Category: Google Ads

After a well-received response from users and merchants in the US offering free Shopping Ads, Google has announced to go global with its strategy in mid-October. So what’s all the fuss? Doesn’t this mean paid ads will still appear at the top of my search results? The answer is yes, but with a level playing field available for e-commerce platforms and businesses, niche products and smaller services can stand out more based on user intent. 

For the first time, SEOs and business owners that focus mainly on organic search can add Google Shopping to their marketing toolkit. Google states that their reason to offer this service is to make products more discoverable through search, as consumers are now browsing for more essentials outside of apparel, toys, and homewares. Many retailers have items in stock and are ready to ship but struggle with the connection to present to their customers. With the COVID-19 pandemic taking a turn on economies and businesses worldwide, it also gives opportunities for struggling businesses to regain their footing. 

Here’s how the change benefits retailers, shoppers, and advertisers:

Retailers: Free exposure to millions of people who search for products on Google
Shoppers: Discovery of more products from more stores, including some they may not have heard of
Advertisers: Reduce spending on advertising budgets and increase potential ROI

Google Shopping and the main search results will now consist of mainly free shopping ads, however, Google will still allow paid listings which will receive placement closer to the top of the shopping tab. Despite offering the two options for retailers and advertisers to battle it out, this provides better and an increased variety of options for consumers. Paid advertising is still beneficial for marketing strategies, but if you are looking for ways to save money, this is an area you could consider cutting back. 

New and existing businesses can utilise the free shopping ads tool by accessing Google Merchant Center and setting up their products and services. With this function being available this month, it is good news for businesses to make their products more visible in time for the holiday shopping season. Thinking of using the free shopping ads feature or need some advice on ranking in Google Search? We can help with all your Google advertising needs.

If you’re a business looking for digital marketing solutions or want to revise your current strategy, we can help! At Searchsmart we focus on creating greater online exposure and increased sales opportunities for our clients. Get in touch with us today or come visit us at our office in Leederville – coffee is on us!

It’s no secret that online advertising campaigns play a critical role in fueling the sales cycle for many B2B and B2C businesses.

With so many online marketing channels, where does each tactic fit into the sales funnel?

Let’s just talk about the most popular of online marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Popular because it sits at the bottom of the sales funnel, and mostly when prospects are ready to convert to a lead (conversion) to a sale (acquisition).

Tracking Success Metrics

SEM campaigns drive website traffic, generate leads for your business in effort to increase sales. So it’s important to measure the success of your campaigns. This will help you determine the effectiveness of your Search campaign, and whether you are investing your money in the right online channel.

Implementing conversion tracking will allow you to see which keywords, text ads, ad groups and campaigns are driving the most valuable activity for your business.

So, how do you measure success?

Conversion tracking is actually fairly easy to implement. It begins with creating a conversion action in your Google Ads account. Conversion actions can be anything from a form fill, to a purchase, an event registration, or email sign up – just choose a metric that is important to your business.

Once you have your goal actions setup, a conversion tag is added to your website on the pages you are trying to track. When a prospective customer completes the action, a conversion will be recorded in your Google Ads Account.

Now this is great data for your Campaign Manager to work with, but what about the sales, and how do you know what leads are quality and what ones produce revenue for you. This is the area where the majority of business owners or managers want to know because outside of the great tracking and data SEM agencies can measure I’m sure you must ask yourself; how much am I getting back from what I’m putting in?

Teamwork, Communication & The Manual Approach

Unless you have an online shop where the price of the sale is ‘the price’, it is hard to track your sales coming through when your products and services may vary in price. It has to be a manual process and can only be implemented and worked on by the business.

If you are a one-man band, perhaps in the trades industry for example, you probably answer all your phone calls or read and respond to all emails (these are what we see if your Search campaign tracked as ‘conversions’). If this is your situation you will need to ask the lead on the phone, did you find me on Google?

And write down their answer, create an excel spreadsheet and track this month on month along with if it’s a sale, and how much did it bring into to your business? Was it the type of customer you want?

Also what is important when communicating with your allocated Digital Account Manager who is normally the person who discusses your campaign results and reports, the date & time measurement of the leads is a big help to them. This way, they can work with you to marry up the conversion tracked to the sale or ROI for your business.

Now if you are a bigger business you may have staff, someone who answers the phone. Based on your own staffing capacity, the roles your staff are in, and how you manage leads coming into the business, it is up to you to create a measurement process and roll out a fool proof way for your staff to follow and report back to you.

Then as mentioned above, pull out your measured data and work with your Digital Account Manager on this. You never know, the Search campaign can actually be working really well but perhaps the data you have collected shows that your website isn’t converting or your sales team may need more training on closing deals. Who knows! But unless you start tracking your ROI you will never know what is working and what is not, and be able to make informed decisions on the amount of marketing budget you are spending.

Google have confirmed that search results pages on desktop will no longer show text ads in the right sidebar. Instead, as many as four text ads will display above the organic listings, and three text ads will show at the bottom of the page.

There will certainly be a lot of analysis to come on what this change means for advertisers — impressions, CPC, CTRs, average position and so on. Here’s what we know so far about the move.

What Exactly Is Google Changing?

All of the changes confirmed on Friday pertain to desktop search results on Google.com and Google search partners.

There are a few elements included in the changes to desktop results:

1. No text ads will be served on the right rail of the search results on desktop.
2. Google will serve four text ads instead of three in the mainline area above the organic listings for more “highly commercial queries” (More on that below).
3. Three text ads will show at the bottom of the SERPs.
4. The total number of text ads that can appear on a SERP will shrink from as many as 11 to a maximum of seven.
5. Product listing ad blocks and Knowledge Panels (sometimes with ads, as tests continue in these spaces) will show in the right rail on relevant queries.

These updates are rolling out permanently worldwide on both Google.com and search partners.

If you want to learn more about this and what this means to you and your business, give us a call