Surfside PPC Podcast

Welcome to the Surfside PPC podcast. Go to Surfside PPPC.com to join Surfside PPPC Premium and ask your questions. Thanks for listening and please subscribe. What's up everyone? Welcome to episode 10 of the Surfside PPC podcast. As always, we will have a premium version of this podcast episode as a video. So, you can get that if you join Surfside PPC Premium. My YouTube membership, Patreon or school, it's all available there. So, you can get it on any of the any of the channels that you decide to choose. Um, obviously just choose one and That's where you can get all the premium content that comes out. So, today I'm going to be going over a little bit about e-commerce, Google ads for e-commerce and some strategy. I got questions, but it's e-commerce. So, going to really just just focus on that for today. I historically I've worked more lead generation accounts than e-commerce. I think e-commerce can be a little bit reliant on the actual business itself, although I think lead generation is kind of getting there too. So, you know, it's kind of the same honestly for as far as you know, overall strategy. I think there's been more challenges with lead gener in the past several years. And there's plenty of reasons why e-commerce actually like works really well with channels like Google Ads and Meta Ads because you're actually tracking the purchase back into the channel. So, as long as you get enough purchase volume, you should be able to come up with a budget that gives you some type of consistent return on ad spend. Now, I've seen, you know, people that post images and results and it's like, "My return on ad spend was 900%." And it's like that data can be very skewed, so you never really know what what uh return on ad spend looks like. Also, with my own clients, generally, if we're seeing a really high return on ad spend, it's the budget isn't that high and they have a really good brand equity already, so they're already getting brand searches, brand sales, Google ads starts taking up some of those. So, there's it's a lot to think about when it comes to e-commerce and there's not really like a one-sizefits-all strategy, but I will go over today. The very first question I got was related to just just strategy. So, we'll put in our question, question number One,
what is your Google ad strategy for e-commerce companies? Do you use different types of campaigns? And what's the best strategy to maximize my return on ad spend? Should I be focused on just return on ad spend or top of the funnel traffic too?
Okay, question number one essentially, what is your strategy in Google ads for ecom? So for me, the main thing is understanding the difference between bottomfunnel traffic, middle funnel traffic and top ofunnel traffic. So the thing with e-commerce is you're generally not going to have somebody who searches a specific term where it's like back pain or back brace, you know, somebody who's searching for a back brace. They it might take them a while before they actually choose which one they purchase. They may click on the first link and purchase. The problem right now is with Google ads is we have an abundance of choice with Google in general. I don't think that's a problem. I think it's a good thing. It's just it from a Google ads perspective, it lowers conversion rates. So people click on your ad the first time and they search back brace. They may interact with your business two, three, four times. They may go to your YouTube channel to watch a video. They may go on your website to read testimonials and reviews. They may end up forgetting about you altogether and coming back through meta ads. So, it's one of those things that you need to understand that like the ecommerce journey is not like this straight line from click to sale. Okay, we're good. It's really understanding like what are the results telling us as they come into Google Ads and using that to basically adjust your strategy. So, the very first thing that I always say is if you're running performance max, I and you should for e-commerce. That's kind of the the campaign that tends to perform the best for me. But if you're running performance max, I do like to split brand verse non-brand because then you can essentially say, okay, this campaign over here is not targeting brand at all. It's just targeting like our middlefunnel, top ofunnel keywords. We can bid it's going after a lower return on ads with the understanding that like we're not getting brand keywords. having that high return on ad spend. So, it's almost when people are searching for the products that I'm offering, I want them to go into my non-brand performance max campaign. As they go through the process of, okay, maybe they maybe they watch a video, maybe they do, you know, all these different interactions that they may have. I'm just trying to figure out all the different conversion paths that people take and I'm trying to basically feed that information to Google and feed that information to meta as best as I possibly can. Now, I know I'm mentioning meta. This this will focus on Google ads, but Essentially, that's that's my main goal. And by splitting the performance max campaigns, I can actually say, "Hey, this campaign that has brand