w/ Menachem Ani, JXT Group
Listen in as Menachem Ani, a Google Ads expert with two decades of experience, joins to explore Google Ads and the current best practices for Shopify merchants seeking to amplify their e-commerce growth. We're talking Performance Max, Demand Gen campaigns, and the nitty-gritty of integrating Google with Shopify. We delve into advanced tactics for segmenting campaigns, the art of crafting killer product titles, and leveraging audience signals to make your ads pop.
Chapters
The future of Google Ads is knocking, with automation and YouTube Shorts taking the front seat. Menachem drops some serious knowledge on feeding the system with data for optimal results and shares tips for conquering the ever-changing landscape of Google Ads.
If you're ready to elevate your Google Ads game, this is the episode you don't want to miss.
Kurt (00:27.87)
My friends, it is 2024. That means January, right? I already, I have abused to death that joke. Oh, well, see you next year, right? It's got several weeks of that under my belt, really exercising my dad joke rights. And today, I want to go over how we're gonna scale our stores this year. Well, we gotta go deep on something. I think that Google Ads is really, is one of the best ways.
to do this. I think the level of options they give you, I think it's easier to do than Facebook ads to start with. But it may not necessarily be the right fit for everybody. And truthfully, it has been many years since I've had to personally manage any of these campaigns. So easier said than done. I need an expert. I need someone with enough experience to talk us through it. And so I have someone who's got 20 years experience, Menahem Ane, who I've been working
gone back and forth with on Twitter. We jumped on Zoom, talked to him several times this year, and really enjoyed it and gotten a lot out of it. And so I want to share his expertise with you today, my friends. This one, this episode, all about Google Ads. I'm your host, Kurt Elster. Check nasty. And this is the Unofficial Shopify Podcast.
Kurt (01:51.082)
Manahem, how you doing?
Menachem Ani (01:52.974)
Awesome. Doing all right. It's a beautiful day here on the Jersey Shore. Thanks for having me on the podcast. Excited to be here.
Kurt (02:00.306)
I am, I'm happy to have you. And in the background, did you rob the Google swag store? The amount of like Google stuff behind you is intense.
Menachem Ani (02:12.31)
Yeah, we've been doing Google Ads for quite some time. We've got a lot more than that. That's only what fit on the camera.
Kurt (02:19.338)
You got the mini fridge? Did they ever send you the Google mini fridge?
Menachem Ani (02:21.706)
The mini fridge is actually right behind me. You can't see it. Got the Google bike. We got all kinds of stuff, but yeah.
Kurt (02:28.627)
The bike? There's a Google bike?
Menachem Ani (02:30.142)
Yeah, it's a Google bike. It's a citizen bike. It's a nice bike. But when you ride it, it's got all the Google colors. I posted on Twitter.
Kurt (02:42.134)
The okay, so swag aside, we're going to talk Google ads today. You and am I right in saying you've done this 20 years?
Menachem Ani (02:52.854)
Yeah, I believe I set up my first campaign March 2003. So it's definitely been a minute.
Kurt (03:00.434)
When you look back 20 years, what's like the big thing that stands out is how it's evolved, what's changed? Broad strokes.
Menachem Ani (03:08.534)
Broad strokes is definitely automation, moving towards smart bidding, AI, performance max, all that kind of stuff. But there's definitely been a lot of change over the year. I think that's the biggest shift that we've seen over the past couple of years.
Kurt (03:22.926)
and trends change, people go back and forth, and there's always gonna be someone yelling, like, oh, Google ads are dead. Make the case for it. Why, why should, if I'm a Shopify merchant, why should I consider Google ads as part of my marketing budget?
Menachem Ani (03:39.818)
Sure, sure. And listen, it's definitely, it's harder to find success for some Shopify stores, some Shopify brands than others, but typically you can find success. Like you mentioned, the breadth of offerings they have is very wide between search and shopping, which is capturing intent and then YouTube ads and performance mags, demand gen, which helps generate demand. There's typically a way to find success for any kind of brand on Google.
Kurt (04:07.358)
And certainly when you talk to clients, you have to vet them, you have to figure out, are they a good fit for you? But more importantly, if they're not running Google Ads yet, are they a good fit for Google Ads? Let's work backwards. Who is not a good fit? Like what's the deal breaker where you go, don't pass go, don't even bother with this yet.
Menachem Ani (04:28.046)
So in my mind, you have two kinds of brands. You've got brands that lead with Google and brands that lead with paid social. Typically, it's the brands that lead with paid social. Think of something that's a bit more of an impulse purchase, a more visual product, maybe fashion. Those brands sometimes can have an easier time on meta or paid social because they're able to showcase the product, tell their story. And until you find that product market fit, Google may not be the right avenue.
