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Google Ads Strategy: Removing Google’s Algorithm From Standard Shopping

John scaled campaigns to 130% without hitting a point of diminishing returns in either the Media Efficiency Ratio (MER) or Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Let's explore how he achieved this impressive feat.

In this episode, John shares a quick update on the low tROAS bidding strategy. He identified an issue many of you have also been experiencing and what you can do to improve your campaigns. The predictive bidding strategy is not as efficient as we expected, resulting in higher Cost Per Click (CPC).


To overcome this challenge and maximize campaign performance, John devised a strategy centered around removing Google's algorithm from Standard Shopping. Discover John's methodology and understand how you can apply it to your own Google Ads campaigns, listen to this episode now.


Connect with John on Linkedin:  

 / johnmorangads  


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0:00 Google Ads Strategy: Removing Google's Algorithm from Standard Shopping

4:42 Scaling with Max Clicks bidding

6:49 The tROAS bidding strategy was over clicking

8:18 Google’s algorithm doesn’t know enough



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Transcript
Jon:

Hey everyone, John Moran here.

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And today I'm about to share

with you a quick update to my

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low TROAS bidding strategy.

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There's actually been a

issue that I've been able to

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isolate, identify, and correct.

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And it's something that I think you'd be

interested in seeing, because a lot of you

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have been reaching out to me on LinkedIn

through direct messages, through comments

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about how you've been actually even

doing some posts mentioning me about how

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you're using a low TROAS bidding strategy

and your standard shopping campaigns

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and have been seeing some good success.

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And I have been as well.

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There's the inefficiency though.

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It sometimes will go

really high with our CPCs.

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And that's simply because the

bidding strategy doesn't know

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too much about these people.

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It's the first click that they've

ever potentially have searched

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or first click that, have ever

interacted with Google ads.

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So the predictive bidding strategy

is not necessarily as efficient.

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So low TROAS trying to get a low TROAS is

going to bid very high to make sure that

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they can maximize that conversion value

within a half attributed bidding strategy.

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When you're talking about attribution,

so with low TRO as the byproduct of

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that is, is going to bid high and

because it's going to be a bit high,

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it only really needs to average out to

at least 40 percent or 50 percent of

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what your actual, return needs to be.

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So when you're talking about the

campaign here, for example, you'll see

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that I have a headband campaign that

was getting a dollar 91 average CPC.

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On its own, but this is all July.

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I got 12 clicks, 12, 11, 10,

9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4.

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And we barely broke the bottom

of the 5 CPC in the first 50.

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Now there's 30, 000 search terms here.

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And the first page is above five ish, but

I still have an average of a dollar 91.

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Why?

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With the low TRO as bidding,

it says, okay, I can spend 12.

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And if I make a sale, that's coming

in around 40 percent TRO as if

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it's a six or seven or 8 sale.

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It's going to be inefficient.

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Now, typically a person would say

why don't I just set a bid cap to

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do a portfolio bidding strategy?

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And I thought instead of doing that

why are we leaning into an algorithm

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that knows a little bit about

the people when they first click?

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Again.

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This is the first time they've

ever actually searched with Google.

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Maybe.

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Maybe they've been looking at some

things online, and maybe you can

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find the people that have been,

identified by Google's algorithm.

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As this is the searches that they've

been doing on Google, or this is certain,

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not search, this is a search that they

may have done on YouTube, or they've

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may been looking at some blogs, or

they may been reading some articles,

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or maybe looking at competitive sites.

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But if it's a first click

inside of Google, Google

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knows very little about them.

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And so it doesn't know where

to actually set the bid.

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So what's interesting about

this is if I said, let's remove

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the algorithm altogether.

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Let's just say, rather than using a half

smart algorithm because of data driven

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attribution, giving too much to brand and

also a half smart algorithm, because it's

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also the first click, what if I just focus

on search terms and focus on new volume?

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So we're going, we're turning

the clocks back 10 years.

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We're going back to max clicks with a bid

cap and why max clicks with a bid cap.

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I'll tell you is because when

you're looking at the average

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cost per click of a dollar 91, but

you're getting 12 and 10 clicks.

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Every one click I get at 12 would

basically be six clicks at 2.

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I take my average CPC and I increase it by

about 25 to 50%, or what I would do here.

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For example.

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Has taken my search terms and

let's say adding in a CPC that

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is above, let's say a four.

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What is my, what does that

look like here for example?

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And do I have a lot of conversions

compared to the ones that are below?

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Yeah, you can see that you see the

differences, 45 conversions in July.

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And if my CPC though is over three.

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Okay, so that's 2000 clicks.

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There's 222 clicks.

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It cost me a thousand dollars made 10.

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All right.

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What about, let's say 3 and 50 cents?

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I'm just using a really.

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bad example here because it's

just the one that was come up,

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but now I have above three 50.

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It's still 4.

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2 ROAS.

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Okay.

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So conversion rate's decent, but what's

interesting is it's not necessarily

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producing the majority of the results.

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Now multiply that with a lot of

different shopping campaigns.

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And then you start to see some

potentially, some opportunity.

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If I have, if you're following

along with my 19 different

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standard shopping campaigns.

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And if I said, what if I just took.

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All of the TROAS, change it into max

clicks, set the bid cap 25 to 50 percent

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higher than my average CPC, cut out

the really expensive fat at the top.

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What would that do?

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So I started to look through each one of

my campaigns and I looked and said, man,

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anything that's above two on that one,

everything's above a three on that one.

