Google Ads for E-commerce: From 0 to 3 X Return On Ad Spend.

[Update 1/10/2021: We are now at over $1 million in annual revenue from Google Ads alone!]

Tres Colori is Shopify store that had never done Google Ads before.

They came to us because they were a brand new, blank Google Ads account with no past Google Ads sales history. They had worked with us to help them improve their website’s conversion rate and increase their revenue with much success: How We Increased Store’s Revenue by $8000 per Month With One A/B Test.

So when they wanted to do Google Ads they came straight to us.

So how did we help a Shopify e-commerce store reach 3x return on ad spend with Google Ads for e-commerce?

I. Understand Google

First, you need to get into the mind of how Google thinks.

You need to realize that Google wants to display relevant results for people doing searches. This means that the landing page for your ad has to match the ad copy and the search term. The more relevant the results that people get, the happier they are, the more that they would use Google.

And the more people using Google means more revenue for Google

II. Understand Your Shopify Store

Now that we understand what Google wants, we have to understand our Shopify store, so we can give Google what it wants.
What are you selling in three words or less? “personalized jewelry”

What makes you stand out from similar stores? “free shipping on all orders”, “established 1992”, “picture reviews from real customers”

III. Understand Google Ads for e-Commerce

There are three main types of Google Ad campaigns: Google Search Ads, Google Display Ads, and Google Shopping Ads.

On Google Search Ads, there is no avoiding these competitors.

It’s not like on Facebook where you can more or less avoid competing against them directly. On Google, they will be bidding on the same high intent keywords as you are. It then becomes a competition of who understands the data better and who can come up with the better ad strategy.

We monitored the data coming in every day and made changes based on our experience. We did a ton of testing with different ad copies, different placements, and different campaign types to figure out what strategies worked best for the product and what didn’t.

We start out with the long hanging fruit of Search Branded Campaigns. And then moved onto Shopping campaigns before going back again to re-optimize the Search campaigns. Getting it to 1.18 Return on Ad spend by month 2.

We combined incoming data with research on search volume for each product to figure out how best to name and categorize the products. As we continued to optimize the variant names, product descriptions, product type, etc on Google Shopping for each product, the ratio continues its upward trend.

The same goes for the Search ToF (Top of Funnel) campaigns.

Based on the results of the first month, we were in the process of creating a campaign that targets specifically the terms with the highest conversion to cost ratio.

And for Google Search campaigns we aimed for keywords that are specific (ex: rose gold monogram necklace) with good search volume. At the same time, we avoided being too specific (ex: cubic zirconia monogram necklace), which means little to no search volumes (aka nobody is searching for it).

We had to balance scaling and at the same time not going too broad (ex: targeting the keyword “necklace”), which means the searcher doesn’t really know what they are looking for yet.

In the example of “necklace”, the searcher could be looking for any kind of necklace from a diamond necklace to a kid’s necklace.

Next, we focus on Display Ads for our Shopify clients.

Google Display Ads: we target specific audiences to show image ads that we have designed, works best for people who had previously visited our store.

IV. Take Advantage of Google Shopping

Google Shopping Ads: the secret weapon to even the field against the likes of Amazon and Etsy. Users are high intent shoppers, meaning they are ready to buy and don’t need much convincing
Shopping ads shows images of products, prices, descriptions etc. And it allows shoppers to easily compare options.

Why is Google Shopping Ads better than Google Search Ads for Shopify stores?
1. high intent (paying for less “window shoppers”),
2. levels playing field against the giants (products all displayed on the same page, harder for Amazon/Etsy to simply outbid you)

V. Working Google Shopping Ads
Product titles: has to match what users are searching for (this means research on search volume for each product) “Double Plated Name Necklace”.

Google Product Categories, Product Type, and Product Descriptions have to be representative of the product: “Apparel & Accessories > Jewelry > Necklaces”, “Customized Jewelry > Necklaces > Name Necklaces > Double Plated Name Necklace”.

Negative keywords: we don’t want to show up for these searches because they have low purchase intent “info”, “how to”, etc, our list contains over 400 words. Then there are words specific to this Shopify store “diamond”, “bamboo”, etc.
Take advantage of Google Ads’ audience features. It allows you to remarket to people who have interacted with your Shopify store before, you can even remarket specifically who had added a product to cart or to purchasers. Target people with similar interests as people who had already visited your website

So to scale we, constantly manually monitored results and constantly added in new negative while we expanded our targeting to broader and broader keywords. This is to weed out the searches that were of the lowest intent. This allowed us to bid low, cast a wide net, and at the same time get buying customers. We were able to target and get keywords that other people weren’t bidding for. And because of our custom ads we were able to maintain a high quality score (8-10) which means cheaper clicks while broadening the targeting. We reached 3x ROAS by the end of month 3.

And many months later, it’s still going strong:

Consistency in return on ad spend is what happens when you take the time to set up the funnel and ads correctly in the first few months. What a lot of marketers do wrong is they rush in to get results right away instead of taking the time to test out different ads and different placements. Take your time, do all your due diligence. Research the competitors, research the product, and research the audience. Slowly scale, monitor the data coming in. Being patient is the number 1 tip I give to all marketers. In this day and age of instant gratification, everybody wants it now and wants results on day 1. Don’t be that guy.