eXpert Insights: The Biggest Problem in Marketing is the Singular Focus On Creatives – Part 2
Put lipstick on a pig…and you still have a pig. Throw a fresh coat of paint on a dilapidated house…and it’s still a dilapidated house. What about fresh creatives on a Google Ads account with a subpar setup? Yep, you guessed it.
You’ll still have a subpar account and in turn, subpar ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). Part 1 of this article discussed why focusing on creatives vs account structure was wrong. Part 2 of this series digs into what it actually means to focus on the account foundation instead of creatives.
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Testing Creatives
While testing creatives can and will increase the ROAS of an account, the results won’t be as remarkable as they could be if you shift your focus. This is an example of a recent creatives test where we tested CTAs against each other over a two week period:
What we learned is that creative #1 performed better at $.05 per result vs $.06 for creative #2.
I’m not sure about you, but I forgot the last time I cared about a penny. However, we just saved an entire penny per result and in our world, that’s applauded and celebrated. Our clients were happy with the results and we went our merry way onto our next test.
But what if we spent our time focused on ad account structure instead?
Account Foundation Cleanup
This screenshot shows results over a one-week period, compared to the week prior. You’ll notice that we were able to increase the total revenue by 32%, costs by only 15%, and ROAS by 15%.
To do this we changed the entire shopping campaign structure for the Google account. As of this writing, best practice (per Google), is to use 3-5 shopping campaigns and to allow their algorithm to do the work. Instead of doing that, we broke out about 15 shopping campaigns based on product category. In doing so, we were able to increase total revenue while also increasing ROAS.
What’s better, $3000 or a penny?
Comparing The Two Numbers
Take a closer look at the numbers. For the creatives test, we were able to increase conversions by 20% at a max spend of about $250 over two weeks. For the shopping breakout, we were able to increase revenue by 32% at an increase of around $2000 in spend per week.
For the creatives test, we’re not able to scale and the results are limited per ad group (that’s a tiny fraction of the account). On the other hand, structural changes are account-wide and have a bigger impact. Comparing the two numbers, we’re able to spend more and make more if we focus on the account structure.
Creatives are still important factors in getting the numbers you need, but focusing on the foundation of your Ad Account gets you the numbers you want and has the larger impact on your bottom line. These structural changes will not only transform your results, but shift your focus to the foundation and fundamentals of a successful campaign. A house isn’t worth more because of a fresh coat of paint, it’s worth more because it was well built with a solid structure and foundation.