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They actually start to have higher

conversion rates, but way higher

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CPCs, much lower amount of clicks,

and then much less conversions.

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So there's inefficiencies there.

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The ROAS inside the campaign, even though

it's only, Half attributed is lower than

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the clicks that are coming in at sub 2.

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what I did is I took the

campaigns and I changed them to

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a maximum click bidding strategy.

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So now I'm on max clicks across the board.

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I set a bid cap at each one

of these to 2 and 15 cents and

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said, let's see what happens.

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We did that on the 8th.

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So the 8th through the 11th, what

you'll see here, for example.

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Is my cost is down 16%.

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My clicks are up 78 percent and

my 62 percent more conversions and

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56 percent more conversion value.

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So I was able to cut my CPA in half

and almost double my row as in the

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first four days, I'm like that's cool.

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How is my positioning still good?

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How my search terms are still good.

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Excellent.

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Can I scale this?

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If I look at the last kind of 14

days, for an example, we can see

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a really nice, healthy scale.

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The clicks are going from 1100

and 28 half conversions or quarter

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conversions to 6, 000 clicks, 178.

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What about my cost and my

conversions costing conversions

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are ramping up with it very well.

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I can scale this to a one to one.

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Let's take a little bit of a deeper look.

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Let's take a look at all

of the campaign types.

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Actually, I have that already here.

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Let's look at all of the campaign

types that are search and shopping.

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And then let's look at everything

here that's not this one

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outside of the country search.

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Let's filter by that campaigns.

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What does that arch look like?

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That looks pretty good here as well.

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It's starting to ramp up in 3, 000,

cost in 400, all the way up to 11, 679.

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That's interesting.

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So now it's scaling.

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If my predictions are correct though, and

I should see a majority of these people

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coming back through my brand campaign,

my brand should look really good.

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Let's check the last seven days compared

to the previous seven days here now.

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And if I'm checking the last seven

days compared to previous seven

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days, my brand campaign only spent 4

percent more, but Oh, I broke Google.

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That's okay.

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Spend 500 more.

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So nothing too crazy, 12, 1 to 12, 6,

but I made 32, 000 more, 146 to 180.

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Excellent.

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So for pretty much no cost, I gained

32, 000 in new branded conversions.

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Where are they coming from?

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Everyone that's engaging in my search

campaigns that are getting more ROAS,

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sorry, not ROAS, more convergent

value, more convergent, excellent.

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So what we found out.

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Is that the T row as bidding

strategy was over clicking?

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Why?

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It was a too small of a goal.

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I had to do that though, because it had

too small of attribution as a proven here.

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It's going to come back

through the brand campaign.

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And then I thought, okay well,

let's let's actually verify this.

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Google ads is a horrible reporting model.

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So let's look at a couple

other things inside of the.

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Lifetimely.

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How was my week doing this last week?

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I gained 25 percent more net

profits and I'm up to a quarter

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million in net profit last week.

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That's good.

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That's scaling up well.

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What about if that was Facebook though?

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Facebook must has to be pushing, right?

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Let's verify that inside of the

dashboard of Norpe, you can see Google

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ads is 41 percent more spend 53 port.

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53 percent more new visits to the

site, my true cost of acquiring a

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first time customer globally dropped

and inside of Google went up 0.

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3 percent in the last seven days.

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So I made 32 percent more conversion

value off of 31 percent more transactions.

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Again, this is multi click attributed.

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I'm taking all of the clicks

that already came from Facebook.

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Out including brand and then

seeing what this is working with.

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So I was able to scale this up in

the last week, 41 percent get 32%.

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I didn't change my CAC.

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My CAC stayed about the

same, which is fantastic.

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That's what I want.

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And what's nice is we're on a really nice,

good ramp up here in the last 14 days.

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And we're going to continue to ramp up.

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So this is a really nice scale.

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Net profits holding CAC is holding.

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I'm scaling up.

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My campaigns are becoming much, much, much

more efficient all because we wiped out.

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The above where I needed to be clicks and

Google's algorithms don't know enough.

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The single click attribution is dead.

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Data driven is over attributing

to my brand campaign.

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Fine.

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But then I get to see my in app standard

shopping CACs, my in app standard

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shopping ROAS, and then measure the

brand return search, ensuring that

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no one else is actually scaling.

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Facebook spent about the same, made 6.

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6 percent more.

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Why?

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It's because they're running the advantage

plus shopping campaigns that are also

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capturing more new visits with less.

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With less ad spend.

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So we're competing with each other

there a bit, but the ratio of new

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visits to visits is actually 13.

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5 or 13 percent higher than visits.

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more new cold traffic, better better

efficiencies, cutting out the fat at

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the top, multiply that by 19 campaigns.

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And the best part is now I'm going to be

able to still continue to scale this up.

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And if you look at the, the

cost factor since the 10th.

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If I just look here, for example, I was

able to take my campaigns and increase

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them 130 percent more in one week

without hitting a point of diminishing

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returns in either my MER or my CAC.

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Top line actually got better.

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Why?

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Because Google ads sucks at attribution.

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And this is all that matters is your

clients about, bottom line or top

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line, whatever you want to call it.

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Low TRO is good.

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There isn't, there is an inefficiency

in there, but you still can scale.

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By taking a deeper approach,

removing the algorithm of what Google

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doesn't know and leaning into good

old fashioned quality marketing.

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Thanks so much.

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