Well it happened after 12+ years, if you want you can read about it on the link below and sometimes you get referrals from trusted friends and they don’t work out, anyway no harm no foul. The challenging part about any business these days are online un-flitered reviews and disgruntled customers, thankfully we choose ours wisely but I guess we made a mistake. We wish everyone success but, we can’t just leave this review out there not addressed after 12 years of spectacular reviews and success… hey everyone has a bad day and maybe they need to rant, we wish them the best. Over the years, I guess I have mellowed, because normally when someone made up stuff and put it online about my work I would have went nuclear on them, but that doesn’t help. Anyway here is our detailed response to this nonsense and hopefully it comes down off of google at some point~ Marty
Review is here
Bad Rhino Clutch Reviews are here
Client Timeline:
December 2021 – Client ( Quality Door) reaches out to Bad Rhino for help with Paid ads via a referral
April 2022 – Client reaches back out to Bad Rhino. Bad Rhino does a high level internal review of client’s Google Ad account. During this time Bad Rhino was granted access to Shopify and Google Analytics to verify data that was being reported in Google Ads.
Findings / Challenges:
- Improper Shopify / Google Integration (Google Merchant Center and Google Ads).
- Tracking and Revenue reporting for Paid Ads was not accurate, giving a false perception of paid ad performance
- Heavily reliant on SEO for revenue
- No retargeting in place
Strategy April 15th – May 31st, 2022
April 18th, 20222 – Bad Rhino advised the client of our findings. We recommended rebuilding all campaigns from the ground up and it was agreed by the client. Based on an initial ad spend budget of $12,000 at the request of the client Bad Rhino recommended focusing in on 1-2 of their most profitable brands so the budget would not be spread to thin across multiple campaigns. This was by design so that the client could generate ample data on a given campaign to make smart business decisions on how to grow and remain profitable.
Bad Rhino noted how heavily reliant on Search Engine optimization the client was. The bulk of revenue was coming from SEO. We voice this concerns with the client to ensure a proper SEO plan was in place. The client assured Bad Rhino that SEO was their priority and they would handle it.
– First we had to correct the Improper Shopify / Google integration. The client was using a 3rd party data feed manager with non-Shopify product IDs from a previous website migration. This is a very manual process to manage and does not allow data to flow seamless between Shopify and Google Ads reporting. Bad Rhino integrated Google Merchant Center with Shopify and submitted all products for review. This created all new data feeds with seamless product descriptions and pricing information sent straight Google Ad campaigns.
– Next, Bad Rhino setup Google Ad / Shopify conversion tracking. This custom integration allows for accurate revenue reporting in Google Ad campaigns. It is the heart and soul of campaign performance metrics and KPI’s. Prior to this integration being completed, the client was importing all revenue from Google Analytics. This gives a false perception of paid ad performance. Here’s why. First, Google Analytics was showing all revenue as being attributed to paid ads. Second, Google Analytics reports revenue based on last click. That means if a customer clicks an ad then later clicks on a social media post and places an order, 100% of that revenue is attributed to social media. The reality is that most consumers require multiple touch points before they make a purchase decision. With the proper configuration, Bad Rhino setup a data driven attribution model the gives a weight to each touchpoint in the sales process. For example, Jon Doe clicks on ad, then later clicks a social media post and completes an order. Google Ads assigns 50% of the credit for the sale to Google Ads, so 0.5 total orders. This is gives a better picture of how ads are actually performing and more importantly the overall picture of how paid ads influence other conversion points during the sales process.
– Next, Bad Rhino launched Google Performance Max campaigns with an initial ad budget of $12,000 per month as agreed with the client. Initially we setup a campaign to focus on 1 brand deemed most profitable by the client followed by a 2nd campaign with all other products/brands and a smaller budget. We did leverage 2 existing search campaigns based on performance and historical data that were in place for brand name protection.
For the Google Performance Max campaigns we leveraged the client’s competitor websites as an audience signal for the campaigns to ensure the ads would be laser targeted. We went as far as researching the client’s competitors and building a list of URLs containing the exact brand name products the client wanted to promote. This means when a visitor is browsing around the web and comparing pricing on one of the client’s competitor sites, we could advertise right over top of said competitor ensuring we reach the right target audience.
– Finally, Bad Rhino setup Ad Roll retargeting. These campaigns utilize a combination of dynamic retargeting (product ads are shown based on specific product views from the client’s website) and images / videos across the web. This is the lowest hanging fruit from a marketing standpoint. The ads serve as a reminder of the potential customer’s intention to make a purchase and bring them back to the exact products they were looking at to encourage finishing the checkout / order process.
The strategy was set and executed as agreed.
As results came, Bad Rhino advised the client to increase budget. In May 2022 we invested just under $20,000 in ad spend, the results are posted below.
