Joe: 00:00:00 All right. So I am here
with Chris Brewer and Brett Curry. Thanks for joining me today guys.
Brett: 00:00:09 Hey, what's up Joe? Glad to be here.
Joe: 00:00:11 Yes. So we have known Chris for quite some time, but not Brett.
So I'm excited to kind of hang out with you today, Brett, to get to know you a little bit better.
Brett: 00:00:19 Yeah, man. The famous Joe Troyer like o the time I was being
smart. You are how cool you are. And now to finally see you and speak to you. It's an honor.
Joe: 00:00:28 Way to pet my ego, man. I really appreciate that. We're gonna
make sure we hit this one really hard with some traffic. So Chris, man, it was always a good hanging out with you and in masterminds. I felt like we were able to click really well in a lot of Google stuff, doing a lot of Google ads both of us. So kinda able to nerd out and go real deep on that stuff. Well, a lot of other people kind of looked at us like we were crazy. But thanks for jumping on with us today.
Chris: 00:00:53 Yeah, no, it's good to be here. Yeah, I'll all those affiliate guys, you know, affiliate is good and you can run a lot of traffic with paid, but you know, those people with those huge lists, they just didn't really understand that cold warm to hot traffic funnel.
Joe: 00:01:09 100%, a hundred percent cool guy. So today what I want to do is
really pick your brain. And I wanted to, I wanted to do it in a perspective that made sense. So I have a client right now that is in the Ketos pace and they sell supplements. So MCT oil, MCT powder Ketp pre-workouts. And really I wanted to be able to bring you guys on here and really pick your brains, right? What should they be doing? What should their strategy be and kind of dive deep as if we were going to unfold a Google shopping campaign for them directly. But before we kinda jump right in, I thought it'd be cool. Obviously, Chris, give everybody your background and then let Brett go. Don't hog each other's time, but give a little back and let everybody know who you are, where you're from, kind of what your history has been and then we'll kind of jump in
Brett: 00:01:56 Yeah way to go. Let Chris go first. Jeez,
Chris: 00:02:02 I'll be brief. Brett. I promise I'll take too much of the spotlight
off of you. So I'm the cofounder of OMG Commerce spreads
business partner and I've been around marketing. Gosh for way too long. You can see I have a lot less hair than Brett. It's also more gray than Brett. So I, I've been around this space for a long time. Had my first website, which actually coincidentally I did anybody come up with this the other day, but my first website was actually an ecommerce website back in the day called find a sign.com. And I think it went out in like 2003 or four maybe somewhere around that time, maybe a little earlier. But that's back when I had a outdoor advertising company. And then I've been in direct mail and then Bret and I partnered up close to 10 years ago and just been growing this agency. And some of you probably recognize Brett and I from a our days with when we were partnered with Russell Brunson and doing.com secrets local. And you know, Russell did something, I don't know, you may have heard of it called click funnels and it Kinda got kinda big and our agency was growing so what was that Brett?
Brett: 00:03:22 I think it's got a few users click funnels a managed to scrape
together
Chris: 00:03:26 Or in something like that. It's nice. Yeah, that's a little bit about
me.
Brett: 00:03:33 Cool. And then I'm also a bit of a marketing junkie. I started
mainly in offline marketing, TV, radio, dabbled in a little bit of print into my first SEO campaign in 2004 for an ECOMMERCE company. And I figured that that was my, that was what I wanted him to focus on was eco online marketing. And then I guess it was about 2012 when when Google shopping became paid only. So pay to play. So when it first became product listing ads, that's when I heard how amazing it was. So a good friend of ours, Todd craney approached us at an event and it was advisor Firestone event or something and he said, man, I'm getting like 10 to 12 x on my product listing ads. And so at that point I knew this is going to be huge. And so I wanted to focus on it.
Brett: 00:04:19 So I kind of dove in with both feet nerded out on Google
shopping, learned everything I could learn about it, talk to people, sort of running campaigns kind of became kind of became my thing for awhile. I wrote the ultimate guide to Google shopping, which is still kind of number one result. If you search for Google shopping guide on Google, it shows up first until Shopify published that. But yeah, it continues to be a staple for us Google shopping and it's not the only thing we do. It's not the only thing I would recommend ecommerce companies do, but still very effective, usually very efficient and yet excited to talk about it today.
Joe: 00:04:58 So so you guys obviously run an agency and we were talking
earlier before we actually hit record what percentage or how much of your business actually comes from e-comm companies?
Brett: 00:05:08 I think it's about between 70 and 80% is now e-commerce.
That's really where we've grown. We have some kind of leadgen and franchise groups we work with still. But yeah, almost all of our growth is e-commerce. We're 70, 80% e-commerce right now.
Joe: 00:05:25 So if you're just looking at E-com, where do you think that
Google shopping as a campaign kind of fits, right? So somebody comes to you and they're not doing anything right? Kind of what would that roadmap of things to roll out right be for you guys? How do you guys kind of see that? Envision that? How do you guys pitch that? What are your thoughts?
Brett: 00:05:45 You know, we like to think in terms of shop being funnels, so
where, how do we reach people at different stages of the shopping journey or the shopping funnel? So it's kind of the awareness stage at the top of the funnel, which someone just trying to become oriented with.
Brett: 00:05:58 What products and solutions are out there. They get kind of mid
funnel. That's when they're getting more serious about buying and they're comparing models, they're comparing prices, they're really doing some detailed shopping. And then bottom of funnel is kind of when they're looking at when, where do I buy? And I would place Google shopping primarily in kind of the mid to bottom of funnel that you could do a little bit of upper funnel stuff with, with Google shopping, with mainly mid and lower. So in our opinion, it's one of the first campaigns that I think in ecommerce companies should run. Because it's usually high efficiency, it's going to convert well. When someone sees that picture of the product and the price and your reviews, it's a pretty good click and the conversion rates are pretty high. So it's one of the first campaign types we recommend. Depending on your category, it may not be huge in terms of scale. Yeah. But we usually is going to convert very, very well. So, you know, we would say to the number of queries, number of people searching for your products. Okay.
