Question 1

What are some high-level recommended campaign bidding strategies?

Accepted Answer

Bid Strategies

Step 1:
**Non-Shopping Campaigns**: Start with manual CPC with eCPC enabled (because eCPC is the option that uses a bit of Google’s automation, but is mostly manual). This is nice because you can control the bids, but it’s not very scalable because it’s high maintenance, and because a machine will do it better than a human ever could. After you have around 100 conversions with high frequency (like a sale every other day, for example), at this point we’ve given the algorithm enough data for it to pick up where we left off and make it better. Now you can switch from eCPC to a smart bidding strategy like Target CPC. It leverages the data that you’ve already provided.

**Shopping Campaigns**s: Start with a regular Shopping campaign before switching to a Smart Shopping campaign, because regular Shopping campaigns are inbound (meaning people are searching for the product when the ad appears) whereas Smart Shopping is outbound (meaning Google will try to show it to the type of people who might be interested), so the Smart algorithm can’t do outbound well, and therefore will never prove ROAS, without plenty of data. So, start with Shopping campaign using Manual CPC (usually w/enhanced enabled unless you have super low profit margin and you're trying to prove concept)

After 35 - 45 days of gathering consistent conversion data (aka converting at a normal cadence with a reliable pattern), then pause all shopping campaigns & replace it with a new Smart Shopping campaign using Maximize Conversions (which is the only bidding option). After 35 - 45 more days if the campaign isn’t hitting an acceptable ROAS, you can turn on the optional ROAS goal within the Maximize Conversions bidding strategy.

You don’t want to start off with a ROAS goal because it won’t get any conversions because it doesn’t have enough outbound data yet. Once you've given it that data, turning on the ROAS goal will restrict it to only spend when it thinks it can hit that goal, so spend starts to decrease, the campaign gets less activity, you get less clicks per day, but you should get a higher quality click and conversions that are making your ROAS.

One additional strategy is to spend more $/budget to force Smart Shopping campaigns to go find new markets by removing the Target ROAS goal.

Step 2: 
Now you can begin to step the ROAS goal higher. For example, if the campaign was at 300% when you first turned on Target ROAS, then try for 325%. If the campaign hits that or surpasses it, then try for 350%. At some point, you will hit a ceiling. Once you know how high the automation can go, get it back to the top and keep it there steady.

Step 3: Now that your ROAS is high, you can begin to give it more daily ad spend to see if you can increase the amount of conversions. So now, instead of spending $100/day and getting $300, you can try spending $500/day and getting $1500. Just make sure the ROAS doesn’t dip.

**Display Pay Per Conversion** - This is a new type of campaign/bid strategy in which you only pay for a conversion, and it’s only when the conversion doesn’t go above what you said you would pay. Begin with a super high CPA and then decrease it slowly. The idea is to get the CPA as low as possible (at which point you'll just turn off any regular Proactive Display campaign and just use this one). These types of campaigns can get lots of fake conversions generated by bots. Captcha prevents the bots from submitting forms and wasting ad spend.

Question 2

How do we rank for organic Google searches?

Accepted Answer

1. Make sure your website can rank organically
2. Continual content creation (unique and about one topic. Doesn’t have to be long, 600 words is fine.)
3. Buy backlinks with a company like seo.co

Question 3

Can I have multiple smart shopping campaigns in order to sell in different countries or one smart campaign with all countries selected. Please whats best practice in your experience?

Accepted Answer

Yes! Best practice for multiple countries is to actually create a new feed in GMC for that target country, then, use a new Smart Shopping campaign to target that country, or, a specific geographical area in that country

Question 4

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 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

What are Cart Abandonment Campaigns and Cart Abandonment Audiences?

Accepted Answer

If you see significantly more product value being added to the cart than what is being purchased, consider adding a Cart Abandonment Audience to a Remarketing Campaign to try to get those hot leads back.

Use Display Ads so that any other websites they visit, like competitor sites, they will see your ad saying, “Finish your checkout and you’ll get 10% off with coupon code x”.

(***Make sure to only add new audiences to the Remarketing Campaign after the campaign has proven that the ROAS is there or else you will simply be putting budget & effort into something that converts at a negative net profit.)

