Google Shopping management that pays for buyers, not clicks.
- Not
“Maximise clicks”. - Not
“lower your CPC”. - Not
“more eyes on your products”, whatever they're worth.
I make Google bid more for the shopper who's likely to spend more, and less for the one who isn't. Your cost per click will probably go up. Good.
Ten people search for a rain jacket.
- Five want the cheapest one going.
- Three want something mid-market.
- One's happy to spend a bit more.
- One wants designer.
On Maximise clicks, Google bids the same for all ten. A click's a click.
Value-based bidding prices them differently. More for the people likely to spend more. Less for the ones who'll only buy if you're the cheapest thing on the page.
Same search, ten different wallets. Google can tell them apart. Most accounts never ask it to.
“Hang on, my clicks have gone up from 40p to £1.20.”
Yes.
And your conversion rate's gone from 0.3% to 3%. And your return on ad spend from 2 to 6.
That's what it looks like when Google stops buying the cheapest clicks it can find and starts paying for people who buy things.
Here's one month both ways. Say you spend £1,200 on Shopping.
Whether 6 is actually any good depends on your margins. That's a different sum, and it's on the ecommerce Google Ads page.
A third of the clicks. More than three times the sales. Cheap clicks are a cost pretending to be a result.
Performance Max does exactly what you tell it.
Which is great, if you've told it the right thing.
Tell it every sale's worth the same, and it'll go and find you plenty of the five who want the cheapest jacket. Across Shopping, YouTube, Gmail and a few places you didn't know you were advertising.
Tell it what each sale is actually worth to you, give it a target worth hitting, and it's a very good tool.
I set the target. It does the bidding. That's the right way round.
You told it
Every sale's worth the same.
So it found
Lots of the five who want the cheapest jacket.
You told it
What each sale is worth, and the return you need.
So it found
The ones worth paying more for.
Negative keywords are scaffolding, not the building.
They matter in the first eight weeks. Google knows nothing about your account yet, so it needs guardrails.
After that, once value-based bidding is running against a real target, the bidding does the job. It doesn't need to block the person who wants the cheapest jacket. It just bids less for them.
So aggressive negative keyword work in month fourteen is a tell.
Month 14, still adding negatives? That's the tell.
Usually that the bidding was never set up properly. Sometimes that someone needed something to put in the report.
I can't fix your prices.
On Shopping, your price is in the ad. In a row, next to everyone else's, with a picture.
If you're £20 dearer than the same jacket two along, that's a bugger to bid your way out of.
No bid strategy fixes a price. I'm not going to pretend one does.
I'll tell you on the first call, before you've paid me a penny.
Shopping results for “rain jacket”
Bidding decides who sees your jacket. It doesn't make it the one they want.
People who let me near their account
Chris is our secret weapon. ALWAYS working away in the background ensuring we are optimised for maximum profits and minimum head scratching. Money well spent!
Tamsin AnsdellSales and Marketing Director, Eribe KnitwearChris has an exceptionally well-rounded understanding of all things digital marketing and eCommerce. Even better than that, he's got the 'commercial hat' to go with it. Always worth a chat, and if you're lucky, he might even buy the first drink.
Phill LumleyCommercial Director, Finnmark SaunaThings people ask before they let me near the bids.
How much does Google Shopping management cost?
It depends on how complicated the account is, not how much you put through it.
One range of clothes, all on the same margin, three campaigns? Simple. Sixteen campaigns, different margins on everything, changes every week? More work, so it costs more.
Show me the account and I'll tell you which end you're nearer.
Will my cost per click go down?
Probably not. If the bidding's working, it often goes up, because Google's paying properly for the people who actually buy.
Judge it on the sales and what they made you. The price of a click is just what it cost to get them through the door.
Is there a contract?
No fixed term. It's 30 days at a time. If you try it for a month and want out, off you go.
Who owns the account?
You do. You give me access through my manager account. When we part ways, you remove my access and everything in it stays yours: the campaigns, the history, the lot.
Do you do Facebook or Bing as well?
Facebook, no. Bing, yes, but I only recommend it once Google is close to running out of customers worth paying for. That's happened at one client so far.
Can you just look at my Shopping campaigns first?
Yes. That's the free Google Ads audit. 20 minutes on a screen share, and you'll know whether Google's bidding the same for all ten jackets.
Show me the account.
- You show me your Google Ads.
- I tell you where the problems are.
- You decide whether I should fix it.
If it's fine, I'll say so, and you can go back to ignoring it.