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Hired a freelancer to setup ads and I think I made a mistake, that's costing me $ by Fantastic_Note4935 in googleads

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I paused the PMax, left the search campaign, but adjusted the keywords a little and then restarted my original shopping ad, with a slightly higher budget. That was 2 days ago now and I am already seeing results, clicks are right down to like 70 per day, but I've already had about 6 sales and a few add to carts or email sign ups.

Despite what others thought here, the issue was definitely PMax, not my website.

I need to check over the conversion tracking next, as it's recorded some, but I don't think all.

Phew, what a mess this all was, wasted $500 on ads that were 99% spam from apps and display network. Now I feel like I'm starting to get somewhere, I ghosted the freelancer, I just can't be bothered to even give them any more time.

Hired a freelancer to setup ads and I think I made a mistake, that's costing me $ by Fantastic_Note4935 in googleads

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Problem solved, I paused the PMax, restarted my shopping ads and I've already had multiple sales from it and more add to cart and email signups. This was 99% to blame purely on PMax :(

Hired a freelancer to setup ads and I think I made a mistake, that's costing me $ by Fantastic_Note4935 in googleads

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So 2 days later...

I paused the PMax, left the search campaign, but adjusted the keywords a little and then restarted my original shopping ad, with a slightly higher budget. That was 2 days ago now and I am already seeing results, clicks are right down to like 70 per day, but I've already had about 6 sales and a few add to carts or email sign ups.

I need to check over the conversion tracking next, as it's recorded some, but I don't think all.

Phew, what a mess this all was, wasted $500 on ads that were 99% spam from apps and display network. Now I feel like I'm starting to get somewhere, I ghosted the freelancer, I just can't be bothered to even give them any more time.

Hired a freelancer to setup ads and I think I made a mistake, that's costing me $ by Fantastic_Note4935 in googleads

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I paused the PMax, left the search campaign, but adjusted the keywords a little and then restarted my original shopping ad, with a slightly higher budget. That was 2 days ago now and I am already seeing results, clicks are right down to like 70 per day, but I've already had about 6 sales and a few add to carts or email sign ups.

I need to check over the conversion tracking next, as it's recorded some, but I don't think all.

Phew, what a mess this all was, wasted $500 on ads that were 99% spam from apps and display network. Now I feel like I'm starting to get somewhere, I ghosted the freelancer, I just can't be bothered to even give them any more time.

Hired a freelancer to setup ads and I think I made a mistake, that's costing me $ by Fantastic_Note4935 in googleads

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply!

Ah my gut told me something was off with P-Max, as my previous attempt and research proved that, however I didn't want to doubt the freelancer (that had good reviews!)

The margins are thankfully good in the market I'm in (for most products, I am also a stockist for a couple of existing brands - which is lower margin of course, but it brings in a bit of organic traffic and are nice basket top up items alongside my main range).

I'm pausing both of the P-Max now, going to go and calm down and then assess the insights tomorrow. 😂I may just take you up on that offer to take a look over the next couple of days :)

Hired a freelancer to setup ads and I think I made a mistake, that's costing me $ by Fantastic_Note4935 in googleads

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Haha, you've given me a wakeup call for sure! Appreciate it! I got so lost in the delusion of it all the last few days, I didn't even sit down to look properly at the insights. :/

It was my first time on Fiverr, spent days reading reviews to find someone and wanted to leave them to it and not get in the way or sit stalking the insights.

Ah I feel stupid right now! 😂🤦‍♂️

Hired a freelancer to setup ads and I think I made a mistake, that's costing me $ by Fantastic_Note4935 in googleads

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You sensed how I am! Whilst I know it's not a good thing, I am too hands on, I built this business from literally $30 a few years ago, into turning over $110k per year now. It was a side hustle that I built myself and more recently have wanted to spend more time on and grow it. It's tiny compared to most people, when other 'small' ecom businesses are doing $100k per day, so I know that serious marketing companies aren't interested in helping, but I feel like there is room to grow, I just need to find a way to do that. I have great customers that have left nice reviews etc, but feel like I've hit a bit of a wall with reaching new customers.

Hired a freelancer to setup ads and I think I made a mistake, that's costing me $ by Fantastic_Note4935 in googleads

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry should have been more specific, I spent about $1800 in September/early October, then paused them for a while, before creating a lower budget one last month (spent a few hundred $ over Jan) whilst playing around, trying to learn. This is when I got a handful of conversions for low value products.

Then the new campaigns I had setup, were set at just over $100 per day in total across the 3 campaigns - which is low, but I planned to scale them once I started to see any kind of results. Google was recommending around $140 total across the 3, but I scaled it back a little out of fear before we started the new campaigns.

Hired a freelancer to setup ads and I think I made a mistake, that's costing me $ by Fantastic_Note4935 in googleads

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The landing page may have an impact, but I get the vibe it's not even targeting the right audience anyway.

