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Driving Sales with Google Shopping Ads with Ryan McDonald, Ep #25

Oct 24, 2019

With the growing trend to build multiple streams of revenue, investing some money in Google Shopping ads can drive your sales off-Amazon. It’s important to build a brand that people can find off-Amazon and learn how to drive traffic to your site. In this episode of Maximizing Ecommerce Ryan McDonald shares his insight into paid traffic and why you need to make the leap.

Ryan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management and Marketing. He owns and operates Shade Digital Marketing which specializes in online advertising, graphic design, and website creation. His 6 years of experience managing over $2,100,000 in monthly ad spend is welcome experience in this episode.

Outline of This Episode

  • [0:40] Driving sales to your website
  • [1:50] Kevin introduces his guest, Ryan Mcdonald. 
  • [6:30] Ryan’s paid ad career
  • [13:50] Google Shopping ads long-term picture
  • [17:00] Where to get started
  • [20:20] Search results are determined by auction
  • [24:45] Things to think about
  • [26:30] What should someone start with?
  • [30:20] Google shopping gets you faster results
  • [31:55] How to connect with Ryan

If you’re in ecommerce Google Shopping should be your priority

Ryan has worked with over $50,000,000 in ad spend, and over 80% of that spending has been on Google. Google has 4 different categories for ads: Search, Shopping, Display, & YouTube. Ads on Google Search are an option, but in ecommerce, your focus should be to leverage Shopping ads. 

When a person types in a search query on Google, the algorithm does it’s best to gauge your search intent. If it ascertains that you are looking to buy something, it will return shopping ads in the results. If you’re not familiar with it, these ads typically consist of images in the sidebar that show the product that’s for sale. If clicked on, these images will link to a website. 

The future of shopping on Google

Ryan dropped a piece of hush-hush information (but if you did a google search you’d find it) about where Google is headed. Typically, when a buyer clicks on a shopping ad, they are taken to the merchant’s website to complete the purchase of the product. In the future...

Google is planning to tie your virtual wallet to your Gmail account. 

The end goal is to enable one-click purchases directly on Google. You will no longer be required to purchase directly from the merchant. Google will send all necessary information to the merchant and act as the middle-man. It’s where the future of purchasing is headed. 

Where do you start?

If you’ve only exclusively sold on Amazon and are ready to branch out and diversify your sales platforms, where do you begin? It may be obvious, but Ryan states you must build a website for your brand. If people do a Google search you want to know that your product will come up in the search results.

Secondly, open up a Google Merchant account. This is where you set up and optimize your shopping ads, decide what your max bid will be for certain keywords, and set up negative keywords. If you’re used to the Amazon platform, Google’s is a little more advanced, but gives you more options for optimization. 

To hear more of Kevin and Ryan’s conversation on where to get started, as well as the bidding process for ads, listen to the whole episode now!

Some things to consider as you grow your presence

A large chunk of product-based searches happens on Google. You want your presence there. People don’t always navigate to Amazon—so It’s time to stake your claim by investing in ads. When your product shows up in shopping ads, the other thing you need to consider: is it competitive?

Is your price point competitive? Do you have positive reviews? Do you even have reviews?

As you’re building your brand these are some basic things to consider. Building a website and investing in ads and slowly building reviews helps your brand awareness. People are more likely to purchase from a brand they’re familiar with. Remember to adopt a long-term mindset and that success off-Amazon will not happen overnight.

To hear more about dominating the market, listen to the whole episode with Kevin and special guest Ryan McDonald now!

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Ryan McDonald

Connect With Kevin Sanderson


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