focus in it, we're setting a 600% return on ad spend, our budget is set at $150 a day." You know, maybe it's much higher. Depends on on what, you know, what the industry and business is. And then this non-brand, we're going to set at $50 a day. And this one, we're going to set a return on ad spend target of basically 100%. Like, we're we're happy to to, you know, from a revenue to sales standpoint, we're happy to understand that this and you can increase that percentage obviously like if you're getting really good return on ad spend and if you're not seeing a strong return on ad spend then you basically decide is this effective and profitable for my business. The problem that I see sometimes is e-commerce and companies that basically go every single dollar out in Google ads every single dollar out in meta ads and this is what it leads to in terms of what we're tracking from Google ads and meta ads and the thing is those channels are going to lift the other things that you're doing. So, if you go with that dollar in dollar out mentality and kind of go, "Well, we're not going to we're not going to make money here if we do this," then you're you're probably going to struggle with e-commerce. You just need you need to have some level of budget. Even if you're like, "Hey, we're breaking even or the numbers tell us that we're, you know, just barely making or losing money." To me, it's going to lift your traffic from direct from SEO. It's going to give you more customers. So, if your customer lifetime value is strong. So, really, e-commerce ads are one of those things that for most businesses you should be running if you have an e-commerce business, especially with repeat customers. If you're like, "Hey, we sell one product and then your business really just isn't designed that well for Google ads and met ads." It's like you're really looking more at that, you know, money in, money out, and you need to figure out how to make your product into something that has a higher customer lifetime value. So, back to strategy. My my biggest thing with strategy is setting up brand verse non-brand performance max campaigns with the understanding that we're going to be bidding separately based on which campaign is and understanding that top offunnel, middlefunnel traffic is not going to perform as well as our bottomfunnel traffic. So our brand campaign, the goal is getting people to drive the sale. The non-brand campaign, the goal is getting people into the funnel. So you always want to have people entering the funnel. And as that starts slowing down, drying up, you'll see your revenue also start slowing down. The next thing is I do still run Google Shopping campaigns. Usually I run one Google Shopping campaign, but that sometimes I take the same approach depending on my client's budget and just go brand and non-brand Google shopping because it's going to give you additional clicks and what I try to focus on is am I targeting good high intent search terms based on what we're selling and ultimately are you know is Google shopping set up in a way that it's helping grow the entire account it's helping us drive more relevant traffic and making sure that we're getting people again into the funnel with with top of funnel and bottomfunnel traffic so that's another one that you could split brand versus non-brand sometimes what I'll do is I'll just create a Google shopping campaign not on brand and it it's going to just give us it's I almost view it as like a search campaign for e-commerce and that's that's really how it's designed. It's not really designed the same way that performance max is but it helps us get s clicks from the Google shopping network and and Google shopping network tends to drive better conversion rates than the search network for e-commerce. So the very last few campaigns search campaign I will run this is another one where I will run branded and non-brand search campaigns at time sometimes you run comp competitive campaigns, they generally anything non-brand or competitive is not going to have that strong of a return on ad spend. So you build these campaigns with the understanding like this is an investment in trying to reach new people and you know we have 10 competitors who are already doing this. So those 10 competitors are reaching people that we're not currently reaching just based on our current campaign design. Now demand genen is something that I run more of. If you talk to a Google rep, they're going to tell you to set your demand gen budget to like $200 a day. Mainly because demand gen just has tons of inventory and Google wants to fill that inventory. Demand gen will run across YouTube, the display network. The way that I generally run it is just on YouTube and I run three separate campaigns. I run one for mobile, one for desktop, one for TV screen. Really, I just want to see what what are the cost per view coming in. Are they getting any anything in terms of sales, add to cart, begin checkout? You know, sometimes I've used demand genen to track engaged sessions, people that come on the website for a minute or longer and I've done it that way before because it's like all right if if we're not going to be driving sales then at the very least we can get people onto the