So I'd say, depending on the type of product, the price point, that's really where it would come from.
Kurt (05:09.666)
The... someone recently told me like, hey, if the product title doesn't have keywords that someone would know to look for, immediately you have a problem.
Menachem Ani (05:20.426)
Right. For sure. Because with I mean, Google's core product is still search and shopping and performance max leans into that a lot. But if the customer is not searching for your solution, they don't know it exists, you've still got to do that education component. That's where it's much harder to find success on Google. You definitely can through YouTube ads and performance max, but it's definitely going to be a tougher try than something like Facebook and Instagram ads where that
the consumer is easier to pull along that educational journey.
Kurt (05:55.434)
And when I think about, you know, on the show, when I think about Google Ads, when I ask people, hey, are you using Google Ads? Have you considered Google Ads? I think really I'm talking about Google Shopping Ads, because they have so many different ad types and placements. And it's like search ads, which are always there, and a thing for me to scroll past. Shopping ads, the one I like. PMAX, PerformanceMAX, YouTube ads. And that's like, and I'm sure there's more than that.
Menachem Ani (06:08.619)
Yes.
Menachem Ani (06:24.642)
Yeah, they have a very wide range of ad types, but search and shopping is the core of what built Google. And I think it's because of how powerful it is, pulling people in the moment that they're doing their research, they're ready to buy. So that's what's the beauty of it.
Kurt (06:26.124)
So.
Kurt (06:44.362)
It's high intent. Like the social ads are interruption based versus on Google. I went to Google. I then typed in a keyword phrase. The phrase is what triggered those ads. And in theory, they are directly relevant to me.
Menachem Ani (06:45.964)
Exactly.
Menachem Ani (06:57.888)
Exactly.
Exactly. And it's funny because shopping is the big piece that moves the needle, especially for Shopify brands, but there's so much more you can do. And that's what Performance Max is trying to do is to go beyond the intent to be a bit more like meta ads.
Kurt (07:19.246)
And, all right, so let's start, I think the two big categories are search and shopping. Define them, break down the difference for me. When am I doing what?
Menachem Ani (07:32.104)
Sure, sure. So for most Shopify brands, e-commerce in general, shopping is going to perform better than search. Search ads are just plain text ads. You've got a headline, description, you'll have some extensions added to it. You can put image extensions, price extensions, things of that nature, but they tend to be more static. Whereas shopping ads are dynamically created from your product information. You connect the Google sales channel and Shopify.
It synchronizes all your product data and it builds ads using your product title, description, image, and so on that shows the picture of the product to the user in the search results. And that's really why it performs so well. It pulls the customer in through very engaging ad units.
Kurt (08:16.158)
And I've seen it like it'll pull in, sometimes it'll pull in product reviews, it'll have stock availability, it'll have shipping times. Like what are the, what's the extra stuff in there? What do they call that?
Menachem Ani (08:31.818)
Yeah, so I mean, they're synchronized. You can send a ton of data to Google. The core pieces of information that you have to send are like the title, the price, the image, and so on. But there's so much more. You can send the color of your product, the sizing, the material, pricing information. So if you have a sale, you can put coupon codes.
You can really send a lot and the more you give Google, the better job you'll do of increasing your click through rate and increasing your overall exposure.
Kurt (09:03.402)
Okay, I want to come back to shopping ads and the technical implementation. But first, I want to talk more about these ad types. PMAX. For the last, I don't know, 18-24 months, PMAX has been seen as... It seemed like a buzzword. It also seemed like an exciting thing where people were seeing results. Performance Max. What is it again?
Menachem Ani (09:27.374)
Sure, sure. So there's a lot of history kind of coming to it. Back in the day, you had standard Google shopping and they created something called smart shopping, which was an automated algorithmic type of shopping where you just gave it your product information and told it what kind of return on ad spend you were hoping to see and the system took care of all the optimization for you. What Google did is they took that and took it to the next level and
came out with Performance Max, which is meant to be a full funnel campaign that combines the smart shopping algorithmic nature, but also goes beyond that search intent we spoke about where now it's also targeting people before they search for it. So it layers on audience ads that are targeting people on YouTube and Gmail and the Discover, the Google app.
You'll start seeing ads before you even start searching for something, creating awareness and educating consumers in the process. So it's that combined with the search and shopping component. And it's an all-in-one campaign that's intended to help you capture search and generate demand at the same time.
Kurt (10:36.254)
Okay, that sounds awesome, but also far-fetched. Could it possibly work? It sounds like, oh yeah, just you throw your content at it, we'll let the AI, the algorithm, we'll do the advertising for it. We'll figure it out, don't worry, buddy. Just give us the budget.
