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Mastering Google Shopping Ads: Tips from Expert Sara Jones
Episode 2326th September 2024 • Bring Your Product Idea to Life • Vicki Weinberg
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Do you use Google Shopping to sell your products? Do you know what Google Shopping is?

This week on the podcast my guest is Sara Jones. Sara helps online retailers grow their business using Google shopping through 1to1 ad management and by teaching them how to do it themselves in the Online Retail Academy.

Back when I ran my own product business, I tried to set up Google Shopping, but got very confused and didn’t stick with it for long. That was 8 years ago.

Sara completely changed my mind on it, she explained what is is, all the improvements that have been made, and how to set it up. There are plugs in so you can sync it with you ecommerce website. Sara also shares her top tips for how to do well, how to make sure your ads are performing, and she even has some advice on how to optimise your website so that Google Shopping really works for you.

It could be a great new income generator for you. Let me know how you get on. 

The Bring Your Product Idea to Life Podcast  - Best Business Podcast Award, Independent Podcast Awards 2023

USEFUL RESOURCES:

The Online Retail Academy Website

Sara Jones Instagram

Online Retail Academy Facebook

Online Retail Academy YouTube


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If so, my masterclass is exactly what you need to find out more about how to start selling on Amazon - without paying for help.

Download now, keep forever and watch in your own time.

https://vickiweinberg.com/how-to-start-selling-on-amazon/


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Transcripts

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Welcome to the bring your product idea to Life podcast.

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This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd

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like to create your own product to sell. I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product

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creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly,

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practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses.

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Let's get started.

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Hi. So today on the podcast, I'm speaking to Sara Jones. So

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Sara helps online retailers grow their business using Google shopping

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through one to one ad management and by teaching them how to do it themselves

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in the online retail academy. I was so delighted when Sara

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reached out to me and asked if she could come and talk to us about

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Google shopping. I used to use Google shopping years ago,

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and I'll mention this in my interview with Sara, and I found it so confusing.

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It was really hard to set up. I didn't really know what I was doing.

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And to be honest with you, I didn't stick with it for long. But

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today, Sara has completely changed my mind on it. She explains

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how Google Shopping has improved in the eight years since

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I was last using it. She also talks about how to get it

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set up, how to do well, how to make sure your ads are performing,

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and she even has some advice on how to optimize your website

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so that Google shopping really works for you. So whether Google

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Shopping is something you're using now, or maybe it's something you're thinking about, or

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perhaps you've never even thought about it, I think this will be a really

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useful episode. And if there's interest, I would love

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to invite Sara to come back to talk about this a bit more in depth

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as, because this is very much an introduction.

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Please, as always, let me know what you think about this episode. If you have

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any follow up questions, and I would love to be able to get them answered

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for you. But for now, let's have an introduction to Google Ads.

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Google shopping with Sara Jones.

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Hi, Sara. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me.

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Vicki, can we start, if you please, give an introduction to you, your

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business and what you do. So I am Sara

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Jones and I am a Google Ads manager. So I

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manage Google Ad accounts for ecommerce businesses, but I

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also teach online retailers how to do their

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own Google shopping in my membership, which is called

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the online retail academy. Amazing. Thank

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you. I guess I'm going to start with, which is probably quite an

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obvious question. But I'll be honest, I'm not sure why fully know what is

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Google shopping, Sara? So when you decide you

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want to buy a new pair of shoes and you hop off to Google and

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search for some lovely pink sparkly shoes. You'll

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see across the top of the page, you'll see images

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and prices and image ads, product

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ads across the top of the page, sometimes down the right hand side.

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Those are Google shopping ads. They do appear.

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There's also like a shopping tab, a separate shopping tab on the search results,

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which you can click into. And then it's all shopping results, shopping

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ads. But those are essentially shopping

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ads. And they can appear in places like YouTube as well.

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So, yeah, they're pretty, I love them.

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And they're the ads that you see that sometimes feel like they're following you around.

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So maybe you google something and then you might click on pair of

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shoes as an example. And then you go to YouTube and then you'll see the

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same, like little ad in the right. It's usually the right of the screen, I

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think, on YouTube. Is it that kind of ad that you might see multiple places?