Chris: 00:07:01 Yeah. Like, if you've got a, if you've got a single skew and it's in a
highly competitive market you know, cause there's, there's always some sellers out there do a great job with, with single products, but sometimes single skews, just like on Amazon, we do some Amazon work, sometimes single skews. You're, you've
got one item in your data feed and that can be sometimes quite challenging. So Brett, when you agree that Google shopping works better, all things being equal with when you've got a solid line of skews?
Brett: 00:07:33 Yeah, I mean the, you know, you have to have enough search
volume around your products and around your category and if you have multiple products in your, in your feeds, it gives me more chances, more chances to, to show up and, and more chances for there to be that, that combination of you've got a well optimized product, not super competitive, you know, with clicks and stuff. Other people trying to get exposure for the keywords you want to get exposure for. So yeah, multi skew is better for Google shopping, but I would recommend it for everybody. And anybody running an ECOMMERCE company, if you're on Shopify or big commerce or Virginia or [inaudible] or whatever, I recommend you Google shopping a shot. Yeah.
Joe: 00:08:14 Cool. So when if somebody is already running traffic through Google ads, right? And there are running direct, a normal ad, right direct to their landing page and they're not using Google Shopify or if they're not using Google shopping, right. They're just going direct. They're not using their feed. Right. and it's profitable for them. Is that like a good indicator that Google shopping is probably gonna be a good fit for them?
Brett: 00:08:39 So, so if they're running, so you're saying someone's running ad
words already, so they're doing search ads and search ads or.
New Speaker: 00:08:44 Search ads Yup.
Brett: 00:08:45 Yeah. I mean, if search ads are working, Google shopping is
going to work. Really the only times go with shopping doesn't work is if, if it's a product that, that Google a hard time matching a product to query or if the user has a hard time too. So I'll give you an example. A, sometimes a custom apparel is weird or, or apparel that's hard to describe or we, we've seen issues with rugs you know, like, like whatever you call it. Area rugs and stuff like that because, you know, how do you describe a rug? So if I'm looking for an area rug for my, for my home, am I looking for something like with Amoebas on it?
Brett: 00:09:23 Or am I looking for like a checkered pattern or what, what am I
looking for? So that's harder. Whereas if someone's looking for, to use your example, I need some pure MCT oil, or I need some, I need some raw coconut oil, organic coconut oil that's easy for Google to match query with product and easy for you to bid on. So then, you know, we've had some customers that sell like
weird blouses and stuff with really weird designs that are super hard to describe with a search query. Those struggle more with Google shopping typically.
Chris: 00:09:56 Well, I think, I guess good just for to point out that if anybody's
new to Google shopping, if you're running search campaigns, you're used to bidding on keywords and it's an important portant you know, point to make that Google shopping is not bidding on keywords. Even though Brett's talking about search terms, inquiries, it doesn't work exactly like that. So Brett can expand on that. But you're, you're not bidding on keywords necessarily in and Google shopping.
Brett: 00:10:23 Okay. Yeah, a good point. So it's still the, the, the traffic source
is still based on search queries, right? So someone has to type in a search to Google before the, the, the ads fire. But Chris is absolutely right. You don't get to pick your keywords like you do with search. So search, you can tell Google, I'll pay a dollar for this, this keyword. I'll pay $2 for this keyword. You don't get to say that you bid on your product and it Kinda has a combination of paid search and SEO. So I know Joe, you're an SEO guy from way back. There's some SEO components to this, right? So getting your, your product title set up properly, your description, all that. We can dig into that as deep as you want to go. But it's more about optimizing the feed so that Google looks at the feed and they look at your product detail page and they say, ah, you're about MCT oil and things.
Brett: 00:11:08 Now we'll show your ad for that. And then you have to bid kind
of on a product level. So, yeah, absolutely. Okay.
New Speaker: 00:11:13 So are most of the stores that you guys are working with these
days? Shopify man, is that, I don't know what percentage still spread out. What are your thoughts?
Brett: 00:11:27 I'm sorry Joe, I cut you off. What, what was the, after the
Shopify, would you ask,
Joe: 00:11:30 Is it pretty spread out still or is it much, you know, it was the
majority Shopify or what do you, what are you guys seeing on your side?
Brett: 00:11:36 Shopify is the most popular for sure.
Chris: 00:11:38 Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean we, we, we've ended up getting a lot of leads and referrals from some people in the industry that are very big on Shopify. So I think, I mean we have gotten a lot of
Shopify business, but Magento is still big out there. I think in the last two months I've had people are on big commerce, even a couple of Volusion stores there at both of them are actually getting ready to move to Shopify and a, and we work with woo woo commerce. So there's a lot of different platforms that are out there that are using Google shopping and, and I think it's also important to point out that your data feed, what you're feeding to Google doesn't have to be based off of what platform they're you're using because there is a variety of, of plugins that are out there that are available and there's some really great third party tools that we use with our customers.
Chris: 00:12:32 That might be a resource we could share on the podcast. A
couple of those resources.
Joe: 00:12:36 Yeah, that's kind of where I was going is kind of what are the
platforms that you're seeing most people using? Obviously Xapi, the Shopify, the biggie. And then, you know, is there any recommendations that you guys have if somebody is used in Shopify, you know, for setting up their feed, you know, is there things to look for, things to stay away from just a company that hey, you should just go work with or kind of what are your guys' thoughts?
