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Google Shopping Ads tips for dropshipping and POD stores
Are you really selling these days if you aren’t using Google Shopping Ads? OK, maybe you are, but you really could be doing more. This is exactly what Sandeep Kumar showed us in the eCommerce Elites Mastermind group.
Sandeep started a new brand on Google Shopping Ads, and the results have been impressive to say the least. He’s been running these kinds of ads for other stores too, so he has built up an extensive array of tips to share with everyone who’s considering jumping on this platform for their stores.
- Make sure campaigns are segregated properly based on product value, margins, and promotions.
- Make campaigns and product groups as granular as possible to simplify the bidding and testing process for the budget and impression share.
- Utilize promotion feed from the Google merchant account to get an additional competitive advantage.
- Identify top-performing products and set them up in individual campaigns with a dedicated budget and high-priority settings to acquire at least 60% search impression share.
- Use Product Ratings and Seller Ratings.
- Make sure to use custom labels on every possible product for segmentation purposes.
- Make product groups based on the themes and margins.
- Use Google Merchant automatic rules to avoid unnecessary product disapprovals.
- Start campaigns with Manual ECPC and gradually move to a CPA bidding strategy.
- Keep your negative keywords list updated.
- Run RLSA (remarketing list search ads) campaigns for the most frequent search terms.
- Run Dynamic Remarketing campaigns to recover abandoned carts.
- Don’t forget to optimize your Product Feed Title and Descriptions regularly.
If you want to ask Sandeep more details, jump into the conversation right here.
PPC
Should advertisers be allowed to bid on any brand keywords?
Are you active in the Twitterverse? Discussions centered around search ads, and Google in particular, are a regular feature there, and it’s been no different in the past couple of days.
The topic of the day? Jason Fried, from Basecamp, tweeting that they have to run paid ads for the term “basecamp” because Google puts 4 ads in front of their organic result.
This sparked a significant amount of criticism aimed towards Google, because their answer to the debacle was:
“To provide users with the most relevant ads, we don’t restrict trademarked terms as keywords. We do restrict trademarked terms in ad text if the trademark owner files a complaint”
The Crew’s Thoughts
The ad by Basecamp? Hilarious.
Google’s reply? Doesn’t make much sense.
Twitter-wide outrage about keywords? Maybe an overreaction… Hear us out.
Google’s reply is just too generic and doesn’t focus on the specific situation at all. Not only that, but it’s also sorta disingenuous… After all, we can’t bid on keywords like “Google” can we?
We still think the outrage might be a bit unjustified in some situations, and this applies to Basecamp too.
The term “basecamp” is pretty generic, and not everyone searching that term will be interested in their tool. What about the mountaineers looking for Everest expeditions, for example?
So, it’s easy to restrict bids on brand terms like Google, Microsoft and Facebook, but it gets into more of a grey area with brands such as Basecamp, Amazon, Tesla and others that can also have meaning outside of their brand.
The solution? Better communication and clearer terms. It’s certainly not clear what the rules of the game are, and it’s not a level playing field at all.
SPONSORED
🎂 This is The Ultimate CBO Cookbook and it’s a must-read for any Facebook marketer!
Facebook is making Campaign Budget Optimization, aka CBO, the only budget option soon. It might already be the case for some of your ad accounts. Does it work well? Maybe. Can it work better? For sure!
Especially when you have someone like Depesh Mandalia diving deep into the CBO strategies he uses first-hand with 7-figures in ad spend to create and perfect the best recipes.
Who is Depesh, you ask? He’s generated over $100M rev in e-comm, lead gen and mobile apps. He’s spent over $30M on Facebook since 2014, profitably. He and his group are regularly featured in our emails because of how good the content in there is… So, back to the book…
This cookbook is not about fish and chips… Instead, you will be able to cook up some spicy Facebook campaigns. In 75+ pages, Depesh goes into deep insights and step-by-step CBO recipes you can apply to campaigns right away.
- Learn how to stabilise CBO and how to build profitability from the start.
- Learn how to setup testing for audiences and ads using CBO step-by-step with diagrams.
- Learn how to prospect and test scale, before scaling.
- Swipe Depesh Mandalia’s complete CBO Scaling Strategy.
- Learn the inner workings of CBO to create your own recipe.
- Case studies and examples for all of this.
- BONUS: Swipe Depesh Mandalia’s INFINITY RETARGETING Strategy.
This book is the equivalent of spending days if not weeks picking Depesh’s brain so you understand everything he’s learned about CBO from running campaigns first-hand.
As a WHAT THE AFF reader, we know you like to be the most up to date and the smartest marketer in the room. So we’ve asked Depesh to do us a favour… and he did.
Grab The Ultimate CBO Cookbook for 25% off right here, only for WHAT THE AFF readers.
It’s “back 2 school” season for the kids but we say it’s “back 2 work” for marketers. It’s time to get ready for the holiday season, higher CPMs, more competition but also for hungry shoppers!
