Google Ads Strategy Update: Here's How to Measure Success in 2023

John: 00:00:11

first that's gonna be maybe a little bit different than what

John: 00:00:14

we're normally looking at is a new way to kind of measure things.

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I've been using this for a client that sells a lot of new and repeat.

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So it's a really good example to see the spend against all of the revenue sales.

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we have individual Google ads campaigns running primary.

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In shopping.

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So here's some things to think about too.

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When you're looking at measuring product performance, that may give you a bit

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of a different insight as to what your overall marketing is actually achieving

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for a specific type of product based on the campaigns that you're running.

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in this account, and I've obviously, I know it's a huge account, but

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it's used just as an example.

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It applies to large, small, doesn't.

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Is actually using analytics.

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So when you don't have Nor Beam, which a lot of our clients don't,

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I think only like 20 clients do.

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Some ways that you can measure overall performance.

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That's not just standard shopping.

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First click and MER is gonna be the cross pollination that your campaigns

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have with each other and the overall effectiveness that your campaigns have

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on very specific type of products.

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So it came up in discussion this morning with Nex Guard, which is one

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of the products that our client sells.

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Now, we don't have a huge budget for Nex Guard when you're

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talking about the overall budget.

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right now, if you look at from January 1st or 19th, we have 300

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K in spend and only 30 of that.

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So 10% of our budget is to next guard.

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Now when you're looking at overall MER media efficiency ratio for

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that campaign looks good for them.

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The cost required to customer is one 30.

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We wanna be under one 40 when possible, and we have 29,000

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in spend and 28,000 in revenue.

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The MER is one.

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. Now, this is only targeting as much as we can.

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New customer, non-brand cold traffic.

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So people looking for ncar.

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Yes, there is some repeats in here, but it's primarily new focused.

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and I forgot who was the person that just dropped in the Google ads channel.

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That GA four is gonna be taken over G t M.

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so Dean heard from a friend.

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Google will be deprecating.

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The Google Ads conversion tracking to consolidate to GA four.

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Now that is scary because rather than having analytics and then Google ads

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and then GA four, we might just have analytics or we might just have GA

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four, no ads and no analytics, and we're primarily set up on on G T M.

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this is another way to think about how your campaigns are

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affecting your overall sales.

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This looks very far from what is.

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Actually happening with this client.

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This is a simple snapshot in time, primarily for new customers.

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Now, Mer looks good.

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2.59.

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But when you're looking at Next Guard, we have $28,000 in revenue

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with our conversions and either new or returning That's what Murda is.

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It's new repeat, it doesn't matter.

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That's what MER measures is everything.

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There's 226 transactions of 53% compared to last period cuz we

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increased our budgets scaling well.

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So we have 34% increase in spend, 68% increase in revenue.

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Yay.

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Everything that looks green across the board when we're running standard

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shopping in the back end of a.

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What you can do is go into conversions, e-commerce product performance.

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If you wanted to get a little bit more specific with your own efforts,

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maybe running Facebook and maybe running other channels, you can

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simply look at a Google CPC view.

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Again, this is gonna go away in g4, but G4 is gonna have a version of

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this available, but from the next six months, we can use this for right now.

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Because it is a good way to measure is this working for them now?

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And I'm looking at Google CPC traffic for this month.

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I can actually see the total revenue that's coming off

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of that specific product.

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It's almost like.

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To an individual product.

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We can't control if a person clicks on a product and buys a different product.

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that's completely, out of our hands.

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But what we can see is the total sales that actually came from this.

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There's $244,000 in product revenue, and there's 1991 unique purchases

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that is coming in from Google.

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This is first.

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Last click.

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I wouldn't talk about Google.

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Just Google.

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I'm not saying omnichannel.

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First click, last click new.

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Returning gets everything.

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So what's cool about this is we get to see, okay, is this actually working here?

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Well, And if you're looking at a mer by product, if you're marketing

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a specific product or maybe a group of products, you can type in

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that, that group of products here.

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So you can actually use advanced search and use multiple if you wanna

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see multiple different variations of a group of products like hair ties

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and scrunchies, blah, blah, blah, and you can start to see, well,

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what is actually Google bringing in?

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Now, yes, this is going to be the brand of traffic that you're

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going to get from Facebook.

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We'll probably come through s e m because they saw an ad on Facebook.

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Okay, that's fine.

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We're dual measuring what is our individual approach to our campaign,

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whether using Google Ads, it's gonna look fairly similar because this

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is just all cash in, all cash out.

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it's close or.

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A look at analytics, you're gonna see also the total sales of that product.

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And now we switched from smart shopping last year to then

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standard shopping this year.

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This is gonna sound stupid, but don't look at the overall numbers.

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This is gonna look really, really bad.

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It's just there was a larger amount of products that had been removed, so

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they look worse, what we're tracking year over year, which is their

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standard products that they sell.

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The product revenue has gone up 130% and the purchases have gone up 97%.

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each one of the products that have been consistent year over year,

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not the ones that were removed from analytics and now we look like we have

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an overall loss, but the products that are still available to us with the

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Nextcar title is looking much better.

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So we're seeing an increased, unique purchases kind of across the board, and

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that's what's been good for this is when we started to do co-op reporting, which.

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is essentially just, reporting of, campaign effectiveness.

