Question 1

Is it possible to run an e-commerce campaign but built as lead generation?

Accepted Answer

It doesn’t always make sense to setup e-commerce tracking in Google Ads.

Instead, we can just assign a static conversion value for the order form submission (average order price) and use that for tracking ROAS.

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](https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6059553?hl=en&ref_topic=7307120) 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](https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7045996).

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

Should I be running video ads and what can I expect?

Accepted Answer

Video Ads - Video ads are best used with Remarketed Audiences. This is because those audiences have already expressed good intent (meaning they’ve already gone to the site and completed a conversion), which is important since video ads are outbound (meaning people who see them aren’t necessarily searching for a solution at that moment.

You can run YouTube video ads, like the 15 second ones that are non-skippable, or you can run video Display, which means the video can show on sites other than YouTube, much like a banner ad.) and so they are primarily for promoting brand awareness.

Videos are often not clicked on directly; rather, leads will watch the video ad a few times and then go to Google later and search for the brand. This makes tracking a bit difficult, so you can expect to see a rise in the conversion rate of your Branded Campaign, as well as a rise in the View-Through Conversions report.

Videos will need to be hosted in YouTube and the Google Ads account will need to have the YouTube account connected under “Linked Accounts.”

### Here are some general recommendations for creating videos:

* Since they are skippable, you will want to mention the offer within the first 6 seconds.
* Mention the brand within the first 6 seconds.
* If you choose to put your brand logo in the video, put it on the bottom left side of the video.

[Here is our helpful 1-minute script template](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iZ703xaRWwGjjb-HyD0j8is7dVizEq-4_PwwkZwlUFw/edit?usp=sharing) that could come in handy if you plan on making a video soon.

Steps to making a video:
* Go to Videohive.net and search for “Explainer” to find explainer video templates.
* Find the one you like and write the script.
* Then send the script to someone who makes videos on Fiverr. (We use Demitri. He makes videos for about $50. His email is: blog.dbl@gmail.com.)
* Then find someone else on Fiverr to do the voiceover (Nicholescott369 is great). You can also get a famous person to do a cameo on this [[site]](https://www.cameo.com/c/voice-actors).

Question 4

How can we make use of my existing customer base? / What is "customer match" used for?

Accepted Answer

If you have a large customer list, and if your Google account is eligible for "customer match," then you can implement some cross-selling and retargeting campaigns.

Because the audience size is limited and much smaller than an audience found on Google, we won't need a large budget for this strategy.

After about a month or two of gathering conversion data, we can also create a "similar audience" based on the customer list. Similar audiences are often effective, and we will incorporate it into our proactive targeting campaigns.

Question 5

What Are Display Campaigns?

Accepted Answer

Display Campaigns - Retail type advertising for brand image or product marketing; Images - Use stock or custom images if you have a designer and have something in mind that you want to try in the Display ads.

Reactive Display (aka Display Remarketing) - Ideal way to use Display campaigns, as Remarketing Audiences (previous visitors to your website) are more likely to convert and therefore make a more effective campaign.

Proactive Display - We often name them “Proactive Display” because they are outbound and they use Custom Intent Audiences instead of Remarketing Audiences. This Campaign is used instead of or in addition to the Reactive Display when there is an exception (like if your business has a long sales cycle (10+ days) or if you can’t use Remarketing Audiences because they’re in the medical industry.).

It can also sometimes work if you can use “Managed Placements” (which means you find 10-20 websites that use Google Adsense and show ads ONLY on those sites, which is a hard list of websites to come up with).

Display Ads are good for brand recognition & gathering data to feed the other campaigns (esp. Smart shopping, if it’s eCommerce or brand) but the *leads often won’t click directly (so you won’t be able to prove profitable conversions on the Display Ad alone*) -- instead they’ll type in the brand name into Google when they’re ready to go to the site. This means you will have to *pay close attention to the conversions in the Branded Campaign before and after the Display ads begin to determine whether you think it’s working*.

Do not allocate too much budget towards this campaign because you don’t want to throw your ROAS out the window, but about $450/month would work great.

