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Google Ads Demand Gen Campaigns: First Results

John tested the Google Demand Gen campaign. We spent $30K in 3 weeks and doubled our leads inside Google Ads for the same ad spend... or so we thought. Join John as he dissects the data and reveals the hidden truths behind the numbers.

Google's Engaged View Conversions combined with Automated Bidding has spawned yet another kleptomaniac in the Google Arsenal known as Demand Gen.


Google Demand Gen campaign: so far, it's a disappointment.


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0:00 Google Ads Demand Gen Campaigns: First Results

3:05 Checking the Engaged View Conversions

4:30 Absence of UTM Parameters

6:30 YouTube campaigns are losing performance

8:03 Is it generating demand or attributing more existing demand to itself?



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Transcript
John:

Hey everyone, this is Jon Moran.

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:

Today, we're going to talk about

demand gen campaigns and why they

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might look like they're doing

better than they actually are.

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Always verify things with data.

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That's what this is going to teach us.

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So we have a campaign that has

been running for a little over

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three weeks for the client now, and

it's a demand gen campaign here.

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Now we spent in the last 30 days.

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Since it hasn't been running the full

time, we've spent 30, 000 since August

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28th, and it's now September 18th.

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So about 20 days spending 30 grand

we've actually seen some pretty massive

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changes in the account that looked good

initially, but then fell apart as soon

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as you start to dig a little bit deeper.

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So I'll share with you

the top line results.

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Cost peaked on August

24th at 33 K again, at.

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September 14th at 35 K.

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So pretty much, the same

cost, give or take like 2K.

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But conversions peaked at

137 and then peaked at 377.

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So that's a massive

increase in conversions.

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And it all has to do with

this new demand gen campaign.

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This demand gen campaign is all of

a sudden seeing 1, 500 conversions.

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It's our biggest conversion generator

in the account or so we thought.

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Let's split it in half

and actually dive in.

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Let's take a look at a little bit

closer as to what we're seeing.

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So looking at the last 14 days

compared to the previous 14 days,

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you can see the cost went up 9.

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48 percent of the conversions.

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And then conversion by conversion

time are both up 80 percent or more.

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So that's a massive

increase for same costs.

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And all of a sudden being able to

get go from, 1, 400 conversions,

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adding 1, 100 to it to 2, 500.

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That is huge.

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Why?

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. Demand gen shows that it

went from 205 to 1, 334.

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That's a big increase.

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That's a 550 percent increase with

only a 52 percent increase in cost.

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when things are too good to be

true in Google ads, most likely is.

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So we started to dig a little bit deeper.

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We started to look at

the conversion actions.

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We see that the Demand Gen has

that Info Kit request all of

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a sudden spike up like crazy.

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And so we looked and said

where are these coming from?

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We see that the Info Kit request

up to:

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That's a 90 percent increase.

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That's amazing.

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We should see some good

qualified leads from that.

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We didn't.

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We actually saw less by time,

a little bit more by click.

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Actually lost 7%.

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Here, and I gained 1 percent

that's odd qualified leads

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means that this people have been

contacted and they're interested.

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Now you can say conversion delay,

but that's not really necessarily a

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thing in the last 14 days compared

to previous 14 days is only down 7.

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If we had 90 percent more leads, I

should have more qualified leads.

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Where are they?

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And that's what I'm saying.

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We're importing these back in.

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I was like, what?

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Where would they be going if

we're importing these leads back?

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And I should see a higher volume.

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And that's when we started to dig

into what type of conversions it was.

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When you look at ad event type, we

can see that the demand gen has an

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engaged view conversion that has

spiked up to a thousand more than it

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did the previous two weeks went from

to:

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which is good now relevant to the cost.

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It's about average, but when you're about

for all of the other campaign types,

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but when you look at the actual engage

view conversion, that went up 847%.

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That's why these people

aren't in our system.

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They're not newer people.

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There are just people that were

going to be converting anyway,

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that simply were shown an ad.

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And the way you identify that is

by looking at the format video only

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will actually tell you that demand

gen here, for example, has 1, 325

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conversions in skippable in stream.

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So YouTube, we see this with YouTube quite

often, where if you're not removing the

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warm traffic, when you're not excluding

90 days worth of website visitors or

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more, if you want to, but when you

don't exclude the website visitors, the.

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YouTube portion of any campaign type,

whether it be DemandGen, PMax, or

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YouTube, will start to get a crazy

amount of engaged view conversions to

80

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people who are already going to convert.

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Now, one of the reasons why this

is going to happen inside of

82

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DemandGen is because in our YouTube

campaigns, it stayed healthy

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because we're hitting a target CPA.

84

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So target CPA is kept up from

spiking up, but with maximized

85

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conversions, it doesn't matter

where it's going to attribute these.

