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    [Google Ads] How can I help Explain to Management that There is No Way to Tell if a Customer Was Going to Place an Order Anyway. Details in Post.

    Posted by seohelper on March 5, 2020 at 9:21 pm

    Hey y’all

    I work for a smaller local company and I manage their Google Ads account. I want to help convince them that our ads campaign is performing well (it is other than some optimization to get even more eyes on us) and could benefit from a budget increase. BUT we keep hitting an impasse when it comes to management completely understanding the information in front of them. No matter how I or my team explains it. They get hung up on “yeah, but how do we know we aren’t paying for clicks/conversions from people who already were gonna use us”

    There’s no way to tell as far as I’m aware. How would you go about presenting the information? Am I mistaken? Do we do a negative word campaign for our brand name?

    BasharAlAsshat replied 4 years ago 1 Member · 13 Replies
  • 13 Replies
  • fathom53

    Guest
    March 5, 2020 at 9:36 pm

    Shut down ads for 3 months and see how that affect sales and revenue. That is the only true way to test and prove the revenue lift you get from paid ads.

  • xristos_forokolomvos

    Guest
    March 5, 2020 at 9:38 pm

    Of course there is a way. This is the whole concept of Incrementality in Marketing. It’s so difficult to understand for most seasoned marketers out there don’t get it. The fact that you put 100E / day on Google ads and they report that they made for you 300E / day in sales DOES NOT mean that if you stop marketing, you lose the sales. Google tells you “if you put X money, you will make Y”. They don’t tell you (and have no incentive tbh) what would happen in the opposite scenario.

    I work in a Performance Marketing agency where we spend 100s of millions of euros yearly. We have audience tests, lift tests with FB, Geo Tests with search ads / GDN. All of these methods answer exactly the question your (very smart) bosses ask. What happens if I invest X amount of money in marketing, what happens if I don’t.

    Theoretically speaking, you can NEVER prove a sale came from marketing. You can approximate reality with very elaborate A/B testing setups to draft a compelling argument though.

    Read [this](https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13228924500-22d5fd24) article if you’re interested in a very basic intro into incrementality in marketing.

    Best of luck

  • KojoSlayer

    Guest
    March 5, 2020 at 9:38 pm

    Keyword reports should easily prove this. If all of the conversions are “brand name keyword” then they are right. If it’s “generic name for service” then it’s likely it’s not.

  • R0N_SWANS0N

    Guest
    March 5, 2020 at 9:52 pm

    Shut it down and see how the MCF changes, if it does

  • SpiffyPenguin

    Guest
    March 5, 2020 at 11:27 pm

    Test it. Only advertise in half the country/state/whatever your target area is. Try to make your test and control areas similarly sized and not all contiguous, since that can introduce lurking variables.

  • BasharAlAsshat

    Guest
    March 6, 2020 at 12:54 am

    When you hit daily average target cut the spend. Then wait 1-2 months and brag about how much you have cut spending and improved roi. Your managers will likely think you are incredible and then ask to increase ad spend. Do the same thing until you plateau.

    The other suggestions on here will just get your fired. If you are an employee your goal is to make yourself look good and the boss happy. If the boss is a fool which he seems to be then let him be…if your business is based on ppc the owner or head of the company should understand ppc/internet marketing!

    I own a large IT firm and I still
    Review all ppc campaigns! Because that’s what built my company and that’s where the majority our money is spent!

  • rhinestoneginez

    Guest
    March 6, 2020 at 1:31 am

    Here’s a simple explanation that could help: if they don’t advertise on their own brand keywords someone else will!

  • DeadBoyAge9

    Guest
    March 6, 2020 at 1:57 am

    The top comment has some good detailed information but it might be too in the weeds for your management team. I would suggest a few explanations / discussions:

    1. If its branded keywords hes talking about, all the biggest most advanced advertisers are using branded keywords. Protect your SERP real estate and really cheap clicks are totally worth the sale.
    2. If its generic keywords, do you really want to take a chance that they choose a competitor instead?
    3. If it’s more of an ROI conversation, I would look at marketing automation, advanced marketing attribution, and a better / more comprehensive strategy for current customers / working leads. Is it really your fault the lead wasnt turned into a “branded” sale? Where would they like the lead to become a customer? If you had a more fleshed out omni channel approach you could have other options, like yes obviously I would ideally like to not pay for a current customer to buy again from me. So how are you marketing to hot leads or current customers? Maybe you need a more comprehensive email marketing plan or something.

  • tomhalejr

    Guest
    March 6, 2020 at 2:38 am

    Total sales volume vs. total marketing dollars. You are not paying for “clicks”, you are paying for advertising.

  • Viper2014

    Guest
    March 6, 2020 at 5:58 am

    Remove the branded campaign[s] and then remove people who have already converted. Run that with a limited budget and see how it goes.

    Also, you need to remind those overly optimistic bosses of yours that sales don’t necessarily come from royal customers meaning that they can always go somewhere else.

  • zhantoo

    Guest
    March 6, 2020 at 6:15 am

    Turn off the ads and show him the drop in sales.

  • ilufppc

    Guest
    March 6, 2020 at 1:53 pm

    A pretty simple example would be to show the non branded terms you compete on where you’re not ranked or have very poor SEO rankings – and these terms are converting.

    Show impression share too and say “Look here client, you’re getting sales on these terms where you dont appear in the search engines or people would have to dig for you on page 3, your CPA or ROAS is quite good at ___ BUT the impression share (market share) is 25% – there is room to increase are bids and budget for more volume IF you want it”

    Also mention that as volume grows your CPA/ROAS will decrease.

    In your campaigns you can also add remarketing lists as audiences in the OBSERVATION – this will show you how many people already visited the site and have come back through search.

    It’s likely the % of traffic from remarketing lists is low but it’s good to have data. You can also EXCLUDE these people or bid them down aggressively to focus on new people. This should help the conversation too.

    In a previous role I worked for a very big spending US apparel client who spend millions during Christmas time and the focus was on NEW CUSTOMERS.

    They were more advanced and were able to capture repeat versus new customers at the point of transaction which we would then marry back to the google click ID.

    Yes they bid on branded terms there was lots of new customer volume there BUT 90% was re-engaging previous customers, the incrementality was LOW. BUT IT WAS CHEAP. ROAS was high, cost per new customer was low BUT so was the % of new customers.

    Other non braded campaigns on search and shopping had higher new customer rates say 20% BUT costs per new customer were also higher too.

    The next layer for them was the include life time value – IE customers who buy X category are 20% more profitable over time so we can have a higher new customer cost for these kinds of searchers.

  • pq102

    Guest
    March 6, 2020 at 6:10 pm

    Incrementality testing for sure. Facebook offers their own solution for this, but it works as follows:
    – Define an audience that you know regularly performs well for the test

    – Segment out a small portion of that audience (10%) and exclude them from seeing your ads

    – Run ads towards the other 90% of the audience, and get your sales data.
    – Examine the sales difference between those who saw your ads and those who didn’t. That’s how you determine your incremental lift.

    ​

    This is really easy to do with Paid Social, but it’s definitely more difficult with Google Search, etc. There’s no way to every prove that marketing caused a specific sale, but this is a pretty good way to get close.