The Dropship Unlocked Podcast

The Best Ad Strategies for Ecommerce In 2025 (Episode 115)

• Lewis Smith & James Eardley • Season 1 • Episode 115

Share episode

💻 Join My FREE Online-Event: The Best-Kept Secret To A Profitable Online Shop:
https://dropshipunlocked.com/online-event?el=podcast-115-best-ad-strategies

➡️ Book a call to learn more about AddPeople: https://meetings-eu1.hubspot.com/meetings/david-gavin/dropship-unlocked-affiliate

🗣 In this episode, Lewis Smith and James Eardley are joined by Rachel Greenhalgh (Head of Ecommerce at Add People) and Oliver Eardley (Principal Consultant at Add People). 

Together, they discuss the best ad strategies for high-ticket ecommerce businesses in 2025 and beyond. Learn how to optimise your ad campaigns, leverage AI, and make the most of multi-channel marketing.

👉 Do you know someone who would love this episode? Share it with them ➡️https://youtu.be/HbqUTpEihHM

Topics Discussed:

★ AI and Machine Learning for Ecommerce Ads
Discover how AI is revolutionising ad targeting for high-ticket ecommerce businesses in 2025.

★ Best Platforms for High-Ticket Ecommerce Ads
Why Google Ads and multi-channel strategies are the most effective for high-ticket sales.
★ Mistakes to Avoid in Paid Ads
Common mistakes when running paid ads for high-ticket products and how to avoid them.

Links and Resources Mentioned:

Key Takeaways:
★ Leverage AI for Precision: Use AI-powered tools, such as Google's Performance Max, to help target your ads more effectively and improve ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).
★ Scale Smartly: Only scale when your campaigns consistently meet or exceed your target ROAS. Start small and scale gradually to ensure profitability.


Learn More:

➡️ For more on launching your ecommerce business with a clear path, visit
https://dropshipunlocked.com/start

➡️ Subscribe to The Dropship Unlocked Podcast to stay up-to-date on the latest episodes, and leave a like to help others discover the show.

FOLLOW:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dropshipunlocked/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DropshipUnlockd
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/company/dropship-unlocked
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/dropshipunlockedlewissmith
Website: https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/

🌏 Want to create location, time, and financial freedom? Watch Our Free Training ➽ https://dropshipunlocked.com/free?el=podcast-115-best-ad-strategies

Join Lewis Smith, Founder of Dropship Unlocked, as you build and launch your high-ticket dropshipping business.

📺 Don’t Forget to SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube Channel! (It's Free)
🔰 SUBSCRIBE here ➽ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9r29zg3RE4e-zDDwVjdJOA?sub_confirmation=1

