Prepare your Google Shopping Campaigns for the 2016 Holiday Push (Christmas, Black Friday)
A shopping campaign enables advertisers to promote their products. The interested parties are able to access to detailed information about the product being sold even before they click on the advertisement. The retailing tools will then inform the advertiser about the performance of the product over a given period of time. Additionally, the shopping campaigns boost traffic to the seller’s website or shopping store, and assist the seller to acquire qualified leads. Usually, the seller sends a product to the Merchant Centre and creates a shopping campaign through his/her AdWords account. The campaign is in turn used to create an advert on Google and in other places on the web where potential customers can come across it. The shopping adverts go beyond text-ads because they include the photo of the product, the price, the store name and other vital details. They enable the buyer to get a strong sense of the product on offer (Google, “About Shopping Campaigns”, 2016). This essay will discuss the various strategies one can use to prepare and optimize their Google shopping campaigns in their AdWords account.
In order to strategize, it is important to understand how shopping campaigns work. The shopping adverts utilize the existing Merchant Centre product data rather than key words in making a decision of when, how and where to show a product. Therefore, it is essential to have the best product data as that is what will be submitted to the Merchant Centre and the details, which will be used to match the users’ preferences. The aim of the Centre is to show to the user the most relevant products. Just like all other AdWords advert formats, a shopping advert also participates in an advert auction, and an advertiser is only charged when a user clicks on the advert (Google, “About Shopping Campaigns”, 2016).
Firstly, the advertiser needs to organize the campaigns based on the desired outcomes and goals. It is important to note that when it comes to advertising goods in one’s inventory, one size does not fill all. Therefore, when creating shopping campaigns, it is essential to make it clear in one’s mind what they intend to accomplish across the different product areas and in turn come up with appropriate ways of organizing the inventory into product groups, that are designed to meet the set goals (Google, “Best Practices for Shopping Campaigns”, 2016).
Secondly, it is a strategic move to start a shopping campaign with a company’s best-selling products. One should choose a product that brings the highest revenue to the business. This will entail creating a separate shopping campaign and the subdivision of the inventory into product groups, which highlight the best products only. If these products are available in large numbers, then it is advisable to subdivide them using the custom label attributes. It is then easier to bid by item identification for the single bestselling item. After this process, the other low performing products can be stuck together in large categories. Alternatively, an advertiser can block the low performing items from being advertised in the campaign entirely. Further, it is important to change the priority setting in order to give priority to shopping campaign above all other low performing products (Google, “Best Practices for Shopping Campaigns”, 2016).
Thirdly, since the campaigns are in preparation for the holiday season, it is possible that the organization has seasonal products and other special promotional products. Therefore, to optimize the campaign, an advertiser should prioritize the seasonal or the promotional campaigns. Many users during the festive seasons go online to look up for offers; therefore, it is essential that one’s promotional products are easily seen by the users in order to maximize the possibility of a sale. The advertiser can utilize the priority settings on the shopping campaign to ensure that the seasonal product gets the necessary attention. One should change the priority from “Low” to “High”, which means that the bids from the seasonal product campaign will be selected over all other bids from the advertiser until the budget from the campaign is exhausted (Google, “Best Practices for Shopping Campaigns”, 2016).
Additionally, bidding is an essential part of a shopping campaign. Therefore, it is important to be strategic with the bids. For instance, an advertiser can try setting the maximum cost-per-click bid. After the setting, one is supposed to be proactive in monitoring the performance of the shopping adverts. Shopping campaigns are flexible, and one can change the bids as often as practicably possible, but it is advisable to set a bid amount for purposes of monitoring performance. Once an advertiser has collected enough data on the performance of product groups, then the bid can be adjusted as desired. One way to react is by utilizing the competitive metrics such as benchmark, impression share and click share. One can also use tools such as bid simulator to assess the campaign performance, increase bid strategy effectiveness and make informed decisions pertaining to campaign performance improvement. An advertiser can also use the strategy of uncapped bids. The latter do not have a set higher limit; hence, the campaign is always on, reaching out to all users at all hours (Meretakis, 2015).
Another bidding strategy is the cost per thousand viewable impressions (vCPM). This method requires the advertiser to pay for the number of times the advert is viewed instead of clicks. One pays for every a thousand times the advert is viewed by the internet users. Sometimes all an advertiser is interested in is to have their name or their advert seen by many people. Notably, this is a smart option for such advertisers. When one chooses to use vCPM, they are required to set the maximum amount they are willing to pay for every thousand viewable impressions. This option allows an advertiser to set bids at the group level as well as on individual placements (Google, “Understanding Bidding Basics”, 2016).
Furthermore, a person can also use the enhance cost per click (ECPC) strategy, which is likely to yield more value for an advert budget. This option raises the advertisers bid clicks and reaches out to those that are more likely to lead to a sale or conversion. A conversion is a particular action that an advertiser desires to see on his/her website such as a sale or an email sign up. In this scenario, an advertiser pays for the click, but AdWords automatically tries to get the as many conversions as possible depending on the specification in the cost per acquisition. When the potential actions are identified, it raises the maximum CPC bid up to thirty percent to enhance the clicks. The ECPC option double-checks itself and adjust as required. However, when one uses it on shopping ads, it appears only on Google Search. For one to utilize this option, he or she must have the conversion tracking turned on. However, this bidding option is suitable for advanced AdWords users (Google, “Understanding Bidding Basics”, 2016).
Lastly, it is also important to optimize the feeds. Feed optimization is one of the most difficult tasks in shopping campaign strategy, but it is profitable in the long run. This strategy is important because in shopping campaign, Google does not utilize keywords, but rather uses product details based on the feeds provided to match the users (Becerra, 2014). Therefore, when drafting product titles and other descriptions, one should do so with the keyword in mind. An advertiser can use the AdWords Keyword Planner to search for keywords on potential product titles. The titles chosen have to be user friendly (Falla, 2016). Additionally, it is essential to ensure that the images used for the products are attractive to entice potential customers. In conclusion, it is not just enough to set up a shopping campaign as its success depends on the continuous optimization strategies, in order to improve performance.
References
Becerra, D. (2014, July 11). Best Practices for NEW Google Shopping Campaigns. Retrieved from http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/best-practices-for-new-google-paid-search-shopping-campaigns/
Falla, B. (2016, January 27). 5 Proven Techniques For Google Shopping Campaign Optimizations | GoDataFeed Blog. Retrieved from http://www.godatafeed.com/blog/5-proven-techniques-for-google-shopping-campaign-optimizations/
Google. (2016). Best practices for Shopping campaigns - AdWords Help. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6275318?hl=en
Google. (2016). About Shopping campaigns and Shopping ads - AdWords Help. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2454022?hl=en
Google. (2016). Understanding bidding basics - AdWords Help. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2459326?hl=en
Meretakis, D. (2015, November 9). Inside AdWords: New tools and insights to optimize your Shopping campaigns this holiday. Retrieved from https://adwords.googleblog.com/2015/11/new-tools-and-insights-to-optimize-your.html