Brett: 00:12:59 Yeah, so we had to answer the first question. We, Shopify is the
most popular for sure. I'm seeing quite a few woo commerce, you know, that that would kind of be a my sleeper. Like someone who five or six years ago would made me want to go Magento cause Magento is so customizable. Now Magento is more enterprise level. So Magenta is going gonna the cost of operating Magenta this or super high. So I think, I think Wu is really making a big push. But Shopify still the big dog without a question. So in terms of, of your feed it really depends on how many products you have and how often those products go in and out of stock or how often they're updated. So your product feed is really just all the data Google needs for your product. Be able to build the product listing ad.
Brett: 00:13:42 So it's your title, description, product category, product type,
price availability, all those things. If you just have a handful of products like less than 10, and if those products are pretty much always in stock and you're not changing the price a whole lot, then I actually like a manual feed. So I like, I like to use a Google sheet. You can use the Google shopping template, customize your title, customize your description. It doesn't have to match the title and description that's on your, your product detail page. So optimize that insert, you know, you know, top keyword, maybe top two keywords in your title. Put additional
words in your, you're a description. Although descriptions, it's Kinda questionable not how valuable your description is. There's some debate in the industry and I'm like, the tags were maybe worth it as an hour worth. I don't have to fill out your, your practice scription product type. That's a place you can Kinda put some keywords. So I like manual. If you don't have very many products, if you, you know, north of 30 or 40 products or you have price going in and out of stock or prices changing, there's a couple of tools. We like. One, there's, there's a integration with Shopify and Google merchant center and it works pretty well. You can use that and then you can use some different tools inside of Google merchant center to customize the title in this
Joe: 00:15:07 Crazy for my client, you know, honestly, probably under a dozen
skews. Right? And that probably includes a couple of bundles. So just by hand in this example, right. Would, would definitely be the easiest.
Brett: 00:15:18 I like it. Yeah, that's, that's what I would do. But then there's,
there's also a good tool that we might recommend and we don't get anything for this recommendation, but a data feed watch a lot. So that's a, that's a plugin. It's a service. You get to pay a monthly fee. It's phenomenal. Also, good data feed is a good one. So, so both of those are good. The advantage there is you can create rules to say, hey, if, if there's a product that's in this particular category, then take the title and add these keywords to the end of the title and then that that tool will optimize the feed without changing your, your site. Cause some people will make it real minimalist cool title on their product detail page, but they need something more robust to simple Google and that, and those will help with that.
Joe: 00:16:03 Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Okay. So then how once you get
the feed set up, you submit it kind of what happens next? Walk, walk us through the next steps.
Brett: 00:16:13 So the first time you submit your feed, Google will manually
review it. So someone will actually look at the fee, they'll look at your site. You know, if you're in the, you use the supplement category, although really Keto could also be like whole foods, you know, you can run them at categories. It's pretty easy to get Keto type stuff approved. But if you're
Chris: 00:16:33 The MCT would be a no.
Brett: 00:16:33 ,No, What's that?
Chris: 00:16:35 The MCT oil will be a no that. And
Brett: 00:16:41 You're thinking CBD.
Chris: 00:16:43 Oh, CBD. That's right. Sorry, I was thinking. Yeah, see that's
probably a common thing that that happens with that guy. But sorry, I got my oils mixed up. There you go. But see but actually it is a good thing and I can send you
Joe: 00:16:57 CBD coffee customer. Just send it to me. CBD Coffee. I was it
pretty great. Yeah.
Chris: 00:17:04 Well but what I was going to say is I could send you a link.
Another link you could use is that there is a list of substances and supplement ingredients that are like will automatically get disapproved. And w when we first started taking supplement companies, we had a few surprises along the way. We get their feet set up and then it would get disapproved. And it could be just a single ingredient that maybe even the person that was manufacturing it didn't really pay much attention. But it's a banned ingredient. And I think for most supplement guys and ladies that are selling, they're not going to have this issue. But it's always good to review your products. And ingredients before you put all of that work in so that you don't get a dissaproval once
Chris: 00:17:50 It's disapproved and in our experience has been harder to get it
approved, especially if you get a manual kind of disapproval.
Joe: 00:18:00 Yup. So I do know that for MCT they wanna they want review
from the FDA, which is very interesting. So not really sure. I know that they're working on that right now. My client is at least, and I'm kinda getting ready with the feed and everything else to kind of go behind this, so something to think about. But I really like Chris that disapproved list. I think that's a really valuable resource.
Brett: 00:18:26 Yeah. And you should be okay with the MCT oil. We, we've
advertised MCT oil quite a bit. So if something kind of falls into the whole food category, it's much easier when you start getting into supplements. Like testosterone boosters are always almost always in know a CBD oil is always a no. There are some, some that don't work. The other thing that, that Google will look at is they'll look at your product detail pages and they'll, they'll see if you, if you're making any outlandish claims and are you saying that the substance will cure something or you know, grow your hair back guaranteed that they'll look at claims. And
so you had a resource on that we can share to Chris will kind of help along those lines. So we've had some clients where they've had, they've had like their, their typical product detail page that they'll send email traffic to that's pretty, pretty direct and it uses direct sales techniques and it's, you know, before and after and it's got pretty, pretty bold claims. And then you've got the strip down version for hair regrowth products, several of those. But that's another tricky category. Like if you're doing hair regrowth, get to watch your claims. So Google will really take a look at that, I think. I think Google's operating from the same point that they don't want to get sued, right? They're there, they don't need a small supplement seller bad enough to risky getting sued. And so they, they kind of play the, putting it pretty safe when it comes to supplements.
Joe: 00:19:49 So if there was an issue with claims on a landing page, right, or
on a product page you've seen at work, just duplicating the product page, right. And dropping the claims and the feed goes through, it gets approval.
Brett: 00:20:01 Yup. Yup. That, that can definitely work. So getting a, and
because Google will look at the, the pages you submit in your feed and they'll look at those first. However, if you're in like an outdoor category and you have any pictures of weapons or you have any products that could be perceived as weapons, Google's even more strict about that. It seems like we had a, we had an outdoor product company that didn't sell firearms, but they had pictures of people hunting with weapons and we had to take those pictures off the site. So like it's just crazy.