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Yeah. So sometimes that can be remarketing. So

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sometimes the ads that kind of follow you around lots of other sites,

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like news sites and blogs and all that kind of stuff, those are

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remarketing ads. So that's if you've already come to somebody's website,

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clicked on a product, and if you have the setup

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done for shopping ads, you have products, it will automatically show people the

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products that they were looking at. So that's remarketing. So I guess it's kind of

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a, the follow on from Google Shopping, if you like, and then the

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product ads that you see on YouTube, those are set up separately. Again,

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when you're running YouTube ads, you can

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also add products in there as well. But the main, when people talk

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about Google shopping, they're mainly talking about those

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main results on the top of the. Google results when you're

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amazing. Thank you so much for clarifying that. That's really good to know. But

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for anyone, and we won't go into that much detail today, maybe you have to

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come back and talk to us about retargeting. So I guess stay, we'll focus just

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on Google shopping. But if people were interested in having those ads that pop

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up everywhere, that's retargeting. And that is part of Google Ads. Yes.

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Yes. Amazing. We may well cover that on another episode. Sara, that

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sounds like something to speak about. But for today, oh, different ballgame.

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Let's just talk about Google shopping for today and keep it nice and

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simple. So let's start with why might

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we consider using Google shopping? What are the advantages

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and benefits of it. So what Google

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shopping does is, as I've hinted at when

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I said, if you are looking for a pair of shoes, you go first place

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most people will go, or when they're shopping for anything, is to Google and

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actually start searching for it. So the big advantage

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of Google shopping is that you are putting your product in

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front of somebody when they're actually looking for it. And the

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analogy I like to use is like, it's like I'm going shopping and I'm walking

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down the high street and I've got a megaphone and I'm going, I'm looking for

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a pink sundress. And then the people in the shop can

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literally run out and wave their pink sundress at me. I've got one over here.

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I mean, that's kind of how I think about it. And so that's

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the biggest advantage over, say, something like Facebook

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ads where you're kind of putting your products in front of people as they're

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just scrolling the feed and not necessarily thinking about buying a pink

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sundress or a pair of shoes. The big advantage of Google

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is that much higher intent because they are looking

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for your products. And if you've got it all set up right, your products will

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show to the people when they're looking. So that's the big advantage. And as to

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sort of why people would want to run Google

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shopping really is when you get to the point where

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you're making sales on your website, you've

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proved that people want to buy your product, and then you're sitting there

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going, I just need to get more people to my website because not enough people

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know about me. And that is at the point where you're thinking, right, okay,

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we need to get more traffic. And as you no doubt

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know, you do have at some point you have to start

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paying to get people and eyeballs to your website. So

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that is when kind of Google shopping comes in. And other paid ads obviously,

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as well. But I'm talking about Google shopping here. So

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thank you for explaining that. And I mean, I can only talk from a consumer

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point of view, but I actually find Google Ads really useful as a

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consumer because as in the example you've given, if I'm looking for a pink sun

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dress, let's use the same example. I love the fact that I can type that

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into Google and I get all these results come up because it didn't feel

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like that long ago that if you were looking for a specific product, you would

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have to go to a specific website and you might search their catalog

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of whatever products they have and they not have it, and then you would go

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to another website and you would search there. So as a consumer, I do

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think that it's really useful actually, because

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it's just great that if you're looking to buy something, because I

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specialize, as you may know, Sara, and selling on Amazon, and I always say that

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Amazon ads are great because people are there to buy. And now I feel

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like possibly because of Google shopping, I do think more

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people are using Google to buy as well. But did you see that

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as compared to maybe, I don't know how many years ago, but I don't

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think, I certainly didn't consider Google my first choice

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for shopping. Yeah, because I mean, it was that

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you're searching and then you just can't be bothered to

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scroll up and up and up on just plain text listings

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because you're having to read

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and all the organic results and stuff,

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it's not conducive to, it just gets really tiring having

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to scroll and read ads and read organic listings,

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whereas the shopping, just as you say, makes it so

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easy to literally, like you'd

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have a whole row and you can scroll as well. So there's more than just

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kind of the thing. There's usually eight across the top, but you can keep scrolling

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to the right. You can immediately look

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and say, oh, I like that one. And it shows you the price as well.