Menachem Ani (10:48.962)
Yeah, so in theory, it sounds like it's very simple. And a lot of people have that hot take, like just set it and just leave it alone. It'll do its own thing. But in practice and what we've seen is that a lot of the success comes from how you set it up, what type of products you're marketing, what kind of data you feed the system. So it definitely is powerful, but it'll do a better job if you take the time to understand.
what the best approach is for your specific brand, for your products and how to find success.
Kurt (11:21.774)
Give me a working example. Like, all right, yeah, just walk me through one.
Menachem Ani (11:23.76)
Sure.
Sure. So there's a lot of different ways you can set up Performance Max. You can set it up in a way where its primary focus is just shopping. And the way to do that is you don't give it the creative assets that it asks for. It asks you for headlines, descriptions, images, videos, skip all that stuff, just give it your data feed. Now it'll focus primarily on feed-based ad units. So mostly shopping, it'll do some retargeting, some prospecting, but it'll mostly be shopping.
So if you have a product that the education component is harder or you don't have the right creative assets, that's the best approach for you. On the flip side of that, if your brand does really well on paid social, you're spending a lot of money, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and you've got amazing creative assets, layer that into Performance Max and let it do some of that on their properties, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and so on. So there's different ways you can set it up. And that's just one example, of course.
Kurt (12:25.286)
So the idea is I give it, I go, hey, here's my products. And maybe I don't do the entire catalog, but I'm like, here's the products that are responsible for 80% of my revenue, my top 20% of my catalog. And I give it access to that, and it could pull in all the product page content about it. So it's got the product media plus description title and reviews.
Menachem Ani (12:44.468)
right.
Kurt (12:47.518)
and availability and shipping. And then I give it, maybe I have done well on Instagram reels or Facebook's social ads. And so now I'm gonna give it that content as well. And then it's able to piece this together and the placements then become dynamic.
Menachem Ani (12:55.906)
Right.
Menachem Ani (13:00.02)
Exactly.
Menachem Ani (13:08.334)
Yeah, and so it's how you structure it within one campaign. You can create different groups. So you can put one product in one asset group, one category in one asset groups. And in that asset group, you choose which products go and you can give it creative assets alongside it. So now it can create ads from that product information that came from the product display page, as well as whatever assets you manually provided it.
And then the other piece on top of it, and this is something a lot of people overlook, is you give the system what they call audience signals. With Performance Max, you can't target a specific audience yourself, but you can say like, hey, these are the kinds of people that I think are my customers, and the system will then go and find whatever it wants based on that as a signal. So like, you wanna, especially if you've got good creative assets, you wanna give that.
signal to the system so it knows who you think is the kind of person to buy it. Because like the shopping component, the system is able to match it to keywords based on the product title, description, the category, and so on. For the creative assets, you've got to give it a signal of who you think would buy from you.
Kurt (14:18.626)
So, yeah, obviously, otherwise it's in the dark a little bit. So when we say audience signal, am I just defining demographics for it? Or am I giving it an email list of past purchasers and then it's going to do something disturbing with it?
Menachem Ani (14:30.19)
Sure, you can do both. Yeah, you can do both. You know, people worry about sharing too much information with Google, my approach is like, I don't know if we have a choice. Like at the end of the day, the more data... Exactly, at the end of the day, the more data you give them, the better job it can do. So you can create audiences off of email lists and phone numbers, you know.
Kurt (14:42.047)
Yeah, they already know.
Menachem Ani (14:52.662)
pixel data, people who visit the website or take certain actions on your website. You can also do demographic data, interest data. There's a lot of cool stuff in there, but again, it's like, it's not going to target that specific audience. It'll just use that as a signal for what it does. And the system will automatically scan the landing page, scan the product pages and try to build its own audiences out of that. So it does a pretty good job, but I find that the more data you give it, the better it can do.
Kurt (15:20.746)
And then the other one that's confusing is they introduce, they're like, oh, we've got AI powered ads that they call demand gen campaigns. Reading the description of demand gen, it sounds like PMAX. What's the difference?
Menachem Ani (15:31.073)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (15:38.914)
So it kind of does and it took me a minute to figure it out. But demand gen is sort of the next iteration. Like you said, there's been a lot of change over the years. So Google first started out with something called Gmail sponsored promotions, which were just, you know, those little ads you see in Gmail. That was, you know, a decade ago. Slowly that's morphed into what they call discovery ads, which is putting ads on the side of Gmail, on the side of YouTube.
the little thumbnail image ads you might see on the side of a video, and also in the Google News app and the Google app, you see discovery ads. So what DemandGen is, is the next iteration of that. They're adding on now YouTube shorts placements, video placements, and I think like Performance Max was originally billed as an all-in-one campaign, but from everything we've seen is that it's very conversion-focused, capturing intent and trying to generate more immediate...
prospecting, whereas demand gen is truly about generating demand. It typically is not going to convert as well as performance max, but it will create that additional demand and push down your funnel. So that's kind of where I see it fits. For me, it's like once you've tapped out search and shopping and performance max, that's when you'll kind of layer on demand gen. I definitely wouldn't recommend that for starters right now.