Question 6

What is the best way to test my existing conversion action setups

Accepted Answer

The best way to **check that a conversion action** is working/set up:
* Login to Google Tag Manager (GTM) (https://tagmanager.google.com/?authuser=1#/home) and go to your account and enable the Preview Mode
* If you refresh (or access a webpage) after you've enabled the Preview Mode, on the bottom (or on the right side) of the webpage you'll be able to see GTM data (tags which fired and which didn't)
* Complete the contact form and you'll be redirected to the Thank You (TY) page.
* On the TY page, verify if the Google Ads Conversion tracking tag fired, If it did, everything is ok.

**Testing The Landing Page Used In The Ad** - If you want to test the landing page URL, it’s best to Google the brand name and click on the ad. Yes, this will spend money (although the CPC for the branded campaigns is always super low), but it’s necessary because of parallel tracking. Parallel tracking is complex, but it has to do with the fact that there’s the actual URL and then there’s the version of the URL with UTM parameters added to it (if you set those up). Sometimes, the UTM “tracking template” version of the URL can work without the actual URL working...which is dangerous, because it might give you a false positive if you just click on an ad from inside the account.

Question 7

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:

1. We would see an inflated number in the Google Ads performance reports/dashboard
2. 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 8

Why are Google Ads reporting different numbers than Google Analytics?

Accepted Answer

Google Ads and Google Analytics handle the same data very differently. And for good reason.

When you’re dealing with multiple sessions (meaning a website visitor came to the site more than once before converting) the conversion data can be displayed in multiple ways. This is called “attribution modeling.”

Google Ads and Google Analytics tend to use different attribution models because their purpose is different: Google Ads is trying to show us which ads are profitable, when, why, etc. Google Analytics, on the other hand, is trying to show us the most straightforward picture of what exactly happened on the site and when.

So, the two platforms almost always end up attributing conversions based on different rules:
* **Google Analytics** uses a same-day attribution model. This means the day that the conversion happens is the day that Google Analytics will show the data.
* **Google Ads** uses one of several different attribution models (whichever one your ad  manager chose in the account settings) to analyze the performance of the ads. So, if someone clicked on an ad a month ago, but then converted today, some or all of today's conversion will appear a month in the past.

In addition to this, the two platforms have different levels of tracking capabilities to recognize the same user across different channels, devices, etc:
* **Google Analytics** measures session date using browser cookies. This is all it needs, since it's only looking at data that happens within a single session.
* **Google Ads** measures session data using browser cookie, too, but also by IP address, session ID, and even WiFi. It also can recognize Google users if people are logged in on their phone or their Chrome browser and connect the dots that way.

Keep this in mind when using Google Analytics: It is a tool that has been developed to show you what's going on on your website. It only sees where users came from immediately before converting, which means it's direct traffic will be high since many people who interact with a paid ad will come back to the site directly when they're ready to convert.

Question 9

When is the best time to run Facebook Ads?

Accepted Answer

Start with a Remarketing campaign only for this first month until the pixel has picked up enough matched users and conversion data in the performance history. As a side note for e-commerce you can do Dynamic Product Remarketing which pulls products from the feed much like a Google Shopping campaign.

Keep in mind that Remarketing campaigns will not be able to spend much ad budget because the audience is made up of a percentage of people that visit your site (Facebook isn't able to match 100% of site visitors back to Facebook users). Start off with $5-$10/day for this campaign and adjust from there based on the frequency of the ads being displayed.

Once you have a good audience size and historical data then you can create a lookalike audience form your existing converters and show proactive ads to that cold list in order to build awareness.

People tend to view FB ads and then convert without clicking in FB. This can happen with Google to but it is more common with FB so it's hard to directly attribute sales and judge the performance of FB campiagns. Some of the people who convert on FB might be the sample people who are converting from an ad on another platofrm like Google. Without an attributuion tracking model it is impossible to know the exact path of conversion.

Question 10

Should I include Bing/Yahoo in my PPC budget?

Accepted Answer

Why Bother with Bing/Yahoo? - Consider testing ads with Bing. Even though the traffic is light, it’s worth running. You will need to allocate a budget.

It is not recommended to use shopping ads on Bing for e-commerce.

30% of all search traffic happens on these search engines.

The average Google user clicks on 4.3 ads, and the average Bing user clicks on 2.5. Half as clicky, so half as many competitors.

Audience tends to be older and more affluent. (Tend to be an older demographic because it is the default internet search engine pre-installed on Microsoft computers, and some people never change it.)