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So if you're in the market for a 50 pound dress and

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that one that you're seeing as a 200 pound dress, you're like, well, you're not

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going to click on it, are you? Because that's at my price range. And so,

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yes, it does make it easier to just really dive,

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kind of narrow your choices if you like, because

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you're just seeing the ones that are relevant to you. And it's a visual

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thing. So it's quicker, much, much quicker, I think, to

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go shopping for stuff and I'm very impatient when I go shopping online for

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stuff, I like to just see exactly what I'm, oh, that's it. And I just

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click on it and away I go, me. Right. And I hadn't thought

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about, we'll talk about targeting in a moment. And I hadn't thought about it until

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you just said it. But I guess the advantage of how

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Google shopping's laid out, the advantage for sellers as well as people

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could immediately see a photo and a price. And as you say, if it's completely

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out of your price range, you're not going to click on it because I assume

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Google shopping is pay per click. So you're paying every time someone clicks.

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And I suppose that having that information right there does

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reduce the amount of clicks from people who may not ever

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be intending to buy, maybe because it's out of their price range or they were

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looking for a different colour or whatever. That's right. And of course it works both

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ways, don't forget, because there will be certain people who have a certain

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price that they expect to pay for something and if they see a 50

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quid or a 20 quid sundress they're like not interested. I want my two.

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So it works both ways. You're kind of, you're giving people so much

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more information than you can in a boring old text,

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ADHD and it's instantaneous that they see it.

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Picture price. Oh right, yeah. Okay. Click and away they

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go. Then of course it's down to your website to do the job of converting

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them. That's just something that we have to kind of say at this point.

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It's not all Google shopping won't do the whole job.

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Its job is to get those people to your website who are

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interested in your products. A whole different conversation again. Then it's

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your website's job to actually convert them and get them to buy.

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But yeah, that's why I love Google shopping so much. Absolutely.

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And to follow up on your last point that makes complete sense. And I think

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anyone who's running any type of ads, if you're getting a high number of clicks,

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but your number of sales is comparatively low, I think that would lend to thinking,

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okay, there's something missing from the actual product page because I'm getting people

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here, which is great, but they're not buying. And that would lead me to

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think, okay, there's something that I'm not telling people or there's something

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that could be improved upon. Yes. Or you're not getting

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the right people to the website. So there are some kind of nuances with

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that as well, again as with all paid

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traffic, but yes, yeah, that's absolutely right.

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The website needs to obviously convert as well.

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So. Well let's, in a moment we will talk a little bit more

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about how we get people there and how we target. I actually

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have used Google shopping myself. I think it was about

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eight years ago. I'm straining then trying to think when it was. I think it

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was about eight years ago. It was a very long time ago and I remember

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then it took me such a long time to figure the thing out because

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it was just really complicated. So I'd love to know, has it

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improved? Is it easier to use now? Yes,

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they are making it easier, which is good in some ways and not so much

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in others, but it is a lot easier than it was. I think I first

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did it about a bit longer than eight years ago, and then it was like

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you had to build a spreadsheet and upload it manually and it was horrendous.

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Nowadays, yes, there are more steps to setting

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this up than just a normal, what people

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consider as Google Ads, which is like, put some keywords

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in, write some ads and away you go. There are

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more steps to work through with Google

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shopping, but it is

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easier now because Shopify has, there's

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an app for Shopify, there's an app for Woocommerce that

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will build the file, the product feed that

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you need to create and submit to Google. And that is

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all done behind the scenes. It's all done through API and things like that. From

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that side of things, it's a lot easier than it used to be.