Welcome to this episode of the dropship unlocked Podcast. Today, we are joined by a specialist paid advertising agency called ad people. Now these guys really know their stuff when it comes to pay per click marketing, and yeah, they're going to help us and help you find out how you can make the most sales possible this year from Pay Per Click advertising. So it should be a really good episode. Looking forward to this conversation. That's right, it's great to speak to experts that are working on E commerce businesses, day in day out, to run their ads so we can find out exactly how to make the most sales from ads with our E commerce businesses this year. Now, not least because as well, one of the guests that we'll be introducing to you soon is another early now, we don't find many earlies out there, so the fact that there's another one, as well as myself on today's podcast, is exciting. So no doubt, as good as the expert Insights is going to give us not going to be able to beat the surnames that we've got on show today. You Wow. Welcome to the dropship unlocked Podcast. I'm Lewis Smith, the founder of dropship unlocked, and with me is our client success coach. James Early. Now, when we're not recording podcast episodes or running our own e commerce businesses, you'll find us helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket drop shipping stores. So if you're ready to build your own six or even seven figure online business, then head over to dropship unlocked.com. Forward slash, start now, sit back, relax and let's unlock your potential with the dropship unlocked podcast today, we are joined by Rachel greenhouse, head of E commerce at ad people, and Oliver erdley, yeah, there's another early in the house today, Principal Consultant at ad people. And so today we're going to be diving into high ticket e commerce, businesses and how they should be using paid ads specifically in 2025 to generate consistent, profitable sales. Now, a bit of context about who ad people are, and they're a UK based digital marketing agency, then they've worked with a lot of clients. They've worked with over 4000 businesses, helping them scale their businesses with digital marketing paid per click, traffic, SEO, things like that. So today we're going to really dive into what they do, and Rachel and Oliver will hopefully be able to share some valuable insights on how you can optimize your ads for success. So welcome to the show guys. Hi. Nice to be here. Thanks. Good to be here. So let's start with the big question, if we can, and kind of start big. We'll zoom in to the specifics. How do you see the landscape of paid ads for E commerce businesses, specifically high ticket e commerce businesses, because that's kind of our model with the home turf advantage. How do you see that landscape evolving in 2025 Well, I think the obvious answer isn't around AI. So obviously we've seen AI for a few years in marketing, and there's there's been advancements, but nothing as much as within last year, within 2024 we've seen huge advancements already. So I expect that to continue into into next year. I'd expect advertising and targeting and creatives, all of that to be affected. But I just think things are going to get a lot more precise going into next year. I would say it'll probably end up in a position where each everybody has their own Google Search feed or own social media feed. Well, obviously you already have your own social media feed, but the adverts that you'll see are going to be specifically, even more specifically targeted to you as an individual. Yeah, we've already seen such a big change in the consumer behavior over the last few years, and that decision making process, it's definitely not as simple. The online purchase is definitely not as simple. So, yeah, it's definitely with ads, but also other channels. It's become even more important to really meet customers where they are, and that means that, obviously the multi channel model becomes even more important. And alongside that, customers definitely also have much higher expectations of brands, that they're a lot less brand loyal than maybe they were a few years ago, which means things like, you know, delivery, customer service, become really crucial in terms of running a business, obviously, ads performance, but just running a successful e commerce business overall, and, yeah, in terms of, as Ali said, AI, a huge, huge change. If we think about search, it's really not changed. And we're focusing on Google ads like has really not changed at all, or not a lot over, you know, up until the last year or so, and with the introduction of Gen AI in search engines, things like Gemini and things like that, that will be a huge change, and we're only really just starting to see that now. So it's going to be really interesting to see how things like. Ads integrate with Gen AI in you know, the search function itself? Interesting? Yeah, there's a huge shift, isn't there to be more personalized? And we'll dive into what that means for us as advertisers, how we can make the most of all the recent AI that's come into Google ads. But firstly, for somebody that's just getting started with E commerce and wants to start running ads, where would you say is the best platform to start? Is it still the case that Google ads is one of the best places to start with running ads for an E commerce business? I'd say platforms will sort of come and go over time, but I'd always say go where the intent is. So really, if I was going to say right now, I'd probably say Google Shopping, or even Amazon ads, something where people are specifically searching for the product that you offer. Obviously, there is some challenges within there as a new retailer, as a new business, but I'd say that's probably the best place to start. And I'd supplement that with social media ads, in order to sort of remarket back to the people that have seen your ads gone through to your site, and that's the that would be the baseline structure that I would use if I was just starting out. Yeah, I would particularly say, if you've got a product with a really strong audience, or it's in a niche, but, you know, with a with a relatively big audience, then Google ads is a really good place to start, particularly because they'll be searching with that intense purchase, and also Google ads is a great way of gathering that data quite quickly, so you'll see a big increase in traffic to your website, and that's really important for particularly for kind of some of the other channels you want to be gathering that audience data so you can optimize towards it on things like social as well. Just to kind of add to that as well, I'd say if you're running any of these sort of campaigns, especially as a new business, just ensure that your tracking is set up correctly, because things