Kurt (17:02.166)
What do you recommend for starters?
Menachem Ani (17:05.165)
So for starters, I like shopping or Performance Max for e-commerce because it's exactly that. You're just pulling people in while they're searching for it. So that's the most opportune time to really generate sales. So start with at a basic level, a standard shopping campaign with smart bidding, Target, ROAS, or a Performance Max campaign, depending on again, what type of store you are, because...
certain products, as I mentioned, like if you're selling highly commoditized products like digital cameras or something like that, gadgets, Performance Max is going to have a hard time generating new demand. It'll do much better to just capture demand. Whereas if you're selling a product that is very visual in nature and you've got good creative assets, that's where I would start in Performance Max. But I guess the answer is a little bit of, it depends on what you're selling.
Kurt (18:02.058)
Oh, for sure. The other thing with Google Ads, it's not the easiest thing to implement. Like, I have found getting it going is not tough. And then you get the errors. Or they're like, hey, by the way, all your products are gonna just get delisted as eligible from advertising. But then the error is so confused, it'll just be really vague. And they're like, all right, go figure it out. And it's...
Menachem Ani (18:28.892)
Yeah.
Kurt (18:29.77)
And like, I don't know what I'm missing. It usually ends up being like hours of screwing around to figure out like, oh, this is the actual issue they were talking about. And once you know it, it's not rarely, it's usually not tough to fix unless it's like, oh, you gotta do a bunch of dead entry on your product catalog. What is, when it comes to the integration, what app are you using? Like, what is this, how are we making Shopify talk to Google? What's the right way to do it?
Menachem Ani (18:37.71)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (18:44.334)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (18:54.558)
Yeah, so I tell people the easiest place to start is there is an official Google sales channel app for Shopify. We recommend that nine out of 10 times. It's super easy. Just install the app, connect the accounts, and it automatically sets up your tracking pixel, your data feed, all that stuff. But to your point, it does get tricky if things get disapproved and it doesn't help that Google is constantly changing the interface and changing how things work.
But that app is fairly straightforward in some cases though where you have more complex product data Or you want to send additional information to Google then you might want to utilize Third-party app for that like feedonomics or some process. There's a lot of good ones for Shopify You know to help customize the data that you're sending But yeah, otherwise, it's like it definitely gets tricky when they just randomly throw disapprovals at you
Kurt (19:49.442)
It drives me nuts. What's the most common one? Like what are the top reasons that get the disapprovals triggered?
Menachem Ani (19:56.238)
So they have for Google Merchant Center, which is the underlying data source for shopping and performance max, they have very, very finicky rules like your price has to match in the data feed and on the landing page. So if you change your product price or your theme is not built properly and the product price is not being displayed in the best way, it doesn't match, it'll get disapproved if tax and shipping in Merchant Center is not configured exactly the same way as Shopify, it'll get disapproved.
So it's a lot of that kind of stuff, but they also have automated algorithms that will randomly flag products as like against policy. You know, like for example, one that pops up over and over again is if you have something maybe in an ivory color, their system doesn't allow you to sell actual ivory. So it'll just get flagged by the system and you've got to like request an approval. But there's so many. There's how many of those. Yeah.
Kurt (20:45.798)
We do, yeah, I've seen that one. It's always funny. Like we do a lot of aftermarket automotive and there's a big brand of tuner called Bully Dog. And we've in the past, those have been flagged because of this, what is essentially a consumer electronics product gets marked as animal cruelty. And we have to be like, no, it's not, it doesn't have anything to do with animals whatsoever.
Menachem Ani (21:05.258)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (21:11.078)
Yeah, so I mean, thankfully they've got a process, but it is tricky to run through. You've got to request approvals and sometimes it'll be dozens of products or hundreds of products and you just kind of got to walk through it, but it's part of playing the game.
Kurt (21:23.67)
Hey, are you recording from a construction yard?
Menachem Ani (21:26.446)
No, no, I do. Yeah, we have busy street over here, but sometimes it gets a little crazy.
Kurt (21:27.438)
Do you hear that truck backing up?
Kurt (21:32.918)
They, does it run in reverse based on how often this truck is backing up? Jeez. Um, so when it-
Menachem Ani (21:38.358)
Yeah.
Kurt (21:44.286)
What do you use as your KPIs? What is your metric of success? What's the thing we need to keep an eye on to know if these campaigns are performing well?
