Romain Stevens

The ultimate guide to Google Ads Local Services

Posted on February 22, 2022March 31, 2025 by Romain Stevens

simulate the results of your Google Ads campaigns:

Our performance simulator allows you to see the expected results of your Google Ads campaigns.

Google’s reach may extend to the whole world, but for some searches, and especially searches for local services near you, you need a solution in our own neighborhood (and fast)!

People who have an overflowing sink can’t wait for a plumber to come from the other side of France…

Yet companies offering local services often find it hard to convert these potential customers with simple text ads on Google.

That’s why these same companies should be delighted with the solutions offered by Google Ads: Local Services ads:

Google Ads’ Local Services ads are an excellent complement to local SEO strategies if you offer local services(locksmiths, plumbers, garage door professionals, electricians and HVAC services).

With Local Services from Google Ads, when a surfer enters a local search query (such as the one below), several professionals are displayed, just above the traditional paid search ads.

These ads display the company number, opening hours, ratings and reviews left by customers.

These local Google Ads campaigns are displayed on computers, tablets and mobiles.

These ads will also be offered in the Google Assistant response to voice searches!

Download our white paper

Who can benefit from Google Ads Local Services?

Today, Google offers Local Services Ads for the following sectors:

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  Aide ménagère
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  Aménagement paysager
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  Bardage
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  Clôtures
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  Collecte de déchets
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  Constructeurs de piscines
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  Couverture
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  CVC
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  Déménagement
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  Diagnostics immobiliers
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  Entreprise générale
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  Entretien de pelouses
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  Entretien de piscine
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  Extermination des nuisibles
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  Fondations
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  Homme à tout faire
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  Menuiserie
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  Nettoyage de tapis/moquettes
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  Nettoyage de vitres
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  Plomberie
```

  Réparation d'appareils électroménagers

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  Revêtement de sol
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```
  Services d'arboriculture
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```
  Services de déneigement
```

  Services de restauration après un dégât des eaux

```
  Services électriques
```
```
  Services liés aux fenêtres
```
```
  Services liés aux plans de travail
```
```
  Services liés aux portes de garage
```

Not all services are supported in all markets
To find out if you are eligible, visit theGoogle Local Services help pagesand sign up for the program here.

What are the advantages of Google ads Local Services?

Advertisers who use Google Ads campaigns campaigns know that it’s expensive to pay for a click that doesn’t work or doesn’t convert (indeed, local service advertisers often pay Cost per Click sometimes more than 5 times the average cost per click in Google Ads).

Google Ads local campaigns help connect potential customers with the right advertiser, and avoid the mismatches that often occur when a user searches for general terms for a very specific service, or for a location outside a company’s service area.

With Les Annonce Local Services, local service advertisers are billed only for valid leads.

If you receive a fraudulent lead, spam or bad correspondence, you can even dispute the billing to obtain a credit.

How do you earn the trust of Internet users with the “Google Protection” badge?

💡 Local Services ads appear with a green tick next to “Google Protection”.

As well as attracting the attention of users, this allows companies to benefit from Google’s guarantee.

Indeed, users trust Google, and its recommendation is not limited to its reputation.

And yes … The “Google Protection” guarantee protects dissatisfied customers up to €1,500 in France on work carried out via local service ads. Find out more about this guarantee offered and insured by Google here

💡 Your positive reviews and comments are highlighted

Every Local Services ad includes ratings and reviews from past customers to help you earn the trust of Internet users.

Currently, Local Services ads are one of the few ways to get your reviews featured in search engines.

💡 Extend the reach of your paid search ads

You’ll notice that Google Ads’ Local Services ads are positioned above traditional paid ads and organic results.

This is because Google’s Local Services ads are not intended to replace your traditional search ads, or even your local SEO.

💡 Be included in voice search responses

With over 20% of all searches coming from voice search, local service ads represent one of the few ways to ensure you’re going to be found on the multiple devices powered by Google Assistant.

💡 No ads or keywords to manage

Paid search advertisers know that keyword research and ad testing can be time-consuming tasks. But Google Ads’ Local Servies campaigns require neither!

These campaigns are automatically triggered when a customer searches for one of thousands of relevant search terms, from as broad as “plumber” to as specific as “leaky faucet under the sink”.

The ad format will be automatically created using the information contained in your company profile.

How to launch your Google Ads Local Services campaigns and ads?

💡 Confirm your eligibility :

Local Services campaigns are only available in certain sectors and markets.

To find out if you can deploy Local Services Ads, first confirm your business type and location.

If you qualify, you’ll be guided through the process of creating an account to manage your local service listings.

These ads are managed separately from the ads you create in Google Ads or Google Ads Express, so you’ll need to create a new account.

💡 Create your company profile

Your Google profile for Local Services Ads is different from your Google My Business account, which is linked to your local listing on Google (if you haven’t already done so, note that you need to create and optimize this account too).

Your company profile for these ads will determine which service offers will be associated with your local service ads.

Be clear about the type of services you are able to offer and the areas in which you want to obtain leads.

From your company profile, you can modify

```
  Votre budget hebdomadaire
```
```
  Vos heures d'ouverture
```
```
  Vos domaines de service
```
```
  Vos types de services
```

You also have the option of adding highlights to your company profile, which will eventually be displayed alongside your ads and on your company details page.

How do you manage your inbound leads and business opportunities?

Once your company profile is complete, you can launch your ads and start collecting new leads.

From your dashboard, you can access the “lead” tab via the drop-down menu in the top right-hand corner.

Don’t forget that leads (potential customers) are not necessarily confirmed customers! So make sure you follow up your incoming leads.

Once you’ve selected a prospect, you can view their details, including job type and location, and listen to a recording of the call.

After reviewing these leads, you have three options for follow-up:

Reply to the customer by sending your message in the form of an e-mail or SMS to the customer.
Call the customer on the telephone number they have provided.
Decline the request. If you decline the request, it will be deleted and the potential customer will be informed. You can send a reply with further information on why the request was declined. Once declined, requests can be retrieved in the event of a change.

Managing your budget

From your company profile, you can adjust your ad budget. You can manage the amount you wish to spend on your ads by increasing or decreasing your average weekly budget.

Since you’re charged on a cost-per-lead basis – not per-click – with Google Ads Local Services campaigns, increasing or decreasing your budget will have a direct impact on the number of inbound leads you generate.

Remember that your ad budget is separate from your Google Ads budget.

Classifying ads

Even with these new Local Services ads, space is still limited on the search engine!

However, unlike your search ads where you have to worry about your ad’s quality score – formulated by a combination of your ad’s CTR, relevance and landing page, you don’t have to worry about these ranking factors.

Instead, Google calculates the ranking of your local service ads by taking the following factors into account:

Votre proximité par rapport aux emplacements des clients potentiels
Votre score d'évaluation et le nombre d'évaluations que vous recevez
Votre réactivité aux demandes de renseignements et aux requêtes des clients
Vos heures d'ouverture.
L'existence ou non de plaintes sérieuses ou répétées concernant votre entreprise.

Get reviews

Reviews play an important role in the ranking of your ads, so it’s especially important to collect reviews from satisfied customers.

Fortunately, Google makes it easy for you to contact customers who book appointments through your ads and ask them for feedback.

In the “Reviews” tab of your local service ad manager, you can review the work you’ve done for your customers and ask them directly to leave a Google review about you.

Be sure to personalize the message for your customers to increase the likelihood that they’ll leave a review about you!

Now all you have to do is get started and acquire new customers, close to your establishments!
Find out more about our digital marketing agencyContact us to set up a local strategy for your business.

How do you create high-performance Facebook audiences?

Posted on January 19, 2022March 31, 2025 by Romain Stevens

Creating Facebook audiences to optimize facebook ads campaigns isn’t rocket science, but with the almost infinite possibilities of targeting options available, it can get complex.

To succeed in your advertising campaigns, promote your products and get a good ROI on Facebook (return on your advertising spend), you need to focus your budget so that only relevant, qualified audiences see your ads. So how do you find the right audiences on Facebook, whatever your sector and type of activity?

In this article we will explain :

– How targeting works on Facebook
– How to optimize your ad sets for success
– And how to use Facebook Business Suite to learn more about your prospects

Here we go!

Introduction to audience targeting on Facebook

Typically, someone typing “buy fine point pens” into Google is looking for particularly fine writing utensils.

But on Facebook, while an incredible range of information can be harnessed to create hyper-granular audiences, the intentional component is generally not present.

Facebook doesn’t offer keyword targeting. You need to define an audience that is sensitive to your products, to which you want to deliver your ads. It’s a complete paradigm shift from Google Ads campaigns.

That’s not to say that Facebook advertising isn’t useful. Quite the contrary. It’s a source of opportunity for all advertisers, B2C and B2B alike.

Facebook lets you attract audiences and people interested in your products or services, and nurture them with dynamic, engaging content, from initial exposure to the day you can close a deal.

Of course, to be effective, you need to have a thorough knowledge of who you’re targeting and, above all, how you’re targeting them.

It’s all about striking a balance between broad and specific audiences, effectively transforming your Facebook advertising efforts into a self-sustaining marketing funnel.

Promote your brand and products with broad Facebook targeting

Targeting large audiences with Facebook ads is the best solution for new campaigns, brand awareness and data collection.

