Question 1

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.

Question 2

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.

Question 3

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?

Question 4

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 5

Why Do We Exclude Certain People In Remarketing Campaigns?

Accepted Answer

Setting up a remarketing campaign in Google (or "retargeting" as it's known in Facebook) is a powerful and effective way to capture conversions from people who did not initially convert.

Cookies and Tags

Before we dive into what remarketing is, we first need to understand what a "tag" is. Whenever someone completes a desired action on your website, a cookie gets installed in their browser. A "tag" is recorded and this information is collected by Google Tag Manager and sent over to Google Analytics for us to track.

For instance, a cookie can be fired and recorded as a tag whenever someone simply visits any page on your website, if they fill out a particular form, if they click on a link, if they make a purchase, etc.

In order to configure tagging, you need to set up an account with Google Tag Manager then have the tag installed on your website or desired web pages. Don't worry though, if you're a client of Solutions 8 we do that all for you!

So now that you know what a tag is, let's talk about remarketing.

The Purpose of Remarketing

The overall goal of marketing and sales is to show the right offer, to the right person, at the right time.

If a person doesn't initially complete an action (i.e. fill out a form, make a purchase), they're not a lost cause. Why? Because they've been tagged.

We know that they didn't take the desired action, and now they are anonymously put into a list of people who also didn't take the desired action.

The goal then is to re-market to these people with different advertisements at different times, in an effort to get them to convert into the desired action. The more "touches" a prospective customer has with your business, the higher the likelihood of them converting into a customer.

Why Do We Exclude Some People In Remarketing Campaigns?

If someone has already completed the desired action, we don't want to keep making them that same offer.

For instance, if you own a shoe store and are promoting the new Brooks Adrenaline GTS for men, you don't want to keep showing this advertisement to the people who have already bought this item.

It's a waste of ad spend and can annoy your customers. It is much wiser to change the ads that are shown to these people.

"They're already customers. Aren't they prime prospects to advertise to?"

However, to reiterate our earlier point, advertising the same products that these people have already bought isn't an effective way to spend your advertising budget. They already know your product exists, what about showing them another product of yours that you think could help them too? Now you're thinking!

Question 6

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 7

Providing Solutions 8 with access to your Google My Business (GMB) account

Accepted Answer

Sign in here: https://www.google.com/business/
Choose the account you would like us to have access to
Choose "Users" on the left hand side
Select the "Invite new users" icon
Enter the email address you have been provided by your customer manager
Choose the role: "Manager"
Select "Invite"

Question 8

How often do we meet to review the campaigns?

Accepted Answer

This report is not proprietary and is easily reconcilable within your Google Ads account (which you retain full ownership of).

After you receive the report, we offer a meeting to review all activities in your campaigns, what happened over the last month, what is happening now, and what our plans are for future growth.

Question 9

Do you do Bing search campaigns?

Accepted Answer

Yes!

Typically, we wait until we have maxed out Google Ads. But in some cases, if your target audience is older, Bing can be a great channel to reach them.

Bing has about 10% of the traffic compared to Google, but it is very inexpensive and full of high-quality leads.

Question 10

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.