Menachem Ani (21:55.218)
Yeah, so typically it all comes back to the return on ad spend for most Shopify brands and that varies wildly by industry, by type of products you're selling. But what I do find as a general rule of thumb is that the market tends to regulate itself for your vertical because if you think about it, your competitors likely have similar margins as you and they're likely only able to bid in a similar way as you. So it ends up kind of evening itself out.
but it should really follow what you're seeing on Facebook and Instagram, what you're seeing on different channels to that effect.
Kurt (22:32.258)
and
Kurt (22:36.01)
What's like a typical range? Like what kind of performance should I expect and how long does it take to potentially see success? Is there a learning period here?
Menachem Ani (22:46.746)
Yeah, so I think like with Performance Max, there's a bit more of a learning curve because it's more algorithmic in nature. But in general, you know, to me, the first, let's say, two, three, four weeks are about gathering data, establishing a baseline. You'll see conversions, hopefully, you know, if it's set up right. But it's really more about understanding the market. And then it becomes more about optimization, building projections and really trying to capture additional market share.
Kurt (23:17.358)
And okay, I know ad costs, there is some seasonality to them. And so I was wondering, is there a right time to kick off a campaign? Like if you're getting into advertising for the first time, is there a quarter in the year that's maybe better than another?
Menachem Ani (23:39.822)
I think that also is going to vary based on the industry. You know, certain things do well, let's say beginning of the year, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day. Yeah, exactly. But the cool thing is that even if you are selling bikes in the winter, if somebody's searching for it, again, it's intent-based. So you're showing the ad when they're searching for it. It's not like with Facebook or Instagram ads where you're just kind of pushing it in front of them. Here they're actually searching for it.
Kurt (23:44.196)
Oh yeah, good point.
like selling bikes in the winter. It's gonna be.
Kurt (24:10.558)
And with, if I'm starting fresh here, let's talk budget. What's a reasonable budget to start experimenting with? I just wanna dip my toe in the water, but if I'm not spending enough, the ads may not run, it may not go anywhere. If I throw too much at it, I may just end up setting my money on fire. What's reasonable?
Menachem Ani (24:24.118)
Right.
Menachem Ani (24:30.548)
Yeah.
So this is a question that I get a lot. And I think the way to think about it is less about budget and more about how much traffic you can drive. So Google Ads has a tool. If you create a Google Ads account, there's something called the Keyword Planner. You can plug in keywords and a location, and it will tell you on average what the cost per clicks are. So really from there is now you just wanna come up with a budget that gives you enough traffic that you can establish statistical significance.
Think that you want to drive at least at a minimum few thousand clicks on a monthly basis. And for some brands that might be starting with a small budget, maybe $100 a day. And for other brands that might be a few hundred dollars a day. But that's probably the range that you need to start in depending on the cost per click, of course.
Kurt (25:19.438)
Okay, and to add your website, you have a cool tool. You have a ROAS calculator. Walk me through this thing.
Menachem Ani (25:24.749)
Yeah.
Sure. So a lot of first time advertisers will come to me and be like, how do I know what I can expect? And if you, if you think about it, yeah, if you think about it, the return on ad spend for every dollar you put in dollars generated in revenue, it comes down to three metrics. The first metric is, is what your cost per click is, how much you pay for each click to the website. You know, once, once you've established that, let's say I spend a hundred dollars and I'm
Kurt (25:36.13)
That's my question as well.
Menachem Ani (25:55.318)
getting a dollar a click is 100 visits. Now the next metric is the conversion rate. What percentage of website visitors place an order? So if you have an established Shopify store and you're not advertising on Google, you will have that data. You'll know what your conversion rate is. And then lastly, it's the average order value is how much each order spends with your store on average. So if you take those three metrics, you're able to now say for every dollar I spend
it'll generate this amount of visitors of which this percentage will place in order and they will spend on average this amount of dollars. So the calculator we have on our website kind of does all that math for you. You just plug in the numbers. So, you know, again, using the keyword planner, you can get an average of what your cost per click might be. And if you have your conversion rate and your average order value, you can get a good idea of what to expect when running campaigns.
Kurt (26:49.858)
So I've got combining these two tools, keyword planner, my Shopify analytics to figure out conversion rate traffic, and your ROAS calculator. I can actually figure out if this is potentially worthwhile to explore. Obviously, your results may vary, but...
Menachem Ani (26:59.617)
Right.
Menachem Ani (27:08.266)
Exactly. And that data also, like the keyword planner, they give you a very wide range. They might tell you, you know, your cost per click will be anywhere from one dollar to six dollars. So like that variable can mean the difference between success and failure. And so take it with a grain of salt. It is an estimate, but it gives you an idea of whether you're something feasible for you.
