Question 1

Why isn’t the Facebook remarketing campaign running?

Accepted Answer

It's common for Facebook remarketing campaigns to struggle to acquire a large enough audience in order to run. Facebook says their minimum audience size for a pixel-generated audience is 1000.

This means the Facebook pixel on your site needs to be able to match at least 1000 website visitors to Facebook users.

What factors into this?

Match Rate - Facebook doesn't reveal their average match rate (the rate at which website visitors can typically be matched up with Facebook users), and this likely varies greatly depending on the type of user who visits the site (do they tend to have Facebook accounts? Do they tend to reset their cache & cookies often?) as well as a number of other factors.

Pixel Age - The pixel is only able to see website visitors in real time, which means it can't see people who visited before the pixel was added to the site. So, if you've had the pixel on the site for 6 months then it will have 6 months worth of website visitors to try to mach to Facebook users (as long as the settings inside the Facebook ad account are set to look back 6 months, which is the maximum amount of time Facebook allows a pixel to look back).

So, the best thing to do is get the Facebook pixel onto the site early, make sure the settings inside FB pixel area are set to look back 6 months, and consider sending more people to the website with proactive (aka not remarketing) ad campaigns in order to populate that Facebook remarketing pixel audience.

Question 2

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 3

How to share passwords with Solutions 8

Accepted Answer

These instructions will help you add confidential login information to Dashlane, a trusted online program that allows you to securely share login information with us. We use this tool so we can keep your information secure, rather than exchange sensitive information via email.

Go to dashlane.com and click on “Get Dashlane”.
Allow the app to make changes to your device.
Log in or create an account. Be sure to create a really strong password!
Follow the prompts or skip the prompts.
The Dashlane dashboard will pop up.
Click on Password on the lefthand panel.
Click the green “Add New” button at the top.
Enter the information you’re sharing.
Click Ok to create the record.
To share this record with our team, go to the sharing center and click “Add New”
Find the items you would like to share in the drop down menu.
Add solutions8ads@gmail.com to the Recipients box. Be sure to click “Full rights” before sharing.
Click send.

Question 4

How can we target competitors even more? / What is a Competitive Proactive Campaign?

Accepted Answer

Pick a few competitors (suggesting 1-6) and create a display or video campaign. Setup one ad set for each competitor. Then, build these 4 audiences within each ad set:

Custom affinity targeting the competitor's website
Custom affinity targeting the competitor's brand name
Custom intent targeting the competitor's website
Custom intent targeting the competitor's brand name

This is a highly segmented way to have an outbound campaign going to specific competitor's users/customers/leads. Affinity means it will target people who are frequently visiting that brand's site or associating themselves with that brand regularly. Intent means it will target the people who are actively researching or planning a purchase of that business.

The caveat with this campaign is, if your competitor is a SAAS product, frequent visitors of the site might be going there to login. So this means the ads will appear for the competitor's existing users. Because of this, it's recommended to test this campaign to make sure you aren't spending a ton of budget targeting primarily existing users -- and, if you are, make sure the ads feature a competitive advantage in an effort to get those users to make the switch.

Question 5

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 6

What time period should I use to judge ad performance?

Accepted Answer

It's tough to look at things on a week-to-week basis. Our team aims for hitting the ROAS goal on a month-to-month basis. Performance is intentionally bumpy throughout the month because we do things like using the Stair-Step Method to push the algorithm to grow, or testing small changes, etc.

Question 7

How To Share The Facebook Pixel with A Business

Accepted Answer

In order to share your Facebook pixel with a business, you will need to already have a business manager. If you don't already have one, you can set one up here.

Once you've done that, go to Business Manager Settings.

Next, go to “Pixels” under Data Sources.

Select the pixel and click “Assign Partners.”

Enter the Solutions 8 Business ID: 915738658498354

Question 8

How do I set up UTM Tracking?

Accepted Answer

This means you want to manually store data in your CRM platform which tells you where the contact record originated from.

In order to do this, you will have to set up hidden fields on your landing page, and you will select which words (aka parameters) to store (i.e. “source=google” and “campaign=branded”).

Once you determine those parameters, you (or your vendor) will enter into the appropriate campaigns or ad groups.

You can double check that the UTM settings are set up correctly by clicking on "ADS & EXTENSIONS", then click and "EDIT" on an ad and then click “TEST.”

Intro to UTM parameters training here:

Keep in mind: These UTM parameters aren't quite as good as Google at tracking folks with accuracy. It's simply a piece of text that's temporarily stored in the person' browser cache when they visit the site. If they come back to the site again with new parameters sent, then the browser's cache will be overwritten with the new parameters. If they come back to the site on a different device to convert, then the browser won't push the parameters into Shopify. If they delete their cache & cookies between their first site visit and the site visit that they convert on, then Shopify also wouldn't be able to include the parameters with the sale.

Google, on the other hand, is much better at tracking folks across devices and through any accidental cache deletions or overwritings. Google has people logged in on their phones, etc. etc.

But the UTM parameters should be close enough to accurate to get a quick gauge on what percentage of traffic is coming from where! You can also compare this data with your Google Analytics account in the Source/Medium section.

Question 9

How long should I wait to see an accurate Performance Report in Performance Max?

Accepted Answer

According to Google, whenever you make any changes to automated bidding, strategies, and budget, you have to wait for at least 14 days (plus your conversion lag) to view accurate and complete performance reporting.

Conversion lag is simply “the delay when people click an ad and when they perform a specific conversion action (for example with, install, purchase, add-to-cart, etc.)”

What happens is the system will optimize towards what we tell it to do, so you must wait to make any changes for 14 days when Google can accurately assess performance.

Making any changes prior to that learning period will reset the account back into the learning period. This means, you’ll have to wait for another 2-3 weeks.

Question 10

How do I grow/scale quickly?

Accepted Answer

Trying to Scale/Grow Quickly - Training Video Here

Sometimes the ROAS will plateau, so you need to take a risk and apply more budget into the smart shopping campaign, turning off the “Target Roas goal” (this is an optional goal that lives inside the bidding strategy of “Maximize conversion value” inside of Smart Shopping Campaigns) temporarily in order to see if we can force the algorithm to “tap into” new audiences.