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The holiday season is one of the most important periods for businesses, and online advertising plays a critical role in driving revenue and profits during this time.

Google Ads is one of the most effective platforms to advertise during the holiday season, but it can also be challenging to manage bids and budgets effectively, especially during the peak buying moments.

In this newsletter, we will show you how to maximize growth and efficiency by carefully managing your bid strategies and leveraging Seasonality Bid Adjustments to optimize your Google Ads campaigns.

Mismanaging your bid strategies can result in huge overspend and lower return on ad spend. Google’s Smart Bidding algorithm works great and uses historical data to predict future conversions.

However, it cannot adapt well to sudden conversion rate changes of more than 30%, and most businesses will have a bigger conversion rate uplift than 30% during Black Friday.

Smart Bidding adapts to the conversion rate uplift AFTER the peak buying moments, which can cause massive overspend the days after the peak, resulting in lower profits. Therefore, managing your bid strategies effectively is crucial to maximize revenue and profit during the holiday season.

In order to maximize revenue and profit between Black Friday and Christmas, there are five phases you need to go through: the ramp-up, the first peak, the first danger zone, the second peak, and the second danger zone.

Each phase requires a different strategy, and it is essential to have a clear plan for each phase to maximize the performance of your Google Ads campaigns.

During the ramp-up period, you need to start spending more to acquire as many customers as possible, but it is essential to be patient as most people wait until Black Friday to make a purchase.

To manage your campaigns during the ramp-up period, be clear on your targets and use the Performance Planner if needed to find your sweet spot ROAS.

If performance and budgets allow it, slightly lower your ROAS as you get closer to Black Friday to push harder. However, it is crucial to use as much historical data as possible and use the Performance Planner when in doubt. After the ramp-up period, it’s time to maximize revenue during the first peak.

The first peak usually lasts from Black Friday until Cyber Monday and is one of the absolute peak buying moments. To maximize revenue during the first peak, we recommend using Seasonality Bid Adjustments (SBAs).

SBAs are advanced bid adjustments that you can use to inform Google’s Smart Bidding algorithm that you expect an uplift of your conversion rate during a specific period.

The algorithm will use this information to push harder during that time range, resulting in increased spend, clicks, and CPCs. You can calculate your expected conversion rate uplift by analyzing last year’s conversion rate trends.

The danger zones are the periods AFTER the peaks when conversion rates are likely to drop, and overspending is possible. The danger zone is essentially an inverted peak, and it is crucial to be careful during this period to avoid overspending.

To manage your campaigns during the danger zone, monitor your campaigns carefully and adjust your bids and budgets accordingly to prevent overspend.

In conclusion, managing your bid strategies and leveraging Seasonality Bid Adjustments is crucial to maximize your profit with Google Ads during the holiday season.

By carefully managing your campaigns during each phase of the holiday season and adjusting your bids and budgets accordingly, you can drive revenue and profits while avoiding overspend and lower return on ad spend. Remember to analyze historical data, use the Performance Planner, and monitor your

Are you struggling to get results with your Google Ads campaigns? Do you feel like you’re missing out on growth opportunities, but don’t know where to look? If so, you’re not alone. Many advertisers struggle to improve their performance on Google Ads because they don’t know how to audit properly.

The truth is, auditing your Google Ads account is the best and fastest way to uncover growth opportunities and improve your performance. However, most people don’t know how to audit properly, and end up wasting time and giving wrong recommendations that result in unhappy clients. That’s why we’ve created our own system: a 3-step templatized auditing process that helps us save time, get better results, and impress our clients.

In this blog post, we’ll show you how to master the 3-step templatized auditing process for Google Ads accounts. We’ll cover everything from preparing for the audit, to conducting the audit, and finally, giving the best advice based on our findings. So, let’s dive in!

Step 1: Prepare – Brief the Client and Ask a Ton of Questions

The first step in our 3-step templatized auditing process is to prepare for the audit by briefing the client and asking a ton of questions. This step is crucial because it sets the stage for the entire audit process. Without proper preparation, you risk giving mediocre or even unwanted advice on how to improve results.