Extended targeting gives Facebook a great deal of power. You have to trust it to algorithmically determine which subsets of humanity might be suitable for your product or service.

Although it can be scary to cast a wide net, this approach can help you find potential customers you’d never have suspected existed otherwise. You can also use the data you glean from targeting a broad audience to formulate more specific audiences down theconversion funnel.

Broad targeting, followed by a search in Facebook Business Suite and your reports will give you a better picture of the Facebook users who interact with your ads in a positive way.

By using overlapping demographic and psycho-graphic characteristics, you can associate new, optimized core audiences with targeted ad creatives to drive more conversions.

Broad Facebook audience targeting in action

Let’s imagine you’re selling high-quality hats to people living in the USA. They’re woven from the silkiest alpaca yarn. They come with a small leather patch featuring your logo. They retail for $59.

You’re looking to take your Urban / Hipster clothing brand to the next level.
It’s time to start spreading the word, and there’s no better way to do it than through advertising and your Facebook campaigns.

Now, it would make no sense to target people of all ages all over France…

Facebook geographic audience selection — geographic audience selection

Now, a few words of caution.

You’re not going to be satisfied with this targeting in perpetuity. The aim is to use it to inform certain more targeted audiences to whom you’ll advertise with attractive, specific creations.

Think of this broad targeting as Facebook’s equivalent of the Display Network or a well-placed billboard.

By combining this information-gathering and brand-building strategy with more sales-oriented targeting down the funnel, you can create a steady stream of leads for your business.

It shouldn’t take up a large part of your overall advertising budget, but by allocating a percentage of your Facebook spend to large audiences like this, your business can benefit from the intelligence of Facebook’s advertising algorithm.

🤨

Who should target a large audience on Facebook? Everyone!

Expanded targeting will expose your brand to new prospects: people who would never have heard of you otherwise.

That said, your advertising and your offer will need to align with the lack of intent of your extended audiences. Your goal here isn’t to sell a hat or close a deal the same day: it’s to gain visibility and fill your funnel.

From there, you can create new personalized audiences, steering Facebook users towards a purchase as you learn more about their characteristics, wants and needs.

While you’re likely to get higher engagement using broad targeting (simply because of the number of people you’ll reach), the majority of your Facebook advertising budget should be allocated to targeted audiences that will have real business value.

Speaking of which…

Optimize your ROI with specific Facebook audiences

Targeting specific audiences with Facebook ads is the best way to achieve profitable conversions.

In fact, by targeting specific audiences, you give Facebook a strict set of parameters to deliver your advertising package to a subset of users potentially interested in your offer and products.

Here are some of the ways you can define these more specific audiences:

– Make a list of the professional positions your customers tend to occupy, associate it with an affinity for the products you’ll be selling, e.g. Food or Cultural, then overlay it with specific locations.

– Leverage personalized audiences based on actions carried out on your website, such as newsletter subscriptions, time spent on your site or, of course, those who add to their shopping cart.

– Create a 1% audience by using your most profitable customers as your core audience.

These methods (and an infinite combination of other specific targeting methods) can help you skip a few steps between the moment a prospect says “hmm, that sounds good” and the moment they enter their credit card number to buy your product.

By drastically reducing the number of people in each audience, you can tailor your creative to the characteristics and actions of a group of prospects you’ve created, improving your chances of success.

Of course, you also significantly reduce your ability to reach large swathes of the Facebook user audience.

That’s why it’s important to combine broad and specific audiences, using the former to channel new prospects to the latter.

Specific audience targeting on Facebook in action

As you already know, there are countless ways to define an audience on Facebook.

The term “specific” does not explicitly refer to the use of personalized or “lookalike” audiences, but rather to a well-defined set of Facebook users.

Basically, anything that maximizes audience targeting can be defined as “specific” audience targeting.

The three main ways to achieve this are :

targeting by level
personalized audiences
similar audiences

1- Targeting by level

Facebook lets you overlay a myriad of targeting options to create new granular audiences.

The advantage of this method is obvious: you can tailor and personalize your advertising to the characteristics of small, overlapping audiences to show your prospects how your product or service meets a specific need.

For example, if you’re selling home insurance, you’ll want to target people who have recently bought a house.

But more specifically, you can use the tiered audience to create variations in the audience of new homeowners based on characteristics such as house type (apartment, townhouse, house with garden), property value and household composition.

This Crédit Agricole ad, for example, would be perfect for people who’ve just bought a house, but completely useless for apartment dwellers who wouldn’t recognize themselves in the advertising image.

By dividing recent home buyers into segments using tiered targeting, you can deliver completely different ads to the 20-year-old couple buying a one-bedroom apartment in Paris, the family of five in the South-West, and the recent divorcee with a seaside apartment in Cannes.

Producing creatives that are specific and personalized to your personas can be an excellent way of increasing conversions in the middle of your sales funnel.

2- Customized audiences

Personalized audiences allow you to target Facebook users based on the following:

– Your customer file (the e-mail addresses you upload)

– Your website traffic (provided the Facebook pixel is present on your site)

– Application activity (pretend it doesn’t exist)

– Engagement (explicit action on Facebook or Instagram)

Of the four possible sources for personalized audiences, the most valuable are, without doubt, customer files and website traffic.

Note that personalized audiences are often the smallest audiences you can create on Facebook.

This makes it difficult for Facebook to distribute your creations unless they reach supreme levels of engagement, as reflected in the relevance scores of your Facebook ads.

The “client” component of customer file audiences is not essential: you can download any list of e-mail addresses and reach Facebook users whose e-mail address identifiers match.

Use these personalized audiences to upsell to existing customers, offer a product demonstration to people who have downloaded specific content: the possibilities are endless.

Ditto for personalized audiences generated from your website’s traffic: use Google Analytics to determine which pages people tend to visit, make sure the Facebook pixel is on those pages, create an audience and serve ads that expand on the content prospects have viewed.

3- Similar audiences

Facebook Similar Audiences are the icing on the cake of Facebook advertising.

While personalized audiences are generally limited – since you have to upload a list or supply users based on actions taken on the application site – similar audiences are simply aggregated users whose characteristics mirror those of a selected source audience.

The degree of correspondence can be modified (1% representing a near-facsimile and 10% a second cousin).

Similar audience creation — Create an audience similar to your site’s buyers

The “source” audience for your lookalikes can be any Facebook audience you’ve already created;

To maximize their value, however, you should use converters, based on the Facebook Pixel, or customer e-mail addresses.

In the example above, the source is the buyers, identified by the pixel.

There’s no point in creating a lookalike of people who, having seen an ad as a member of one of your larger audiences, haven’t interacted with it, or interacted negatively.

In brief

– Similar audiences are one of the most effective ways to get immediate value from Facebook ads.
– Tiered audiences are a great way to take advantage of Facebook’s inherent intelligence without spending a lot of money.
– Finally, personalized audiences are the ideal way to activate mid- and lower-level audiences in your Facebook advertising strategy.

Now that you know the differences between broad and specific targeting of Facebook audiences, here are three tips to help you use them more effectively.

😇

Tip 1: Reach (and act on) statistical significance as soon as possible.

Statistical significance refers to the point at which you have accumulated enough data to make an informed decision about performance. It’s essential for both broad and specific audiences, but for very different reasons.

With extended audiences, you need to determine and act quickly on statistical significance to avoid wasting ad spend on whole swathes of tangibly interested Facebook users.

This is where Facebook Business Suite can really become an invaluable tool in your arsenal.

When it comes to more specific audiences, those likely to get conversions quickly, tailoring your targeting and ad creative based on performance will ensure that small, valuable audiences aren’t frustrated by your efforts.

This is the best way to determine whether or not an audience is working, and therefore to begin the never-ending process of optimizing Facebook conversion rates.

It can be tempting to divide your campaigns into dozens of ad sets based on this information. According to Facebook, this is a big NO:

“You want to segment your campaign into several smaller ad sets to see which one performs best and use that as a template for future ad sets. However, with so many ad sets, it’s unlikely you’ll get a statistically significant number of results for any of them anyway.”

Too wide and you’re background noise. Too narrow and meaning is unattainable. To counter this, use engagement data from both broad and specific audiences to inform your ad creative.

If something isn’t working at all, use this audience information to modify your targeting and re-engage your prospects.

😇

Tip 2: Base similar audiences on high-value-added sources

As I said above, sources such as comments on articles or engagement on the Facebook business page are not viable bases for your sister audiences on Facebook.

There’s no way of knowing whether their features represent a discernible commercial value that you’d like to reflect. But that’s not the only problem. Lookalike audiences tend to be too small.

Use the most valuable sources at your disposal to create look-alike audiences.

Leverage the Facebook pixel and your CRM’s proprietary data to distinguish between people who say “oh great, a link [cliquez] eh” and those who have already paid for your product or service.

If you’re an experienced advertiser with a large amount of data at your disposal, you can take this discerning attitude even further.

Distinguish between customers and major customers (those who spend the most, etc.) and create similar audiences for both groups. The first group can function as a large audience. The second, a specific audience. As soon as they populate, you’ve got gas to spare.

😇

Tip 3: Quality is more important than volume (especially with personalized audiences)

This is related to our last point, but it bears repeating: quality is greater than quantity. Final point. A key way of determining quality (apart from conversions and revenue) is to check relevance scores.

The relevance score is Facebook’s measure of the quality and level of engagement of your ads. Your relevance score is important because it determines both your cost per click on Facebook and the frequency with which Facebook displays your ad.

