What is AdWords on Google: How does AdWords identify with Google Analytics? When you’re in an e-commerce situation, you can use Google Analytics to track behavior on your shopping site, just like you can track any other kind of site, in terms of visits, how much time people are spending on the site, etc.
Platforms like Shopify can connect directly to Google Analytics for this kind of information.
But what AdWords brings to the table is the ability to track conversions—measuring the journey customers take from clicking an ad to making a purchase.
This is why AdWords is so important in generating information and why search engine marketing is a desired skill, and important for online marketers to understand.
Okay, let’s dive in
How Google AdWords work | What is AdWords on Google
Creating an Account/Getting a Tracking AdWords on Google Code
To start an account, go to https://ads.google.com/home/. Feel free to wander around. The How it Works link may be of interest. When you’re ready,
Click Start Now:!
When you have an account started, go to Tools and Settings ➤ Measurement ➤ Conversions:
This process is setting up a connection between AdWords and your e-commerce site. It results in a bit of code that you can bring into Shopify, which allows AdWords to track your site.
For example, the scenario you are setting up is that a person sees your ad, clicks on it, reaches your site, and ideally buys something. This “conversion code” you’re creating allows Google to make a connection between the ad and your site.
When the visitor reaches the Order Confirmation page or the Thank You page, the code is there. Google can report that this specific ad was clicked on and resulted in a purchase.
This basically allows you to determine that when you spend a certain amount of money on ads, it results in a certain amount of revenue on your e-commerce site. AdWords does not magically sell things for you.
There are an art and science to selling, but the fundamental opportunity is significant for any business, and it’s very solid, compared to traditional forms of advertising.
If you’re planning on connecting AdWords and Shopify, you may want to review this link, which provides an overview and additional information about connecting the two:
After clicking the Conversion button Choose Website
Next, set the Conversion Category to Purchase/Sale:
After that, enter a Conversion name:
Then click “Use different values for each conversion”. This allows you to set different prices.
And keep the rest of those options as set as default. Or if you want to change as you need.
Then click Save and Continue:
After That Choose Website (Insert Tag yourself)
Make sure that the Markup Language is set to HTML:
Next, Google will give you the code, and you should copy it (Ctrl+C):
Finally, click Next and the Done button.
Connect Google AdWords to Shopify
Back in Shopify, go into Settings:
Click Checkout:
Paste the code into the Additional Content and Scripts area:
Click the Save button.
To Modify or Not to Modify
In terms of actually changing the code, Google says you should do it:
The Shopify documentation provides a way to do it (even showing relevant parts in red):
If you are approaching this as a learning experience, you don’t have to change the code, though. Just remember that when you try the ad out and get someone to click on it and buy your test product (even if it’s a friend),
you’ll get a conversion value, but it will be $1.00. If you actually want it to represent the price of the products, you have to replace the code. Don’t be alarmed about the code;
just think of it as a recipe.
For example, a recipe might say:
1) Get some bread
2) Put some peanut butter on a slice
3) Put the other slice on
Google is giving you a recipe for Shopify:
1) Here’s some code
2) Shopify, the value we place on the items will be $1.00 unless we change the recipe
3) Have a nice day
It might look a little different (everyone has their own lingo, right?)
var google_conversion_label = “ntvnCPWE5goQu92B8gM”;
var google_conversion_value = 1.00;
var google_remarketing_only = false;
You go to the Shopify article and select the relevant recipe replacement:
And you replace the particular part of the “code recipe” with something new:
var google_conversion_label = “ntvnCPWE5goQu92B8gM”;
if ({{ subtotal_price }}) { var google_conversion_value = {{ subtotal_price | money_without_currency }}; }
var google_remarketing_only = false;
If we bring it back into the kitchen, all you’re really doing is saying that instead of peanut butter, you can choose what to put in the sandwich.
So instead of this:
1) Get some bread
2) Put some peanut butter on a slice
3) Put the other slice on
You end up with this:
1) Get some bread
2) Put some [whatever you want] on a slice
3) Put the other slice on
All the code is doing is having one computer speak to another, or one program speak to another, etc. It’s basically just a set of directions to do something.
Given the fact that you have the article, Google support, and Shopify support, I think you can do it. The advantage to changing the code is that then your site is real.