To prepare for the audit, we start by sending our client a detailed briefing document with questions about their business and goals, customers, competitors, market insights, products and services, marketing efforts, specific Google Ads goals, KPIs, challenges, and more. We only ask about Google Ads after we understand their business, goals, customers, market, and marketing efforts. By asking the right questions, we show our clients we truly care and showcase our expertise beyond just Google Ads. This reinforces our position as the authority in our field.

Quick bonus tip: always ask your client specifically WHY they requested an audit and what they’re hoping to get out of it. This will dramatically improve the quality of your output and how you frame your advice.

Step 2: Audit – Check the Account with a Template/Checklist

Once we have the answers to our questions, it’s time to conduct the audit and dig up any growth opportunities we can find. We use a template that’s basically a big checklist to quickly find out what’s working and what isn’t. We structure it based on 15 categories like goals and targets, performance insights, general (account) settings, connections, Search campaigns, Performance Max campaigns, bid management, budget, conversion tracking, audience data, remarketing, Google Merchant Center, and more.

In all those categories, we have over 200 checks that we go through one by one. We invested over 100 hours to create a document that fit all our needs. The template looks like this:

• Predefined question that needs to be answered
• Predefined column that ranks the impact of the check and fix (high, mid, or low)
• Predefined column that ranks the complexity of the check and fix (complex, neutral, or simple)
• Give a score to a check (through the predefined drop-down menu)
• Room for any notes on this specific finding
• Room for any screenshots to back up findings

 

3: Advise: give advice on how to improve results (with a clear action plan based on impact/complexity)

The final step in our templatized auditing process is to advise the client on how to improve their results.

We prioritize our advice based on the impact and complexity rankings we’ve given to each check in the audit.

This helps us to present the client with a clear action plan that highlights the most important changes that need to be made in order to see significant improvements in their performance.

We group the recommendations together based on category (as described in the audit checklist) and prioritize them based on impact and complexity.

For example, if we find that the conversion tracking is set up incorrectly, and it’s a high-impact and complex fix, then that’s going to be our top recommendation. We’ll explain why it’s important, what the impact could be, and provide detailed instructions on how to fix it.

We also make sure to provide context around why each recommendation is important, and what the impact could be on their business. We’ve found that this helps clients to understand why we’re making these recommendations, and it helps to build trust between us and the client.

Finally, we present our recommendations in a clear, easy-to-read format. We’ve created a presentation deck template that we use for all of our audits, which includes slides for each category in the audit checklist, as well as slides for the top recommendations.

This helps to make the presentation visually appealing, and it helps to reinforce the impact and importance of our recommendations.

Conclusion

Auditing a Google Ads account can be a daunting task, but it’s also a crucial one if you want to improve your performance and see better results.

By using a templatized auditing process like the one we’ve outlined here, you can save time, get better results, and make your clients very happy with advanced advice.

Remember to always start with a detailed briefing document and ask a ton of questions before you start auditing. Use a template or checklist to ensure you cover everything, and prioritize your recommendations based on impact and complexity.

And finally, present your recommendations in a clear, easy-to-understand format that highlights the most important changes that need to be made in order to see significant improvements in performance.

If you follow these steps, you’ll be well on your way to becoming an authority in the Google Ads field, and your clients will love you for it!

 

Are you tired of seeing your competitors outperform you in the online space? Do you want to take a slice of their traffic and revenue? Well, the good news is that it’s possible to ethically steal traffic and revenue from your competitors using Google Ads.

Many businesses are already using Google Ads to target specific keywords that their competitors are ranking for. But did you know that there’s a more powerful way to target your competitors’ traffic? In this post, we’ll show you how to hijack your competitors’ traffic and ethically steal their revenue using Google Ads.

Step 1: Create a Custom Audience Based on Your Competitors’ URL

The first step in this strategy is to create a custom audience based on your competitors’ URL. This allows you to directly target people who have shown interest in websites similar to your competitors’.