While it can be difficult to maintain a solid relevance score across a broadly-targeted set of ads, it’s not impossible: all you need to do is understand your audience and test perpetually.

Combined with a compelling offer and attractive advertising creative, a quality audience of 100 is better than 10,000 strangers every day of the week.

Finally

Remember: introduce your brand to a range of prospects by targeting a broad audience, then sell to them by targeting a specific audience.

Facebook ads aren’t easy to understand, but if you understand audience building and implement a consistent targeting strategy, you’ll be well on your way to success in paid social.

And don’t forget to set up remarketing lists that will allow you to serve ads to your “hot” audiences or reactivate your customers 😉

If you need more advice and want to delegate your Facebook campapgnes and Instagram campaigns, our social media experts will support you in your developments.

15 ways to reduce your cost per click in Google and Facebook ads

Posted on January 17, 2022March 31, 2025 by Romain Stevens

As anEcommerce business, and with all the changes in the marketing ecosystem over the past year, you’ve certainly had to rethink your priorities in terms of advertising ROI.

And while many measures have an impact on ROI, let’s first take a look at cost-per-click (CPC), which has an impact on your Google Ads spend and campaigns.

How to reduce the cost per click (CPC) of Google Search ads

Google Search is the starting point for all digital advertisers in developing their online presence. Yet the cost of running Google Search ads is still disconcerting to many.

What is the average CPC for Google Search ads in 2021?

Over the past four years, the average CPC for Google Search ads has varied between $2.39 and $2.69 in the US. This average is slightly higher for the legal and government sectors. Wordstream data shows an average CPC of $2.39, but if you exclude the legal sector from the list, the average CPC is $1.72.

Google search ad CPC history:
– 2018: $2.69 (between $1.16 and $6.75)
– 2019: $2.41 (between $1.30 and $6.35)
– April 2020: $2.76 (between $0.82 and $10.96)
– June 2020: $2.39 (between $0.21 and $15.82)

Although search ads have been around the longest in the world of digital advertising, people still feel like they’re struggling to lower their CPCs. So here are three tips for saving money:

1. Choose your keywords wisely, and don’t settle for the cheapest one!

Keyword research is a given when it comes to Google search, but it’s not just a matter of discarding the most expensive keywords on average. Our advice: don’t ignore a keyword because of its price, but choose it according to the volume and types of search queries you want to attract.

For example, if your most profitable keyword is also your most expensive, you can’t afford not to bid on it. But you can reduce your keyword list to save on other expenses while you’re bidding on this high-converting keyword.

Or, a more expensive keyword may have a higher average search volume, which can translate into more clicks on your website – increasing your expected CTR. This improves your quality score, enabling you to get more clicks for less money in the long term.

In short, you can always choose your keywords based on cost. But make sure you also consider the volume and intent behind those keywords. A good mix of low-cost and high-paying keywords will enable you to get the lowest CPC possible without sacrificing the quality or quantity of conversions.

2. Improve your ads and landing pages to increase your quality score

Remember that bidding is only half the battle when it comes to paying for a click in an auction. For example, an advertiser with a low bid but a high quality score may still win the auction and be more likely to get a click at a lower cost (this is a case where quality score is important).

Google is willing to make this compromise, because it wants to make as much money as possible from paid search ads without sacrificing the user experience. So Google will accept an offer that results in a cheaper click if it means the ad will be more useful to the surfer (in other words, a higher quality score).

In addition to the expected click-through rate, your keyword quality score also takes into account the relevance of the ad and the landing page experience. So try to devote time to regularly updating your ads and including new, relevant keywords.

You can also take a look at Google’s suggestions from the platform’s ad editing section to see where your current ad strength lies and what you can improve.

When it comes to your landing pages, make sure your main keywords appear on the page, just as you would with your ad text.

3. Try the Research Partner Network

Google’s Search Partner Network allows your ads to be displayed on any other search-enabled site in the Google family.

Historically, clicks from search partners were cheaper, because they were less competitive. You can choose to include your campaign here, and measure results against the Google SERP whenever you like – an excellent way of testing the cheapest clicks.

How can I reduce the cost per click (CPC) of Google Display ads?

Google Display ads behave differently from Google Search ads, which makes estimating costs a little more confusing. To help you out, here’s the latest Google Display data:

What is the average CPC for Google Display ads in 2021?

Over the past four years, the average CPC for Google Display ads has fallen. According to Wordstream, it has dropped from $0.66 to $0.41. And if you take out the Occasions and Gifts sectors, the cost-per-click (CPC) is even lower, dropping to $0.34.

Historical display CPCs:
– 2017: $0.67
– 2018: $0.63 (ranging from $1.16 to $6.75)
– 2019: $0.59 (ranging from $0.60 to $0.81)
– April 2020: $0.41 (ranging from $0.28 to $1.01)

Reducing CPCs for Google Display ads is not a common goal, as they’re often just a few cents per click. Even so, you need to look at your advertising efforts holistically to see where you can save money to offset areas that are worth investing more in.

Here are a few ideas for further reducing your display CPCs, so that you can devote these expenses to potentially more expensive and higher-value keywords in search.

4. Exploit exclusions

Since Display ads can be displayed by default across the Display Network, it’s important to use exclusions to avoid spending on more expensive, irrelevant clicks.

There are the normal exclusions available for all campaign types that you can also apply to Display, such as locations.

In addition to the basic essentials, such as locations, here are some Display-specific exclusions you’ll also want to check:

– Subjects: Are there any types of pages with content related to subjects that wouldn’t be suitable for your Display ad?

– Audiences: Are there additional audiences you don’t want to target? For example, your customers or remarketing audiences.

– Placements : Do you want to display your advertising on all types of websites or applications?

You can easily update and manage display exclusions with Google’s dynamic exclusion lists.

5. Reassess your bids

The amount you’re willing to pay per click correlates with the amount the platform is willing to accept. If competition and other factors help you determine the bid amount for your Display ad groups (manual bidding is only defined at ad group level on Display), you can also try reducing your maximum CPC bid to attract only the clicks that match your budget.

However, if you’re using an automated bidding strategy, you can’t always make this specific call (unless you adjust the strategy’s objective, maximum or target).

Your best bet is to A/B test the bidding strategies that seem most effective.

6. Test your audience targeting with A/B testing

As well as testing different ways of bidding to get the lowest possible bid, you can also apply several audiences to your Display campaign and compare which ones get the lowest CPCs. The approach is similar to that used to select keywords for a search campaign.

The most profitable audience doesn’t necessarily have the lowest CPC. However, it’s best to try out several audiences to see which one makes you the most money, or to have a healthy balance between a high-paying audience and a low-cost one.

How can I reduce the cost per click (CPC) of Google Shopping ads?

Google Shopping campaigns can be tricky to get to grips with, because their infrastructure is different from the one you’re used to for search or display.

What is the average CPC for Google Shopping ads in 2021?

According to Wordstream’s most recent data, the average CPC for Google Shopping ads is $0.58, with a range from $0.17 to $1.55.

Google Shopping CPC history:
– 2019: $0.66 (ranging from $0.34 to $1.09)
– April 2020: $0.66 (ranging from $0.29 to $1.07)
– June 2020: $0.58 (ranging from $0.17 to $1.55)

Reducing the CPC of Google Shopping campaigns takes time and patience! Here are a few ways you can get a head start now to achieve lower CPC results over the long term:

7. Create negative keyword lists including a few competitors

Since you can’t choose your keywords in Google Shopping campaigns, a healthy negative keyword list is at the heart of any successful Shopping campaign.

But how can you optimize this list for CPC?

We know that stronger competition on the SERPs can drive up CPC prices. It may therefore be a good idea to eliminate the names of big-brand competitors that you feel don’t match your company’s products on the SERPs, especially if you’re a brand that’s not yet well known.

This way, you’re on an equal footing and not paying for more expensive clicks because you’re appearing next to big brand products.

8. Try the “priority” structure for auctions

It’s advisable to prioritize the structure of your Shopping campaign according to the type of traffic your products are targeting. This way, you’ll be able to distribute your bids to save on your overall CPC.

For example, competition for generic searches is higher, and this audience is more likely to be at the top of your conversion funnel.

If you don’t want to waste your high bids on searches that have a low probability of conversion, but still try to capture this audience, there’s a solution: the priority bid campaign structure.

It takes risks on CPC, but helps your campaigns evolve.

9. Optimize your product flow attributes

Google associates your products with searches based on your product feed. If your attributes are inadequate, you’re more likely to waste your CPC on irrelevant clicks.

If you feel that your CPC is high, take a step back and examine your product flow. Are all attributes correct for each product?
Can you modify the attributes of your products to better match the intent of your ideal researcher?

By answering these questions and manually optimizing your Google Shopping product feed, you’ll help Google match your product ads to the best possible searches to maximize the value of every click you get.

How can I reduce the cost per click (CPC) of Facebook ads?

Facebook ads are totally different from Google ads, as they can’t be displayed within a search box. So you need to optimize them not only for display when someone is browsing Facebook apps (including Facebook, Messenger and Whatsapp), but also to get the cheapest click possible.

What is the average CPC for Facebook ads in 2021?

For all campaign objectives combined, the average CPC for Facebook ads is $0.97, with a range from $0.25 (catalog sales) to $3.30 (brand awareness).