That could be exciting, to know you’ve done it, and to be able to say you’ve done it. But don’t feel bad if it seems like too much—you can always come back later and try it for real.
Even if you don’t modify the code, you’ll still end up being able to test the connection between AdWords and Shopify, and all your wildest analytics dreams will come true.
What’s Going On To come back to Earth from the galactic analytics kitchen, consider the Order Confirmation page. The code that Google gives you, a “snippet” of code,
which you can either use as-is or tweak, is used by Shopify on the Thank You page.
So when someone clicks on your ad, purchases something, and checks out, they end up on the Thank You page. When it displays, it tells Google there was a purchase.
and choose View Source. Pretend you’re looking at a recipe book and see if you can find something that looks like the conversion code that Google gave you.
Then you’ll win a prize! Okay, the prize is the knowledge that you’ve discovered the code you planted there.
Create a Google AdWords Campaign
Now that you’ve connected Shopify and AdWords, you can create an ad so that you can try it in real life. Alternatively, you can get something a friend wrote and sell it as a digital product, or even find a physical product.
But to keep the momentum going, all I’m saying is there are options. In short, the world’s your oyster! What you’ll see very soon is that AdWords ads cost money—surprise! But that’s fair. In order to make money, you have to spend money.
Analytics allow you to see if you’re spending money effectively. Did your ad work? If people clicked on it, did they buy anything? To be clear, Google charges you when people click on your ad. This provides you, visitors. It’s up to you to get people to buy something.
There’s competition, so when you’re paying Google for the clicks, it’s like a kind of eBay auction. For example, say you own a company that sells basketballs and there’s another company that does the same.
You both want to get people to click on your ads. When people type “basketball” into Google, there’s a bidding situation. This is where it can be helpful to review some of the background info, as mentioned earlier.
On the bright side, you can sometimes get free ad credit. Check out:
At this point, you can limit your “ad spend”. You bid very low and make your product price very low, just to get some friends to find the ad, click, and buy the product, so you can test things out.
Then you can always come back and try the finer points by experimenting with different prices and bidding, in an effort to get “real” customers. That can be exciting. Think of that—an exciting analytics learning experience.
Yes, it can make money, but it can be exciting. Especially if you’re doing it for a client, a friend, or an employer. At that point, I definitely recommend getting AdWords Qualified, so that you can increase your chances of selling effectively.
At any rate, when you’re ready to try AdWords, go into AdWords and click New Campaign:
For the moment, click Website Traffic and Choose Search only.
After that Add your Business Url and Click continue.
Next, give the campaign a name:
Choose Start Date and End Date to how much time you want to run your campaign.
Choose the location where do you want to run your ads.
You can use the Automatic Ideas wizard, and you can also type in phrases of your own:
Next, you will be given a chance to set a budget. Ignore everything else for the moment.
I suggest $5.00 a day for learning. It doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily spend $5.00/day; this is only if people actually click on the ad. But you can limit a budget and change it later, and that’s the important thing to remember.
Here’s where you can bid. Just like with eBay, there’s an art to bidding, but you can always just use $1.00 to start.
Google may try to convince you to spend more and bid more:
You can get this page URL by going into Shopify and clicking on the middle icon on the bottom-left side:
Technically, your site page can be your landing page. This is the page where people go when they click the ad. As with other aspects of AdWords, there is an art and science to landing pages,
which is part of the way you increase the chances of someone buying something (by selling the value proposition, etc.). Just for learning purposes, you can copy that link from your browser and bring it back into AdWords.
Next, you can give your ad group a name if you like. What AdWords is doing is giving you an opportunity (by scanning your “landing page”) to get some ideas for keywords.
When creating an ad, ultimately you are targeting a particular keyword or set of keywords related to your product. Ask yourself, what would people type in Google if they were interested in my product?
This screen gives you the ability to get some ideas. Click on the little arrow icons on the right:
You can use the Automatic Ideas wizard, and you can also type in phrases of your own:
Then click Continue to Ads.
My advice is, especially if your head is swimming, to make an ad and not to worry about the particulars or keywords too much. This is just for the learning experience.
Delete or cancel the ad as soon as you are ready and then come back and try again. It’s more important to try the full process of making an ad, without worrying about getting it exactly right the first time.
