Question 1

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 2

How do I advertise holidays and promotions?

Accepted Answer

**Holidays & Promotions**

**Promotions** 
If you are offering a temporary discount, you might ask how it should be included in the ads. Consider the three options below:
1. Temporarily change all ad copy to include mention of the promotion. 
2. Simply swap out the landing page URL but keep the ad copy the same. 
3. Run a promotions-focused campaign (which is described in the holiday campaigns section below).

**Holiday Campaigns**  
You might try to boost sales surrounding a specific holiday, depending on whether your product is a good fit and whether you have the ability to put together a holiday-specific landing page.

Here is a recommended strategy example surrounding Valentines Day with a $15k spend on holiday-specific ads:

* Spend $3k three weeks prior to V-Day & then spend the remaining $12k during the last two weeks.

* Swap out the landing page used in the Branded Campaign to the holiday-specific page temporarily so that anyone familiar with the brand can learn about the limited-time products.

* Set up a new **Smart Shopping Campaign** for the holiday-specific products. (If the products are new, then start with a regular **Shopping Campaign** in order to build conversion data first and then switch to Smart Shopping. See the **Bidding Strategies** FAQs for more on this.)

* Set up a new **Display Campaign** for holiday-specific products.

* Do not set up a new **Search Campaign** targeting V-Day Gift search terms (not product specific).
A Search Campaign is NOT recommended (because people searching for “valentines day gifts” won’t cost effectively click on this product-specific inbound ad, AND it will be expensive to bid on these keywords to be shown. You can read more about this in the “**eCommerce Search vs. Shopping Campaigns**” FAQ.) If you have a campaign set up or are being asked to set one up then strangle it (limit the budget severely) to keep it from bringing down the ROAS of your account too much.

Question 3

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:

1. Use [this website speed analyzer tool](https://tools.pingdom.com/).
2. Enter your website URL.
3. Pick a server closest to you.
4. 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 4

Why Doesn't Google Ads Show The Same Conversions As Google Analytics?

Accepted Answer

If you are using Google Analytics to count conversions from Google Ads, you may be missing a large chunk of conversion data. The reason why is because Google Analytics doesn’t do a great job at identifying website visitors who have come back to the site. It focuses mainly on session-specific data. This means, 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. Another thing to watch out for when comparing conversion data across these two platforms is Google Analytics runs off different attribution models then Google Ads. Google Ads will look at the first click model so that you can make sure that if the user is going to come back and Google a brand name then you can properly attribute it to the proper campaign. However, Google Analytics will look at the last click or same day attribute. That means that it’ll show you that between this period and that period, this is what happened that day. Here’s an example, let’s say that Google Ads shows 1000 conversions and Google Analytics shows 800 conversions. There’s a 25% difference in conversions. If you’d like to explore this further, here is our chief account strategist, John Moran, on the subject:

Question 5

Adding Users To Your Google Analytics Account

Accepted Answer

In order for your PPC campaigns to perform at the highest level, Solutions 8 will need access to your Google Analytics account. Having access to your Google Analytics account will allow us as an agency to link your AdWords account to it, which will allow us to do a number of really useful things. For instance, once your Analytics account is connected to AdWords, we will be able to track website conversions as well as the paths user took to complete a conversion. This is extremely valuable information for us as advertisers and for you as a business owner, because it allows us to spot areas of possible strength or weakness along the customers journey. This will in turn aid in the overall strategy of the PPC campaign. Pretty neat, huh? So it is absolutely imperative that we connect your AdWords account to your Google Analytics. In order to do that, you or your webmaster will need to ad us as a user in Google Analytics. If you aren't familiar with the process, don't worry. Simply follow this step-by-step guide, and you'll see it's as easy as a walk in the park. ### Step 1 The first thing you need to do is to go to Google Analytics and login to your dashboard. ### Step 2 Once you're logged in, go ahead and click on the "Admin" icon in the lower lefthand side of the screen. ![step 2.png](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/F8bP8kYmCX/step%202.png) ### Step 3 Once you've clicked on "Admin", you should see your Admin panel. In the Admin panel, there will be 3 columns labeled "Account", "Property", and "View". In the Account column on the left, click on "User Management". ![step 3.png](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/YhAbTetvDr/step%203.png) ### Step 4 After you click on "User Management", a tab will popup labeled "Account users". In the upper righthand corner of the "Account users" tab, you should see a "+". When you find it, click on it. ![step 4.png](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/mVOO4Em4NG/step%204.png) ### Step 5 Once you're on the screen above, please make sure that the "Edit", "Collaborate", "Read & Analyze", and "Manage Users" boxes are all checked. This is a very important step, and it is vital that it is done correctly. We need access to all 4 of these things as we have a team of people who will need access, and this will allow us to add and remove people on our side without the constant back. This limits the drag on your campaign and the makes it much easier for all parties involved. ![step 5.png](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/pK7hN3oZZ0/step%205.png) ### Step 6 In the "Enter email addresses" form field, enter "Solutions8ads@gmail.com". Also, make sure that the box "Notify new users by email" is checked. That will notify us that you've added us as an account user. Once you've done that, go ahead and click on "Add" to finish things up. ![step 6.png](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/CcjsqpUljh/step%206.png) You're all done! That wasn't so bad! Right?

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 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 8

How do we spend more without lowering ROAS?

Accepted Answer

When a campaign isn’t limited by budget, we can often increase the spend without lowering ROAS by much at all.

However, when that same campaign has maxed out its spend (meaning it reached its entire audience), **using a lower-spend outbound campaign** (such as YouTube or display) **can increase brand awareness and introduce your offering to a new audience**.

So, we recommend starting these campaigns with a lower budget to see how it affects the overall campaign performance. The main campaign should become more active, thus allowing us to increase the budget.

You will sacrifice ROAS with these new outbound campaigns, so it's best to keep the ad spend low in the beginning to test this.

Question 9

Should I share budget between multiple campaigns?

Accepted Answer

Shared budgets are not ideal but they can be useful - In the beginning of a campaign launch, you might decide to put campaigns into a shared budget in order to help determine how to divide up the budget. You will be able to let the algorithm decide what to show based on how much demand (impressions) there is.

Question 10

How do the ads get switched over during a site redesign or a new website with a new domain?

Accepted Answer

If it's the same website that's getting a re-design, setup tracking on all the new landing pages & forms during the week before the switch over takes place. If not, the only way to do it would be to pause the ads for a few days while you re-setup tracking.

Make sure you/your developers to make sure the same Google Tag Manager code and Google Analytics code get copied & pasted into the new design.

If it’s a new domain, then it’s considered a new website. It will need a new Google Tag Manager code and also a new Google Analytics “property”. Both sites will need to be up for about a week while you are switching over the tracking.

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