Although it’s not as simple as choosing the cheapest keyword, Facebook’s advertising platform allows you to make interesting changes to reduce CPC:

10. Perform A/B tests on your advertising copy

One of the easiest ways to optimize clicks on Facebook is to try changing the text of your Facebook ad.

You’d be surprised how two different ads within the same ad set can generate completely different average CPCs.

This is because Facebook’s machine learning classifies your ad before deciding when, where and how often to show it.

If Facebook determines that the text and images in your ad won’t drive any actions, you’ll pay more for the click of that ad.

To perform an A/B test on your Facebook ads, try swapping images, CTA buttons or text to improve the CPC of your Facebook ad.

11. Choose your campaign objective wisely

Choosing the wrong objective can be a costly mistake when it comes to Facebook advertising.

Indeed, the objective of your Facebook campaign determines how your ad will be delivered. As with Google’s automated bidding strategies, certain objectives can result in a higher CPC, as they prioritize other actions.

For example, a campaign objective optimized for conversions may appear at times when the CPC is higher because you’re more likely to convert.

It’s best to try out a campaign objective that best matches your final objective, and if you’re not sure, split your campaigns to test two objectives simultaneously!

12. Try ad programming

Ad scheduling is a cost-saving feature that you can apply to the ad sets in your Facebook campaigns.

Although this feature is only available if you’ve set a lifetime budget, you can use ad scheduling as a way of controlling your overall Facebook costs and even your CPC, as you decide when your ads are shown.

So, if you notice that you’ve attracted irrelevant clicks that drive up your CPC, but don’t convert, you can think about when your audience will most appreciate your ad.

If you’re a bar owner and your Facebook ads run at breakfast time or outside opening hours, you run the risk of increasing your CPC on wasted clicks!

How to reduce the cost per click (CPC) of Instagram ads?

Under the umbrella of the Facebook platform, Instagram ads live within another social media that can be tricky to untangle when it comes to your CPC.

What is the average CPC for Instagram ads in 2021?

Instagram’s average CPC is $1.23 for all campaign objectives, with a range of $0.20 (traffic)-$7.00 (lead generation).

The current CPC of your Instagram ad is not an end in itself, don’t forget! But you can still work towards a lower CPC with the following optimizations:

13. Customize placements

If you’re running ads only on Instagram from Facebook’s platform, then you already know that you can customize your placements.

However, even within Instagram placements, there are multiple ways to display: on stories, news feeds, and more.

Make sure you select the Instagram placements that best suit your type of advertising.

14. Be selective in your targeting

With such a saturated platform, it’s vital to be selective about who your ad is shown to. To save yourself a high CPC on Instagram, don’t cast a wide net.

With so many audience options to choose from, don’t be afraid to be selective by age, location and interests when configuring your ad set.

15. Focus on engagement

Once you’ve set up your ad set for specific targeting and placement, focus on the ad content that will drive engagement.

When your ads generate actions such as comments, likes and shares, Instagram’s algorithm will rank you higher.

Your ads will also be more likely to generate conversions and growth, as they will capture your audience’s attention.

For starters, try an Instagram video ad to engage your audience in the comments.

In conclusion

To reduce your CPC in Google search ads:

– Choose your keywords wisely (and not just on the basis of cost)
– Improve your ads and landing pages to obtain the best Quality Score
– Try out the network of search partners

To reduce your CPC in Google Display ads:
– Take advantage of exclusions
– Reassess your bids
– A/B test your audience targeting

To reduce your CPC in Google Shopping ads:
– Create negative keyword lists that include competitors
– Try the “priority” bidding structure.
– Optimize product feed attributes

To reduce your CPC in Facebook ads:
– Run A/B tests on your ad text.
– Choose your campaign objectives wisely
– Try ad scheduling

To reduce the CPC of Instagram ads:
– Customize placements
– Be selective in targeting
– Focus on engagement

Would you like us to help youoptimize your Google, Facebook or Instagramcampaigns? Contact us, our teams of online advertising experts will be delighted to help you with a specific topic or provide you with long-term support.

Average CTR on Google: it’s possible to increase your click-through rate by a factor of 3!

Posted on December 21, 2021March 31, 2025 by Romain Stevens

What is the average click-through rate (CTR) of a Google Ads ad? When people ask this question, it’s often because they want to evaluate the click-through rate of their own ads.

CTR = Clicks through rate => clicks rate

Unfortunately, too many advertisers are content to achieve an average click-through rate and leave it at that.

Here’s an article to help you maximize your click-through rate and triple your performance on the average Google CTR.

What is a good click-through rate (CTR) on Google?

This obviously depends a great deal on your industry, the competition and your objectives. However, marketers who settle for 2-5% CTR are not up to the job.

We can’t see our competitors’ data, so we don’t know if their CTRs are similar to ours.

What we do know, however, is that whether or not our CTRs are “good” depends largely on the position of our ad. Ads in higher positions naturally have higher CTRs than those in lower positions.

The chart above reflects average CTRs per ad position on Google, based on an analysis of nearly 100,000 advertiser accounts representing $3 billion in annualized spend. This gives a pretty good idea of the big picture when it comes to the CTRs that real advertisers are actually experiencing.

So the ad in second place has an average click-through rate of 4%. You might think that’s good, but it’s just an average. So if that’s what you’re seeing in your account, you’ve got plenty of room for improvement.

Averages are fine, but there’s still a lot of variability between advertisers, as you can see in the graph below. Remember, these are not keywords – each blue dot indicates an advertiser account.

In this chart, you can see the expected or average CTR curve in orange, while the green and purple curves show what you need to aim for if you want to achieve CTRs two to three times higher than average.

This data shows us that there are indeed a few accounts that stand out and far outstrip their competitors. What does it take to be one of these exceptional advertisers?

The bottom 50% of advertisers achieve average or lower CTRs. If you want to be among the top 15% in the highly competitive Google Ads landscape, you need to achieve an average CTR on your account that’s twice the average (we call these advertisers “awesome”). If you achieve a CTR three times the average, you become a super-awesome advertiser, which is the case for about 1 in 20 advertisers.

You can quickly check whether your own CTR is above or below the average for your sector.

But why not aim for the stars? If you want to be in the top 1%, you need to achieve an average CTR six times the norm – we call these advertisers “Unicorns”. They’re rare, but I promise you that Google Ads unicorns do exist. They’re not inherently better than you; they just work harder and optimize their campaigns better.

So how do these unicorns do it? First, we need to understand…

The importance of quality scores and how Google Ads works

Understanding how AdWords auctions work is essential if you want to optimize and improve your performance.

Google ads are live auctions. Google must determine the ranking position of each ad, as well as the cost of each click, in real time for each ad in the auction.

Google uses ad ranking to determine your position in the auction and your CPC. The latter is calculated by multiplying the maximum cost-per-click bid (the maximum you’re willing to pay for a click) by your Quality Score (Google’s assessment of the quality of your ads).

Note: Google has recently updated Ad Rank to include the expected performance of ad extensions, but the basic principle remains the same.

In this example, you can see exactly how Quality Score can affect your performance in this live auction.

The main advertiser, who obtained the first position, had a maximum bid that was $2 lower than that of his competitor, but his Quality Score and therefore his ranking were much higher, enabling him to obtain a better position and a lower CPC :

Google does this because it doesn’t get paid if no one clicks on its ads, so it prioritizes the ads most likely to succeed.

The average Quality Score is around 5.1 out of 10.

If you have an above-average Quality Score, you can get up to 50% off your cost per click. Conversely, if you have a below-average Quality Score, you can pay up to 400% more.

But CPC is only one measure among many. What about the actual cost per conversion? Here, we’ve also seen an inverse relationship, across billions of dollars of ad spend, whereby as your Quality Score increases, your cost per conversion decreases, because your clicks are so much cheaper.

How is Quality Score calculated? In general, the higher your CTR, the higher your Quality Score. However, as you can see from the chart below, there’s a lot of variance, thanks to ad positioning.

As we saw earlier, ads at the top of the page are predisposed to getting more clicks than those further down.

The blue line at the bottom, for example, refers to keywords in positions 1.0 to 1.5. Quality Score is not calculated solely on the basis of your CTR, but on the basis of your over- or under-performance in relation to the expected CTR.

In the following graph, you can clearly see how important your CTRs are in calculating your Quality Score.

It’s all relative.

Your Quality Score, which is the key to getting prominent ad placements and low CPCs and CPAs, isn’t entirely based on your CTR. Rather, your ads and keywords must be above the expected average. This is the key to a high Quality Score.

What about these unicorns?
We’ve seen so far that an above-average CTR will help you achieve your goals, but to be better, you need more.

When we see “unicorn” accounts in the AdWords Performance Grader, they share some common characteristics:

– Every keyword in their account has a high Quality Score.
– They make effective use of negative keywords to reduce unnecessary expenditure.
– Their high impression share shows that Google loves to show their ads.
– They have very high, impressive double-digit CTRs, several times higher than the average.
– They target very specific, long-range keyword phrases.
– Their account activity is high – they continue to optimize and improve all the time.

If you can focus on ad and keyword combinations that have these above-average CTRs, the rewards are enormous: higher impression shares, higher ad positions, lower costs per click and lower conversions.