website learn about our products and services and hopefully eventually convert them as they continue searching and you know essentially going down our funnel. I know I mentioned funnel a lot in this but really like I've seen e-commerce setups that are we run one performance max campaign it drives a really good return on ad spend and that's fine. You can take that approach and just say we're going to run one performance max build out asset groups for all of our different product categories and we're going to create a really nice, you know, really nice campaign and just focus on driving sales from it. The problem is you're you're not taking into account that like if you're spending $10,000 a month, you should take some of that budget and say, "Why don't we put a little bit of this into demand genen and into shopping and into, you know, top offunnel pmax and seeing if that can help us lift the entire account, lift the return on ad spend we're seeing from our entire account. There's additional things you could do as far as bidding for new customers. I'm not going to over that too much here cuz that's really like an account byount basis but ultimately it's coming up with a campaign mix where you're targeting the right people in different stages of the funnel. So that will wrap up question number one basically what is your Google ads strategy for e. So next is going to be question number two. Question number two is going to be kind of similar what I would say but just kind of a little bit more a little bit more detailed as far as what what they're looking for. So question number two is going to be related to optimization of e-com. Mer accounts and and basically what are some of the steps that I take in terms of optimizing my e-commerce Google ads accounts. So let's put in question number two. What are some of the steps you take to optimize e-commerce accounts and campaigns? Are there certain things I should look for? How can I improve my existing results?
Okay, question number two. So basically they're looking for what are some ways that you optimize Google Ads campaigns for e-commerce clients? So Let's let's get started here. I'll have five different things that I go through today. So the first one is going to be conversion tracking. So I would say the first thing is just you need enough purchase conversion volume, purchase conversions and conversion revenue coming in to really optimize for that action. So one of the issues I see sometimes is people just aren't getting enough purchases. And in that case, you need to spend enough to get enough purchase data. And if you don't, then you need to incorporate begin checkout data. So I don't really use add to cart. I usually use begin checkout. I set it almost like a lead. So $1 value. I only count one begin checkout. So if somebody does add stuff to their cart, begin checkout. We can fire that conversion back into Google Ads as a $1 conversion. So then what I can do is have my purchase conversion which actually fires in the dynamic revenue. So the first thing as far as optimization is making sure conversion tracking is set up correctly, making sure you have enough volume in terms of purchase conversions. If not, optimizing for some of the some of the other actions, you know, as far as begin checkout. Some people have like op in and you know get sign up here for your free coupon code. That's another one that you can track and just say okay we're just tracking you know we're getting new people kind of filling out this form and we're getting their information. So number one is going to be just basically optimizing conversion tracking tracking and ensuring that all the data coming in is accurate. Number two, so one of the things with search terms is I generally leave my e-commerce more open in terms of search terms but I do look for two different things. I look for very irrelevant search terms. And then as far as very irrelevant, also lowquality, so like free people that are searching reviews, people that are searching things like that. I I would rather not pay for it. People that are kind of in that information learning process. The other one is just going to be, you know, re really just things that are completely not relevant to what I'm targeting. But if it's like competitive, if it's, you know, things that are somewhat relevant in terms of like that, you know, informationbased searches in terms of like how do I sometimes as I leave those in. It just depends on how much I'm spending on that. But I do prefer, you know, in terms of those types of keywords, I do try to make sure that like I'm those clicks are coming in cheap. So, in terms of search terms, I'm looking for very irrelevant. I'm looking for low quality, low value, you know, the free, the reviews, those types of Amazon, Walmart. Some of those things I'll get rid of because I'm like, I'm not competing with with the the big box retailers. And then the other thing is looking at the very high cost per click search terms at the end of the month and just seeing if there's anything that kind of stands out is okay, we're getting, you know, if if your average cost per click is a $1.50 and you have a bunch of clicks that are 5 6 7 8 $9 or higher, then generally what can end up happening