like your remarketing and everything will be affected long term. So I know as a smaller business, as a new business, budget is going to be a key thing here is you don't want to be wasting any of that budget. You want to make sure that every person to your website can at least be remarketed back to at some point. So that's just a little, uh, preamble that, or ending I would add to that. Yeah, definitely, getting the the foundation set up so that the AI can do its job right. Otherwise, you're just running traffic blindly to a site, not knowing what's working, what's sticking. I think it's fascinating. You talk about it like it's, you know, flooding a website with traffic from paid is the fastest way to get data. So you can then optimize both ads. But even other things, like you said, socials as well and and you mentioned about like Gemini and how that's, you know, affecting the the search engine results page, the Google's AI tool for anyone that doesn't know Gemini. And I mean, I'm seeing it now. I'm sure many other users are seeing it. When you search something on Google the top of the result. I guess it depends on the type of query. If it's an informational query, I imagine it skews more towards giving you an AI generated response like that. But it's fascinating as an E commerce seller, because I'm thinking, well, Google's revenue stream primarily comes from ads, so they're not going to just suddenly push ads off the, you know, below the fold on a search results page. So be interesting to hear your thoughts on them. Yeah, how that's going to factor in with people paying for ads? But I know. So AI and machine learning are obviously playing this massive role. It's all still unfolding. No one's quite sure kind of where it's going to lead. How can we as high ticket e commerce businesses, leverage some of these AI powered tools to maximize our own ad performance? Obviously, we've got to get the foundation set up right, enhanced conversions, attribution tracking, things like that. But how can we really make the most of these tools? Yeah, so the first thing I would say on that is, look, there will be new platforms that will be introduced side. I'd say being able to adapt as a newer business will give you an advantage if you can be quick. A lot of bigger businesses will be slower to the punch with a lot of these new AI tools. So I'd make sure, when these things come up, just jump on them as soon as you can. That'd be my first bit of advice. You want any bit of advantage you can get, I'd say in terms of tools that are already existing, considering we've already been talking about Google ads, performance Max within Google ads would be something I would recommend. I wouldn't recommend it straight away. I'd say, get some early results with regular campaigns first, because you need, you want the AI to optimize around what already works, right? So use some some normal campaigns, initially get some results, get some sales, and then move over to some of like performance Max and let Google's AI do its thing. Yeah. I think one of the really big things that AI in Google ads, but overall, can really help businesses with, particularly when they're first starting, or when they're a little bit smaller, is the content, the creative we've already said about the, you know, customization of content to to the different customers. I think it really allows businesses to do that when it wouldn't necessarily be feasible. You know, when you're running your own business, and maybe you're the only person there and you're doing everything. Thing that might not be the top of your list. And you know, AI really allows businesses to do what maybe wouldn't have been feasible before, in terms of creative, whether that be for the ads, but also on the website itself, improving the actual products and the product descriptions, which is going to be so crucial on getting those conversions, and then, yeah, in terms of within Google Ads itself, Oli mentioned kind of performance max that automated bidding that you can use really does allow you to target the people that are most likely to convert. So it's definitely something to make the most of Once you've gathered that initial data. Interesting. Yeah, it's interesting because only a few years ago, when we were running Google ads, we had to be so manually updating bids, updating keywords, the amount that we'd bid on each keyword, et cetera, et cetera, which can now all be done for you through AI, which is good news. Should be music to the ears of new e commerce business owners, especially if you're going into business on your own when you first get started, because there's lots of work to do that AI can now do on your behalf. I mean, when you set up new campaigns now, the AI wants to give you so many suggestions that it sometimes it's just a case of giving them your website URL, and it will start to suggest the keywords the ad groups that you, that you set up, and it's only going to continue, I think, in that direction, which is, yeah, I guess, a good thing to highlight on this podcast today. But in your experience working with E commerce businesses, in particularly, what mistakes do you see these business owners making when they first go into running paid ads? Okay, so they the key mistakes that I'd see are not back, not taking to into account a longer buying cycle. That would be the first thing some people will expect. You know, I'm just going to switch these ads on. I'm going to get sale day one. It can happen, obviously, but I'd say, just bear that in mind. When you're running, running the ads, think about your your lifetime value. Think about your cost per acquisition costs. What can you spend to get those, those those deals, across and just be patient with them? That would be the first bit I'd say. The other thing I'll talk about is social proof. It's quite difficult for a newer business to do. Obviously, you need some some reviews and some credibility there. So think about how you can do that, leveraging different things. It could be influencers. It could be there's lots of different ways you can think about how you can build in some social proof. So think about that. And the other thing I'd think about is the landing page of the website itself. So have you considered conversion rates? Have you looked at maybe some of the top people in your industry, what they're doing, how their pages are laid out, even color schemes. In some cases, there's lots of things you can look at just to see. What are they doing differently to me, before I start spending money on these, these ads, yeah, I would definitely agree, in terms of the the results side of things, and just because you don't see results immediately doesn't mean that it's it's not going to work, and it's not necessarily the right channel for you, particularly in Google ads, or