Is My Business Ready For Google Ads?

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Are you wondering if your business is ready for Google Ads?

Is My Business Ready for Google Ads?

In episode #23 of E-Commerce Marketing with the Pitbulls, Andy and Lindsey answer the important question: “Is my business ready for Google Ads?”

PPC Pitbulls’ goal is to work with brands they can help to be successful, get a ton of sales, and really scale up. But… Google Ads aren’t for everybody. So how do you know, before you turn the ads on, before you spend a ton of money, if you are likely to have success with Google Ads?

Optimized Website

Ask yourself these questions:

• Are your products on a site that’s designed to convert?
• Are there images? Are they clear, and do they show off your product? Don’t forget close-ups.
• Is your site esthetically pleasing? Does it make people want to purchase?
• Do you have your products set up in collections? Are they in groups that make sense and make people want to bundle multiple items together?
• Is the copy clear? Does it accurately describe your products? Does it make people excited about your product and want to purchase?
• Are your titles optimized? Naming products after people is creative, but it’s not helpful in search or for the customer.
• Is your site designed with the customer in mind? Is it on a platform like Shopify that allows for a seamless experience from looking at a product to purchasing it to receiving shipping notifications?

Capacity for Sales

It’s important to remember that once those sales come in, you have to be able to fulfill them. Make sure you have enough inventory and can scale up appropriately.

Make sure you have a shipping process set up so that you can get those orders shipped reasonably soon. The order should be out of your hands within 1-2 business days. If there’s no room to scale in this process, it will not cover the ads' cost.

Make sure you have customer service on board to handle anything that goes wrong if a customer has a problem. Maybe your customer has an issue because there’s something you missed in your purchase process.

Have a plan for when shipping notifications don’t get to the customer, or if the package is lost in the mail. Know how you’re going to handle customer problems first.

Measuring Data

Are you measuring where your traffic and purchases are coming from? Make sure Google Analytics is set up and installed on your website immediately. Google Analytics will start collecting data right away. Even if you don’t know what to do with that data, just start collecting it. It’s an easy settings configuration and will provide you with a treasure trove of information. You do not have to install any code to do it.

If you don’t know the basic information, it’s hard to know if it makes sense to pay for ads to bring more people in. If you don’t know where your traffic and purchases are coming from, it’s difficult to measure whether your ads are working or not.

Shopify has its own platform analytics as well, and there are other third-party analytics you can install.

Other Sales

Do you have sales coming in from other channels? This helps you to know if the first three points are working well before starting your ads. You can make some test purchases yourself, but they don’t test all the factors involved. The other piece is that we can take the data from those purchases and send it back to Google. This tells Google what types of people visited your site and which ones of those made purchases.

Once Google knows what your purchasers ‘look like’ they can target other customers with similar profiles. Getting these purchases from other sources will also help to build your email list and company customer data.

Where do you get those purchases? Post on social media with your website link, put a card with your website on it in all in-store purchases, or go out to shows or pop-ups and sell that way.

The information you collect through these other channels will help Google in setting up your ads and being more successful.

Don’t forget about influencer marketing - if you know someone who has a ton of followers, ask them to post for you.

There are always going to be blind spots. Have people test it out for you on different devices to make sure the process runs smoothly in every possible way.

Clarify Goals

How much are you willing to spend per purchase? Beyond that, how much are you willing to risk?

If you have the budget to do it for two or three months, do it. If you only have the budget to do it for a week, that’s not going to work.

How do you determine your budget?

Start with how much you’re willing to risk and how much you have on hand, knowing that it will take a couple of months to get going.

After that, you’re going to want to be able to put enough data back into Google so it can optimize and hit people who will actually purchase your product.

You need to get 30-50 purchases per month per campaign. When you’re just getting started, you’re testing 1 or 2 things at a time with each campaign.

Working backward, you’re aiming for a 3-3.5x ROAS (Return On Ad Spend), which is basically revenue divided by ad spend. If you put $1 in on ads, you should get $3 - $3.50 back.

After you look at that, it may not be profitable for you. There are companies that need a larger target and can be more difficult to scale, and the aim might be 6-7 ROAS.

Getting back to the budget, say you’re shooting for a 2x ROAS, divide your average order value by 2, then multiply by 50 for the 50 purchases you want, and that’s your minimum ad spend budget for the first month.

If you can’t afford that for one month, then it’s time to look at other, less-scalable options.

You have to be able to give this channel some time so you can send enough data back, and it can learn and optimize to see if it’s going to be able to succeed.

Conclusion

We’ve been discussing whether Google Ads is right for your business and whether you’re ready for Google Ads. The main things to focus on are:

• Make sure your website is up-to-date, gives enough information about your product, and provides a seamless checkout,
• Make sure you have the capacity to fulfill the orders that come in in the areas of inventory, processes, and customer service,
• Make sure your analytics are set up and that you know where your traffic and purchases are coming from,
• Make sure you have sales and data coming in from other channels first,
• Make sure you’re crystal clear on what your goals and budget are.

You can find Andy and Lindsey on LinkedIn:

Andy

Lindsey