To create your custom audience, follow these steps:

1. Go to Tools & Settings > Audience Manager > Custom Segments > Hit the ‘+’.
2. Click ‘People who browse types of websites’.
3. Enter your competitors’ URL. You can choose to add one or multiple URLs.

Once you have created your custom audience, you can target your competitors’ traffic with YouTube, Display, and Discovery campaigns.

It’s important to note that your ads will reach people who browse websites similar to the URLs you enter. This doesn’t mean your ads will show on those URLs. Google can go beyond the targeting you’ve provided, so it’s essential to keep testing different audiences (with single competitors or multiple).

Step 2: Create Ads That Show Why Your Brand is Better

Just targeting your competitors’ audience isn’t enough. You need to actively show them why your brand is better. One way to do this is to create comparison ads that highlight the benefits of your brand over your competitors’.

Here are some examples of comparison ads:

• Bounty: 2X More Power Than Leading Brands

Bounty created an ad that compared their paper towels to leading brands. They claimed that their paper towels had 2X more power than leading brands.

The ad featured a side-by-side comparison of a Bounty paper towel and a leading brand’s paper towel. The Bounty paper towel absorbed more liquid and was more durable than the leading brand’s paper towel.

This ad is a great example of how to use comparison ads to showcase the benefits of your brand over your competitors’.

• Dove: Real Beauty

Dove is another brand that has successfully used comparison ads. They created an ad that tapped into an emotional angle. The ad showed two doors – one labeled “average” and one labeled “beautiful.”

Women were asked to choose which door they would walk through. Many women chose the “average” door.

The ad then revealed that only 4% of women would choose the “beautiful” door. The ad went on to explain that Dove believes that real beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.

This ad is an excellent example of how to use emotional appeals to connect with your audience and show why your brand is better than your competitors’.

Step 3: Write Comparison Ad Copy on Your Landing Page

The last step is to add comparison ad copy on your landing page. By doing this, you can boost your conversion rates by directly comparing your brand to competitors or the industry standard.

LearnWorlds has an entire landing page dedicated to comparing their product to Podia. They immediately show you why LearnWorlds is better than Podia from their biased perspective. As you scroll down, there are side-by-side comparisons on key features.

It’s not always about directly roasting your competitor. It’s more about identifying the main challenges and pain points of your customers and painting a clear picture of why your brand is the best solution.

Step 4: measure and optimize your campaigns

To measure your campaigns, you’ll want to use conversion tracking to see which ads and keywords are driving the most conversions. You can set up conversion tracking in your Google Ads account by adding a tracking tag to your website.

Once you have conversion tracking set up, you can see which campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords are generating the most conversions. You can then optimize your campaigns by pausing or adjusting underperforming ads or keywords and increasing your budget for top-performing campaigns.

It’s also important to track your return on investment (ROI) to ensure that your campaigns are profitable. You can calculate your ROI by subtracting your advertising costs from your revenue generated from the campaigns and dividing that number by your advertising costs.

Remember to continually test and refine your campaigns to improve their performance over time. This includes testing different ad copy, landing page designs, and offers to see what resonates best with your target audience.

Ethical considerations

While this strategy can be effective in stealing revenue from your competitors, it’s important to approach it ethically. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Don’t engage in false or misleading advertising. Make sure your ads and landing page copy are truthful and accurate.
• Don’t use your competitors’ trademarks or copyrighted materials in your ads or landing pages without permission.
• Don’t engage in click fraud or other deceptive practices that could harm your competitors or violate Google’s advertising policies.

By following these ethical guidelines, you can use this strategy to gain a competitive advantage without resorting to unethical or illegal tactics.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a way to gain a competitive edge and steal revenue from your competitors, targeting their custom audience with Google Ads can be a powerful strategy. By creating ads that show why your brand is better and optimizing your landing page copy to highlight your unique value proposition, you can convert your competitors’ traffic into loyal customers.