Chris: 00:20:35 As opposed to people hunting without weapons.
Brett: 00:20:40 You really gotta be good. You really have to be sneaky.
Chris: 00:20:43 Hand to Hand bring em on.
Joe: 00:20:48 Gonna start selling Ghillie suits and nets. Let's do it. That's
[inaudible].
Brett: 00:20:59 I'm sorry, what was that?
Joe: 00:21:01 I said, that's my next vacation on invite you guys. Let's do it.
Brett: 00:21:03 Oh dude. That would be interminable if we filmed that. That
would be, that'd be amazing. That's our next info product. Yeah.
Chris: 00:21:12 Uh,let's see how it gets better not to become, how to become a
wart hog wrestler.
Joe: 00:21:17 There we go. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. That's some really, really good information. I was talking with another client and they had prospective client, this one actually, and they had told me that they had some claims that they had to take down in order to get their feed approved. And I thought that that was interesting. I didn't know really anything about it. I didn't see the before and the after either, but I have heard that, so thanks for that clarification. That's a good little tip. And obviously I would just assume with all the Google stuff that I've done having those claims on your other product pages longterm is probably just asking kind of for trouble.
Brett: 00:21:55 It is. It is a, you're pregnant, get slapped and may or another. I
think it's better, like just, you know, just get, get your claims cleaned up, you know, take a look at that. Another resource that's really good and, and, and there's some of people can look up, it's called a legit script, so like prescriptions but legit scripts.com type in any ingredient, any product name. And then Google really pays attention to that. And if they've got kind of a system on a site where there's a yellow flag, red flag or green flag, it means it can be approved.
Brett: 00:23:37 So legit script's also a great resource, a legit scripts, scripts like
prescriptions. So if you go there and type in any ingredient product in, and then legit scripts will tell you if there are any issues with it. So we've got a flag system, a yellow flag, red flag, green flag, or I guess it'd be green, yellow, red. So green means it's a approved substance. Like Google's cool with you advertising it. If it's yellow, it's like a caution thing. So you can advertise it, but you can't make certain claims and it will spell out the claims you can't make. And then if it's red, it means it doesn't matter what you say, you cannot advertise that substance. So that's where, that's where CBD would fall into that category. So, so take a look at that. That's where, you know, you can look at the yellow flag products potentially and see what claims can be made or can't be made. But I totally agree with you, Joe. I think go ahead and get your, your product detail pages in, in a a state that passes muster that Google will approve. You're going to have to at some point anyways. So go ahead. Do it now.
Chris: 00:24:39 Yeah, because I think the other thing I'd like to bring up is I
handle all of the inbound leads that come into the company and it started around the time that the Cambridge analytical deal was happening with Facebook. Like last fall got a flurry of calls September, October. My CPA's are going up on Facebook or I've, I've realized I need to get off my one trick pony and this year again I've had another flurry of calls of people that they're spending 20, 3,000 thousand dollars a month on Facebook, but their CPA's are just really starting to go through the roof. So they're thinking, and it's a good thing to think of me. Facebook still works for a lot of people. It's going to continue to, to work. I like what as a Firestone said at a mastermind we were in recently, the Facebook's newsfeed is just sold out.
Chris: 00:25:32 That's the issue. The newsfeed is sold out. So when you're in a
sold out space, you are going to see costs go up. And so it's going to be a mindset shift. If you've been doing great on Facebook and and especially the things that Facebook is going to say, no, you can't advertise that. The amount of times I have people that have said, oh well I worked on Facebook should work on Google. No or this audience worked on Facebook. How do we get that audience on Google? So thinking about your audiences is different on Google. Thinking about what Facebook let slip by or what Facebook never caught. Those are important things that you need to think about when you're rolling out on Google. And also you've got to give Google the chance to work where, and again, this is more a little bit back in the day, Joe, with early Facebook days, but when you knew how to do
Facebook for an ecommerce product, if you knew what you're doing, you could get it dialed in pretty quickly and do very well.
Chris: 00:26:39 And then just take a look at the millionaires that Facebook has
made on the space. It's a lot. And but on the Google side, you've got to really have more of a, of a map to roll things out because Google shopping does take time to kind of gear up and optimize it and get it dialed in. And so you've got to have the patience, you've gotta have the cashflow, you've gotta have the budget to be able to kind of see through those, those potentially rough periods as it gets going.
Joe: 00:27:07 100%. So on that note, I'm curious then is quality score a factor
in terms of Google shopping campaigns?
Brett: 00:27:17 Yeah, it is. It definitely is. I think quality scores a huge part of
what Google does with anything, you know, search related. Yeah. The differences there with, with a search campaign, you, you can dig into your Google ads account and see at the keyword level what the quality score is. With Google shopping, you don't see it. So Google shopping does not reveal that what the quality score is, but they definitely calculate it. So the things you have to keep in mind, just a quick people don't know the quality score is it's a score. Google gives based on your ad relevance, your landing page relevance, and then your click through rate or your expected click through rate. So it's Google looking at, at your, at ad based on the keyword you're targeting and saying, how relevant is this? How good is this? How good is the landing page experience going to be?