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When we started going after brand new users of this product at scale

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and not spend our money on primarily was the repeat users before.

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And this company went on smart shopping or before when this company

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was on smart shopping out of 45,000.

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Purchases per month, only 7,000.

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Were new now.

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We flipped this thing completely around where 80% of the purchases are new.

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So we're starting to see more purchases of this product because our ad

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spend go is going to a new audience.

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We're starting to see everything lift up.

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There isn't, I think, one that went down.

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. So there is a mix of products.

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That's why I can't look at the overall, but of the ones that had sales before

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and after, this one did go down, but everything else went from six

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to 40, 29 to 46, 40 to 86, 34 to 40.

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Everything is looking up, which is good.

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So of the ones that actually were live from last year to this year, I

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think there was a chat that came in.

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Oh.

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Does analytics track every.

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It gets very, very, very close.

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when I've taken a look at the backend of the UA e-commerce proc performance,

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and I've measured that against the Shopify SKUs, they're very close.

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which is good.

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And we've used this tactic before we tried to identify what campaign was

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selling what products, but now knowing that conversion paths are this big

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Gives us a MER kind of buy the product.

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So first saying, Hey, we need to sell.

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Purple picture frames, pick it and it doesn't matter.

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And you start to send cold traffic to the purple picture frame and you look

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to see does the overall revenue of that purple picture frame increase and

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at what mer from the ad spend you're spending on that product to the actual

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sales that that product is producing.

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This is important because we have clients that have low and high margin.

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We have products that have clients, that have products that are low and high.

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margins.

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So both gross and net are sometimes different.

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Sometimes a $5,000 sale on item doesn't really net them that much money if they

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have a very low profit margin on that high value item and sometimes reverse.

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when looking at different clients and looking at different AOVs we had an.

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Not really an issue.

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We had a client that experienced a difference.

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. And this is actually yesterday I was talking to this client here because they

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called me freaking out because they just didn't, look at their numbers correctly.

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So what was it to yesterday was the 19.

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So I did one through 18 compared to the previous year, and the client

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says, oh my gosh, what's happening?

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we're losing out on.

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They didn't scroll down a little bit further down and be like, oh, okay,

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well actually our orders are going up.

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So the average order value decreased cuz this is more new customer traffic.

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So what was interesting here is we actually made more sales than last

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year, but they lost 31% revenue.

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They had more draft orders, they had less online store when we, I had them

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install the buy the numbers app and we actually have more new customers this

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year, then last year by about 20%.

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That's why the returning customer rate's actually going down.

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So this is all good, but what we're looking at is, okay.

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The profit margin is potentially better.

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They didn't have enough data on their side to tell me if they actually made

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more net revenue off of this because it was a different type of product.

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But what we came to the conclusion is we need to test all products uniquely.

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So a standard shopping campaign for pendants, watches,

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bracelets, necklaces, et cetera.

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Great.

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Fine.

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We had more sales on more new customers, but they were buying cheaper products.

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Why?

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Well, these repeat purchases of theirs was sometimes spend 20 grand per purchase.

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that's what we kind of came about this.

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Yes, there was overall less revenue.

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Yes, there was overall more sales.

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So the client doesn't necessarily care about sales.

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They care about revenue first.

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So that tells us that looking at individual spend

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and return is going to win.

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Went out against everything else.

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When you're talking about being able to control the individuality of that,

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I don't even know if individuality is a word, but it is today.

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So that's what we're gonna be seeing is how do we start to get

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more sales, consistent sales on a very specific type of product.

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And what's the gross and net profit margin?

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This separates us from others.

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When we're looking at roas, obviously that's a bad indicator,

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but that is a bad number.

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But again, going down further, this is a good number.

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So there's no problem.

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There just is a change of strategy.

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if this went up on the same products that their existing audience buys,

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then we wouldn't have even gotten a.

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So it kind of makes us a little bit deeper of a level.

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Clients just look at spend in, spend out.

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We say, okay, it's spending, this is new, this is repeat.

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This is the gross, this is the net, and this is what we need to change, and this

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is where more traffic needs to go to.

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And more often than not, it can be measured by, well, I'm spending

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more on this type of product.

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Am I getting more unique sales on it?

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Even if you can't take full credit for it, that's okay.

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MER means that if it is holding true to what we can see in Google,

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Potentially nrp if we have it.

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And if we start to increase that, we should see more new sales coming in

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for that product, even if it's not us.

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Coess would, looking at CAC initially avoided the worry, not necessarily.

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I took two hours and got them to then look at that.

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we developed a spend and a rev target.

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So CAC was better, but what the L t V is of those users, I told

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'em yesterday, I said, you're brand new to Google right now.

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I actually hopped into other Performance Max campaign than showed them how we had

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a product with zero clicks of one sale.

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I said, this is why we're hopping off.

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He goes, I didn't do anything for you.

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Your, customer came back and bought it.

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So that's what was really cool is I was able to show him that

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there was fake repeat traffic that was giving him the roas.

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And after two hours of going through this, he said, ah, perfect.

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And then we just agreed to keep doing what we were doing before.

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So it was just client education.

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So the nice part about this though, is we can then measure more so than

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what's going on, because we all know every single time we hop into

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a Google Ads account, those revenue numbers tied to the products are all.