The unicorn hunt

By now you know what Google Ads unicorns look like, and you should have a good idea of why they’re so desirable. Let’s take a look at each of these features so you can replicate this success on your own account.

Unicorn keyword strategy

The top 1% of all Google Ads accounts tend to focus on keywords with strong commercial intent. This is not surprising, as people tend to click more when they are already motivated and intend to buy. For example, “best Internet marketing software” or “stainless steel dishwasher” are keyword phrases that demonstrate buying intent.

Branded keywords are another fantastic opportunity for advertisers, but we’re not just talking about your own brand. Target partner brands, competitor brands or other brands that your target market might be looking for when they’re in buying mode.

A third type of keyword that performs well are local keywords, where the searcher’s intention is to find your business – or your competitor’s (for example, “San Diego personal trainer”). These words tend to get high click-through rates, as local searchers often have strong commercial intent.

Avoid informative keywords wherever possible. These are often formulated as questions, such as “What is a dishwasher?” or “Where is Paris?”. These searchers tend to look for Wikipedia-type information and have no intention of buying, which can result in a lower CTR or unnecessary spend.

Warning about dynamic keyword insertion
If you want to achieve unicorn status, don’t overuse dynamic keyword insertion, or DKI. This is a strategy that consists of using a certain syntax in your ads to allow Google to automatically substitute the keyword that triggered the ad in the ad’s text or title.

Dynamic keyword insertion is beneficial, but only up to a point, as illustrated below:

Here we have two curves: the red curve corresponds to ads with DKI and the blue to those without. The red curve shows that ads with DKI are relatively more abundant in the top 15%. However, as you move into the top 5% of ads, down to the unicorn ads, you’ll notice that the red curve drops below the blue curve.

Dynamic keyword insertion ads seem to hit a wall. This tells us that they should certainly be part of your toolbox, as they tend to produce slightly higher initial returns, but don’t put too much faith in them.

Ad extensions – are they the miracle solution?

Google seems to release new ad extensions almost every week, but what impact does using ad extensions have on ad Quality Score and will it help you become a unicorn?

This graph shows that impact, and it’s not a game-changer. We can see that accounts that used sitelinks on their ads did slightly better than those that didn’t, which is no surprise.

Extensions can increase CTR, but they won’t fix boring text. It’s a modest increase, but it won’t double or triple your CTR rates.

Most ads suck. Create emotional ads.

Additional tip: Optimizing mobile ads

Our research has shown that calls from mobile ads convert 3 times more than clicks to a website. When testing mobile ads, you should base your conclusions on call rates, not CTR or conversion rates.

I’ll say it again: focus on call rates and do everything you can to get people to click on the “click to call” button.

What to remember about CTR optimization?

Deleting the bottom third of your account could be a good idea: your low CTR, low impression share and poor performing keywords. The idea here is to maximize the budget you’re currently spending on useless ads.

As you can see here, the average cost per click can be significantly lower in a number of areas of the Google Display Network than in Google Search.

Similarly, conversion rates for display ads are comparable to those for search ads, especially when using remarketing. In some sectors, such as automotive and travel, conversion rates for display ads can be even higher.

Many search results pages look like this, with boring ads that all look the same. That’s exactly why position can make such a difference, because the only differentiating factor is where an ad appears on the page.

This is a huge opportunity for you.

When you see a bunch of boring, dry, similar ads appearing for a query, you have a chance to stand out and be different. I like to call this the “Google ad jackpot”. The alternative is to find something that stands out from the crowd, that uses emotional triggers.

Create emotionally-charged ads with Swiss army knife brainstorming.

Respected marketer Perry Marshall has devised a structured brainstorming method for creating compelling advertising copy, called the “Swiss Army Knife”. You take different entities such as your customer, something your customer loves, something your customer hates, your customer’s best friend, your customer’s enemy and so on. You then determine how your brand connects or relates to each entity and build from there.

It’s a simple, structured brainstorming process that can help you generate more compelling and emotional ad copy to test, by blending these concepts, like this:

This is a perfect example of a unicorn ad, with a click-through rate of over 30%, that stands out from all the boring divorce lawyer ads.

Your ad copy needs to resonate on an emotional level, and it needs to be different to stand out. You need to test the important elements of your advertising message – things like your guarantee, your unique selling proposition and your offer.

Understanding relative abundance

Unicorns wouldn’t be so special if they were abundant. In fact, only one ad in 100 is a unicorn. The chances of finding it the first time are slim to none; on average, you have to try 100 different ads to find your unicorn.

The more ads you create and test, the more likely you are to come across one that beats the average by 2, 3 or even 6 times!

You don’t test as many ads as you think.
You may be thinking, “I already have THOUSANDS of ads on my account! The last thing I want to do is write more ads!”

That may be true, but I can almost guarantee that you’re not testing as many ads as you think. Certainly not all of them were created using the vision and process described above.

Let me tell you a secret: the bar, especially for SMBs, is incredibly low. The average small business Google Ads account has just 18 ads. You may not be able to reach 100 ads this month or even this year, but if you work at it and test even 40 or 50, you’re already doing much better than the majority of your competitors.

5% of ads account for 85% of impressions

Here’s more good news: you can get rid of your poorly performing ads, and there are plenty of them.

Across all accounts, we found that the top 5% of ads in an advertiser’s account accounted for 85% of their impressions.

You don’t need to test 100 ads for each ad group in your account.

Instead, choose your top two or three ad groups and concentrate your efforts there. Test them thoroughly, ideally reaching 100 ads to test in each of these top-performing groups.

Of course, you can start by having us audit your Google Ads campaigns. This is an essential first step in determining the health of your Google Ads account and identifying optimization opportunities.
Want to know more?
Contact us – Adenlab, your Google Ads Agency

7 effective ways to optimize your online store’s conversion funnel

Posted on December 7, 2021March 31, 2025 by Romain Stevens

Building an effective conversion funnel for your website means optimizing it in a number of ways to improve your conversions and profits. This includes a set of best practices that focus on the design of your website, not just on one aspect or another, as you want to offer your users a complete package. The conversion funnel is made up of a succession of small steps. Each of these steps will improve your chances of increasing sales on your site.

In this article we’ll look at what a conversion funnel is, the parts that make it up and the 7 best ways to optimize the conversion funnel to increase sales.

What is the conversion funnel?

Easier said than done. It’s not enough to offer good services and products to be on the right track and make good sales. It’s often a little more complicated, because customers can be unpredictable.
Developing and improving your conversion funnel is a good way of improving your sales. This is the path your customer or
user must follow before reaching the shopping cart and finalizing his purchase.
There are 4 stages in this process and, as you might expect, at each stage there are losses. Optimizing your conversion funnel means
minimizing losses at each stage.

These 4 steps are:

Destination Page (Interest-Visit)
Product Page (Review-Discovery)
Purchasing Page (Purchasing decision-Summary)
Purchasing (Customer loyalty-Payment)

To make the most of this funnel, each of these steps needs to be optimized in some way. In this article, we’ll look at best practices for conversion rate optimization.

What do these steps mean? For a start, every customer who visits your site, in one form or another, starts with the landing page. This is the most important stage of the funnel, and the one with the highest drop-off rate. This is where your customers become aware of your products and services, and where you need to hook them. You’ll need to provide interesting content, such as free blog posts, articles, guides, even video guides and demonstrations to pique their interest.

The next stage of the funnel, which is usually only reached by 40-50% of landing page visitors, is the product page. At this stage, users will be curious to discover your products, because you’ve hooked them with an interesting landing page. This is a crucial stage, and this is where you need to provide healthy, interesting product pages. Talk about your products and give them some value, but don’t forget to include the specific details that will interest certain customers.

Once customers have decided that your product page is attractive enough to buy, they enter the shopping cart phase of the funnel. This is a crucial step on the path to purchase, and poorly designed baskets are often the reason why people abandon their purchases. They may add products to the cart, but never complete the purchase. There are a few best practices that can reduce the number of abandoned shopping baskets.

The last stage is the purchase, when users decide to buy something it’s important to have a good payment system.

Let’s take a look at some of the best ways to improve your funnel in general.

Optimize your sales and your e-commerce funnel in 7 effective ways

A woman who enters her bank details while shopping online. — Photo by Pickawood / Unsplash

1 – Attracting customers via social networks (arousing interest)

The first stage of the funnel is marketing, which involves guiding visitors to your landing page. Social network marketing, in other words: being active on different social media platforms, has several advantages. Some 90% of marketing professionals believe that social networks offer broad exposure for their business activities.

By being active on several platforms, you can :

increase brand awareness
drive more traffic to your site
increase customer loyalty
improve your search engine rankings
boost your conversion rate

Facebook is a social network known to almost everyone, and has a large number of users. For this reason, it’s important to develop a high-performance tactic to attract Facebook users to your site. From 2018 to 2019, Facebook use by marketing professionals in the US rose from 86.3% to 86.8%, and could reach 87.1% in 2020.

Facebook ads are great, but they’re not enough. You need to design powerful ads to effectively promote your products and create a Landing Page that will make your visitors want to go deeper into the conversion funnel.

2 – Offer free, attractive content on your landing page (Interest phase)

The purpose of your Destination Page is to attract Internet users and make them want to buy your products, or at least to capture their interest. People choose pages and products that are of value to them, and at this stage, it’s just the right thing to do.

These could be short blog posts about your products and services, or a variety of promotional items.