Remember to measure and optimize your campaigns to continually improve their performance, and always approach this strategy ethically to maintain your brand’s integrity and avoid legal issues. With the right approach, you can use this strategy to take your business to the next level and outpace your competitors in the online marketplace.

Bad lead quality can be a major challenge for Lead Gen advertisers, especially in expensive verticals like law, insurance, and software, where Cost per Lead (CPL) averages can be high. Low lead-to-sale conversions can also have a significant impact on Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Fortunately, there is a solution to improve lead quality and decrease CAC: Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT).

By importing offline conversions, Lead Gen advertisers can gain a more comprehensive look at which campaigns, keywords, and other dimensions drive the most sales and which ones do not. This data can help advertisers and algorithms optimize their campaigns for increased profit. OCT closes the loop from lead to closed deal.

When to Use OCT

There are several scenarios in which advertisers can benefit from using Offline Conversion Tracking:

• When you are a Lead Gen advertiser and close each sale offline, such as over the phone or in person, and want to import the closed deals with the actual revenue and/or net profit into Google Ads.
• When you are an E-commerce advertiser and close each sale online, but cannot use Google’s standard JavaScript-based conversion tracking scripts because they didn’t fire due to a script blocker. You can import these otherwise missed conversions into Google Ads.
• When you are a SaaS advertiser and want to leverage Value-Based Bidding (VBB) because not every customer represents the same Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) due to different churn rates. This makes it possible to switch from Target Cost per Acquisition (tCPA) to Target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS) and let the algorithm bid more aggressively for more valuable customers and vice versa.

How to Configure OCT

There are four different ways to set up Offline Conversion Tracking:

1. Directly through Google Ads Conversion Import
2. Conversions from clicks using Google Click Identifier (GCLID)
3. Enhanced Conversions for Leads (ECL)
4. Google Ads Conversion Import for Salesforce, Zapier offline conversion tracking, and HubSpot’s Google Ads optimization events tool.

Most of the time, advertisers use the native Google Ads Conversion Import. Enhanced Conversions for Leads is particularly recommended since it saves time and eliminates the need for custom development. This method is much easier than conversion from clicks using GCLID because it uses information already captured in lead forms by implementing Enhanced Conversions.

To Include or Not to Include

In the author’s opinion, every Lead Gen advertiser should leverage OCT for analysis and reporting purposes, such as calculating the actual Return on Investment (ROI) of Google Ads campaigns and determining where signed quotations are coming from. Ideally, advertisers would want to switch their primary conversion actions from their Google Ads conversion pixel (such as filled-in forms) to their Offline Conversion Import conversion action. This way, Smart Bidding can optimize towards closed deals instead of unqualified leads, greatly benefiting ROI by cutting away trash leads.

However, switching to the primary OCT conversion action greatly reduces conversion volumes, which can impact Smart Bidding, especially when conversion volumes are low. The author suggests having at least ten OCT conversions per campaign per month to make it work. If conversion volumes are low, advertisers can consolidate campaigns to increase conversion volume, or switch to a different OCT category to increase conversion volumes, but this negatively impacts lead quality and ROI.

Flipping the Switch

If advertisers decide to flip the switch, they should:

• Import Offline Conversions as frequently
• Before immediately turning on Smart Bidding after switching to the primary OCT conversion action, it is recommended to upload your Offline Conversions and wait for the conversion window to complete. This will provide you with a more complete understanding of which dimensions are driving the most sales and which ones are not.
• If you are uploading the revenue or profit of closed deals, you can consider testing with Value-Based Bidding, specifically the tROAS strategy, since you already have a conversion value in place.

By importing Offline Conversions, you gain valuable insights that can be used to optimize your campaigns for increased profit. This is especially important for Lead Gen advertisers who should consider implementing Enhanced Conversions for Leads (ECL) as soon as possible.

In conclusion, taking the time to upload Offline Conversions can provide you with valuable data to improve your campaign performance and maximize your profits.