Kurt (27:32.962)
And what's the most common mistake or pitfall you see people making? Because certainly, we've been phrasing this as, you're new to this, you're getting into it, people who have not started yet are talking to you. I would imagine you get just as many or more people who have existing accounts and are either shopping around for somebody better or they did it themselves and they wanna get it off their plate.
Menachem Ani (27:51.723)
Yeah.
Kurt (27:59.595)
I bet you've seen some weird stuff, you've seen some failures, like what's the... Where do people go wrong?
Menachem Ani (28:01.486)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (28:05.23)
So I think the biggest mistake that I see with people new to Google Ads is not giving it enough time to succeed, shutting off a campaign before it's really had a chance to learn. The biggest piece in today's Google Ads is that it is algorithmic in nature. It takes time to learn. So what success you see on weeks one, two, three, four might not be what you'll see after that.
A lot of it again comes back to how you set it up and all that. But I think being patient and allowing it to run through its paces is really important. So that's definitely one. Another is just people don't always set it up the right way. Have the best tracking in place to really know the performance of the campaign. And that feeds into the smart learning algorithm of how it can find you better success. So I think those are some of them, but yeah, I've seen a lot of crazy things over the years.
Kurt (28:59.938)
So within Shopify, the other part of it is like, not only do I have to get my data feed into Google Merchant Center, my products, I also need tracking within the store. There's a data layer that has to happen so that I could do my remarketing. I could do, Google could do attribution. How do you get that installed? What are the tools there?
Menachem Ani (29:22.514)
Yeah, so Google has, they have that sales channel app. I think it's officially supported by Google or Shopify. So I recommend that sales channel app. And once you install it, it's really just going through the configuration. Connect your Google account, connect Merchant Center, connect Google Ads. There's a bit of a setup process, but once you connect all those pieces, it'll do the setup for you. It'll set up your Google Ads tracking so that it can track at the cards, it can track sales.
and it will also set up your data feed to synchronize your product information to Merchant Center, your shipping settings, your tax settings. So it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you if you just set up and configure that app.
Kurt (30:04.438)
So this is the one I have used most since they launched it or relaunched this. And everything you've mentioned, I'll put all this stuff in the show notes. And they call this thing simply Google and YouTube. That's an awkward name, but it's like Google and YouTube. But it's a sales channel that plugs in and it gets you attached to Google Merchant Center to push your products up. And it looks like, you know, once you've got that in place,
Menachem Ani (30:18.327)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (30:22.527)
and... right.
Kurt (30:32.598)
then you can run all these other ad placements we talked about. I'm sure there's extra steps there.
Menachem Ani (30:37.102)
Yeah, and that app itself has transformed a lot over the years. I think at this stage it also includes Google Analytics 4, but it's definitely one of the basics that I would say almost every Shopify store should set up. Because even if you're not going to do Google Ads, search or shopping, just setting up that app will connect your Google Analytics. Also, if you connect it to Merchant Center, you can take advantage of what Google calls the free listings.
which are free traffic they send from the shopping tab on Google. So it's highly recommended for everyone.
Kurt (31:12.71)
Yeah, no, take advantage of that. Now, there is, there, the one I see most is Google sales channel, but I also see third party paid shopping feed apps. Like, Simprose's Google shopping feed app has almost as many reviews as the Google, this official Google sales channel does. So what's the scenario where I'd want to move to one of these custom paid shopping feeds?
Menachem Ani (31:14.785)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (31:40.91)
So those typically make more sense for larger catalogs. The Google channel app works really well, but if you need any customization, it really doesn't do any customization. So something like SimProSys, FeeDynamics, and there's a whole bunch of them, will allow you to sort of map custom fields. Maybe you wanna send over like your cost of goods sold so you can have it and build out campaigns. Maybe you want to create, you know, add additional fields with.
color, material, or just feed the system more information. That's when you'll want to utilize one of those. Also like to create proper segmentation with larger catalogs. Google has custom fields where you can send over custom labels of different, you know, maybe it's a collection, maybe it's a seasonal aspect of it. But basically you can build out a lot of custom data in these apps that you can't do with the standard feed. But the truth is, is that even if you use the standard sales channel app,
You can do a lot of that stuff in Merchant Center. If you're familiar with how they have something called feed rules, where you can layer on top of the data that comes in from Shopify that like maybe if a title contains a certain keyword, then assign a certain custom label. But that stuff is much simpler using something like Simprosis, which is where we would recommend it.
Kurt (33:02.07)
And yeah, once, I mean, going for the Google shopping feed where they intentionally limit your options to make it easier to use, but then once you need those options, like once you go into some process, I mean, that's just top of mind, that's the one I had used most recently. I was like, wow, there's a, really, one thing is I could configure and really get myself in trouble with here. So I wanna talk advanced strategies.