May Results:
There were 172 first time customers in the month of May which is a good start. The marketing is working and you can continue to grow and increase budget accordingly.
Showing $163,921.95 in total revenue and $112,987.95 that came from the online store. That’s on an Ad Spend of $19,281.28 (including Ad Roll and Google). Overall Roas are at 8.50x.
ROAS from just paid ads are hovering around 2.70x excluding any call in orders from the ads. See screenshots below with the “Conv Value / Cost” column for ROAS on Google and a 2nd screenshot for Ad Roll at 4.19x ROAS.
GOOGLE ROAS May 2022
AD ROLL ROAS May 2022
June 2022
The client wanted to add additional product lines and campaigns but keep the budget at $12,000. Bad Rhino advised against it is budget would have to be reallocated from existing campaign that were performing. The client was adamant about adding in additional campaigns without giving them their own dedicated budget. Bad Rhino advised the performance would degrade across the board due to the reallocation of budget and proceeded to move forward at the request of the client.
The client was insistent that he was getting better results with less ad spend. That was, however, due to inaccurate and over reporting of revenue being attributed to paid ads. Bad Rhino continued to educate the client about this issue but client refused to acknowledge the reporting mistakes.
The extra investment in May started to create Momentum in early June until the budget was reallocated across multiple campaigns. The end result would be limited data across all campaigns. This created a challenge of getting enough quality day to make smart business decisions to move the campaigns forward. Despite all of that, Bad Rhino was able to make the best of the available budget and still generate good results.
June Results:
There have been 165 first time customers in the month of June which is very solid. Your marketing is working and you can continue to grow and increase budget accordingly.
Showing $137,496.27 in total revenue and $99,911.14 that came from the online store. That’s on an Ad Spend of $11,466.38 (including Ad Roll and Google) as of 12:30pm EST Today. Overall Roas are at 11.99x.
ROAS from just paid ads are hovering around 3.10x excluding any call in orders from the ads. See screenshots below with the “Conv Value / Cost” column for ROAS on Google and a 2nd screenshot for Ad Roll at 6.16x ROAS.
GOOGLE ROAS
AD ROLL ROAS
July
July is always a tough month for ecommerce. It’s the largest vacation month of the year. We advised the client that revenue would like slow down with seasonality in July. We made the decision to keep the marketing budget around $20,000 for the month.
Client is starting to see a dip in company wide revenue. We advised paid ads would see a dip in revenue and returns due to limited ad budget being spread across multiple ad Campaigns. The client continued to completely change the strategy and decided to spread budget against advise. This meant starting additional campaigns from scratch instead of riding momentum that was created in May/June. This caused “Limited by Budget” notifications for all campaigns. After continually consulting with the client, they agreed to start increasing budget to start acquiring the data needed in order to move the campaigns forward. Despite this, the client still achieve reasonable returns. Revenue started to decrease in a compounded fashion while the new paid ad campaigns were trying to get off the ground.
The big picture: ads and campaigns that were optimized in May/June started to decrease in performance, new campaigns were not getting enough data for the Google Ad platform to leverage the platform for optimal performance. The client views an increase in ad spend without an increase in performance as “waste”. This mentality is a hurdle for the client. It stimulates from the previous over reporting of revenue. July we advised to maintain course and continue acquiring data across all campaigns so we could slowly optimize the Google Ads for performance.
Google Ads “Limited By Budget” Notice:
July Results:
The client agreed to start increasing budget to start acquiring the data needed in order to move the campaigns forward. Despite the trials and tribulations up to this point, the client still achieve reasonable returns. Ad Roll retargeting still held a 3.98x ROAS and Google was close to break even. Couple this with a Google Update that caused SEO rankings to fall and any smart business person can see a larger, underlying problem that is starting to compound.
AD ROLL ROAS
August
In August Revenue continues to decline company wide. The client informs Bad Rhino they have fired their SEO company. At the request of the client, Bad Rhino was invited to assist with SEO or make a recommendation to a service provider. Upon further investigation, Bad Rhino discovered the clients search rankings were declining due to an algorithm update. After meeting with the client, Bad Rhino also noted that there were Multiple Google Search Console accounts associated with the client’s website and a number of “404 Web page not found” errors. This was from a previous migration the client initiated over to Shopify. Bad Rhino was not a part of the migration. We advised the client appropriately that the migration was incomplete. We also noted that there was no official SILO structure and missing information on product category pages.
You can see the high level review on the video below:
Despite all this, the client invested $20K in ad spend over the course of August, Generated $114,000 revenue, and 148 brand new customers. After investigating the client website issues and SEO rankings, we agreed changes needed to happen in order to correct the decline in revenue.
August Results:
AD ROLL ROAS
In conclusion things were actually trending in the right direction. After attempting to serve the client Bad Rhino was informed that as a business the client decided to go another direction. We understand and respect that decision. We wish all the best.
