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What to Do if Your Google Ads Campaign Is Not Converting on Cold Terms - Part 1
15th June 2024 • The Google Ads Podcast • Solutions 8
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John Moran, our Senior Client Strategist, analyzes a Google Ads account that hasn’t been converting on cold terms, and is only converting on brand terms. Learn more about John's process of analyzing why this is happening.

In this episode, John also emphasizes the importance of analyzing various channels, tracking conversion paths accurately, and understanding the customer journey to improve conversion rates. Listen to this episode to learn how to optimize your Google Ads campaigns if you're having trouble converting cold traffic and watch out for Part 2 for the continuation of how John troubleshoots the account.


PS: This episode is from a recent internal Solutions 8 training.


Learn about the Solutions 8 Digital Marketing Services here: www.sol8.com/digital-marketing-services



0:00 Intro

0:15 What to Do if Your Google Ads Campaign Is Not Converting on Cold Terms

3:34 Checking channels

7:07 SMs is the worst for attribution

12:51 Check customer geography and learn more

18:00 Reviewing attribution sources



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Transcripts

Speaker:

We're so deep in the rabbit hole now

of little bolt ons and add ons and

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:

strategies and that type of stuff.

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:

The only thing that doesn't always

change is does more high quality

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cold traffic convert, regardless of

what conversion journey they took.

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:

So John, our biggest struggle in this

account is that we haven't been able

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:

to convert on cold terms and we've had

this client for probably two years now.

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It's been a real struggle.

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It just really converts on brand.

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so we've had a really terrible

traction on top of funnel terms.

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:

Okay.

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And I think even our P max brand

excluded is still showing up for brand.

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Yeah.

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And this is 1 more thing to add here.

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we have made few changes

on titles and descriptions.

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It has improved the.

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Search terms quality, I will say,

but still, we are not able to,

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target huge masses or not able to get

impressions and clicks on those terms.

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what other channels are they spending on?

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just Facebook.

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Do we know their meta,

weekly or monthly spend?

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approximate.

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Yeah.

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Weekly.

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Let me grab it here.

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Doing weekly, Melissa, they

are doing Tabula, right?

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or Facebook?

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they do like native ads

and like affiliate as well.

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so weekly spend 9,000 John.

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On Facebook.

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9,000 a week.

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And then we spent in the

last seven days, 600.

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So we'll do.

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640 plus, was going to say 9, 000, right?

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Okay.

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Do we have a CAC target for them?

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basically we have a ROAS target, but

it's new, it would be new customers.

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So I would say like

anything like above a 1.

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8 to a 2 would be, they

would be really happy with.

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Okay.

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their current CAC is 50.

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48 if they're not spending on any

other channels, just Meta and Google.

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they started running P max, they did it

in:

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right now is 50 48, their last week, 719.

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of the 719 are new.

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So they have a lot more

returning than new.

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And it looks like of the big

things was, there's probably like

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an April sale that took place.

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So typically they get more

returning than new every day.

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Yes.

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So we have to look at, here's a good

thing is we have to look at this.

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If we don't have like performance max,

here's a good area to check in on.

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Is looking at the marketing and then

looking at the channel report and

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then looking at a 1st click and then

looking at like a 7 day and then

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descending by 1st time customers.

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We have Google paid as 13 and

23, so we're delivering almost

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twice the amount of returning

customers than 1st time customers.

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Now, this is also the inclusion of brand.

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So we have 13 customers last week in

Google paid from first click perspective.

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This is where we look at in the last

seven days as an example as to what we're

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tracking in terms of just all purchases.

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Now, again, we don't want to take this

as gospel, but the trends are right

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because if we're looking at Google paid

giving us a lot of first time customers.

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We can also see, though, that Klaviyo

Paid, no, Klaviyo Paid is driving almost

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the amount of same first time customers,

which is interesting to think about.

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why?

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One of the reasons that this happens is

because they get to the site, they sign

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up for an email, then they take advantage

of that discount, and we don't get

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any attribution instead of Google Ads.

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So it could be driving

a whole bunch of stuff.

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But we don't ever see attribution for it.

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Remember attribution, put

attribution out of your mind.

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Now, in app attribution,

Google can do very well.

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my most recent launch of a

campaign, I'm getting a 4.

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25 Edmer on new customers with a 0.

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41 percent ROAS and standard shopping.

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It's okay.

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Imagine Google's a hundred percent

wrong and you can't look there.

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Now, what do we do?

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that's what we all have to

start thinking about is.

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Identifying that customer journey

by single points of attribution.

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So when you see something like this,

where Klaviyo has 109 returning

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customers, but 10 first time customers

that's beating Google in returning

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customers, but we're beating Klaviyo

and first time customers, however.

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There's a lot of brand here last week.

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We had two, three sales inside

of our non brand campaign and

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PMAX that brought probably first

time customers from brand terms.