in ADS overall, you know the campaigns do take time to learn, and with high ticket items, the conversion path, or time before a person, a customer, actually converts, might be a little bit longer, but that doesn't mean that you can't see some signs that show that it is successful. So it's really important for you to understand what does that look like to show that you will be getting to those purchases eventually. So is this the traffic that's going to website? Is that relevant? Are the people searching for, you know, relevant things to your products? Are people adding to the basket? Are they viewing product pages? All that type of stuff can really be good indications that is going in the right direction, before you're actually seeing those conversions. They think, thinking it's really key to understand what those initial signs are before you obviously get to that conversion stage. And everyone obviously wants to rush to making loads of profit, but it's about taking those steps together. So, you know, get getting that those customers to the website, getting them to starting to add to the cart, starting to purchase, and then obviously getting to, you know, on on ads, you know, break even in terms of the return. So it's about scaling and being confident that, you know you're following that process to get that, yeah, trust in the process is having faith that there is, there will be results at the the end of the tunnel. And, yeah, I like what you say about certainly high ticket products, and the longer buying cycles Oliver, I know, um, certainly my experience was when I first started running ads, and it was kind of like, I hope I've done everything right on the website, and I hope it, you know, kind of strikes a chord with the customer. And certainly, if I thought back to, I don't know, first 20 sales, I bet if I looked back, a lot of them probably came from me calling back abandoned customers and being like, hey, you know, I'd run the business here. Just wondered if I could help answer any questions, and end up closing that sale over the phone and probably learning a few things to then go in and tweak the website from a CRO perspective of like, ah. So that's what customers want to see. That will probably avoid a phone call in the future, they'll just buy. And then you make those tweaks, so you kind of complete the loop, don't you? But, um, yeah, something, sorry, you go ahead. Sorry, yeah, I was just gonna say it's all about learning, right? Like it's all about you're not going to get it perfect first time. And it's all about that, you know, that iteration of taking on the feedback, whether it's from customers, or learning from the things you did in campaigns that really worked, or maybe you could improve and continuing that, you know, improvement cycle, because you're just not going to get it perfect straight away, and just keep going through that. And then you'll, you'll, you know, you'll just only see improvements. Yeah, exactly. And there are, there are some people who, yeah, we've worked with, certainly, who, once they switch ads on, they come into us, almost like in panic mode on day two, and they're like, my ads are running. I can see the, you know, for the first time ever, they're spending money to acquire traffic, which is a bit of a new sensation to us all, isn't it, when you first do that and you're like, why aren't they buying what? Like, it's been, I had 100 visitors today. Why didn't anyone buy and and so obviously, delayed gratification, longer time horizon. But also to your point, Rachel, about early buying signals of like, Well, did you get many add to carts? Did you get many abandoned carts? Did you get, you know, put customer inquiries? Did you get phone calls? Because if none of that's happening, maybe it's a CRO or even, like, a site usability issue or something, so that something's wrong, right? So you can kind of figure that out. But I know one of the things that, um, particularly people first starting out on this journey running a business. And maybe they've heard, you know, from someone else on YouTube, that, like, our tick tock ads is your your way to go, like, that's what's hot in 2025 and then someone else is like, that's all about Instagram reels and story ads. And, you know, we teach kind of a methodology that's like the difference between search intent ads, ie, Google Shopping, Google search, text ads versus disruption ads where you're trying to kind of distract someone off of a social platform and pull them into buy, get a high ticket sale, and there are so many platforms out there, there's so much noise. Which do you think are most effective for driving higher ticket, higher priced sales and and why would that be? Well, I would say it does depend on the product that you're selling. I've got a few thoughts. There's a few different platforms that I can sort of go through. So I'd say, really, ideally, the probably the most, highest converting platform is organic SEO, in my opinion. So search engine, so through Google. So if you're being found at the top of Google for the kind of things that you offer, then naturally, you've got that credibility and and does tend to convert high, whereas, obviously, I realize a lot of people starting out with with drop shipping, that really isn't realistic. I'd say another option, because you mentioned Tiktok a second ago, that I actually think Tik Tok as a search engine, is quite exciting. That could be something you guys could could explore, because I think it's one it's fairly early on as well. There is a bit of an opportunity there. If you want to spend some time as a business, creating video content, optimizing it around search terms for Tiktok. I know certainly the younger generation are searching on there as a search engine. So that would be an opportunity, depending on your product, right? Because if you're selling something very, very expensive, yeah, most, in most cases, younger people aren't gonna be able to afford that. Let me see what else could be useful YouTube is, is another good one, I'd say, in terms of a lower cost per acquisition, I think it's quite A a cheap way, in my opinion, in terms of getting brand awareness out there, because you typically wouldn't pay for your ads until someone's watched half a video in most cases. So there's a lot of different ways you can do I'm sorry there isn't an easy answer here. I say this is the platform you want to use, and this is how you do it, but, yeah, there's very different ways you can do it. