Grow a Sequoia, Not a Bonsai: Maximise Profits, not ROAS

Dave Hare

UK & Ireland Retail Market Lead at Google

The Ecommerce Club welcomes Google's UK/I Retail Market Lead to talk about what ecommerce businesses need to do to quickly grow, scale and automate their way to having a more successful and valuable business. A relatively short talk followed by 40 minutes of questions from the audience. This FREE event is a fantastic opportunity for those attending to have access to a senior insiders view about tools, best practice and new innovations from the company at the core of global online trade.

Dave works with some of Google's most advanced Retail businesses to focus on maximum profitable growth. Through automation - you can now build your own 'money printing machine' by leveraging machine learning, investing across the user journey, and focusing on the right results. Businesses who follow these steps make more money from their digital investment, spend less time managing their campaigns, move faster, and spend more time on strategic issues like customer segmentation, loyalty, and cross-selling.

‍

At Google, Dave looks after a portfolio of retail businesses across the UK and Ireland helping them to grow, automate and scale their online businesses. Dave has previously worked for Mentor, IBM and Vodafone and has an MSc with First Class Honours from the UCD Michael Smurfit Business School.

‍

Dave's talk encouraged a flurry of questions from the audience including:

What % of sales are affected by consent mode / no cookie tracking?

Is it worth switching to "Pay By Invoice" instead of Card payments to improve cashflow?

Our agency keeps asking us to use Enhanced Conversions. Is it worth it? Also what's Consent Mode, is it important?

In your opinion, what are the most underused Google Ads features?

Would you recommend any specific third party dashboard tools like Triple Whale etc?

How useful are the Google Account Strategists? What size do you need to be to get one?

What if you sell fridges? People don't change their fridge every month so not typically your usual retail model?

What top custom columns would you recommend that your clients set up?

We've seen a lot of beta Google Ads features being mentioned on SE Round Table? Is there a roadmap for these?

What is the best way to stop business owners reverting to cutting a budget that makes them profit?

Is there a way to highlight questions?

In the current climate with lots more companies all in competition for the same customer or traffic, the general pattern is for a decline in paid traffic. 1/2

How is this anything other than a race to the bottom with the decline in ROAS to make a loss on traffic acquisition 2/2

It's well known amongst PPC professionals that the Google Display Network contains lots of spam sites. Do you know if Google is doing anything to combat this?

Custom columns formulas still don't allow any basket level metrics to be used in calculations. This makes it difficult to see profit (less cost) via reports.

Do you know if automated bidding strategies are panned for e.g. "Maximise Profit" or "Profit on Ad Spend" for Google Shopping Ads or PMax?

What changes does Google Ads envisage in the way they do their rankings in the coming year?

With Google Optimize being sadly sunset into Google’s Graveyard, does Google plan to launch another product in the A/B space?

Dave - tut tut tut, Victorian Plumbing...... really ? How do i go about taking on that behemoth given they spend upwards of £5m per month on GA's

How does Google plan to rank SEO listings now between AI based product descriptions and people generated content?

Does Google Ads plan to rollout updates to Performance Max campaigns to improve "transparency" e.g. search term reports, segmentation by ad types etc?

Does Google Ads plan to rollout updates to Performance Max campaigns to improve "transparency" e.g. search term reports, segmentation by ad types etc?

It's well known amongst PPC professionals that the Google Display Network contains lots of spam sites. Do you know if Google is doing anything to combat this?

We ran three SLIDO polls (two before the talk and one after). Here are the results:

The Ecommerce Club

The Ecommerce Club has operated for 12 years. Although it's primary audience lies within Scotland, we regularly have guests and visitors from other parts of the UK and overseas. For more information about the Ecommerce Club, visit https://www.indez.com/blog/ecommerce-club where you can register for this and future events.

Events take place on the first Tuesday of every month between 9:30 and 10:30. Events start promptly so please join a few minutes before hand. People often stay on after the event to chat and find out more about other members of the audience.