Question 7

How do I use landing pages?

Accepted Answer

It used to be standard practice to create a designated landing page that would “squeeze” people into a sale because it focuses on one product, there’s no menu, no distractions, no alternate buttons, etc.

This is not recommended because on average people view 2.8 pages before converting.

So, this means a new visitor who lands on the website’s product page, might also view other products or view the homepage or the contact us page before going back to their original landing page to purchase/convert.

Question 8

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 9

What is the $1,000 e-commerce start-up fee for?

Accepted Answer

We don’t like charging a startup fee. But for eCommerce clients, that fee covers necessary costs:

First, we have to rebuild and optimize your data feed — i.e. the massive data file that tells Google Merchant Center what products you want to advertise from your site. We do this using [DataFeedWatch](https://www.datafeedwatch.com/).

This usually means we have to do quite a bit of “cleaning,” in the ways of updating and adding product names, prices, images, descriptions, attributes, and much more. The reality is, most websites do a poor job of explaining all details of the products, so we rebuild it to have the most accurate and relevant data possible; this way, Google can do the best job at targeting users based on that information

Once this cleaning process is complete, we integrate with Google Merchant Center. ([GMC](https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/188924?hl=en) is a tool that uploads your product listings into Google Shopping, Google Product Ads, and Google Commerce Search).

This is about when we rope in a Tag Implementation team to set up modified cart value conversion tracking and build out dynamic remarketing.

All this is to say:

Building an eCommerce campaign is extra complex.

Configuring [DataFeedWatch](https://www.datafeedwatch.com/) is time consuming. Conversion tracking is more difficult to set up. And this is all further complicated the more products a business has.

In fact, many Google Ads agencies refuse to work with eCommerce businesses because of this extra work.

We, on the other hand, love the challenge.

You can read more about why there is a startup fee in our blog [here](https://sol8.com/why-is-there-a-1000-startup-fee-for-ecommerce-campaigns/).

Question 10

How do I determine my ad spend budget?

Accepted Answer

**Brand New Campaigns** *Should Be Free to Spend* - When launching a new campaign, we often set the budget extra high so there is no risk for a limitation in reach in the first few days when the matching algorithms start their learning process. Overspending in the first few days can be compensated down the road.
What To Do About The Ever-So-Present **“Limited By Budget”** Message - When Google gives this message in the status column, you might choose to  act upon it or wait. This decision depends on the timing and the ROAS of both the campaign and the overall account.

**Why It Matters** - When a campaign doesn’t have enough ad budget to show the ad enough, it can have a compounding negative effect on campaigns. For example, when someone first clicks on your ad but doesn’t convert, the campaign might not have enough budget remaining to show the ad to them the next time they search, which is often the time that they’re ready to buy. Limited by budget can also be detrimental to your conversions per cost ratio, because how much you are able to spend per click affects how far up on the page you’ll be. For example, a smart shopping ad might be hidden by the “view more” button, or the search ad is showing at the very bottom under all the organic results. So, raising the budget slightly can often act as a catalyst for raising ROAS.

Increasing the budget almost always has a compounding effect on the ad performance: As the ad begins to appear more frequently, it "snowballs" into a handful of other phenomena, like leads viewing the ad more than once, the machine algorithms honing in on the number of impressions needed before a conversion, etc. So expect the cost per lead to decrease after adding more budget."

**When To Act** -  While limited by budget can be harmful, *raising the budget can also be harmful if it doesn’t manage to raise the ROAS*; This is because a campaign that doesn’t have a proven ROAS is essentially losing money with every dollar that it spends and so, in that case, more budget will just mean more money lost.

*If the ROAS is already proven* and you can see an accelerated conversion rate in Google’s recommendation (click on the “limited by budget” error message), then this is a no brainer: more budget means more profit.

*If the ROAS isn’t proven*, you may want to see if an increased budget can help it get there by removing the compounding negative effects that a limited by budget campaign is struggling with. You can still consider increasing the budget as long as the account’s overall ROAS across all campaigns is proven. Optimize everything else first, because throwing more money at a problem as an experiment to see if it will make the problem go away is a risk, so it’s best to get the account to a good place first to avoid jeopardizing the whole account too much.

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