Google Ads Does Not Convert on the First Click

When it comes to Google Ads, nobody buys on the first click, not even you. So why would you expect your customers to behave any differently? Here are some facts when it comes to customers' buying patterns specifically for Google Ads. Let's firstly look to lead gen. Year after year, WordStream has released some data showing that the average conversion rates for lead generation campaigns across all different industries is at 5%. Now obviously that can be higher and lower for some different industries, but if you look at lead gen as a whole, it's sitting at 5%. When we move over to e-commerce, uh, when we look at data from Shopify, it will tell you that 70% of sessions that make it to add to cart don't convert on that session. So 70% first add to cart sessions don't convert. And in fact, on Shopify, the average conversion metrics are still sitting somewhere between 1% to 1.5%. So I repeat my earlier statement: if you don't buy on the first session or on the first click, why would you expect your customers to? And this is a common complaint we get with business owners or brand owners when they're running Google Ads, especially if they're new in Google Ads, where they'll go, I just don't get it. People are clicking, they're going to our website, we can see them going to our website, we know the traffic is relevant, but they're just not converting. And I do understand the frustration, but what I just want to remind you about is that I want you to think about the way that you buy products. Even now, as you're watching this video, I want you to think about the last thing that you bought online. Did you buy after the first time you saw their very first ad, you went to their website and you made that purchase there and then, right in that session? Chances are no, because what would have happened is that you would have maybe even seen some ads first, thought about it for a little bit, gone and had a look at their website, did some further research, went and checked out some reviews, and then you came back and bought their product or booked in their service. Now, that's not a weird way of buying. It's just the reality of how your customers, including you, interact and make purchase decisions. So why would you then judge the results or the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaigns after the first week, after the first month, or even after the first 3 months. Now, as a business owner, I do get it. And especially even when I'm running ads for my own business, you've gotta really, really take a step back and go, hang on, hang on, hang on. Why am I stressing out about this? Because I know that the people that are gonna be buying today, they didn't interact with my business today. Some of them have even been on a journey for more than 12 months in order until they are ready to make that decision. And that's why when you're looking at Google Ads, just tracing metrics like ROAS can be really, really dangerous. Now hear me in the right way. Way. I'm not saying that you don't want to measure your Google Ads campaigns with a metric like ROAS, but what I am saying is that if you're only looking at the ROAS, you are really, really underestimating the power that Google Ads can have for your business. Now, the experiences that I'm going to be sharing through this come from my experiences of running Google Ads for my own businesses and thousands of other businesses. I've been running Google Ads since 2010 in pretty much any niche that you could imagine. But just in case we haven't met yet, my name is Aaron Young. I'm from Defined Digital Academy, and we exist for one reason, to empower business owners like you really take control of their business with Google Ads. And if you are a business owner or a brand owner and you are currently paying for Google Ads, you might be running it yourself, or you might be having an external agency or freelancer run it, but you would like to be able to learn how to take more control of your Google Ads campaigns, why don't you follow that link in the description below? And what you're gonna see is a couple of options. One, if you are spending over $5,000 a month inside of Google Ads right now and you want to scale to the next level, can I highly recommend you find out more about our on-demand program. This is where you get one-on-one support from our Defined Digital Academy coaches in coaching calls and also Slack support, and we do a full audit and everything that you need for success with Google Ads. Or if you're just starting out on your journey in Google Ads, we do have some different tools that we can give you for free, including our Google Ads Optimization Claude tool. And we've also got a program called Google Ads Mastery. You can find out about all of that in the link in the description below. But right now, let's get into the teaching. So the first really big mistake that I want you to avoid when it comes to Google Ads in your business is that you never want to judge that click, especially that first click, as a point of sale. As we've said before, and I've already taken you through those numbers, people don't buy on the first click. Remember we said even when they add to cart, 70% won't check out that day. And even for lead generation accounts, 5% is a good conversion rate. And many businesses perform under that, even when they've been running Google Ads year after year. Now, what I really wanna show you that this is not just something that I'm