This is the core of making the ad in Google, whether you follow the initial wizard or create a campaign first, and then create an ad group, and then create an ad.
The Destination URL is the link to your e-commerce shopping page. Remember you can always click on the little question mark icons for more information.
Next, enter a headline. Try it; you won’t hurt anything. Look at what happens on the right:
Try experimenting a bit with headlines and with the ad text. Try to think of something that would get someone to click it.
Think creatively. Dream wild! When you are ready, click Save Continue.
Next, you can click Continue to campaign.
The fact is that this example has its limits. My goal is to provide a cheap/free way to try things out that might result in you actually selling something (woohoo!), even if you used this free social media marketing book as an example.
But for better or worse, especially with social media, there’s always competition! There happen to be a lot of trainers, schools, consultancies, etc., that are all interested in people who want to learn more about social media marketing.
The prices of their products and services are much higher than a little social media marketing book, so they can afford to bid more on keywords. When you don’t put quotes around a keyword,
Google will automatically create variations of it. Google takes something like this:
And makes a variation like this:
Social media marketing
You could end up in competition with someone who is selling social media marketing as a service and charging a lot more money. The bidding will be higher than someone who is selling a service to learn about social media marketing, or selling a book.
This is just a little taste of how eBay—I mean AdWords—works. The way it relates to analytics is that there’s data around the competition for keywords, their average bidding price, and so on.
There is analytics in AdWords, in addition to the information that AdWords generates. At the end of the day, it can help your career and business.
You can try putting quotes around words so Google uses those exact phrases only:
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What are AdWord’s Tricky Timing Settings
The other important thing to remember when playing with AdWords is to keep track of when a campaign starts and ends. For whatever reason, Google added a couple of extra steps for actually ending a campaign.
You could say that it is because many campaigns are ongoing. Or you could say that they are doing this because they are apt to make more money.
Either way, I recommend reading this article:
Basically, when you create your campaign, be aware that you will want to go into Select Campaign Name -> Settings:
Doh! Google has decided that your campaign of giving them money has no end date.
Click the Edit button and set an end date. Ah! Much better. Just be aware of these hoops you have to jump through.
It’s Not Quite As Simple as This
I’ve covered a lot of ground, but I think it’s worth trying things out, to get a sense of how tracking conversion works. And yes, it’s not as simple as this. Because clicks don’t necessarily mean conversion into sales.
Someone might click on the ad and not actually buy something. The art and science of AdWords involve working with a variety of analytics. In theory, if someone buys something,
you can track ad budget against revenue, and that is the primary basis for $40-50 billion of Google’s revenue each year, which represents a large amount of revenue made by businesses.
Here was the competition I was up against in my little test:
Where oh where is my ad?
Eventually, I did find it, on the third page of the results. I had a friend click on it to test things out. Depending on what your goal is—to learn or to actually sell something—you might want to give yourself the freedom of not worrying too much about the keywords and not worrying too much about the bids.
Just set things up live and get a friend or two to search on Google for your keyword until they find the ad. Then buy your product (at a low price!),
and give yourself 24 hours to look back in AdWords to see the results. What you’re hoping is to see some Clicks:
Learning More What is AdWords on Google?
My apologies if your head is swimming. You should check out the following links for more information. Shopify
Help center: https://help.shopify.com/
Connecting to AdWords: http://docs.shopify.com/ manual/your-store/dashboard/google-adwords
Free AdWords credit: http://ecommerce.shopify. com/c/ecommerce-marketing/t/aha-this-ishow-to-get-your-google-adwords-and-facebookcredit-121154
AdWords: www.google.com/adwords
AdWords Help Center: https://support.google. com/adwords#topic=3119071
Use Keyword Planner with AdWords on Google
To try Keyword Planner, choose AdWords ➤ Tools ➤ Keyword Planner
This is the toy you can play with to figure out keywords. I mean, this is the tool you can utilize to attain clarity on keyword potential. I played around with it and found that the competition is pretty low or medium.
I dug a little deeper and found that the average “CPC” (cost per click) of “social media marketing training” was $2.00. So I thought, okay, I’ll try an ad where the bid is $2.00 and I’ll set the product’s price to $2.00 in Shopify.
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