Data Driven Daily Tip - August 13, 2017: I totally understand how hard it is sometimes to keep up with the changing atmosphere of Google Adwords. If you're an eCommerce business selling direct to consumers online, Paid Search - specifically Google Adwords - has to be a huge part of your strategy.

But, you may have noticed a declining number in "return on ad spend" over the last 12-18 months in your traditional contextual search campaigns. Cost per click continues to increase as more and more retailers continue to flood the market and bid on keywords, driving up the cost.

Additionally, we know that bidding on first position is critical to conversions but also a lot more expensive. If you've seen the search engine results pages lately, you also may have noticed while searching for products that Google Shopping results are starting to dominate. These are set up via Google Merchant Center accounts that feed in products from your store. Once you have feeds set up, you can also run Google Shopping Paid Campaigns via Adwords. The proof is in the data from our clients that these Shopping campaigns are returning about a 300% return on ad spend, compared to 200% or less for Search campaigns.

For more information about setting up a Google Merchant Center account with Google Shopping campaigns for your business, contact us and we'll help!

Paul Hickey has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.