saying, this is actually data that even Google has gone through and researched. So Google went through and looked at over 310,000 different customer journeys. In most cases, it's not a straight line from click to purchase. And what they found was that buyers would generally go through these 2 behavior patterns. The first behavior pattern is that they go through exploration. They're widening their options, looking at all the potential solutions for the problem that they are facing or for the desire that they wanted to meet. And then they go into evaluation. They then narrow those options. So it's not a straight line. A lot of the time it's circling around until they come back and find the solution which is perfect for them. Let me give you a really, really classic example. Right now, one of the big purchases I'm looking at making, I probably won't even be making it for another 2 or 3 years, is that we're currently looking— I like fishing, so we're looking at some sort of option that allows me to fish over at an island which is 5 kilometers away from where we live. So you would just go, oh, that you need a boat. But no, maybe I could do a jet ski, maybe I could do a smaller boat, a bigger boat. So that is in me widening my options. So it's not just one product that I'm looking at. As I said, it could be anything from a sea kayak all the way up to a boat. But then what I am doing through this process of widening all those options, I'm taking out some of those options. And then when I come through and make a decision of this is the option I'm going to go for, I then narrow those options. And those options are when we're looking at things like price, we're looking at things like practicality, then we start looking at things like reviews, then we also start looking at ongoing maintenance costs and holding costs. All of these things. So it's that widening and then it's that narrowing which goes through. And then this brings us to that simple rule is that the higher the purchase price, you're going to have a longer buying cycle. And then there's also another part through there is urgency. The lower the urgency, the longer the buying cycle. So this is what you need to be thinking about when it comes to what product or service you're marketing inside of Google Ads, because this will be different for all different types of businesses. If you have a business with a higher purchase price, you're gonna need to get prepared that you might have a really, really long buying circle, which even goes outside Google's 90 days attribution window. Highly urgent, that can be a shorter click-to-purchase window. If you're running something which is not life-threatening and not urgent, you're gonna have a longer buying pattern. So these are the type of things you need to be thinking about when it comes to marketing your business and when it comes to marketing your brand, because that makes the core decisions on how you structure your account and what metrics become most important to you. Now, so I can illustrate this a little bit more clearer, let's jump over to my trusty iPad, and we're going to go through both e-com and lead generation, and then I'm going to show you how you can structure your account, all the different options you've got for structuring your account. So as we said before, we know with the higher average order value, it's going to take more research. Now, the other thing to think about there as well is it's also an urgency thing. If you've got a product which is highly urgent, people are going to make their decision much quicker. If it's not as urgent of a decision, it's going to take longer. So there's generally 3 core categories that we can look at. Now, as I said, this can be different depending on your niche and depending on where you live and depending on a whole lot of different factors. So let's just look at broad numbers here. But if you're looking at an impulse buy, and this is generally for any product which is under $50, you can definitely have a much shorter buying window. And this is where you may pick up some of those purchases where they click, and they buy it straight away. When you start jumping up to that $100 to $300 amount, this is where it can go into the days. And it may be 2 or 4 different sessions of going through. But then when you start moving over to, you know, $500 plus, this is where it could be actual weeks. Because the general rule is as the price rises, they're gonna need more research until they start to make their decision. Now, the other thing that you need to be thinking about as well is it's not only time, it's also looking at the amount of resources So there are some general guidelines here. For example, travel. So I want you to think about the last time you booked a holiday. How many different sites did you go through? You might have looked at some different OTAs, Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda. You may also be looking at the hotel or the resort's direct website. You then may also reference things like TripAdvisor, Google Reviews before you make those decisions. When you're buying a car, they're looking at on average, it's 18.2 different sites. Different resources that you're looking at before you make that final decision. So, but there is a direct correlation. The higher AOV, the more research. Now, lead gen, there is a little bit more, I guess, distinction you want to have here. So for example, when it comes to an emergency, so if you've got a burst pipe or, you