Brett: 00:28:04 It is brilliant on Google's part when they invented this because it
allowed them to say, we're not just going to reward someone for their high bid. We're going to reward them for a good quality ad. So the difference than on Google shopping is instead of it being ad relevance, it's feed relevance because the feed is the ad, right? So the title, description and product type, product category, all that, that's what feeds the ad. So that's what Google is scoring and really think about it. You know, the most important part of quality score is the click through rate, right? That that's what Google really cares about. They're, they're really trying to decide how likely is someone going to be to click on this. And the more people click on your ads, the more excited Google is because they feel like, hey, this is a relevant ad. People like this ad, they're clicking on it and they'll reward you with better lower cpcs or higher quality score, which leads to better CPCs
Chris: 00:28:56 And impression impression share too, because I, when we,
when we get somebody to take a look at their Google shopping account, that's one of the first places at least I go, is I look at their impression share that they're getting for their ads. And if it is incredibly low, 15, 20, 25%, it's, it's no surprise to me. They're saying, well, you know, we just really can't get these Google shopping ads to work or we can't get them to perform well if they're, they're only showing up one out of 10 times or one out of five, depending on your impressions, your, and your competition, you're, you're always going to struggle. So those things that Brett's talking about the better you have those things dialed in, the more Google is going to show your ad and that's when your efficiencies of scale have, can start kick in
Joe: 00:29:43 100%. So let's talk about the, the bidding then and how we
optimize, right? So if we get, get the feed set up right, we go submit the feed, we get it approved, we get past, you know, all these issues. W what are kind of the, the levers that we're pulling and what are the big things that we need to, you know, be on the lookout for and that we need to be watching, right?
Brett: 00:30:04 Yup, sure. So this is something, this, this answer is very different today than it was a year ago or, or especially two years ago. But to start off with, so if you don't have many conversions, you're just going to start with Google shopping. Then I recommend just manually bidding. So, and also recommend bidding at the product level. So to take your client who's got 12 products as an example, separate those products out within your ad groups. Have their individual and create an a unique bid for each product. And then what you can do as bit up or down based on how it's performing. Are you getting conversions, not getting conversions? Are you above your return on ad spin target? Are you below your return on ad spend? Target. So bid up or down accordingly. But then once you get conversions, so once you've got like 20 conversions and about a 45 day window, then I recommend you use smart bidding.
Brett: 00:30:54 So use some of Google's smart setting technology. This, this was
a, I think this has been going hard for some agencies to admit. And, and I'll confess like some of our Google specialists, we've got five Google specialists that work for us full time. Some of them are restful with smart bidding cause they're like, but wait a minute. And that's what I do. I bid like I change bids. That's my thing. And, and I even like adjusting dates. But Google smart bidding is so good now. And Google will make bid adjustments on, on things, on data, on behavior that they'll never reveal to us. So it's something like 70 million signals Google can look at for their, they're smart, bidder, but just a quick explanation
more better is that's when you tell Google, hey, I want to reach this return on ad spend and then Google's going to bid up or bid down to help you hit that return on ad spend.
Brett: 00:31:47 And we found it's, it's pretty good. Like it's, it's really good in
fact. And so Google can adjust bids on things like, you know, the browser, your on your connection speed, whether you're mobile or desktop, which, which we can do that too. But then Google also looks at things like, what's your problem? Your if look like, so we maybe Joe's the ones searching for MCT oil. We know Joe's bought three or four other [inaudible] products last month and this is his fourth search on for keto products. So we're going to bid.
Brett: 00:32:18 Up on him. Well, none of that data can we see as as users, only
Google knows that data. So Google's leverages stuff that only they know and they can adjust the bid at a user level. So at the time of auction they'll adjust the bid based on how likely they think someone is to convert. So we, we've just got to the point where smart bidding is really better than about anybody. Right. I'm so eventually use you smart bidding as well.
Joe: 00:32:42 So what umhat was that formula again?
Joe: 00:32:47 Sorry, you cut out for a second. What was that formula again
before you, smart bidding, smart bidding, how much traffic do you have? That kind of how many visitors, how many sales? What was that formula?
Brett: 00:32:56 About 20 conversions within a 45 day window. So if you've got
less conversions than that, Google doesn't really have enough data. So, so the, the, the smart bitters not going to work very well, so manually bid at that point point. And so then it's kind of a, you can kind of do the math and say, hey, this is our conversion rate and this is what we're willing to pay per sale. And so we're kind of then working out our, our Max CPC. But then, you know, once you have that conversion data, I recommend turning on smarter bidding.
Joe: 00:33:30 Okay.
Chris: 00:33:33 Yeah, and I was going to say mentioned too that that volume is,
is key. And just be real careful if you're, if you're low volume, you may want to be playing a lot more with the, the manual bids. And it's interesting, I just got added to this paid search group. I'm actually doing some recruiting right now for a new Google ads specialist at a buddy of mine get me in a slack group,
but there's a bunch of paid paid search people and it's just fascinating to me watching their chatter about using smart bidding, enhance CPC and, and hearing people that I can tell have been doing adwords, Google ads for years and years and years. But they are really, it just so down on it. But then you see the guy posting down below who gives some stats and figures on exactly how he rolled it out and then everybody gets quiet. So until you've really done a lot of tests with this and if you've got solid volume again, I, I, I've, I've told this story before, but obviously not on your podcast as Brett and I went out to the, what was the Google summit called in July or whatever, Brett
Brett: 00:34:47 A Google marketing live.
Chris: 00:34:49 Yeah, Google marketing live. So we went out to that and
California and the first day I'm sitting in the audience and you know, we just moved into a new 4000 square foot office. I've got, we've got 26 employees, I've got a pretty big payroll and I was going, Oh man, I'm going to have to find something to do in the next year or two because Google is automating everything. I mean, not my, I'm going to be, there's going to be push button easy. And I literally was thinking that like, man, this is not good. Why did Google invite us here if they're going to be automating everything. But by the end of the first day and them talking about their 20 different Beta programs they were rolling out and after listing some more it was, it was key to me that that if you're a product seller or in the side, there is a lot to learn and there was a lot to make sense of and that's why you just can't set these things and forget them. Even on smart bidding, smart bidding doesn't mean set it and forget it and go run your Facebook ads. So you still are going to have to pay attention and make good decisions based on what's happening.