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. You talked about maybe four or five different things there, like organic, SEO, Tiktok, Google, YouTube, to someone just starting out, and they're thinking, Okay, I've only got, you know, a few hours a day I can dedicate to my business. Should businesses do you think focus on more than one platform, and really try and spread their efforts thinly across all of these or do you think it's more wise at the beginning to kind of go all in on one what's your experience been? My experience? I'd say probably be, well, I'd always want multiple channels ideally. But if it was like if I had a really limited budget, I'd rather do one thing right than a lot of things wrong, in my opinion, because a lot of these, a lot of these platforms, if you don't have enough budget to put through, you can't get the learnings you need in order to optimize it. So I'd say, if you are very limited by budget, pick the one that is right for your product and go all in on that? That would be what I'd say. Yeah, I think as a starting point, definitely more focus on one one platform or one channel is a really good way to start. As Ali said, you don't want to be spreading yourself too thinly and not really achieving your goals on any of them. But the ultimate goal, if you really want to achieve that growth, is that you do have to. You don't want to be one channel reliant. So you do want to gradually get to the point where you do have more of a multi channel approach. But I think it's all about gradually building that up, rather than necessarily going all in, in one in one go. Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. Because if you're just reliant on one channel. If that channel gets taken down, suspended for whatever reason, then all your eggs were in that basket. So the way we kind of approach this is the way we set up our Shopify stores. We're encouraging a good ranking on Google for server SEO, but obviously that takes three to six months before you start to see any traction really Google ads as a primary source of getting the data and getting customers to your site. And then email marketing, we can start capturing emails, and then we'll start remarketing campaigns on meta as well. So we start with Google Ads single point of focus initially, but then we use that data to then inform lots of other different campaigns that will run alongside it as well, which ties in with the multi channel approach. So we're not sort of reliant on the initial Google ads campaign that we've got set up, and from that position, then people that have got their first campaign set up, and they're starting to get some results, starting to get some data come back in, when would be the right time to start increasing the budget? And how can businesses look to look into their data to find out when it is the right time to start scaling those budgets. So I'd say, before running any sort of campaign, I'd say, have a clear understanding of what you're trying to achieve and what the targets would be. Have a look around as well, and look at sort of industry standards as well. Don't just think I want a 10x on my, uh, spend straight away. That can be, can happen for certain industries. But I'd say your first port of call should be setting your your targets and what you want to achieve. And then from there, if you're consistently achieving those targets, not just one month, I'd say you need to be consistently hit them, you know, three, four months in a row. That's when I'd say, that's it's time to take a look at this now and see how we can scale it up. So you want to be thinking about return on ad spend. So what, how much money am I spending, and how much am I getting in return? So that's one of your key metrics. You want to look at your cost per acquisition costs. So you know, what is it costing me to get one sale, and then also think about lifetime value. This can be very difficult at the start for a newer business, because you're not you're not going to be sure how many times people are going to buy your your product, but you'll have a vague understanding based on what you sell if you expect people to buy again, to maybe consider that as well. But I'd say at that point, once you're happy with that return. You've been running it three or four months, and it's consistently hit those targets. That's when you want to incrementally, sort of start to raise the budget. We're talking maybe 10% at a time. Don't, don't double your budget, or don't fire loads more money into it. It's tempting, but at that say incremental increases the best way to go? Yeah, definitely. ROAs for all return on ad spend is normally one of the key metrics that you'd look at within e commerce, but it's also worth balancing that with actually how much revenue making overall. Sometimes it can be easy, particularly if you're new to, as we said, kind of spending on ads, spending money to get sales, it can be sometimes easy to just really focus in on ROAs and maximizing that as much as possible, but often and definitely not always, that doesn't actually lead to maximizing in terms of the profitability. So it's always about balancing and figuring out, based on your gross profit margins, where do you need to be in terms of the return to really be making profit and scale that alongside the budget, so ultimately, you're making as much profit as possible, not just, you know, maximizing the revenue for minimal, minimal spend. Yeah, we've seen that happen a lot of times, where people will set, like, a super ambitious ROAs target, and Google's like, okay, I can do it, but I can't spend more than five pounds a day to hit that because what you're asking for is crazy, and it will show and it will look good on paper, if the only metric you're looking at is ROAs and be like, Great, I'm hitting my row as why is my budget not spending? And it's like the expectation you're asking of the platform is so out there that it's just, it's kind of operating with its hands tied behind its back. It's not able to go and reach out for those customers that are likely to convert. So as a really good point, I think, something that's overlooked that you said, Rachel about, it's about the overall profit that the business brings in, not about the percentage margin necessarily, because you'd like, I'd rather make way, like, double the profit, but at a 20% margin, than half the profit, at a 40% margin, because I capped myself in reach. So I think, yeah, it's having that, that ability to kind of relinquish control a little bit and let the platform do its thing, but keeping a close eye on that cost per acquisition and making sure you know, it doesn't get out of hand. And this is all really good stuff in theory, right? But I'd love to hear some more kind of practical cases of this coming to life. And can you share any kind of specific. Examples, ideally for clients of yours, and they've got like 4000 that you can kind of reel off, but ones that are similar to these types of businesses, so like, high ticket products, ideally, kind of UK domestic suppliers, fast delivery, this kind of model that this has worked for. And if so, can you