know, I hope you don't have this, but if you've got a toilet which is overflooding, you don't care what price it is. You just want someone out there right now. So that once again can be an example where you can get that conversion on the first click. However, when you start going into more considered approaches or more considered purchases, the higher the price, the lower the urgency, it's going to mean a longer buying window. So this could be an example for B2B SaaS products for accountants, or example for home repairs. They'll generally go through this process. So this here is the click. This is the first click right here. But you can see here there's some other stages that they're going to go through, and this is what we're talking about— the exploration and then the refinement. So they need to do their initial research, and this is where they could be looking at anywhere between 3 to 5 different businesses, may even be even more than that. They may get some quotes, they might narrow that down and get 2 to 3 quotes. Then when they get those quotes, they need to go through and compare because there'll be a range in price that they're looking at here. Sometimes it's not just about the cheapest price or the more expensive price, it may be the inclusions. Then they sometimes will go back and renegotiate, do all of these things, and then they go through and check some different references, could be Google reviews, could be asking to speak to different clients, all these different things before they're ready to go through and make that decision. Once again, in most cases when they're clicking, they're not making that decision on that very first day, with the only caveat being unless you are dealing in emergency plumbing or something like that, you can get those clicks to sales on the very, very first day. So let's now talk what that means for your Google Ads account structure. Now As you could imagine that I can't go through and give you an exact structure for your individual business because there's just so many different considerations that you need to take into account. But what I can take you through is something that we call the bottom-up funnel. And the great thing I love about Google Ads is that you do have some search-based inquiries that you can focus on. So this is where you'd go through and focus on things like your search campaigns. If you're an e-commerce brand, also your shopping campaigns. And that's where really you're just getting that direct response. They search for this product or they search for this search term or the service that you're offering, you hope they go through and make that purchase decision. But if you are noticing that you're getting people going to your website and they're not converting, you may need to step down or step below the blue section, which is what we call our remarketing or retargeting. And it's where you could use something like a demand gen campaign where you're only targeting people who've been to your website or people who have gone to your cart before. And what you're doing there is that you are using videos on YouTube or images in order to remind them. Just keep showing up, showing up until they go through and make that purchase decision. Then when you've got that sorted, you can take a step up. And this is where you can start to use things like Performance Max, video campaigns, or even you want to use some of the new AI Max features on Search or Shopping. And it's where you're starting to reach out and you're leveraging more on audience-based bidding or you're leveraging more on conversion-based bidding where you're giving Google the right environment. Now it's really important that you've got the right data flowing into your account where essentially you are giving Google some control or go, hey look, this is what our account is converting for, can you find me more people like this? And then you can go up to that top part, the red part of the funnel, which is where you're using things like your demand gen where you can build out lookalike audiences. So you can upload your current customer lists, create a lookalike audience, and then target them in YouTube and display. And this is where you are hitting people before they even know you, and even potentially before they even know that they need your product. So essentially what you want to be doing with the bottom-up funnel is that you are starting to get your Google Ads account profitable, and then as you get it profitable, you're building in some remarketing, retargeting, and then you're starting to reach out to people before they're even in that buying window. So thank you for joining me. And as I said, the main thing I wanted you to get from today's video is to just stop that expectation that people are going to click and then buy your product or book your service on the first day. Sales with Google Ads does— is a process, and it does take time. Now, if you are a business owner or if you're running Google Ads and you'd like to get some more support from Define Digital Academy, remember, follow that link in the description below. You can find out more about our on-demand program or also our free tools that we offer to help you start with Google Ads. But if you'd like to stay right here on YouTube, why don't you go through and watch this video right here, because when you understand this about Google Ads, it'll help Google Ads become a money printing machine for your business. Thanks for joining me. See you real soon. Bye.