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It tells us that PMAX will

attribute more just inherently

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because these are email purchasers.

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These are email buyers.

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Our first time customers,

primarily when you don't count

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brand or coming from email.

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So what is the cure?

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That's what we have to figure out.

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Go into the marketing,

go into the top channel.

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Let's go last 30 days.

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Sort descending.

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This is first click.

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We have 84 and Klaviyo.

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Interesting.

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Now they spend a whole bunch of

money on meta that don't give us

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a lot of first click attribution.

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That's okay.

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We can see though that they are driving

probably more cold traffic than we are.

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Because we do have Brandon

here and they have more first

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than returning from a click.

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Now let's look at last

non direct attentive.

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Attentive is SMS.

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It's text messaging marketing.

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So text messages is going to be the

worst for attribution ever, because

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that's a text link from a phone that

they got from a probably maybe different

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device, laptop signs up for email.

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They text them attributions gone.

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So when we think about the customer

journey, imagine just missing as

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soon as you bring in that new user

that comes to the site and then

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they sign up for text messages, the

attributions out of Google's gone.

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they're not even on the

same device anymore.

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Or maybe.

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Let alone least IP address,

wifi connection, et cetera.

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So attentive and Klaviyo have

brought in more first time customers

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this month than any other channel.

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And these two.

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Are a linked channel.

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This is actually not paid.

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that's not true.

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But look at the volume of sales

and look at the amount of orders.

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And look at the conversion rate.

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Does that conversion rate

look really cold to you?

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No, very warm.

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So Facebook looks real cold, right?

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that conversion rate sucks, but

they spend a lot more than us.

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So what we're seeing here is

that this Facebook is bringing

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probably a lot of these here.

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So Facebook is bringing a

lot of them here because why?

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Facebook doesn't attribute anything.

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They do attribute more cold and

warm, but people don't just come

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up and sign up for email addresses

in order to get their first time

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purchase discount off of Google brand.

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when we start to look at the flow of

traffic and we start to look at how these

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people are coming in and just the human

nature of beings, human beings, we will

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probably look as bad as Google does.

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Where they spent 3, 000 in sales

and they spent what, 9, 000 a week?

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So they spent 36, 000 to make 3, 000.

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It's probably what our Google

looked like on cold traffic, right?

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That's okay.

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We have to take into the

CACMR and LTV targets.

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If we just scoop up brand, we live and

die by how good their meta team is.

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And please do an email blast

and SMS blast this week so we

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can earn some ROAS company.

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That's what PMax may be doing right now.

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So don't necessarily look at in app ROAS.

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That's not going to tell you something.

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Attentive will crush Google.

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And now you're dead in the water.

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And that's why Google is only able

to attribute a conversion when it's a

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branded click, because that's the point

in time that they can actually, earn that.

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That's why it's like I entered in

my brand exclusions, but my brand

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excluded is still getting brand sales.

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So YouTube is good.

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That's fine here, but the PMAX feed

only, let's see what this one we're

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spending the most amount of money on.

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that's, brand.

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But we have 5 out of our 9, our brand.

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Our other campaign was all brand.

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So my opinion is Google is not driving

new users to sign up for attentive.

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It's not driving new users

to sign up for clavio.

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We're potentially getting, our 139.

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Returning customers that

want to buy something else

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attributed their first time.

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Customers will come

though heavily from brand.

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What do you want to do when

you want to buy something?

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Google the brand.

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So here's what I would say is start

to measure a global CAC or a global

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and CAC just 1st and foremost, that

global and CAC right here of 50.

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48 is our true north

star just to begin with.

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And say, if I were to drive high quality

standard shopping traffic, which means

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man, these search terms look like they

should be doing something most chances

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are, they probably are, they're just

doing it in attentive or Cladio So

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I go there for the first time ever.

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Actually, limited time, free

shipping on all products.

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Awesome.

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take the quiz.

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Are we tracking any sort

of quiz, completions?

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Nope, we aren't anymore.

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So this right here, for example,

could be where all of our Google

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traffic is lost to attentive.

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Wait, enter your email to get 10

percent off any of our Google traffic

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that goes here and takes a quiz.

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We will lose attribution

for we shouldn't, but we do.

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That's why we don't trust Google.

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I go to a page here, subscribe and save.

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How many of our purchases are

coming into subscriptions?

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Not that much.

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Our online store tanked, but it's

because there was an Easter sale

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in the time before that on Sunday.

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So if we look at our customers, here's a

good indicator to have things that like,

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Hey, where do these people come from?

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If you go into the first order

date and then just open up, five,

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it'll tell you, okay, this order

here, there's no conversion.

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Okay.

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Sometimes if for subscription

models, it just doesn't give

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you any conversion thing.