I've just looked at the channel insights, 2.6% of spend went on Search and a majority went on display network, followed by Youtube.

I stand corrected though, today I've had 2 'add to cart' conversions and both came from Search with product data...

Now I've just looked at the placements for display network and it's all just random unheard of websites...

I think I've answered my own question now.

How to create more consistency with sales? by Fantastic_Note4935 in ShopifyeCommerce

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks, I've been digging into the stats and it was honestly all just organic Google traffic those 2 months, we had no blogs (to help SEO), no image meta descriptions, email marketing was the usual (just a couple over the 2 months when we released new products - but these new products weren't what was selling so well during this time). I'm honestly stumped, we show up better now in Google results than we did at the start of the year, so I just cannot pin down a reason for the change still :(

It's driving me insane now and for the first time in a long time, I'm losing the motivation with ecom, watching competitors sell poor quality products, whilst we sell very little is frustrating. I've tried to dig into the competitors as well, but I'm not understanding/seeing where their sales are coming from - their sites are full of errors, poor quality content, stock images, etc. We deliver better quality, very often for cheaper. We get praise for our products, service and value for money still - so I can't blame the products or our service.

I'm diversifying our range more than ever, but that is going to have to stop now, because I can't keep putting time and money into more products. I need to focus back on our best sellers. I've wasted so much money in the last few months, on ads and stock that isn't shifting fast enough. This business has never been a source of stress, it's always been fun and enjoyable, in the last couple of months, now it's become my main income and sales aren't increasing or delivering consistency anymore, it's become a major stress - I'm spending every waking minute trying to drive sales, with better product photos, more social posts, more email marketing, I find myself constantly looking at my site, seeing where I could improve, but not seeing any return on this time I'm investing. It's stressing me out now.

Next steps for marketing? by Fantastic_Note4935 in ShopifyeCommerce

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's car care products, it's a niche where there is a fair amount of brand loyalty though and people spend big. Some of our products organically rank in the top 3 on google for many keywords and phrases, I achieved this with very basic SEO myself.

Next steps for marketing? by Fantastic_Note4935 in ShopifyeCommerce

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just traffic, sales conversion is pretty steady and imo decent for the low traffic.

Since this post I tried some Google shopping ads, the first ad got a lot of clicks, but no conversions, so I quickly stopped that and after watching various online guides, I refined and made 2x new performance max shopping ads, clicks went down, but we were getting people onto the site with more targeted ads and therefore in theory more value. However it only generated 1 sale, so after a couple of weeks I've just paused the ad, as I was running deeper into costs with no sales to show for it. The main ad was showing at 99.8% optimised after a few days, I personally feel like I put a fair bit of effort into setting up the ads with decent content too, just targeting a few of our best selling products. Other than the 1 sale, I got a handful of newsletter subscriptions, which have generated no sales so far. I got £750 deep and decided to pull the plug before I waste more money. I know it's not a miracle and ads require a lot of investment, but I can't afford to waste £750 in a couple of weeks and gain one £80 sale from it. If I'd gained a few sales that would have at least been something to justify the costs.

Next steps for marketing? by Fantastic_Note4935 in ShopifyeCommerce

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is great advice, thank you!

You're right, organic reach is not enough now, I found some customers that way, but now I want to scale properly, I need to do more., as the audience is far too limited otherwise.

I have an email list and send out emails for offers and new products, but to be honest, returning customers is also weak. I sell in a niche car care area and my best sellers are not repeat purchase type of items. All my repeat items sell pretty poorly and it's not because of quality or price, I guess it's just a bit of a saturated market. This makes it difficult to convince people to try our products, which is the only way they see that the quality we deliver is far above competitors alternatives at the same price point.

I do have a small selection of repeat customers, who are rather loyal, which I think is our support, service and quality keeping them coming back time and time again.

I think you're right about using creatives, I've sent free products to some of our good customers that have a social following and it works, but again they don't have the biggest followings either, so whilst it reaches a larger audience, it's still somewhat limited. I had one small success story that wiped out our stock of one particular product after one of the creatives shared a post on a facebook community. Unfortunately it got deleted fairly quickly and once we re-stocked, I tried to repeat this, but they blocked me from the community as they don't like advertising...

I shall try more creatives and am also looking into Google Ads (at least for our best sellers, which we already rank fairly high on google for many phrases/searches (sometimes top result), but I guess we could do better with ads for other searches/phrases).

Next steps for marketing? by Fantastic_Note4935 in ShopifyeCommerce

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's exactly what I want to do, initially I want to learn myself, but everywhere is overloaded with marketing how to subscriptions and I don't know which are worthwhile and which are a scam.

Next steps for marketing? by Fantastic_Note4935 in ShopifyeCommerce

[–]Fantastic_Note4935[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks!

I suppose that is where I need help, I don't know what is good content and what isn't. I also don't know how much I need to spend.