Joe: 00:35:53 Yeah, smart bidding I think is amazing. I think it's the future, but
I think what you guys are trying to say is you gotta be really careful, right? Either way. I had a campaign that we came in and I saved the customer over $20,000 a week in spend from Google ads just from display because we turned some of those things off specifically when they were going after branded search. Because branded search, like the cost per clicks were almost nothing because nobody was bidding on his dope, you know, on that brand. Right. But Google is just shoving the cost per clicks up, up, up. Right. And we were able to come in and just literally drop them and save them 20 grand a week. Right. Cause there was no competition. We, we were our own competition. Right? Like so I definitely think that's, that's the way of the future. But I think at the end of the day, I agree with you guys. You gotta you gotta be careful too and kind of pick your battles.
Brett: 00:36:43 Yeah. You have to think strategically. And, and to your point,
like I don't recommend smart bidding for, for branded traffic. Branded traffic is more about kind of being defensive and making sure you own all of the searches around your brand and it should be super cheap. And so, yeah, and in a situation like what you're talking about, the success of branded was masking the lack of success in other areas. And so, you know, campaigns, segmentation is important, your overall strategy is important. So, yeah, it's definitely not a, let's just use Google's automation and call it a day. Like you still need to be paying attention. It's just the smart, bidder when done right. And with the right campaigns will outbid any human and so that's that
Joe: 00:37:25 To look at it. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's the outlook and how you go about it. That's the important thing. Right? And not just like you said, just setting it up and forgetting it. You're bound to lose your ass if you do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which we've done a a million times and I'm sure you guys have as well. It happens. So I'm inside of Google shopping. As I look at it, I'm seeing things like return policies, right? Shipping policies. I'm seeing like special offers. I'm seeing obviously reviews. I'm seeing like no tax. What, what's important there? Brett and Chris, as you guys look at Google shopping, what do you guys, what are you guys asking your customers or pushing on your customers to really do so that you guys can compete with Google shopping? Yeah.
Brett: 00:38:13 You mean to take that Chris or do you want to take a stab at it?
Chris: 00:38:15 Yeah, I think you'd take it cause I'm, I don't know if I'm
completely clear on the question. So you, you can roll with it, Brett.
Brett: 00:38:22 Yeah. So in terms of, so some things you mentioned, you know,
reviews, reviews are super important. It can sometimes be tricky getting reviews approved. So Google prefers that you use a, a review aggregator, like a third party company like shopper approved or yacht po or something like that. So reviews are extremely important just like they are on Amazon or any other platform. So I highly recommend you use your get your reviews set up to where the reviews show up on your product listing ads or on your Google shopping ads. When it comes to things like, like return policy, sales, tax, shipping costs, things like that. Don't get too hung up on the sales tax and the shipping cost because all Google wants is an estimate. So what you provide Google is just so they can provide an estimate to their customer. That's not actually the sales tax you're going to charge.
Brett: 00:39:15 That's not the actual shipping you're going to charge. Right?
That's all. That'll all be done on your site. Now. Now make no mistake, like sales tax is a huge, huge issue. Don't screw that up or work on your website and that's, you know, between you and your tax accountant using something like Avalara or whatever. So that that's on your site. What you give to Google. It's just purely an estimate so that if someone clicks into the Google shopping tag, Google shopping tab, they can see shipping and tax estimates. So what you give to Google, just an estimate, you know, so try to be as accurate as you can. Don't get too hung up on it. Google will let you know if they think it's inaccurate and then you try to go to fix it. Kind of an easy fix if, if your too low on shipping, it's just overestimate shipping if you're, if you're high in your estimates, Google won't really say much from the main search results page.
Brett: 00:40:08 So if I type in MCT oil, I've got all the text ads and then the
shopping ads next to it, I don't see shipping costs in that. I have to click further to see it. So if you have to overestimate your shipping just to get things approved.
Joe: 00:40:20 I'm just saying, just like a, if you just do a search for MCT oil,
right? You'll see obviously like the review snippets are inside of the shopping area. Right? also I see like three, 365 day returns and right. Free shipping has like a label on the ad. So really talking about kind of the different options in terms of the ad units, they're like, yeah, you need reviews. Like all of our clients, we push really hard. So for example, in local, right? The first thing that we do when we get a customer while we're onboarding and the team's going to work, right?
Joe: 00:40:56 We're working on reviews, right? And just crushing their
competitors. So when we do get them clicks and we do get them traffic that they convert it. Yup. Yeah.
Brett: 00:41:05 Reviews are huge. Promotions can be effective. So that's where
you'd submit like a coupon code promotion to Google Merchant Center. And then a little little sales tag appears into the product listing ad. And if you click on that and expand, it'll say, you know, 15% off and here's the coupon code or whatever that that can help a, I think it's worth testing. I will also say, because Google shopping is a comparison shopping engine, Google does pay attention to price. They know the price of products that get the garner a click or given categories. And if you're way off on price, that will affect your quality score and will affect how often Google will show your product to think about, I'm not saying, you know, change your pricing strategy just to please Google, but I'm just saying be aware of that. If you're higher
than everybody else, then that may or may not work for you. Maybe maybe you can win on reviews. Maybe the product image shows that it's unique some, so maybe you'll get click- throughs, but price does make a difference. And if I had to pick between either like a s mid to higher price with the coupon code versus a low price go low price because Google's going to reward that low price, the promo may or may not work. It's worth testing. But I would go with low price if you can.
Chris: 00:42:28 Yeah, and I, and I think this probably be a good spot to, to talk
about if you're in the drop shipping business and Google shopping's probably going to be tough for you and especially cause if, if there's products that target or bed bath and beyond or Chewie's if you're in the dog and cat space, if you've got the same product, same product photo and, and you don't offer free shipping. Yeah. And that, that can be another designator. You might be a dollar off on price, but you're going to charge shipping and so you're going to end up just getting that abandoned cart once they hit your product page because they're going to be like, oh I think I show off soft free shipping back on the, the shopping results. And so that's where sometimes if you're a drop shipper and you're competing against products that are also sold on other big box stores, then you want to think about maybe bundling some products together, creating some new kind of combos skews off of your bundles and things. It can separate you from, you know, similar photos, things like that.
