Question 1

Should I use search with my e-commerce business?

Accepted Answer

Shopping campaigns are way more effective than Search campaigns when you’re targeting a wide audience. This is because search campaigns require search terms to run whereas shopping campaigns use Google’s 70 million signals to determine whether to show the product to someone. The former is inbound and the latter is outbound.

However, always build both Search and Shopping campaigns for your eComm companies, because:

* Shopping Ads and Text Ads (from Search) have different formats and they do appear in different placements/properties throughout Google network

* Being different, there are instances when both shopping and text ads can appear at the same time. This increased exposure is beneficial.

* In most cases, shopping ads do perform better but this is no guarantee so you also need to, at least, test search ads.

* There are accounts where the reach for the shopping ads is not sufficient to spend the monthly budget. Thus, you need to supplement shopping with search.

* Aside the above reasons, presenting a setup with search and shopping ads (and explaining the differences and the performance projections for each ad format) is better than the alternative (not having Search ads and wondering "why not").

Question 2

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 3

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 4

What to Expect With Competitor Campaigns

Accepted Answer

Competitor Campaigns:
* These campaigns tend to have a shorter sales cycle.
* They are also known to drive more branded search (because someone shopping a competitor’s site, might come back to Google after not finding what they were looking for, remember your name, and type that in).
* Don’t expect to have a high quality score on campaigns like this because the content on the site will never have the keyword (the competitor brand) in it.
* It is almost always a trademark violation to put your competitor’s business name into your ad copy.
* If you do not have a direct/obvious competitor, some nuance needs to be taken into consideration: 
	* For example, you might want to target a big brand who steals most of your business, but since the big brand sells more than just the products that you sell, you will need to target keywords that include both the competitor’s name and the product. 
	* Sometimes this is the case with smaller competitors, as well, in which case try both strategies (target just the competitor’s name and also the competitor + product as keywords).

Question 5

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 6

How do I access search terms report for Smart Shopping?

Accepted Answer

This report can only be accessed by sending a request to Google because the terms in the report don’t accurately represent the search terms that would be good to target.

Since Smart Shopping is outbound (meaning the algorithm shows the ad to the type of people they think might be likely to buy, rather than the keywords most closely related to the product), there are usually 70 million signals to decide to target that person, and their search term is just one of them.

Question 7

New customer onboarding process for clients running lead generation campaigns.

Question 8

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 9

What are my resources as a Solutions 8 client?

Accepted Answer

When you become a Solutions 8 client, you are assigned an entire marketing department team *for less than the cost of a part-time employee.*

## Your team is made up of: 
##

1. A dedicated client manager
2. Specialist and backup specialist
3. Strategist

![Screenshot (3).png](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/hWCrjP5XYm/Screenshot%20%283%29.png)

Question 10

Can You Join Our Company Slack Channel?  (...Or Other Communication/Project Management Channels)

Accepted Answer

We take communication seriously. **And that’s why we don’t join external client communication channels or project management applications** (like Slack, Ryver, Asana, Basecamp, or TeamWork). *Here’s why:* ## 1. Juggling channels is inefficient Each of our client managers may work with dozens of clients at a time. So you can imagine that joining every client’s Slack channel would get a bit *noisy*; not to mention each client uses a different platform type, which would result in a lot of clutter. ## 2. We have rock-solid processes inside our own agency From onboarding to account setup to ongoing management, our communication processes are about as efficient and streamlined as it gets. We have automations and purposely-redundant methods in place to ensure each client account is managed with the sharpest eye. Which brings us to our final point: ## 3. Limited access and workflow Each client is assigned a powerhouse team dedicated to their account: a client manager, a specialist, a *backup* specialist, and two strategists. To provide the best service, client managers frequently rope a specialist or strategist into conversations with the client. However, **if a client manager joins a client's external communication channel, it is nearly impossible to rope in those other team members**—and it is similarly clunky to forward client information out to the rest of the team. With our communication systems, we can move efficiently, tie automations to our emails, and allow access to our entire team. ## We prioritize frequent and *meaningful* communication We try to set clear expectations early on regarding our time and yours. While adding your client manager to your internal Slack channel might seem like the best way to reach us, our policy to stick with internal communication processes actually results in **more availability to speak with you and higher-quality communication**. As always, we’re happy to chat with you about any questions or concerns. Reach out anytime.

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