3 – Use product proofs on your product page (Reflection phase)

When you present your products on your site, it’s important to display some kind of proof, a confirmation that your products are worth customers’ time, money and perhaps effort. The best way to do this is to display social proof (customer reviews, helpful messages or comments) on the product page. This will make your products seem more interesting.

According to a Minter report, 70% of Americans look for reviews on review sites before making a purchase. The good news is that BrightLocal found that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

4 – Optimizing your Product Pages (Examination/discovery phase)

The next step is crucial and indispensable (if you haven’t already done so): optimizing Product Pages.

This means giving customers all the information they need. Product descriptions don’t have to be boring, for example, describe how they would feel, but make sure they also include technical information.

Also include practical call-to-action buttons on your site, enabling customers to buy quickly and providing all the necessary information: shipping, costs and fees…

You can find great inspiration for your CTAs, but make sure they’re fun, unique and irresistible.

When it comes to optimizing a Product Page, one element that shouldn’t be overlooked is web analysis, and in particular qualitative analysis tools such as traffic maps and site path analysis. They’ll help you answer all the questions starting with “Why …? during the optimization process.

5 – Using software to track discharge intentions (Basket stage)

Too many shopping baskets are abandoned along the way. Fortunately, there are many things you can do to reduce the number.
One of the best things you can do is create a pop-up message when the customer is about to give up.

You can do this with exit intent trackers, which can be very effective in this respect.
You can combine these trackers for an even more effective result. For example, Pixojet uses a pop-up linked to an intent tracker and a time spent tracker.

6 – Optimize your check-out (Shopping cart stage)

One of the most important parts of your conversion funnel is your Checkout System.

7 out of 10 visitors give up buying at this point. That’s a huge number. But there are a number of key ideas for reducing it:

One study showed that around 30% of buyers gave up at this stage when asked to sign. Instead, offer order validation or automatically create a user account.
Consider product prices that include shipping costs. For example, NuFace, an online beauty distributor, increased orders by 90% by adding a simple “free shipping on orders over $75” banner.

Adapt your site to all types of media. In practice, this concerns buttons to tap (ergonomics), loading speed (reduce the number of images), ease of navigation (align / organize forms vertically).

7 – Offer and promote a loyalty program (Loyalty Stage)

The last stage is the one that never ends: building customer loyalty. This is an ongoing process aimed at creating long-term relationships. Here, you can offer a program with discounts and special offers to those who buy from you more than once. You need to promote this program so that customers are aware of what they gain by remaining loyal to you.

In one report, 84% of consumers say they prefer a brand that offers them a loyalty program, and 66% add that being able to earn rewards changes their purchasing behavior.

Conclusion

Improving your conversion funnel is the top priority in your business. If you do so, and if you embrace this process of constant improvement, the results should not be long in coming.

Google Shopping: optimize your end-of-year shopping campaigns

Posted on November 30, 2021March 31, 2025 by Romain Stevens

It’s time to get ready for Christmas! Did you know that 8 out of 10 consumers worldwide use Google to get inspiration and information for their end-of-year shopping? What’s more, this year 58% of them plan to buy more online than in previous years. So, if you don’t want to miss out on a great opportunity for growth, discover the essential steps for optimizing your product feed on Google Shopping. Spoiler: anticipation is key!

Google Merchant Center: how to optimize your product flow for Google Shopping campaigns?

1 – Check your product flow configuration

For the creation of your Google product feed, the golden rules are:
Categorize your products in a relevant and rigorous manner
Remember to include all product variants with the correct attributes and GTIN code
Make sure that prices and currency are the same as on your landing page
And don’t include any promotional text in your product title or images.

If this is the first time you’ve launched a Google Shopping campaign, the best advice we can give you to optimize your campaign is to make all your settings beforehand. To do this :

Two weeks before launching your campaign: import a test feed
Then check that everything is working properly and adjust if necessary.
If you want to change your logo, you should also do so early, as it may take a few days to validate it.
Finally, one week before the launch of your campaign: integrate the new feed

Please note: promotional campaigns are examined on the same day, but sometimes the analysis takes up to 72 hours, especially during peak periods such as the festive season. So once again, if you don’t want to leave anything to chance: an-ti-ci-pez!

2 – Optimize the content of your product flow

Writing the title: To give your ad the best possible chance of converting, here are a few essentials:

propose a clear, concise title
detail your product’s main attributes (name, type, color, characteristic or reference…)
and put the most important ones first!

Product type presentation: We recommend that you describe the elements of your products precisely for your entire catalog.
Don’t hesitate to enrich your feed with the “Google product category” attribute: if you don’t, Google will generate it automatically.

Googlebot: Your ecommerce site also needs to be well optimized and categorized! That’s why we advise you to check the crawlability of your landing pages and images by Google robots, by consulting the robots.txt file.

Google Ads: examine the structure of your Shopping campaign

1 – Prepare your campaign in advance

We can’t stress this enough: to avoid any last-minute hazards and benefit from the full power of a well-planned campaign, we advise you to :

Activate campaigns and set an appropriate start date at least one week before launch.
Don’t modify your ads at the last minute: if you do, they’ll automatically be sent back for review!

2 – Optimize priority settings for standard shopping campaigns

Did you know that Smart Shopping campaigns have priority over Standard Shopping campaigns? In fact, optimization via priorities on Shopping campaigns can only be applied to Standard Shopping campaigns and not to Smart Shopping campaigns.

Common problems with accounts and items

If you are having problems setting up your Christmas campaigns on Google Shopping, they may be due to :

Inconsistencies (or missing information) in prices, shipping costs or taxes
The impossibility of purchasing for some or all users
Image overlay (e.g. promotional text in the product photo)
Failure to comply with the Google Shopping policy

If you’re having trouble setting up your end-of-year campaigns, contact Google support or your Google contact. They’ll help you solve the problem.

Need help with your Google Shopping Christmas campaigns? Save time!

You can also gain in efficiency and stop wasting time on subjects that you can leave to a team of experts: contact us, we’ll be happy to provide you with our know-how to maximize your Christmas sales thanks to perfectly optimized Google Shopping campaigns!

Customer value (LTV), churn: measure long-term indicators with Google Analytics

Posted on November 28, 2021March 31, 2025 by Romain Stevens

Long-term metrics such as customer lifetime value (LTV) and churn are often overlooked in analysis and optimization processes. Certainly because it’s quite difficult to track and measure loyalty using common tools like Google Analytics and Optimize. However, they can be very instructive when combined with other, more basic metrics, such as transactions or revenue. In this article, we take a look at several ways to track churn and customer lifecycle with Google Analytics, and suggest some even more useful solutions…

Depending on the software you use, there may be ready-made solutions. For example, on Shopify, you can use Littledata to send a more accurate LTV value in a customized Google Analytics interface. More often than not, however, there’s no good solution available and it’s necessary to make new developments on your existing configurations in your Analytics accounts. Some people often mistakenly think that these long-term retention metrics are only relevant to a few specific types of business. It’s true that metrics such as churn are essential for SaaS and subscription products, yet any company that carefully tracks its business should have its long-term performance metrics in place, such as loyalty rate, re-purchase rate. And we’re not just talking about tracking them, but analyzing them and optimizing the business with them in mind. And we’re not the only ones! The Harvard Business Review points out: “Acquiring a new customer is five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. It makes sense: you don’t need to devote time and resources to finding a new customer – you need to keep the one you already have.” So, if you’ve been focusing on new customer acquisition and metrics like revenue or transactions, this article is for you!

How do you measure loyalty indicators such as LTV and churn?

The most relevant long-term loyalty metrics for you depend on your industry, but the most common are customer lifecycle value (LTV) and churn rate. Below is a list of popular loyalty KPIs. It’s up to you to decide which ones are most relevant to your business!

Current customer loyalty measures(Source )

Churn rate
Sales attrition rate
Growth rate of existing customers
Repeat purchase rate
Product return rate
Days sales outstanding
Net promoter score
Time between purchases
Rate of loyal customers
Customer lifecycle value

User identification for Google Analytics

Almost all retention measures require correct implementation of the user ID.

This means you need to identify the user over time, even if they use multiple devices or browsers. Fortunately, in most cases, actions such as making a purchase or signing up for a subscription involve some form of authentication. While it’s possible to track retention metrics with Google Analytics alone, in most cases you’ll get much better (and more accurate) results by combining it with other solutions.

Sending retention data to Google Analytics

This solution involves sending retention data to a customized Google Analytics interface.

The exact workflow depends on the software (CRM, CMS, database, etc.) you use, but the general process looks like this. Create a personalized dimension in Google Analytics (tailored to the user)

1. Create a custom dimension in Google Analytics (tailored to the user)

2. For logged-in/identified users, extract relevant retention metrics from a database or other system (CRM, CMS…)

Here’s an example with order data stored in BigQuery.

3. Make retention measurements available in the data layer (Datalayers)

4. Upload your retention metrics to the dashboard

Use Google Tag Manager to send your retention metrics to Google Analytics, using the custom dimension or metric locations/indices depending on how you configured them in step 1.

Now that this data is available in Google Analytics, you can do whatever you want with it! Here are a few examples. Using LTV in a custom Google Analytics report

LTV in the Google Analytics User Explorer report

Note the difference between the LTV that Google Analytics indicates by default ($439) and the value we see in the custom dimension ($2,016). This is because Google Analytics cannot track the user as accurately as your backend system or the e-commerce platform you use. The same applies to other retention measures: obtaining precise measurements requires customized work.