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It still can be overwhelming, though, for a lot of people because there's,

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oh, I've just got to, you know, an ad account, I need a merchant center

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account, I need a product feed, I need a, you know, I need

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to. There are these things. I've got errors and I've got warnings. What do I

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do? So that,

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you know, it's. But what I'm trying to say is it's a lot easier than

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it was. But, you know, some people just can

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find it overwhelming. But if you follow, if you work through it step by

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step, then it's definitely something that everybody can

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do 100%. Don't feel that, you know, don't

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believe people when they say, oh, it's all too complicated and you need to pay

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somebody to do it because you don't. That's really reassuring to

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hear. And what other things that you feel

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that you, what are the things that we need? Maybe if you

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can just briefly, but I don't know how many steps involved. If you can just

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briefly talk us through the steps and what you need, we can keep it really

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high level, just so everyone's got a bit of an overview, if that's okay. Okay,

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well, explain how I normally explain about how it works, because

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then that basically tells you what you need. Thank you. Your shopping

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ads are run, not surprisingly, inside your Google Ads account. So you

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need a Google Ad account. The difference with shopping ads and

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normal Google Ads is you also need a Google Merchant center

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account, and that's a separate account,

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which is effectively, if you can think about it, as

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a data warehouse for your product information. So that's

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Google Merchant center. They talk to each other. You also need a

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product feed. Now, anybody who's run maybe Facebook catalogue,

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you know, shopping, ads, what do they call performance? No

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shopping plus ads, whatever they are in Facebook,

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you'll be familiar with having to set up a catalog, a product catalog in Facebook.

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Same thing in Google. You have to create this, what we call a product

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feed that sits in Google Merchant center. And that

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kind of Google then looks at all your product information, says, yeah,

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that's okay, or no, we've got a problem with that. Go

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and fix it. And once Google is happy that it

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likes all the information that you've submitted for your products, it will

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then push that information through to your Google Ad account. And that is where you

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run your shopping campaign. So

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the product feed obviously is pulled from your website. Like I said,

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Shopify has the, there are multiple apps, but there's a free app

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run by Google. In shopify. There are plugins for woocommerce,

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Bigcommerce. Like whatever you're on, there'll be some kind of plugin or

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app that will generate that file that is submitted to

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Google's Merchant center account. That's the bit that

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usually confuses people. But once you realize and understand how it works,

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then it makes it a bit more straightforward. Does

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that make sense? It's quite hard to explain without visuals, but

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hopefully that's made sense. That does make sense. Thank you. I think that's just

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really helpful. Just, I think just knowing that there's the merchant center and there's somewhere

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you need to pull your product data to, like the catalog, I

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think that is just really helpful because it's really. I think it

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is a really hard thing to explain. I know. So thank you for that. I

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think just having that overview will be really reassuring because I think

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sometimes when you're thinking about trying something new, so maybe

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people thinking, okay, I'd like to try Google shopping. Often what can stop people

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is just that thing of, I don't know anything about this. I don't how it

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works and I don't want to spend hours watching YouTube

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or. That's right. And of course you can do it all in

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Shopify. And Shopify will try and get you to, oh, run your campaigns

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in Shopify. And then the problem with that is you really don't know what's

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going on. And I think a lot of people, for a lot of people,

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it's that little niggle of thinking, I don't know what's

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happening and I'm spending my money, but I don't know what's happening and

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I don't know if it's working. That's the bit, I think that puts a lot

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of people off. So if

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you could just kind of take the time to understand those elements,

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then it just gives you a bit of reassurance, I think, to understand what's

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happening and then it's easier to, or you feel more

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confident putting your money into it if you know what's happening and what's

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going on and whether it's working or not. So that makes sense. And maybe

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we can talk in a moment about how we know if it's working or not,

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actually, because that would be really useful to cover. But before we get

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to that, let's talk a little bit, if it's okay, about targeting. So

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how does targeting work on Google shopping?

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So when I talked about Google Merchant

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center, all the product

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information you submit to Google Merchant center, that product

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information is what Google uses to actually target your

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ads. So we don't say in a shopping

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campaign, please show me for these keywords, please show me for pink

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sundress and blue sandals. What we do is

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when we're submitting our product information to Google,

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it's that product information that determines when we show

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up. So this is the kind of the big step that I think a lot

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of people can miss and not understand the importance of

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optimizing. I mean, it'll be the same for Amazon. It's like optimizing

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an Amazon listing. You have to understand how people are going to

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search for certain products, and you have to make sure

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that that information is contained in your product

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feed. So, for example, if I

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sell artisan leather satchels, okay. Or

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dresses. Well, let's stick with pink sundresses, shall we? And I have a pink

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sundress that's called the aurora. And my website is

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called, you know, on the website it says the aurora dress.