kind of talk us through, like, what would make their campaign successful in the first place. Yeah. So we actually, over this year, I've been working with a client who sells kind of like luxury bathroom fixtures, quite high AOV. And when they started working with us, they actually had just paused their ads because they just really weren't performing how they wanted to. They were doing quite well on some other channels, but they ads just wasn't really working for them. And so yeah, as I said, we've been working them for with them for about 1010, months, 11 months now, and when we brought it on, we really saw a lot of inefficiencies in the ads account. So actually, when we first started working with them, we actually dropped the budget because we could notice a lot of overlap in the accounts. Campaigns were competing against each other, and it was really inefficient. So actually, really we wanted to get that strong base of campaigns. Initially brought the spend down to make sure that we were making the profit, the most profit that we could, in the areas that we could. So actually, we brought the budget down about 20% but increase the revenue, but in 23% by 23% in the first few months. So that was kind of the starting point. If you've kind of maybe gone a little bit crazy with your campaigns at the start and spread yourself for loads of different areas, sometimes it's about if you've not necessarily created the right foundations, bringing it back maybe before you can then start scaling. So once we've dropped, dropped that budget slightly, then it really meant that we could then scale. And actually, in the last few months, their total website revenue has gone up by 100% compared to where they were last year. And and another kind of thing that we worked on outside of the ads, and I was I always like saying this, because I think it's always about making the most of the traffic that you are paying for on Google ads. We all acknowledge we're paying for it. We want to make the most of it that we can. So we're really also focused on introducing email marketing, which they'd never really done before, and particularly with that high AOV product, we want to kind of get as many of those clients to convert, customers to convert as possible. So using that traffic that we generated from ads and trying to get as much revenue from it, and they'd done really well on some of their other channels, so it was making sure that their branding was also really aligned across all of those, all of those different touch points that a customer might have. As we said, customers are going to be interacting with your brands in lots of different places. Different places, in different ways, so making sure that that is really consistent across all of your different marketing areas also really, really helped them. Is really beneficial. Interesting, yeah, because it's good that you've got that holistic approach. Whereas one thing getting people onto the site, but what do they actually do once they get to the site? Do they purchase? Or, if not, do they at least leave you their email address so that you can get back into their inbox to bring them back to the site to purchase another day. And so, yeah, great, great results. So what I heard there was that you sort of simplified the ad account, reduced the overlap that was in there, and then you increase the revenue while decreasing the budget initially, and then scare from that position, which is great, yeah, it sort of it's always inspiring to hear these, these stories of when people have gone out and, you know, weren't so sure initially, but then simplified and then scaled from that position. So when you bring on a client, says for that position, and there's no doubt there'll be some metrics that you look at to get a feel, get a finger on the pulse of the business and how the ads are performing initially. I wonder what those key metrics would be so that any business owners listening in today can understand what metrics they should be looking at to really focus on increasing the profitability of their own business. Yeah, so the first thing I'd say is just know your numbers. I've had many conversations over the over the years with business owners that aren't sure about things like their gross profit margins, their average order values, that sort of information is going to allow you to make real decisions within your business and within your campaigns and without it's very, very difficult for you to be in a good position as a business. I think you need to know those numbers. So that's the that's the first thing I'd say. And then the other things you can look at are just the obvious sort of metrics to use within campaigns like ROAs that we've mentioned, lifetime values, cost per acquisition, just having all of these numbers prepped and ready so you know what they mean first of all, and you know how to use that information. Yeah. And like Oli said, in terms of taking into account kind of that lifetime value. So again, we've said, you know, really focusing on ROAs often is important, but how that actually applies to your specific business and your specific products and the type of customers you have break even ROAs is obviously normally considered. Did you know the absolute bare minimum so you're covering the cost of the product, but how much above that you want to achieve really does come into take into account how the lifetime value of those customers, and I would say over the last year of the last few years, it's definitely become a lot more difficult to get the truth or the exact truth, or have the one source of truth. When it comes to performance, obviously, there's lots of been lots of changes in terms of privacy cookies, being able to actually track what the performance is. So you do have to look at it slightly more holistically in terms of your overall business, with a lot, you know, alongside those more specific metrics like ROAs as well. Yeah, I'd agree, because a lot of the time you can look at your ad campaign and say, I've hit this ROAs within this campaign, but if you're not looking at the bigger picture as a whole business, maybe there's assisted purchases in other channels that have that been as a result of them seeing you on an ad. So bear that in mind. So don't just just look at each channel individually. Now you want to make sure that you're you're assessing them all. Yeah, great way of visualizing that is with meta. With with our methodology, we typically use meta mainly at the beginning for retargeting, because we find the CPA so high for high ticket products when you're trying to bring someone in from social. And so you will end up often getting much higher ROAs than is realistic on those campaigns, purely because the audience, the pool of people you're retargeting to search to in the first place on Google. So