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So product sync, do we know what product

sync is, but it's like a secondary, I

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don't know if it's like a secondary,

like landing page where he sends like

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his native traffic or like taboola ads.

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Cause he runs like a lot of affiliate

stuff as well, but he doesn't send it

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straight to the website as we see it.

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Okay.

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Do we know what Mediago is?

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Mediago?

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No, I don't know what that is.

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That's like the additional details.

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Cora.

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So this one was showing

like source value is Cora.

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Source value is Mediago.

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Source value is Mediago.

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Source value is Mediago.

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Source value is 38 harsh.

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What's up?

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Yeah.

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So John, another thing is I've

tried like us inbound campaign

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here, search inbound campaign.

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Another one was a standard shopping,

which was purely to the top of the funnel

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traffic and the convert and the search

terms were looking great at that moment.

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And we were getting clicks.

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We were spending good amount

of money as well, but we did

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not getting any conversions

except search term particularly.

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So what I did, I looked at the

old time data and what I examined,

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we, Jake, like we have 10, 000

conversions data in the Google ads

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account and almost 9, 500 were from.

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So what I think it might be, or it could

be anything, which is like black box

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thing where the account is learned in

a way that it is just only tends to get

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conversions from Thomas specifically.

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Is there any possibility for that?

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Yeah, the problem is aware of the

app and their customer journey

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went to Google in a brand name.

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if we don't track any conversions

in app, like we don't look

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at that there's media go.

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I call it Mediago, but media go here.

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We got to find out what this is.

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That's getting all the attribution.

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there's a source value here.

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We got to figure out what this is

because this, for example, is this

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interrupting that journey because

there is no conversion details.

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It almost looks like this is

a draft order because this is

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actually coming from product sync.

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this is the attribution engine

that Shopify sees, which means

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does our tag even fire on this?

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Looks like it's a funnel.

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product enhance, add funnels.

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So from an ad funnel, this

could be used only by affiliate

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marketers, this could be the engine.

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That's what I'm saying.

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We have to know these conversion paths.

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We, if we look in app in Google ads,

we have to say every text message

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is a hundred percent accurate.

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Every email a hundred

percent accurate from us.

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Every media go funnel we're tracking

tested 100 accurate to us If we can't

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say yes to those three, we can't look

at google But what if he's sending

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traffic john to this if this media goes

like a funnel so it's just separate

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He's sending traffic to those pages

from his like native and taboola ads.

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Like he's not sending traffic to the

actual Website like us and Facebook

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are the only paid advertising

that are going to the website.

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And that was, that would be my question

is, does Clavio and attentive send it

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there to the website or to the media go?

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I don't think so.

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I think that is specifically

for the website.

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What do you mean for the website?

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I'm sorry.

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It's not the funnel media go.

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Like I think Clavio and SMS.

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when someone places an order on product

sync, how did they get to product sync?

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Do we know?

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I think this is the funnels

we're talking about.

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this is his, like taboola or native ads.

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this is where they're sent to.

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Okay.

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Got it.

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So no email, no funnels that we're

driving traffic to can get to media

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sync in any way, shape or form.

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No.

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Okay.

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so we'll just keep all of

these out then for now.

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So we got

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perform media, no

conversion, product sync.

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Okay, we have, holy crap, online store.

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Bing, ha!

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Okay, Bing did something.

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we got product sync, nothing here.

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is this a native ad on Cora?

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That's what it looks like to me.

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It does.

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And why would someone

Google that brand name?

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You've heard of it elsewhere.

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where?

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Yes.

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If we drove more cold traffic,

getting people to actually ask those

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questions cac or hold it at scale.

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Could be.

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So that's what I'm saying is we have to

look at everywhere from a conversion path.

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How does a journey get gets us?

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We know core is places where

people go and ask questions.

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And if they are assistance of just

saying, This is a really popular

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SEO strategy where they get a good

high quality backlink from Cora by,

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or, and read it by going on Reddit

and be like, does this really work?

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And then having an employee at

the company, it's I grew six

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feet it overnight, it's amazing.

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And then you're like, Oh, okay.

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So those are the things that we have to

look about is why does someone do that?

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if I drive in the best anti wrinkle

cream and then they hit the page on

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standard shopping and then they go

and ask questions and then Cora earns

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that attribution, Google ads says,

shucks, we didn't do anything today.

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So I always have to look at all those

conversion paths and then measure

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by NCAC and that kind of stuff.

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we're so deep in the rabbit hole now

of little bolt ons and add ons and

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strategies and that type of stuff.

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But the only thing that doesn't always

change is does more high quality

317

:

cold traffic convert, regardless of

what conversion journey they took.

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You remember when I used to show up

the North beam and I say, Hey, this

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spend here and those top line metrics

are the only thing that matter and

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everything else is customer journey.

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I used to X that out in the middle.

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That's a good example of this here.

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