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Well, that doesn't really tell Google that it's a pink

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sundress. So when we submit our information to

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Google, we have to make sure we include, this is

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a pink sundress in 100% cotton,

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pink sundress, blah, blah, blah. However, somebody would search for it, and then

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that's how Google knows when somebody searches for a pink sundress.

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Oh, right. This product, the title of the product in our

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feed says, oh, it's a pink sundress. Lovely. We'll show that product.

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Does that make sense? So that's how it works. Yeah. And lots

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of other parts of the feed that sort

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of influence that as well. But mainly

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your product title and your description. Well, that makes a lot of sense.

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And coming back to what we were saying earlier about your website, obviously having to

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sell your products, I think that these are, this ties together really nicely because

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I think by having titles and descriptions that describe

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your products really well, using language that someone would be searching

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for, I think that will help hopefully with sales and

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also help if you choose to Google shopping because all the information

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is there because as you say, customers might search, if we use

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Vicky Melissandres example, people might search by color or they might be looking for

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a dress that's made from organic fabrics, for example. Or they

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might be searching by the length they want it. They want a maxi length sundress

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or whatever it is. And I think that sort of

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thinking through all of that and having that in your description works

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for both conversions and Google shopping. Yes. Yeah. Well, because

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it will help your organic rankings as well, of course, because

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anything anybody's searching for and you know, like, you know, it's

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exactly the same as it is on Amazon, you have to have all that information

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in there, otherwise the machine is not going to know that that's relevant for

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what somebody is searching. So. Yeah, but

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it's something, I think it's a step a lot of people don't

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necessarily, they don't miss completely, but they maybe don't go into the

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depth that they could do to get the most out of the shopping

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ads. That makes sense. So I think knowing this now is

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brilliant. I think you've saved a lot of people a lot of time just by

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knowing this upfront because I'm sure that this is one of those things where people

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often go back and sort of revise,

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revise their data so that it works. That's

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brilliant. And how do we know if our targeting and our

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ads in general are working?

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Are there tools where you can see the progress of your ads? Can you tell

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how many sales you're getting via ads, via organic sales? How does that

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work? So, yes, inside

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your Google Ad account, there is something called conversion tracking. And

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so basically what that is, it's, it's a little snippet

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of code that sits on your website that tells the ad account

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if somebody's actually purchased, oh, I did cart or started the payment,

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started the checkout process. And so

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you 100% have to have conversion tracking set up. Like

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I said, if you're using Shopify and you have the channel app, Google the Google

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app, it's all done for you. That's all done. So the conversion

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tracking, basically inside your Google Ad account, when you're running your ads, you can

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see, I've spent 100 pounds. I've had four

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conversions, that is, purchases, and those conversions have

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been worth 400 pounds. So I've spent

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100, I've generated 400 pounds in revenue. Happy days.

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You can also see all the usual metrics that you

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would see in an ad account. You can see how many impressions you've had, which

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is. So that's how many times you've actually shown an ad to somebody,

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your click through rate. So that's how many percentage of people have actually clicked on

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your ad. There's loads of stuff, which I

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won't go into all of that now, but you can see all of that inside

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your ad account, which just helps you understand what's happening. You can see

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whether you need to give it more budget, you can see whether you're showing up

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high on the page or further up in the ads or whether you're

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showing up further down. And that's all vital. I

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mean, you have to, as you well know, you have to know that

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otherwise you're just throwing good money after bad if you don't actually know whether

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it's working. So that's where the conversion tracking comes

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in. You don't see any data for sort of organic traffic or

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anything in your Google Ad account. You see that in

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obviously your Ga. Four account.

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But the conversion tracking shows you everything you need to know

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about what you're spending, what you're generating in revenue from the

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ads and which products, in fact, are generating the revenue even down to.

