS goal within the Maximize Conversions bidding strategy.

You don’t want to start off with a ROAS goal because it won’t get any conversions because it doesn’t have enough outbound data yet. Once you've given it that data, turning on the ROAS goal will restrict it to only spend when it thinks it can hit that goal, so spend starts to decrease, the campaign gets less activity, you get less clicks per day, but you should get a higher quality click and conversions that are making your ROAS.

One additional strategy is to spend more $/budget to force Smart Shopping campaigns to go find new markets by removing the Target ROAS goal.

Step 2: Now you can begin to step the ROAS goal higher. For example, if the campaign was at 300% when you first turned on Target ROAS, then try for 325%. If the campaign hits that or surpasses it, then try for 350%. At some point, you will hit a ceiling. Once you know how high the automation can go, get it back to the top and keep it there steady.

Step 3: Now that your ROAS is high, you can begin to give it more daily ad spend to see if you can increase the amount of conversions. So now, instead of spending $100/day and getting $300, you can try spending $500/day and getting $1500. Just make sure the ROAS doesn’t dip.

Display Pay Per Conversion - This is a new type of campaign/bid strategy in which you only pay for a conversion, and it’s only when the conversion doesn’t go above what you said you would pay. Begin with a super high CPA and then decrease it slowly. The idea is to get the CPA as low as possible (at which point you'll just turn off any regular Proactive Display campaign and just use this one). These types of campaigns can get lots of fake conversions generated by bots. Captcha prevents the bots from submitting forms and wasting ad spend.

Question 10

What do you recommend for a new product launch?

Accepted Answer

If you are launching a new product, there are a few things we can do to get it out into the ad ecosystem.

First of all, if you add the product to your eCommerce store, then it will automatically be added to the Smart Shopping campaign through the product feed after a few days. However, depending on how large your store is, it could take the algorithm quite some time to give the new product ad spend and gather conversion data on it. If you want to speed that process up, we can give the product it's own campaign(s) to force the account to devote ad spend to it more quickly.

We can give it it's own budget and run the following campaigns:

Shopping (eventually the product will be switched over to the main Smart Shopping campaign once we are done with the "push")
GSP and Display - These work especially well with remarketing audiences of recent website visitors
YouTube - Do you have a video to promote the product? If so, we can try YouTube shopping to get eyes on it.
Search - Temporarily running a search campaign on a new product can help the ad account gather conversion data more quickly because it allows the algorithm to see what the ideal, target customer looks like.