Joe: 00:43:38 I love that. That was going to be one of my questions too is how
do we, you know, how do we stand out in Google shopping? You know, over time it seems like it's obviously getting more and more competitive. I still think that there's a huge market for Google shopping, but you know, what are the smart things that we can do to stand out right now? So I love the bundle idea, Chris.
Brett: 00:43:55 Yeah. And to kind of along the same lines, you know, the good product image is super important. So if you look at kind of the areas that are most likely to help you get a click, it's your title, it's your price and it's your picture, right? Those are the things that really help you get, get a click. And just to clarify something, Chris said, I'm drop shipping as a business model is not necessarily bad, right? Like you can drop ship somebody product, but if there's a lot of other people drop shipping it, that's when you're gonna run into trouble. Right?
Chris: 00:44:25 Especially if you're talking margins. Cause then your ROI is going
to be a lot. Tougher
Brett: 00:44:32 Yep. Yep. So thin margins and the products available from lots of other sellers, then it's just going to be a race to the bottom. It's going to be tricky for you, but I'm getting a good image is really important. So one of things we look at is as we're beginning to dig into a campaign, we look for products that have really low click through rates. So we look for what the product that has, you know, north of several hundred impressions and less than a 1% click through rate. And usually align with those products is it's either a bad image or the price is too high or we've got something in the feed that Google is misunderstanding and they're showing us for random keywords. Right? So kind of one of those things is the fix, fix the image, clean up the feed so that we can clean up our keywords and maybe add a negative keywords. You can do that or where it's price and so so looking for those products that are not getting good click throughs and trying to clean those up. That's a great kind of ongoing a way to optimize and make sure you're, you're spending your money wisely.
Chris: 00:45:32 Yeah. One, one little quick thing I'll mention just since we're
talking about kind of looking at your feed and what your feed says. There is a pretty sweeping update that Google made recently that relates to medical terminology and we had some pretty huge feeds get massively disapproved, which was completely irrelevant to their products. So like one customer sold like charms that would hang off like a charm bracelet and because it was a tag, Google's update disapprove that thinking it was a medical id tag. So it, especially on supplements, if you've got things in your product title that could be construed as a medical term, you may not be too surprised if your, if your feed ends up getting disapproved for that medical reason, then you've got to go in and submit a manual review and hopefully get it approved.
Joe: 00:46:28 Gotcha, Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I see
when looking at Google shopping, it seems like some people are being like really smart, but maybe it's just negligent. I wanted to get your guys' kind of thoughts changing background colors, right. And making it pop. Cause everybody seems to be using like a white background, right? Or just like everybody's product is the same exact like bottle or whatever. Right? And it's white, white, white, white, and then it's like bright orange. Right. And it's like, wow, that one really pops. Do you guys put much emphasis into the product image or not? Kind of a sense.
Brett: 00:47:05 So, so for some people it's hard for them to get a good image.
So some, some clients are limited on, on what, you know, what their capabilities are for images. I think it is important that, I
mean the product photo is super important. So maybe, maybe it's a closeup, maybe it's a product in a little bit better light. Maybe you're highlighting some of the features and things people really care about for that particular product. It could be the background. Google of Google kind of prefers a white, but they're not usually won't get disapproved if it's not. The only thing you can't do is you can't add logos, you can't add text. So if you add things like made in the USA or on sale or whatever at a starburst, you know, as class as those will, Google will disapprove that.
Joe: 00:47:46 So. So it's Kinda Kinda baked into your product image. Yeah.
Chris: 00:47:50 Just, just add a puppy. You're good.
Joe: 00:47:54 I was thinking a little kitten. I mean
Brett: 00:47:57 Puppy and Kitten, a go split test it split test the puppy versions
with the group, which works. Yeah.
Joe: 00:48:05 Okay, cool. So any other tips or tricks on just kind of standing
out? I think we definitely picked up a couple of like really good things I think on, on really getting the listing to stand out.
Brett: 00:48:17 Yeah. so there's a couple things. You know, if you're thinking
about broader terms, I'll kind of use an example. We did some stuff in the the outboard motor space, so people selling like outboard motors for boats and there was this major competitor and what they would always do is they would always push their lowest priced outboard motor. So for anything broad, like, you know, I'm typing in Honda outboard motor, you could tell they were segmenting their campaign and bidding up so that the smaller horsepower, cheaper outboard motors showed up for that. Then anything, you know, if there's a specific query, like I want the eight horsepower motor, I want this specific motor, then then those would show up. But everything else, they were pushing the low price motor. So remember it as comparison shopping. So pushing your low priced option, pushing your, your a highly reviewed products is also important.
Brett: 00:49:10 And kind of watching the click through rate on things and
determining kind of where to segment. I would also begin to look as a little more advanced and maybe kinda hard to describe fully on the podcast, but look at adding negative keywords. So, so maybe, so to funnel broad keywords to that low priced outboard motor, I'm going to add the broad keywords as negatives to the the ad groups of the higher price
motors and kind of try to funnel that traffic even though you can't choose your keywords like Chris mentioned earlier, you can add negatives and kind of force. You can work on your feed, work on your negatives, and will the traffic where you want it to go. So that's the other thing is think about what products we want to focus on for what types of queries and then bid and use negative keywords accordingly.
Joe: 00:49:59 That opens, I think lots of options.
Chris: 00:50:04 And I think it's worth mentioning, you know, we haven't talked about remarketing at all yet on the podcast and, and obviously that's a whole nother podcast, but I think Brett, what Brett's talking about with that technique is if, if people were looking at different results and they're maybe not looking in that depth, they're just shorting by price and Oh, that, yeah, that looks like it. And with outboard motors, you can't really tell what that housing, how large horsepower really is an engine. So if they click through and you get them to your product page, now suddenly you're, you're being able to add that person to your remarketing audience and you're able to potentially move them further down the funnel. So there may have been some people thinking, oh, well that's just gonna cause me bounce traffic. Well, it's also going to gain you a share of audience that then you can remarket to with your brand new products and, and go from it from that angle.