Custom segments in Google Analytics

The list of possible uses for this type of data is unlimited. We therefore recommend that you create custom segments in Google Analytics for customers in the top 10% in terms of LTV to see what differentiates them from the rest of the visitors. Apart from the fact that a percentage of these customers make more/larger purchases, of course. Elements such as their traffic source, the pages they landed on, the A/B test variants they saw, etc. can be very informative.

Data storage and analysis on a larger scale

If you’re just starting to use retention metrics and are still mainly optimizing generic metrics such as revenue sources, total transactions and total revenue, you’re better off sticking with Google Analytics.

But if you want to take it to the next level, to analyze in depth and optimize customer loyalty and customer lifecycles, you need a dedicated data management system. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide:

Send all Google Analytics data to a specific data management system (e.g. BigQuery). Tools using the Reporting API (most of them) can get you started, but to get real, unsampled data at the results level, you need a tool like Parallel Tracking.
Transfer, sort and pull data from other relevant sources into your data management system. This can include your database, CRM, marketing tools, advertising platforms, customer support, live chat and any other tool containing data about your customers and their interactions with your brand. Self-service tools like Stitch can help you get started, but we recommend more flexible solutions.
Finally, to access the data stored in your data system: you need a tool (they may be separate tools) capable of handling ad hoc queries, dashboards, automated reports and the creation of data models. Solutions like Google Data Studio will get you started. But Looker or Tableau are more powerful. In any case, the best solution will be made up of a set of tools that are optimal for you, and tailored to your specific needs.

If Google Analytics has enabled you to produce all kinds of useful reports and analyses, with the configuration above, you’ll see just how rich, not to say unlimited, the options become!

An appropriate data management and analysis system is a real competitive advantage

Not only does it give you a very good overview of the current state of your business and your customers, it also enables you to truly optimize the user experience and journey. This leads to improved retention measures, lower acquisition costs and higher sales. Don’t forget that acquiring a new customer costs five to 25 times more than retaining an existing one! To convince you of the usefulness of an efficient data management system, here are a few examples of questions that would otherwise be very difficult to answer:

Purchases from which traffic channels are most likely to be redeemed at some point in the future? This could lead you to review your marketing budget.
Which traffic sources have the highest retention/LTV?
What is the correlation between subscription value ($) and churn?
What is the long-term impact of your campaigns or A/B experiments?
Do quick wins lead to higher churn or lower LTV?

Do data from different sources add up? Perhaps Google Analytics is missing some transactions that are in your backoffice, or perhaps some of them are duplicates? For example:

As you can see, Google Analytics is missing a good deal of transaction data, which requires further analysis. This is certainly something you should include in your Google Analytics database. And this is just a short list of ideas to get you thinking about what’s possible with the right data analysis system!

Working with automatic recurring events

It’s also important to bear in mind that some retention measures can change without the user himself doing anything. You must therefore ensure that these cases are followed up and taken into account, particularly with regard to :

Recurring orders/payments
Subscription expiry
Expiry of payment method
Modified/cancelled orders (e.g. due to a missing item).

If your data management system has been set up correctly, you should already have this information. Just make sure you include it in your analyses and reports. If you don’t have a data management system and are trying to solve this problem with Google Analytics alone, you need to use a measurement protocol. Some of the most common subscription platforms, such as ReCharge for Shopify, integrate this functionality or can be solved by third-party solutions, but custom development is often required.

In short …

If your customers are expected to generate value more than once (repeat purchases, subscriptions, etc.), you need to start focusing on your retention measures. Google Analytics can get you started with basic metrics and limited precision. A better setup would be to combine Google Analytics with Parallel Tracking, but if you really want to optimize these metrics, you need a customized data management system where all your marketing data is collected. Do you have any questions? Contact us, we’ll be happy to discuss these topics with you and help you solve your data analysis problems!

Google Ads: improve your quality score in 4 easy steps

Posted on October 14, 2021March 31, 2025 by Romain Stevens

Want to optimize the performance of your Google Ads campaigns? Increase your sales without increasing your expenses? To do so, you need to improve your Quality Score. Discover our four-point checklist to boost your performance.

What is the Google Ads Quality Score?

First of all, for the uninitiated, Quality Score is Google’s evaluation of your SEA campaigns. This score looks at the quality of the user experience, from reading your ads to clicking through to your site’s landing pages. You can also find Google’s definition of the google ads Quality Score here.

The Quality Score can range from 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest. You can view it on your Google Ads dashboard.

Quality Score Google Ads — Quality Score

Essentially, the Quality score (or Google Ads quality level) is an indication of how your ads and landing pages benefit consumers. To understand how it’s determined, there are three main factors that influence the score:

**CTR (Click-Through Rate): how likely is it that someone will click on your ad when Google displays it?
Ad relevance: does the ad meet the needs expressed in the targeted keywords? Does it make sense for the ad to appear when someone searches for a particular keyword?
The quality of the landing page: does the information on the landing page correspond to what the ad is proposing, and vice versa?

These three points give you a good indication of the steps you need to take to optimize your campaigns, i.e. :

Optimizing CTR
Improve the relevance of your ads
Offer your visitors a quality experience on your landing pages
… and we’ll give you one last tip for optimizing your ads

How can you optimize the CTR of your Google Ads to improve your Quality Score?

CTR estimates the probability that someone will click on your ad when it appears for one of your chosen keywords. It assumes that the search term corresponds exactly to the targeted keyword. This probability is expressed as a status:

Above average
Medium
Below average

The first two cases mean that there’s no significant problem with the expected CTR, even if it’s obvious that an above-average CTR will have a better chance of converting.

However, a below-average CTR is clearly problematic. In this case, it’s essential to modify the ad text associated with this keyword as quickly as possible (in particular, by repeating the keyword more often).

Let’s take the example of a men’s shoe salesman targeting a customer looking for sneakers. His ad group might contain the following keywords: white sneakers, city sneakers, leather sneakers, suede sneakers…

A poorly written ad would say:

Marcel’s shoes
Visit our online store to discover a wide variety of shoes and benefit from a 50% discount!

Note that this ad doesn’t contain any of the relevant keywords, which means that the surfer who typed the queries detailed in the ad group is unlikely to click on them.

Here’s what a more attractive ad might look like:

Les souliers de Marcel – City and sport sneakers
Leather, fabric or suede sneakers: discover our range of white or colored sneakers, in a wide variety of materials.
Promotion on white sneakers: get 50% off our leather, fabric or suede sneakers.

This example shows how useful it is to create two or more ads per ad group. You can then incorporate more than one targeted keyword in each ad to improve your CTR.

Please note: in addition to working on your ad text, you can also refine your keywords to improve your expected CTR. Consider removing keywords that people aren’t really looking for, or add a wider variety of keywords to your ad groups by performing a keyword diagnostic. For example, for online stores, semantic analysis to identify the highest volumes of queries by product type is highly recommended.

How can you improve the relevance of your Google Ads to increase your quality score?

The second essential point for improving your Google Ads Quality score is to consider the relevance of your ads. The objective here is to know to what extent the message of your ads corresponds to the keywords they target.

Again, there are three possible statuses for ad relevance: “Above average”, “Average” or “Below average”.

Using the keyword groups targeted by Les Souliers de Marcel Boutique (white sneakers, dress sneakers, leather sneakers, suede sneakers…), an ad with a status of “Below Average” might say:

Marcel’s shoes
Visit our boutiques located in the heart of Paris, to sport the capital’s finest looks.

This ad isn’t relevant enough, because it doesn’t include any of the keywords on which the store bids, and their content doesn’t deal with sneakers. To improve the relevance of this ad, simply reformulate it by adding these keywords.

Les souliers de Marcel – The most beautiful sneakers in Paris
Visit our Paris boutiques to discover our sneaker models in leather, suede or fabric. White or colored, the choice is yours!

How can I improve the user experience on my landing pages to increase my Quality Score?

When you’re trying to improve the Google Ads Quality Score of your campaigns, you need to analyze the relevance of your landing pages in relation to the expectations of users who have typed in the keywords you’re targeting.

Here are some useful questions to ask yourself:

How useful is my landing page to someone who clicks on the ad?
Is my landing page well organized?
Does its editorial content relate to the targeted search terms (keywords)?
Is my landing page clear?
Do the products I offer match my target keywords?

Returning to the Souliers de Marcel example, we can examine one of the enhanced ads above:

Les souliers de Marcel – White sneakers
Discover our selection of white sneakers for men, in leather or fabric.

Suppose someone searches for “White sneakers”, looks at your ad and clicks on it… only to be redirected to a landing page featuring colored sneakers.

The page doesn’t match this person’s search term, which means it’s of no use to them.

Or, suppose someone clicks on your ad that matches their search term, but they’re bombarded with pop-ups or the page takes too long to load.

These factors are likely to affect their user experience and cause them to leave your landing page.

With this in mind, make sure your landing page is well organized and contains everything the visitor needs. We recommend including useful information, related links, a clear view of the shopping cart and contact details.

Our final tip for improving your quality score: group your keywords by semantic field.

When you set up your campaigns and integrate your ads and keywords, you create ad groups in which they will be placed. To do this, it’s best to use several logical ad groups (sorted by semantic field) rather than grouping all your keywords together in a single ad group.