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That point, that's really useful. And I'm thinking as well that with the

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conversion tracking, that also coming back to what you mentioned earlier about

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retargeting ads, for example, and I'm guessing also

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maybe you can, I'm assuming that if we went into this, we went today,

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but going into it in more detail, you can think about

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targeting ads at people who got to various stages in the process, but for

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some reason didn't buy, of people who maybe added to cart and then went away

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or spent a while on your page and didn't buy. So I guess it's

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key to have that conversion tracking set up. That's

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exactly it. Yes. So, and again, I think a lot more people

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are probably more familiar with Facebook ads. It's the same way you can build an

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audience in Facebook ads, you can build an audience in Google Ads and say,

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I want this audience to be made up of people who visited my website

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in the last 30 days. And I want this audience to be made up of

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people who added to their cart in the last 30

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days, you know, so you can do all this. It can get quite

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nuanced for most people. You don't need to get too detailed with all of that.

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It's good enough to say, I want the people who visited, the people

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who purchased, because obviously, if they've just bought from you, you don't want to be

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wasting money showing an ad to them if they've already purchased.

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And then you can kind of work from there and build your

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audiences 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 365

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days, and then show people ads who were there last year. If

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they came to your summer sale last year, maybe they'll come back this year. There's

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lots that you can go into, but as you say, I mean, that's a

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kind of a different conversation, really. But it's all part and

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parcel. You have to kind of do everything together, don't you, to get things, to

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get the best results, I think. Absolutely. And it sounds as well that there's enough

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to be thinking about. For anyone who's listening and thinks, we haven't tried Google shopping,

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I'll give it a go. It sounds like there's enough to be getting on with,

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getting the, just getting the ads running and working for

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you. And the other areas seem a bit more

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like advanced, maybe something you might do. Once you achieve

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a good return on your shopping ads, then that might be something that

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you might consider. But it sounds like the first thing is just to get

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everything set up and running. Well, yes, yes,

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I'd agree with that. So I don't like to dwell too much

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on negatives, but I think this might be just useful for people to

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hear the, what's the biggest waste of ad budget

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that you see? Because obviously we all have a certain amount of money that we

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think, okay, we can spend this on our ads. I don't know if I want

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to say waste, but what do you see where people, you think, oh, actually, you

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could have maybe done that differently and have made

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better use of your bad budget? Let's like that.

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So I think the biggest

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place where people could potentially waste money is

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there's something called negative keywords in Google shopping. So if

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I, I can look and see

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what terms are triggering my ads

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and what sort of search phrases

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people are putting into Google and then clicking on my ads.

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So if I, if I sell now, this is

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an example of one of my members, she sells dog toys. Everything she sells is

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dogs. It's dog apparel, dog toys, everything. And she was

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getting Google because, you know, it's a machine and sometimes it can be a

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bit stupid. She was seeing search

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queries that were saying cat toys and cat beds

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and she doesn't sell any of that stuff. And surprisingly she was still

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getting clicks for it because I guess a cat bed, maybe a cat bed looks

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quite like a dog bed. I don't know.

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So the way we can use negative keywords is to say, right, Google,

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I don't want you to show me if that query contains the word cat or

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free or cheap or, I don't

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know, secondhand or something like that. So I think that's a

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big one that can potentially cost you a lot

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of money and result in traffic

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that isn't going to convert. Because we do have to be realistic. Some people do

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click on ads when like, you know, we've

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searched for cat toy and I don't sell cat toys. Why are you clicking on

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my ad? Because they do. They do. So

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negative keywords is a big one and understanding how they

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work and understanding where you need to look to

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see what searches people are making

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to show your ads, that's probably the big one. And I think another big

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one is actually

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following Google's

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recommendations. I'm using air quotes, recommendations

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and blindly following what Google tells them to do. That can be

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a big problem because Google is usually only interested in you spending more

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money. It's not generally interested in you

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actually making more profit for your business. So

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it will say, oh, change this and we'll get you 50 more

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conversions at a cost of another, however many hundreds of

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pounds. And at the end of the

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day, that's not profitable for you. So that's another big mistake, I think. I see

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people making is just, oh, Google says I have to do this and they do

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it. And without understanding what they're doing. So

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those are my two, those would be my two biggest things, I think. Thank

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you. And that's really interesting because they're actually the same things or very

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similar things that I see with Amazon ads as well. So negative keywords is, I