is like that increased cost per click, if you're not seeing increased conversion rate, then you know ultimately it just drives up your cost. So getting rid of search terms that tend to be a little bit more expensive. But ultimately, you know, I I tend to leave it a lot more open. Next is going to be assets. So in terms of creating a lot of asset groups, a lot of headlines, des description lines, long headlines, images, videos. I think the more you have, the better. So, making sure you have a lot of assets, I think, is a very important aspect of optimization. Number four is going to be just incorporating all the audience data you possibly can. So, first party data, ensuring that you've uploaded your customer match list, linking, so new sales coming in are automatically tracked, conversionbased lists, making sure you're turning them on at the account level, and then just incorporating all the different audiences in terms of like YouTube and your website visit. s and all these different things that you're able to track back into Google Ads. All of these things are going to make a huge difference in the overall results and the audiences that you're targeting. So, it's really a combination of feeding Google Ads good conversion and audience data and they kind of help do the rest in terms of e-commerce. Number five, last but not least, is going to be really optimizing the product feed. So, going through all the individual products and making sure that the product feed has really good descriptions in there, making sure everything's filled out, there's no gaps. I've worked with clients that have ascented or two in the product feed and then you know we've actually gone in and said okay let's let's optimize we did it once for a company with about 200 unique products and went in some of them had no description and it made a difference almost like I don't want to say instantly but month over month we definitely saw a difference in terms of like what we were targeting and and it's really just helpful to give context to Google in terms of what your products actually are this was a business with pretty unique products so things that people would search and longtail keywords you could actually target. There's, you know, competition in what they were targeting, but not as crazy because it was food based, delivery based, and it was it was one of those things where they did the food and delivery really well and they just needed somebody to to fill out all their descriptions. So, we did that and it did make a difference in terms of like the results that we saw from our Google Shopping and our performance max campaign. So, those are five different ways that I optimize. There's a lot of steps you could take as far as optimization. I think it's a constant let's test, let's optim ize. Let's test. Let's optimize. Let's see what works. Let's see what drives incremental conversion value across our account. Sometimes you may find though, like I've worked with clients where we spend, you know, we've spent a lot, we spent a little, and we figure out, hey, if we spend about $6,000, by the end of the month, we're going to have conversion value of about $30 to $40,000 attributed back to our advertisements. If we go any higher than that, we may still have 30 to 40,000 attributed back to our advertisements. And sometimes that's when you find you're reaching diminishing returns. So ultimately the biggest thing to me is making sure that I'm you. So performance max obviously is is the first campaign I'm setting up. Performance max and shopping branded. I think if you run those two campaigns, set your return on ad spend targets high. That's the best way to really maximize return on ad spent for every dollar in dollar out. As far as strategy for e-commerce growth, growing your customer list, growing your customer lifetime value, and just basically being focused more on overall growth, that's where you start inorp ating more of this middlefunnel top offunnel traffic and just understanding that hey if we put 10% 20% of our budget behind this it's going to lift the other campaigns we're running it's going to help the SEO efforts that we're doing it's going to help our meta ads that we're running it's going to help our Tik Tok ads so if you're running on all these channels it's like people go from Facebook Instagram Google Tik Tok and some people use one or the other but it's like you're running across all of them and you know it really is the rising tide lifts all boats when it comes to e-commerce and really any other channel but that's that's going to wrap up podcast episode number 10. There will be a video component to this. As always, you can get my Google Ads course at surfacpc.com, $34.99 a year, and that will give you yearly access and all of the updates that I put out throughout this year. And if you stay on the course, you'll get access updates forever. So, thank you for listening to podcast episode number 10, and I'll see you at podcast episode number 11 next week. Thanks for listening to the Surfside PPC podcast. Please go to Surfside ppc.com for management or consulting options or to get my course or join Surfside PPC premium through my YouTube channel, my school page or my Patreon. Please subscribe.