Dropshipping is DEAD on Google Ads

Dropshipping is DEAD on Google Ads – Transcript

Meaning you cannot advertise on Google Ads if you’re a drop shipper. Let’s take a little step back because you’re going to tell me you’ve seen people advertising on Google Shopping who are drop shippers before and you will be completely right.

Guys, we’re going to talk about dropshipping because I get a lot of messages from you, guys, who watch the channel, who are either thinking about doing a dropshipping store or maybe you’re running one already and I do get messages from people asking what’s the best approach with Google Ads when it comes to dropshipping. Now, as you can tell from the title of this video, that is probably not the best channel to run dropshipping stores with, but you’re going to find out why by the end of this video.

Let’s take a little step back and understand the premise of dropshipping so you can understand why Google don’t necessarily want drop shippers to advertise on Google Ads. Dropshipping is essentially the process of selling our goods or goods to a user without holding the stock yourself and without paying the costs of holding that stock or paying the costs of buying a load of wholesale stock. You essentially only make the purchase when the deal is made at the end of the day. It saves you a lot of money and it can be quite a lucrative business model and you can see why there are so many outlets promoting it as a useful way to make money.

Now, parking aside all the fake guru courses out there that I’m sure you’ll probably have maybe even seen before this video in the adverts, then you want to understand that dropshipping is a difficult business model to get right. The reason for that is because, of course, first of all, it’s saturated, everyone’s doing it. Secondly, Google Ads don’t even let you advertise your shopping items on dropshipping websites.

Now, let’s go into the specifics of why that is, but let me tell you exactly why that is through the way of a story. I’m working with an e-commerce business right now. Essentially, the issue was that we were running ads on Google for the period of about two weeks and then all of a sudden, Google banned our adverts and said that we could no longer advertise and that we’ll no longer be able to advertise in the future either. This is a pretty solid ban and something that’s very rare that I’ve seen in Google Ads.

Normally, you get banned for maybe an ad that’s disapproved or something like that. You can resolve it quite easily. This was a ban based on a policy known as misrepresentation. Now, let’s take a look and understand why the misrepresentation policy in Google Ads is a problem for dropshipping. This is the misrepresentation policy on Google Ads. It is a policy that essentially tells you that you shouldn’t mislead any customers if you’re advertising on Google Ads.

Now, you shouldn’t mislead customers anyway, but Google do check your content when you do advertise on Google Shopping, so they can see specifically different things that you’re doing or not doing. The policy that’s really of interest to us under misrepresentation is this one, unavailable promotions. Unavailable promotions are promoting offers in terms of not having items that are stocked. Now, the whole premise of dropshipping is, of course, you do not stock items. Therefore, Google Ads is not the place to be when dropshipping.

If you’re running a dropshipping store, there’s nothing wrong with that if you want to trial it as a system of making money, if it’s something you think you can do. I know there’s a lot of guru courses out there who tell you you can become a millionaire. As long as you’re not wasting your money on those kinds of courses, then that’s fine. If you want to try and dropship, it’s a legitimate business model. However, Google Ads is not the place to do it. They can ban your store instantly as a result.

As you can see, misrepresentation means that you must hold stock, otherwise, you’re misrepresenting the idea of your store, meaning that drop shippers out there who are advertising products on Google Shopping must hold the stock. They cannot trick Google into saying they’ve got stock. If Google can understand based on their website because, of course, Google does scan your website, they understand and interpret what’s on the page. How do you think they come up with quality score? They can actually see your content on the page.

Now, when they look through your page and they can see that you have massively long lead times, you don’t hold any stock, when they look at your feed, they can interpret that as not holding stock either or maybe you’re misrepresenting the fact that you can’t hold stock but you’re promoting the fact that you might. All of these things add up to the point of the misrepresentation policy, meaning you cannot advertise on Google Ads if you’re a drop shipper.

Let’s take a little step back because you’re going to tell me, you’ve seen people advertising on Google Shopping who are drop shippers before and you will be completely right. Yes, if you go to Google right now and you search for products online through Google Shopping, you will see there are plenty of stores out there with people who are dropshipping right now as we speak using Google Shopping. Why are they allowed to continue to advertise when many dropshipping stores coming into the market now cannot advertise?

Well, that’s an easy question to answer. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Google saw a massive influx of people whether they’ve seen adverts for courses on how easy it is to make money with dropshipping or maybe people were out of work because of the pandemic, all of these things add up to the fact that there is a massive rush of people coming onto the platform on Google Ads who want to sell a dropshipping product on their store. Their e-commerce stores set up for dropshipping came onto the platform in their hundred, in their thousands.

There was a huge swarm of it. Of course, Google is all about user experience. With all of these new dropshipping stores coming into play, you can imagine how bad the customer service for those stores is going to be. I’m not saying that about your store, if you’re dropshipping, but I can bet you, bet my bottom dollar, that your store, as a dropshipping store, will have a lot worse customer service than a store that’s been running a long time who don’t dropship and deliver products that they hold directly to the user.

There are less things to go wrong. This is just the nature of the game when it comes to dropshipping. With that said, Google decided to really crack down on websites who are promoting products through dropshipping. That became a problem for all of those through e-commerce dropshipping stores and they all got banned on Google. That was the case with a client I’m working with right now as well. They got banned from Google because of that misrepresentation policy.

We luckily have a lot of contacts and managed to speak to somebody at a big agency here in the UK and managed to get the account unbanned because it meant we have a direct line of communication with Google because, as you know, with Google, if you don’t have a massive, massive ad budget and a long-standing relationship, then it means that you cannot reach somebody at Google to get the help you need directly. We luckily got around that and we did and we got the problem sorted.

That, guys, is the question answered. Can you drop ship on Google anymore? No, you can’t. If you’re a new store, forget about it. It can’t work. If anybody tells you, otherwise, they are lying to you or trying to sell you something, so remember that is the case. Use Facebook ads. It’s a lot better channel for e-commerce quite often in some regards for new products anyway, especially for new brands, you get a lot more reach for a lot less money so it really helps in terms of advertising there instead. Leave Google Ads alone if you’re dropshipping, but if you want to use it as a business model, just jump on Facebook ads instead.

Thank you guys so much for watching this video. If you liked it, please leave a like below. Let me know in the comments if you have any experience with dropshipping. Tell me the positives, the negatives. Tell me the issues you’ve had with advertising. Is your store even a success? Hit me up down below in the comments. In fact, just let me know any challenges you’re facing in the world of digital marketing. I reply to pretty much every single comment on new videos. Hit me up down below. Like this video, if you like it. Don’t forget to subscribe. Check out the other content across the channel. I’ll see you guys on my next video.