Joe: 00:50:53 I love that. What's what do you guys see as like a cost per click
comparison between a Google normal display ad? Right. Let's say on google.com right. Versus, or a search ad, right. Versus a Google shopping click
Brett: 00:51:06 Yeah. Google shopping. Yeah. I'm sorry, what was that Joe,
Brett: 00:51:10 Do you have any comparison or any idea in the, in the change
and the ad unit price? Yeah, so, so Google shopping is almost always less expensive, so it's almost always cheaper to run Google shopping ads than it is to run search ads. And if you go back to the, the click through discussion that we've, we've talked about before. So, so the biggest, the biggest factor with 'em biggest factor with, with quality score is the click through rate. So Google shopping typically has better click through rates than search as a whole. And so Google kind of rewards that with a little bit lower CPC. So it's going to vary wildly based on your category based on specific keywords. But clicks can be 25% less than the search click. They can be 80% less than a search click.
Brett: 00:51:59 We try to kind of run some bottom of funnel type campaigns.
We're doing just really low bids on Google shopping and when we get some volume there. So I mean we, we've got some Google shopping campaigns. They're getting 25 35 cent clicks, 15 cent clicks and some cases, not a lot of volume there, but you can get really good click like low a long tail kind of low in the funnel clicks. So, so yeah, Google shop is almost always less than, than search in most cases except for branded search. Branded search is going to be the best usually.
Joe: 00:52:28 Okay, cool.
Joe: 00:52:30 So guys any other trailing thoughts? We're just at the top of the
hour. I don't want to keep you guys, you guys have brought a ton of value. Any trailing thoughts before we kinda disconnect here? [inaudible]
Brett: 00:52:42 Yeah,
Brett: 00:52:43 I think we'd be remiss if we didn't mention youtube just really
briefly and I'll just throw it out there. Yeah,
Joe: 00:52:48 Sure. I love youtube, I'd be down to hear what you still have to
say. Yeah. I think
Brett: 00:52:52 You gotta use youtube one for remarketing. So people that
don't convert set up some, some youtube remarketing campaigns that there's a, a, a format called trueview for shopping, which is kind of a marrying of the Google or the youtube pre-roll video ads and Google shopping. So it's your youtube pre-roll video. Google shopping is next to it. Running that campaign type as a remarketing, a campaign is awesome. And then there's a format called trueview for action where you kind of bid on a target CPA and using that to kind of feed the funnel. So kind of to that, that awareness stage to kind of get people interested and aware of your brand. I think that's where you got to look at. You know, Google shopping is amazing. I think it's gonna be a viable channel for a long time to come, but it's still mainly kind of a mid and bottom of funnel channel. So what are you doing to feed the top of the funnel? Think about, so, so consider youtube and then look at, you know, getting your search in place too. So your text ads along with shopping always will do better than just shopping. We see that kind of time and time again. So what would you like?
Chris: 00:54:00 I and I would just, I would just say open up a Google browser and Google Brett curry, Google shopping and you'll find Buku
amounts of thought leadership and guides that Brett has put together on Google shopping. I also would tell you if you'll Google sumo, Brett curry, just s u m o Brett Curry. You should see as their number one result, a recent article that sumo put out on how Brett was able to recover thousands of abandoned carts using some youtube techniques. And I would say that that would be a tremendous article that you can go to an it and when you land on that article, it actually, there's a little click through where you can get our seven tips on building, converting youtube ads, things like that that all can be used with Google shopping.
Joe: 00:54:51 Wonderful. That was actually going to be my next question.
Where should people you know, learn more about you guys and keep up with you guys all? So those are two great resources. And then your guys' main website right now is
Joe: 00:55:02 OMG commerce.com. So OMG like marketing giant, OMG,
commerce.com. So check it out. We got resources there, a fill out the form a chat with us. And yeah, that'd be the best place to, to go.
Joe: 00:55:16 And then if if anybody is looking for agency work, would you
guys kind of, or Chris maybe kind of recap who your kind of target market is kind of your requirements. You know for anybody that would be a fit for you guys.
Chris: 00:55:29 Yeah. Well our philosophy here is whether you're a good fit for
us as a client or not, I'm going to make sure that you're well taken care of so that I don't just leave you to the wolves on your next search, so feel free to reach out to us on our site. But to give you an idea, our, our minimums, just for instance, to work with us on Google ads is $2,500 a month plus your ad budget. So it's going to be pretty easy to figure out, you know, unless you're spending seven, eight, $10,000 a month on ads already or you're in a spot where we really think we can scale you up quick because you're probably not going to be the best fit for us right now. But I w I do know some other folks that you can trust that like just two, three years ago we were running Google shopping only. We're not doing Google shopping only anymore, but there may be some folks I could refer you to that could just set up some of those campaigns for you. But I always encourage people to get educated first, know, use some of the resources we told you. Make sure you know what an agency's going to be doing for you and you understand the terminology and you understand how to read reports before you go and hire an agency and I can help you there as well. So feel free to reach out either. Yeah,
Joe: 00:56:40 100% great tips there as well. You gotta have an idea, I always
recommend somebody at least try, right? Whatever the marketing source is, get in, try play with it for a couple of weeks, play with it for a month with your own team. Right. And then choose if you wanna outsource it and you're going to be much more adapt and have a much better understanding of what the heck is going on than if you just, you know, partnered with any agency right out of the gate. So definitely like that tip. So guys, thanks for coming on. I really, really appreciate it. We'll make sure to link up all the amazing resources that you guys gave us inside the show notes. Thanks guys. Awesome.