Menachem Ani (33:25.161)
Right.
Kurt (33:30.582)
With Google Shopping Ads, is there any realistic way to optimize this? Like, is it just pulling my product page?
Menachem Ani (33:36.85)
Right. So that's the piece that a lot of people overlook. And it definitely is worth the effort to take the time and do it. Because if you think about it, shopping ads, performance max, there's no keywords. You're not telling Google, I want to show up for a specific keyword. What it does is it analyzes your product's title, description, categorization. And that's how the algorithm decides which search queries to show it for. So if you take the time to...
Fully flesh out your data feed, make sure that your title has keyword-rich descriptive titles, that each product is categorized correctly in Google's taxonomy, that you have the UPC codes, that you're giving additional custom labels, additional information. That'll help your product show up in more searches and get more exposure. And that's, you know, that's totally outside of the Google Ads interface, but it's a very powerful thing that can really help.
Kurt (34:34.146)
And all right, keep going, give me more. I want, once I've got this thing working, I want the advanced tactics.
Menachem Ani (34:42.578)
Yeah, so you can give it so much. You can give it like, for example, you can give it your profit margins. You can give the system your cost of goods. And then you can use that to build campaigns where, okay, I have certain products where I might only have a 20% margin. So I can't bid as aggressively as other products where I have 40% margin. And so you can split those into separate campaigns utilizing that data and then bid.
more aggressively on certain products over others. You know, also segmenting products by seasonality. If you have certain products that are giftable items and do well certain parts of the year, you break them out and build them into these campaigns. That's a lot of the stuff, you know, but really taking advantage of trying to fill out and send as much data as you can to Google so that A, it knows when to show, you know, for more searches, when to show your products.
and B, that you could segment your campaigns in a more sophisticated way to really take advantage of what's important to your business.
Kurt (35:48.002)
So as I get more advanced, it's segmenting that catalog out so that I could dial in bidding strategy. And that's gonna help me scale more effectively as opposed to just like, here it's one big bucket of products and one big bucket of money and we're just gonna keep dumping money into it. We could be smarter about it.
Menachem Ani (35:55.349)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (36:06.395)
Exactly. And then there's a lot of little things that layer on top of it. Like, for example, product reviews, if you collect them on your store, definitely send them to Google. They attach to your product listings. It shows the star ratings, you know, helps you get a better click-through rate. If you're adjusting your price on the website for a short while, or if you have a sale, if you notate it the right way in the feed, it'll show up as like...
on sale or price drop, if you have coupon codes or promotions, you want to set those up in Merchant Center. So it also connects to your product listing and it shows promo code. All that stuff is a lot of things that by default doesn't pull through and you want to make sure to take the time to set it up as best as possible.
Kurt (36:51.03)
So I could go in Google Merchant Center and be like, hey, I'm running a promotion right now, and here's the coupon code. I didn't know that.
Menachem Ani (36:55.978)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think it's a feature that's not even turned on by default. If you go on your Google Merchant Center account, they have a section called Manage Programs. And you can opt into all different sections of Merchant Center, but they have something called Promotions. And you can set them up one off manually, like, hey, I'm running a 20% code until the end of the month. This is eligible for all products. Or you can actually set up a data feed, where
Something like Simprosis can synchronize all your Shopify coupons straight into Merchant Center and automatically connect them to whichever products they're meant to be connected to.
Kurt (37:34.37)
Pretty sweet. What, uh...
Menachem Ani (37:35.662)
Yeah.
Kurt (37:38.858)
So with our optimizations, our talk has been largely about Google shopping ads. And with Google shopping ads, I guess my ad copy is kind of non-existent, isn't it? I'm not writing headlines. I'm not writing text ad copy the way I am for search ads, right? So
Menachem Ani (37:57.674)
Right. Yeah, that, I mean, that's a hundred. So you lose with shopping as compared to search. You don't have keywords to target and you don't have headlines. So what happens is that product title really becomes super important because Google looks at the title more importantly than everything else. It has a heavier weight as to a what products it should show up for, but be how it's displayed. So if you if you search for anything and you look at a Google shopping ad, you'll see that typically only the first few words of the product title are even visible.
So it's really important to make sure that those few words are as descriptive as possible and sort of work as your headline. And from what I understand, the closer a keyword is to the beginning of the title, the heavier weight it has, you know, also including keywords in the title is more powerful than in the description. So there's a lot of little things like that definitely play into your success of your campaign.
Kurt (38:54.034)
The other one, is it true that when you run these ads, Google has a crawler, has a bot that will go to your site, add products to cart, go through checkout, not buy, it'll ban a checkout, but it does it to verify your out the door price, that like what the data you're giving it in the feed is correct?