then, if you're like, well, great, it's doing really well, but you try switching Google off and see what happens to that campaign, and it starts to fizzle out, right? So I think it's very easy, like you say, for people to get fixated on the numbers and the metrics and like tinkering around and thinking that you know that if they just adjust this by a percentage of that will be the answer to everything. But I'd be interested to hear from your experience, are there key indicators, maybe outside of the numbers even, or just kind of more general trends that you see consistently in your most successful clients with the most successful campaigns? Yeah. I mean, I definitely love the numbers, and it's important to look at those numbers, and particularly at the overall business numbers. But there's definitely things that you can see in accounts that show that it's, you know, in a good position to be successful. So in terms of kind of your overall business, I think it's all about being really clear on your brand and your audience. And you know, ultimately, what you're selling, what are your USPS, really genuinely uniquely us genuinely unique USPS to yourself, and to be really clear on that, to make sure you're consistent with the messaging, because that's always going to lead to stronger performance. And then in terms of actually in the ads, not just relying on kind of, maybe one campaign, or one campaign type in, say, Google, having that segmentation, even on Google, across the different touch points there are making sure you really are targeting all of those, or a lot of those, because you can really then deliver specific messaging for specific products. And as we said, kind of that customization is only going to become more crucial. So I think kind of some of those key things show that you're in a good position in terms of your campaigns, perfect. Yeah, we're targeting people at the specific parts in their journey. So what you say is, when you know that somebody is quite far through the journey, perhaps they've abandoned the cart, you've got a retargeting display campaign, potentially in Google ads to get to those people on other websites to bring them back. And the type of messaging that you put in those ads are speaking to people that are quite far down the funnel. So it's like, come back. We know you're close, or words to that effect, that's not quite so in your face. But it's things that you know get people over the line, depending on where they're at in the journey, which is great to hear. And something that we often mention is the USPS as well. And thinking about, what is it that you give to your customers that perhaps competitors can't give? So yeah, things that you can really highlight front and center on top of your your your website, and on the product pages as well. If somebody is seeing under performance and isn't reaching the target row hours that they've set out at the start of their campaign, where would they start looking for improvements? What would you say the first things that you'd recommend that they start to analyze or start testing, the first area that I tend to look at is the starting at the end and working back. So I tend to look at CRO first, so conversion rates on the website. So if you're sending traffic, let's say you're using Google Shopping. For example, these people have seen your product, they've seen your price, and they've gone through to your website and they've not purchased so my first indication would be, right, what's missing within the site have you got? Is the trust not there? Or is it just clearly a really poor looking website, and they're not trusting you at all? So I would start at the end with, you know, with the actual website itself and how you can optimize that. How. Really at the start of the campaign you'd added on the right sort of tracking to be able to look at what people are doing on the site. There's various tools you can use to do that. And obviously we could talk all day about AI and various things you can do there. But I'd start with with the end result, which is the website itself. What you can you do to optimize that for performance? Yeah, then in terms of the actual ads on what you can look at there, I think it's all about, are you getting the right people to your website? Are you getting enough people to your website? Are you getting too many, like, are you actually, genuinely targeting the right people with your ads? Maybe you're going a little bit too broad, and that's why you're struggling to conversions. You're not being efficient with your spend, or maybe you're being a little bit too specific, and you're not getting enough people, or maybe just your targeting is not quite right. You've maybe misunderstood your audience slightly. I think it's really crucial that you know you are getting the right people to the website, and then, as Ollie said, from there, it's all about the conversion. And then there's lots of things that you can do in terms of testing in Google ads, whether that's the actual content of the ads, testing the different keywords that you use, potentially creative. There's in Google ads, for example, there's experiments you can run and trying different things. So it's really good to it's always good to test, to test things and see what works better. Because sometimes, as much as we all have years and years of knowledge, things can surprise you, of what actually works. So it's good to test and always be learning and always be improving, amazing. But there's so much you could do. There's so many rabbit holes we could go down with this conversation, and I know we're going to be recording a behind the scenes training for our premium members after this as well. So looking forward to diving into that, but for the podcast, this has been incredibly insightful. Hopefully our listeners are already taking notes furiously on how to optimize their paid ad campaigns. And for anyone who wants to learn more about how ad people can help them improve their paid ads, we'll leave a link in the description or show notes of this episode, and Oliver and Oliver and Rachel, if someone clicks that link and then wants add people to manage their ads and take things to the next level, what happens next? So what would happen next? Dude, they'd likely speak to either myself or someone within my team, and we would basically, we'll dive deep into your business. So like I said before, know your numbers and know what you're trying to achieve as well, and we can obviously discuss that properly, and then, based on what you tell us, or based on what your goals are, we'll be able to suggest the right path for you. Amazing Well, Oliver, Rachel, thank you very much for joining us on the dropship unlocked podcast. Thanks guys. Thank you. What a great conversation there with Rachel and Oliver. Thanks