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think, often people don't know where to look to see, okay, what

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someone actually typed into the search bar and how much have I spent and what

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have I made from that particular query? And then, yes, Amazon is

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exactly the same where it will say, oh, increase your budget by this

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or use these keywords. And I don't even know where a lot of this information

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comes from because I always look often clients will forward

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me recommendations, say, oh, they say we should do this. And I want to

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say 99% of the time, I don't know. That's

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completely not what we want to do. I'm not sure who

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generates these machine is. It's given, it's given a computer

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algorithm and then it goes away and it thinks that this is the one I

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love. Because a client of mine sells spray can graffiti

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spray paint, and a machine doesn't understand the difference

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between art spray, which is a can of spray paint,

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and spray art, which is a picture on your wall, but to them it's spray

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art spray. Same thing. No, it's nothing. So.

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Yeah, well that's really funny. And I can see there'll be so many examples

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of things like that. And that's why I guess it's good to be making sure

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that you're looking at what's going on. And I mean, I think this applies to

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any ad you're running. You just need to be on top of it and see

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where your money's going. No, and I think, I don't know whether

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you see that, but that's one of the biggest things I see with ads is

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people setting and forgetting. And then that's like a really easy way to

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spend a lot of money. Yep.

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And how do you help businesses with Google shopping, Sara,

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what can you do to help? If anyone's listening and thinking this all sounds great,

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but actually I just don't want to do it myself.

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So I manage Google Ads for ecommerce

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businesses. Generally those are kind of

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bigger budget accounts because otherwise it's obviously not worth paying somebody to manage your accounts

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if you're only spending 500 pounds a month. So generally if people

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are already spending about maybe two to

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3000 pounds a month in ads and just haven't got time

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to deal with it and to kind of watch it and optimize it,

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then that's where I can help. Or likewise, if you're new

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to advertising but you do actually have budget

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to put in it, then I can help with that as well. And for those

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retailers who, and I would advise this actually to

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start, even if you do have the budget, I would advise that you learn how

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to do it because it's, it's important that you

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understand what's happening before you actually hand it over

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to somebody else because then you know what questions to ask when

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you're looking at your account. And so I think you need to be well

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informed even if you're paying somebody else. In fact, even more so if you need,

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if you're paying somebody else to do it. But I also, for the people

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who do want to learn and do it themselves, I have a

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membership called the online retail academy. And then people can join that and

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learn. There's a whole course in there on Google shopping

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and they can work through that and get my help and

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support to learn how to do it themselves. And everybody can learn how to

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do it themselves. Just want to stress that even if you think you're a

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complete just technophobe,

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everybody, nobody hasn't failed yet to get somebody up and running with

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Google shopping, so. Well, that's really, really reassuring. Thank you,

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Sara. And I'll link through to your website and everything you

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offer in the show notes for this episode. Thank you. And so my

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very final question is, what was your number one piece of advice be

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regarding Google shopping? I think I've already touched

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on it is do not allow

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Google to update

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things in your account. So Google will make

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recommendations and say, oh, you need to up your budget, you need

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to tweak this target, you need to

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change this setting or whatever.

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But there's also, but unless you switch it off, they

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will do that automatically. You kind of have to go in and tell it not

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to. So that would be my biggest thing would be to

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say, you need to turn off this auto apply. They call it

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auto apply. Recommendations need to be turned off.

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Otherwise, especially if you are not in your account

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regularly, you can go back into your account after a month or two and you're

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looking at and going, what on earth is coming on? You're like, what's happened? Because

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Google has just applied something that it thinks is going to

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be good. And nine times

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out of ten it doesn't work out well for you. It just gets you to

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spend more money. So that would be my biggest piece of

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advice. That's so useful. Thank you. And I think everyone now

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that's using Google shopping is going to check the auto apply switched

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on. That's really useful. Thank you so much. And thank you for everything

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you shared with Asara. That's quite all right. It's been my pleasure. It's been lovely

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talking to you, Vicky. Thank you so much for

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listening. Right to the end of this episode, do remember that you can get the

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full back catalog and lots of free resources on my website,

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vickiwineberg.com. please do remember to rate and review this

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episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think

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might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.

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