Menachem Ani (39:17.634)
Yeah, so they do they have very sophisticated algorithms that will check the price in your data feed the tax settings the shipping to make sure that everything matches and It is an automated algorithm as far as I understand But they also do manual checks like if your store gets flagged because the pricing in the feed doesn't match the pricing in the checkout Once you manually flag and you have to appeal it and get a manual review somebody will actually go and try to check out And check it themselves
to make sure that it works. But yeah, they are very strict about making sure that all the data and merchant center matches. And I think the big reason why is like a bit more of the backstories before Google shopping became as powerful as it was. If you think back like probably 10, 15 years ago, there used to be a bunch of shopping comparison sites like shopping.com, Shopzilla, Price Grab, or Nextag. Google pretty much obliterated them all.
by having accurate information. Consumers couldn't rely on what they found there. Like you'll see one price, you click through, you land on the website and there's another price. And so Google puts a very big emphasis on merchants having correct information in the campaigns.
Kurt (40:27.338)
Which, you know what, I'm glad they do, right? We should not be deceiving people. It's just, you know, honestly, the reason I'm aware of it is because you see the complaints of people who are like, what's with all these abandoned checkouts from a guy named John Smith? You're like, well, it's not actually a person that's a Googlebot. It's making sure that your stuff's running correctly. They're skewing my conversion rate. This way, conversion rate's not...
Menachem Ani (40:29.971)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (40:33.582)
for sure.
Menachem Ani (40:44.962)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (40:51.205)
Yep.
Kurt (40:52.318)
should not be your one and only KPI metric that you monitor, because there are so many ways to skew it.
Menachem Ani (40:55.147)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (41:00.062)
Yeah, yeah, conversion rate. I mean, if you think about it, it's impacted by the quality of the traffic, the website experience, and then of course the product offer. So there's so many different places that can cause a conversion rate to change. So definitely not the only metric to look at.
Kurt (41:16.283)
Oh yeah
Yeah, I can really, really push it around. Or if like, you know, some dude who doesn't have your audience shares the site on Twitter and sends traffic to it. I got all this unqualified traffic, and I just, the conversion rate dipped for that day. Okay, looking ahead, are there any new features on the horizon here? Any things we should be aware of?
Menachem Ani (41:26.895)
Yeah, exactly.
Menachem Ani (41:40.358)
Yeah, so from where I'm sitting, like Google is all in on performance max. They've made a lot of changes since it debuted about, I think it's about two years ago, a year and a half ago, but there's gonna be a lot more changes coming to it. I think it's gonna lean a lot more towards automation, but I think some of the bigger changes in the Google Ads ecosystem is gonna be a bigger push towards YouTube Shorts. That'll become a lot more prominent. It's really grown as a platform.
And then like on the search side, I think there's gonna be a lot of changes around keywords. You know, right now we have different match types. I think a lot of that's gonna go away and it'll become sort of like Performance Max where it's around themes. But you know, it's really gonna be automation world. So we gotta get used to it.
Kurt (42:29.399)
I love it. I love automation. Just make my life easier. Make the decision for me. I will give you all the data and let your supercomputer crunch the numbers for me. That's what I want.
Menachem Ani (42:39.358)
Exactly. I mean, that's what we want, but a lot of people don't give the system all the data. And so then it flounders. It doesn't know what to do. And so I think like the message that I have, exactly, exactly. Just feed the system and it'll feed you.
Kurt (42:49.366)
Garbage in, garbage out, man.
Kurt (42:57.15)
That's a great line. Yeah feed the system it'll feed you any final tips or advice for someone who wants to conquer Google ads
Menachem Ani (43:09.582)
I think like I said, be patient, take it seriously, take the time to understand how it's different than something else you might be doing already and just lean into it because it's, at the end of the day, Google Ads provides all these different tools, it's just, there are other tools in the toolbox and it's how you utilize it. So take the time to really understand what Performance Max is, how it works and make it work for you or any of the campaign types for that matter.
Kurt (43:39.986)
Menahem Where are well are you entertaining new clients currently? if We wanted to reach out to you. How would we do it?
Menachem Ani (43:45.358)
Sure, always happy to help.
Menachem Ani (43:51.446)
Sure, you can find me on LinkedIn, on X, Twitter, on our website, jxtgroup.com. I'm always happy to talk to people. I've been doing Google Ads and e-commerce for a long time.
Kurt (44:04.15)
The... Yeah, no, it's good to chat to you. I've been, I've enjoyed it. I will, I've got lots of stuff in the show notes. Okay, you're linked in, that keyword, that ROAS calculator and other links we mentioned are in the show notes. Thank you, thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it.
Menachem Ani (44:11.103)
Yeah.
Menachem Ani (44:25.326)
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a great conversation. Thank you.