419M FB users’ phone numbers totally accessible on the internet. Thorough lead generation funnel for a high-ticket biz
The latest FB data leak could give you inspiration for starting a traffic network. Then, a case study using ads and bots to gather 114 leads for a high ticket service.
419M Phone numbers leaked
It’s been at least a week since the last FB data leak. We were really starting to miss these stories. “Fortunately”, privacy failure and Facebook is a couple that will never get divorced.
What happened this time? A huge database containing phone numbers linked to Facebook accounts ID has been found online by security researcher Sanyam Jain.
The server wasn’t even password protected. Anyone could find it and simply access the database.
Each record contained a user’s unique Facebook ID and the phone number listed on the account. A user’s Facebook ID is typically a long, unique and public number associated with their account, which can be easily used to discern an account’s username.
We know what you’re thinking: You have been paying FB Ads to generate leads, and all this time there’s been a DB containing the phone numbers of 419M users!
That would have been enough to build an SMS traffic network!
Obviously this information has now been taken offline, so it’s not possible to access it anymore. However, we wonder if other people found it before the security researcher did, and what exactly these people might have done with the info…
We’re also wondering if there are any more accessible FB databases lying in the dark corners of the internet. Finding all that data would be 2019’s version of striking oil!
FB Ads + Messenger: Complete funnel to generate 114 high-ticket leads
Data leaks aside, let’s check out this strategy that Cameron Marlon Susman shared. It’s the funnel he used to acquire 114 leads for a dog trainer who charges $3.3k for her service. So, we can definitely say it’s a high ticket business.
Let’s jump to it.
Campaign structure
Top of the funnel (TOF): Video views campaigns to generate an audience and create Lookalikes from that. They spent $395.47 and generated 5,927 targeted ThruPlay.
Bottom of the funnel (BOF): Campaign to gather leads in a Messenger bot that gave potential leads a quiz. Cameron targeted 4 different LLAs from 10-secs video view Custom Audience built in the previous campaign: 0-1%, 1%, 1-2%, 1-6%.
The 1% LLA was the best performing one, with a $5.65/CPL
We know, the middle of the funnel part is missing, but not every funnel is equal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Creatives
TOF: A 1:54 mins compilation video showing footage of the trainer at work, interacting with and training dogs.
“The dogs in the video were very happy and behaved nicely – planting the seed in our audiences mind of what their dog can turn into as well over time.”
Dogs always work, uh?
The text in the video aimed to hit prospects’ pain points and desires.
BOF: 3 types of videos:
- The initial long-form video used at TOF.
- A short 15-second video of the trainer walking dogs off-leash.
- A short 12-second video of the trainer playing with one of the well-behaved dogs in her program.
No text was used in the second and third video. The second one was the best performing with a $5.18 CPL.
Copy
TOF: Here they used just one variation, structured like this:
- Headline asking a question that triggers prospects’ desires.
- Story telling prospects that it’s not their fault.
- 5 benefits prospects can expect from the program.
- CTA.
BOF: For the bottom of the funnel ads, Cameron tested 2 variations.
The first is the one used at TOF. The second one is structured like this:
- Question headline.
- 4 pain points.
- Desire.
- 2 sentences about the program in brief.
- CTA.
- 2 benefits.
- Scarcity.
Chatbot
Up until now, it’s all been about how Cameron gathered the leads. This part is about qualifying them.
So, apart from some generic qualifying questions, the lead was gifted a free PDF and a consultation in order to continue the conversation.
You can head to the post to read all the questions used in the bot. You’ll also find the copy used in the ads.
FIREFOX
Third-party tracking cookies blocked for 100% of users in Firefox
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy… Chrome?
In a jab at Chrome, Google and the ad industry, Firefox will start blocking third-party tracking cookies by default in its browser.
The “Enhanced Tracking Protection” feature has been around since June 2019 and was utilized by around 20% of Firefox users. Starting now, it will be enabled by default for 100% of users.
Soooo… should you care? Well, a little.
It does mean you might have more issues seeing conversions tracked in your FB and Google campaigns from Firefox users. It also means FB and Google have less data on them.
Why shouldn’t you care more?
Because less data doesn’t mean “no data”. Firefox only has a 9% market share on desktop, dropping to 4.4% overall when you include mobile. Basically, it’s not a significant player, and as a result this will have very little real world impact.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
… and the world’s most liveable city of 2019 is?
We’re going to give you a few hints:
It used to be the capital of a big empire.
It’s in Europe.
It’s where WTAFF started. (We weren’t talking about this empire first *cough cough*)
And it’s where you can go for free if you refer 1,000 readers to WHAT THE AFF.
It’s… Vienna, Austria!
That is according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s global liveability index. Which other cities made this prestigious list? Well, Melbourne and Sydney took spots 2 and 3 respectively, Osaka came in at 4th and Calgary rounded out the top 5.
What can we say? Vienna is an awesome city, no doubt.
If you haven’t visited before, how about an all expenses paid-by-WTAFF trip?
Click the image below to share and build up those referrals!