86

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It's going to find them anywhere it can.

87

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And so it's found a bunch of Warm

audiences that it gets to take all of

88

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the engaged view attribution for now.

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That's what's interesting here.

90

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As we didn't actually see

any new traffic to the site.

91

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We didn't, or a little bit

new, but not as much not, 550

92

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percent more leads attributed.

93

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They didn't have UTM parameters either.

94

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We saw an increase in UTM parameters,

but where we didn't actually see the

95

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people filling out the form with the

UTM parameter of demand gen means that.

96

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This is the reason why we didn't really

have much of an increase in leads.

97

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We didn't have much of an increase

in the UTMs attributed to demand

98

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gen, but Google was saying, Hey, it's

doing 550 percent better this last

99

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two weeks than the previous two weeks.

100

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So that was verified by CRM data, but

also verified that when you look at that

101

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conversion action, the conversion action

of these info kit requests here didn't

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match the qualified leads that we had.

103

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They were the same leads.

104

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Now, the other part you can

say is creating demand.

105

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when we're looking at the brand campaign,

I am vastly outspending what I can

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actually attribute as a daily ad spend.

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What that means, if I look at the last

seven days for a quick example, and

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I segment by time and by day, we have

some slight ads limited by policy.

109

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That's not the reason only one out of 96,

but I'm trying to spend 45, 000 a day.

110

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With manual CPC, and I'm

getting a click share of 94.

111

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24.

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I am capturing literally every

single person that would ever Google

113

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our brand ever, and I can only

spend about 14 to 15, 000 per day.

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I am spending everything I possibly can

over the last 14 days compared to the

115

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previous 14 days with these, a thousand

new people, are interested in our info

116

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quit kit, I should see more branded.

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More branded search.

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More branded leads.

119

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I'm not, I'm actually seeing 14%

less inbound branded searches.

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So inbound branding conversions.

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So it's not necessarily generating demand.

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I'm still capturing the same

amount of click share as well.

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So my cost for conversion

has spiked up a bit.

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My cost has stayed about the same.

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My conversions are dropping, but that's

also due to those split attributions.

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So because Google can split

attribution with things, I'm seeing

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click engage conversions go down.

128

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My YouTube campaigns are also

suffering the same fate though.

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So when you see our

YouTube campaign here..

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Some campaigns are actually losing

performance and they're losing

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performance over a longer period of time.

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So that's, what's crazy is some

are going from 77 down to 42.

133

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This was stayed about the same.

134

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This new one here is, can't be

attributed to that, but then our

135

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main campaign is also losing.

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So my main campaign is

losing, stay the same.

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This one's new.

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So we're seeing less YouTube.

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We're seeing about 10 to 50

percent less YouTube, which is

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equating to 10 to 15 percent less.

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Inbound brand is search because we've

been running YouTube for a long time.

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The only outliers is Dimanjan,

but Dimanjan is now producing

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550 percent more leads.

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What ends up happening.

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And one of the reasons why we actually

don't even charge this client for

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their branded ad spend is because this

client has a lot of additional traffic.

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They have traffic from major

news networks, major influencers.

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National TV brand, announcers, but

like people with their own talk shows,

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they are influencers for this brand.

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This brand is, has a

great organic traffic.

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We are specifically targeting

very cold traffic demand.

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Jen is targeting warmer traffic and simply

inserting itself into the conversion path,

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showing an ad to a person that is ending

up converting within the same three days

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that campaign type is going to be tracking

a gate view conversion, counting it.

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It's own spiking, spend getting

a thousand more conversions, but

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our brand is actually suffering.

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Our brand search is actually

suffering conversions because of it.

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So is it generating demand

or is it attributing more

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existing demand to itself?

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That's the question.

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We're going to be going through a top

line study to see how much actual.

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More new leads we've

got that was qualified.

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Cause right now it is the exact

same with a 80 percent increase

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in overall account growth.

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Our actual leads amount are

the same and our brand campaign

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is actually having less.

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geNerated demand.

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This is John Rand.

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We're going to have more for you,

but I wanted to give you this quick

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tip just to say investigate a little

further, because if I saw my cost for

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conversion be cut in half and get 80

and 85 percent more conversions after

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running demand gen, you could be really

inclined just to triple or double that

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ad spend, because this looks amazing.

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We'd never seen this before.

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Always dig a little bit deeper.

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Always understand your conversion path.

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Always measure your end CAC.

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Those will protect you.

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Make sure you triangulate.

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Your metrics that you see inside

of Google ads, because sometimes.

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It's just Google getting better

at attribution and you'll be the

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one to lose if you base your long

term metrics off of Google's KPIs.

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Thank you so much.

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Bye.

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