so much to those guys for joining us. There's so many actionable takeaways for us to consider how we can improve our paid advertising strategies. And it's clear that this year is shaping up to be a game changer for high ticket e commerce businesses. Yeah, definitely. They've got a lot of experience. They've got a great team, well thought out process, and it was fascinating diving into the specifics and the details of how you can optimize your ads, which platforms to be on all of that fantastic conversation. Very insightful. And yeah, I feel like I've got a much clearer understanding now of how to approach Google ads and other platforms moving forward. That's right. Yeah, it's very exciting partnership between dropship unlocked and ad people, and because we're now close with them as well as the podcast episode. They also stayed on with us for a little while longer to record a members only podcast as well. So that would be another deep dive into the world of paid ads for E commerce businesses. And so yeah, obviously, check that out if you are a member as well. Yeah, absolutely. And if you're not, and you're just getting started and you're looking to refine your approach when it comes to starting an E commerce business. You can get started by heading over to dropship, unlocked.com, forward, slash, start to get access to all of the resources and the support that you need to implement what we've discussed today and to start building your successful e commerce business. Are you enjoying the podcast? We'd love to hear from you leave a comment or a review, and we might feature it in an upcoming episode, and for detailed show notes and resources, visit dropship, unlock.com forward slash podcast. If you found value in any episode of this podcast, please. Could you take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your favorite podcast app? It helps us more than you can imagine. And who knows, you might just hear your comments read out on the show. Thanks for being a part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering new episodes to you every week. Now it's time to answer a question that we've received from a listener. So thank you very much for getting your questions in. Remember, if you have a question that's come from today's episode, simply comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode, and not only will it be answered in the comments, but it may also be featured in an upcoming episode. So Louis, I'll ask you a question that's coming from Toby. And Toby has asked, How can I register a company without using my home address? Yeah, great question, Toby. You don't necessarily. You want customers turning up at your front door, I imagine, to ask where if they can buy their products from you. That's not really the idea of an online, semi passive business, right? So, I think for that reason, but also for other reasons, in terms of like legal protections and saleability. You know, if you wanted to sell your business one day, having a registered limited company, is the move that that we make in terms of getting things set up right from the beginning, separate your finances, have a business, bank account and and also, when you go to suppliers, when you want to start signing high quality suppliers, they're more likely to take you seriously if you are already a company, you know, and you can provide that, rather than just saying, like, I'm just a one person, show you, like working from home. It's, yeah, I just It doesn't maybe give across the most professional approach, right? So, yeah, to avoid using your home address, typically, what we'd recommend doing is you can use like a virtual office address, where you don't actually have to be there. You can use, like, accountants addresses, things like that. And we actually set up a partnership with tide bank because we were getting a lot of questions from members around well, which business bank account should I use, and which formation agent should I use to start and create my limited company? You know that, rather than doing it through Companies House, if I want a virtual office, so we set up a partnership where they offer a service that will register your company to their London address and set up your business bank account all in one go, and it's cheaper than doing it yourself through Companies House in the first place. Plus you get the business bank account, and I think you also get 50 pounds for free when you fund your account with 50 pounds, I believe, makes it a really easy process. So if you're looking for kind of the one stop shop to do that, head over to dropship, unlocked.com forward slash company, and on that page, fill out the form, and you'll see everything you need there to get everything set up. Perfect, exactly. Nice, easy way to get started, and a nice bonus payment as well. So now let's highlight a recent review that we've had in for the podcast, because we love to highlight the reviews that people leave for us, and it's nice to be able to share those with everyone, because when you get involved, we'd love to share that and make sure that everyone feels involved as part of this podcast. So thank you very much to Lucas. Grace for leaving your review. And Lucas said, Truly, great value. I learned a lot, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you very much, Lucas. And yeah, as you say, James, it does make a huge difference to us all of these reviews. You know, to like Lucas, for example, in that review, so helpful for us to be able to grow this podcast, to continue delivering value. It helps us in the podcast. Magic algorithms, however, those work. But if you're listening to this right now and you maybe you have left us a review, or if you, especially if you haven't, and you could take 10 seconds now to jump onto Apple podcast or Spotify and leave us a really quick review. It means the world. So if it's something you wouldn't normally do, but you're willing to go that extra mile and give us that 10 seconds of your time today, it would be very, very much appreciated. So yeah, only takes you a moment, but it will help us out, and in turn, we can hopefully deliver more value that helps you out in the future. So we appreciate your support, and we'll speak to you on the next one. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. We hope you are leaving with new insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial journey. To kick start your E commerce business, head over to dropship unlocked.com. Forward, slash, start. It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more episodes packed with strategies, tips and success stories, plus, if you enjoyed this episode today, a five star review would mean the world to us, and you might even get a shout out on the next episode. Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. You.