Google Ads group — Example of ad groups targeting device models

The methodology we recommend is as follows: group your keywords into similar categories, then create relevant ads for each category.
For example:

Ad group: sneakers

Fabric sneakers
Leather sneakers
Suede sneakers

Ad group: Richelieu

Men’s Richelieu
Black Richelieu
Richelieu with buckles

Ad group: Moccasins

Leather loafers
Blue loafers
Men’s moccasins

In short, improving your Quality score in your Google Ads campaigns helps you maximize the performance of your advertising budget. By optimizing your ads according to the three criteria that influence the quality score: expected click-through rate (CTR), ad relevance and landing page experience, you’ll achieve better results and control your spending.

*CTR is a ratio indicating how often people who see your ad actually click on it. CTR can be used to evaluate the performance of your campaigns (choice of keywords and relevance of your ads).

How to set up an effective SEA strategy for an e-commerce site?

Posted on August 30, 2021March 31, 2025 by Romain Stevens

As a complement to a well-calibrated SEO strategy, SEA campaigns (or paid search campaigns) can help you rapidly achieve the objectives you’ve set for your e-commerce site.

But just like a marketing plan, a SEA campaign needs to be properly organized beforehand, in order to achieve the best possible return on investment. Before you get started, here are a few things you need to know to put in place a well-informed, and above all personalized, SEA strategy for your e-commerce site.

Step one: identify your goals!

All paid search campaigns can serve different purposes:

Acquire new customers, by developing your website’s notoriety and thus its audience.
Make your communication campaigns profitable
Introduce new products, promote a launch or an event
Follow-up prospects and customers
Increase your sales
Etc…

Before taking the first steps towards creating your campaign, you need to ask yourself which objectives are relevant to your company’s digital strategy.

Keep in mind that your campaign must take into account aspects that are specific to your organization. For example:

Which brands are your priorities?
What are the highest-margin products in your catalog?
What is your stock situation, and what are your supply forecasts?
What are your planned sales events and promotions?

Step two: consider the buying journey

An important phase, the conversion tunnel (also known as the purchase or sales funnel) represents the various stages a prospect goes through before becoming a customer. This may involve consulting mailings, visiting the website, social networks, physical stores, etc., right through to purchase.

Google recently renamed this phase the “messy middle”.
The “Messy Middle” is the more or less short period between the expression of need and a customer’s purchase.
This period contains a random path of exposure to your marketing messages and those of competitors, made up of various stages of inspiration, research and comparison before the final decision is made: the purchase.

Your mission is to guide and shorten this phase. That’s how you’ll improve your ecommerce site’s conversion rate.

That’s why it’s important to know your customers, the competition and the information available on the market: your SEA strategy will be all the more effective for it. Each step of the journey must be accompanied by specific actions to achieve your objectives.

Don’t forget: optimize your e-commerce site to improve the performance of your SEA campaign.

As part of your SEA strategy, it’s essential to optimize your e-commerce site. In fact, while many companies link their ads to existing pages on their websites, the proper organization of your account will also depend on the tree structure and categories of your site.

The prerequisite for successful campaigns is clear categorization (ordered by product category, brand, etc.) and the creation of optimized landing pages to serve your campaign objectives.

In particular, they must include a unique, well-defined call-to-action (CTA) to encourage your targeted visitors to take that action (request for quote, purchase, reservation…).

Step 3: Define your performance indicators

Once you’ve defined your sales objectives and categorized your site, it’s essential to quantify them to get a concrete view of your results, and optimize the profitability of your campaign.

At the end of this stage, you’ll need to set up a series of performance indicators (KPIs) that will enable you to measure your return on investment (ROI) and the real effect of your expenditure.

Here are the main KPIs to track and analyze to determine the specific performance of the SEA strategy implemented for your e-commerce site:

Cost-per-click (CPC): the average amount charged for a click on your ad. It is calculated by dividing the total cost of clicks by the total number of clicks.
Quality Score: this is a score between 0 and 10, assigned to your ad by Google as part of a Google Ads campaign. It is defined according to criteria of relevance, expected click-through rate and landing page quality.
Click-through rate (CTR): this indicator corresponds to the number of clicks obtained in relation to the number of impressions of your ad.
Average position: this is the position at which your ad is displayed on a page in relation to other ads.
Number of impressions: this is the frequency with which your ad is displayed. An impression is counted each time your ad is displayed on a search results page.
Conversion rate: this percentage corresponds to the average number of conversions carried out each time an ad is interacted with.

Finally, analyze the evolution of your sales and your site’s overall audience over the long term. Because a well-executed SEA campaign generally has a global impact on your business that cannot be immediately measured on a single channel.

Step 4: Choose the right strategy for each of your objectives

Once your objectives are clear and defined, taking into account the customer journey and integrated into a relevant overall acquisition strategy, you can launch targeted actions, step by step.

1. Build brand and product awareness

The first step is to introduce your brand, products or services to potential prospects. At this stage, your mission is to generate visibility for your company.

One effective strategy is to set up a Display advertising campaign, which will initially enable you to reach a large audience. In particular, you can explore the solutions offered by Youtube Ads.

With over a billion videos viewed every day, YouTube represents a real opportunity to develop your brand image with specific targets (age range, geolocation, interests…) and promote your products.

From a wide choice of formats (True View, Discovery TrueView, Bumper, Masthead, Google Preferred…), choose the one that best suits your needs. True View, for example, displays an ad while the user is watching a video, and has the advantage of being billed only if the viewer watches at least 30 seconds of the ad.

2. Generate interest in your products

This involves convincing Internet users who already have a potential interest in the products you offer. To target them specifically and get them to visit your site, you can opt for a Search campaign via Google Ads.

This type of campaign allows you to display your ad alongside perfectly targeted Google search results, in affinity with the needs met by your products. In this way, you reach users at the precise moment they are looking for the type of products or services you offer.

3. Motivate purchases and drive traffic to your e-commerce site

When an Internet user is determined to buy a product you have in your catalog, your natural aim is to encourage them to buy it on your site.

You can then opt for a Google Shopping campaign, which will enable you to display a product listing in search results as well as in Google’s Shopping tab.

The advantage of this format is that it directly targets web surfers who are in the buying process. These people are actively researching and comparing similar products before making their choice.

Google’s results pages display products at the top of the page, when users’ queries are clearly related to a purchase: products sold on your e-commerce site are thus promoted.

4. Follow-up a potential customer or prospect

Despite the quality of the campaigns you’ve set up, it sometimes happens that web users don’t make a purchase when they first visit your site, or when they see your ad.

You can then carry out a personalized commercial relaunch using Google Ads’ remarketing tool. This allows you to boost the performance of your campaigns by re-presenting your ads to targeted web users who have interacted with one of them.

These solutions enable you not only to re-engage your audience, complete purchases or abandoned shopping baskets, but also to conclude your prospects’ conversion processes!

Do you have questions about your campaigns? Are you struggling to optimize your SEA strategy to maximize sales on your e-commerce site?

Get in touch with us! Our experts will help you build a customized strategy, fully parameterized to meet your specific objectives and evolve them over time in line with your performance.

SEA campaign: measuring for better international development

Posted on July 30, 2021March 31, 2025 by Romain Stevens

Do you currently sell only in France, and would like to export your products to North America, South America or perhaps Asia? Do you dream of developing your application internationally to reach a wider audience?

To ensure that you don’t invest without a concrete basis for success, there’s nothing like measuring your results. Thanks to Market Finder and Google Analytics, you can really understand your foreign visitors, identify them, and then respond to their specific needs.

Google Analytics and Market Finder: two essential tools for your SEA campaigns

Market Finder: your ally for international market entry

Google’s Market Finder is designed to help you expand abroad and support your international marketing strategy. It’s the right tool if you want to know more about advertising solutions for your SEA campaign, and the importance of measuring your results.

After entering your URL on Market Finder, Google identifies the markets most suited to your business. This gives you the most coherent countries relevant to your business, with extremely precise insights: monthly search volume, recommended bid, ease of doing business index, real net disposable household income. In short, everything you ever wanted to know!

Google Analytics: essential information about your site

Google Analytics, on the other hand, is designed to help you expand abroad and support your international marketing strategy. It’s the right tool to keep your SEA campaign budget under control. Thanks to Google Analytics, you’ll get precise answers about where your visitors come from, what they do during a browsing session, average spend, session time… Key elements for a controlled and effective opening onto the world.

With Google Analytics, you’ll get precise answers about where your visitors come from, what they do during a browsing session, average spend, session time…

SEA campaign: precise reports to help you expand internationally

Google Analytics offers you reports sent by email, according to elements as different as :

Audience type” reports, for information on users: gender, age, origin, language, interests…

Acquisition reports detailing how users arrived on your site: marketing campaigns, social networking campaigns,Facebook advertising, website, search engines…

Reports on behavior on your site: most visited pages, most frequent entry and exit pages…

Essential data for conquering markets in other countries

Tracking this data is particularly important when launching a new product, or when you’ve recently set up in a new foreign country. It will enable you to adapt your message to your new target audience, as well as your Google Ads campaigns, for example, as part of an effective and consistent international SEA campaign.

You’ll be able to offer content based on the sites your visitors come from or on certain search themes, but also relevant content: images, text, videos adapted to your target language and not just translated.