Day 1 – Shopping Strategies That Never Go Out of Style
Speakers:
1. Jake Favaro (@3QDigital)
2. Jared DeSisto (@merkleCRM)
3. Cady Condyles (@cadycondyles)
Moderator:
1. Ginny Marvin (@ginnymarvin)
Google Shopping merchants should have largely consistent key performance indicators (KPIs), including cutting CPCs, increasing CVR and increasing average order value (AOV)
For these results, some of the best practices include:
Using the “Product Type” in your data feed – This is because “the front end will only be as powerful as data in your feed.”
Arranging account structure to categorize similar products – It’s a good idea to try to match products in similar groups that will have similar performance, such as similar CPC, CVR and AOV.
Applying one bid to a categorized set of products – Keeping bids as granular as possible, it’s a good idea to match bids for products with comparable CPC, CVR and AOV – but for products whose CPC and CVR are comparable but have wildly different AOV due to the prices of individual stock-keeping units (SKUs), consider adding SKU value as a fourth granular category. This will keep your products in a similar price range .
Account product segmentation vs. data density – In your account structure, it’s a good idea to segment according to click volume, not the number of products in a category, to ensure sufficient data for smart bidding decisions. Merchants that sell very few individual SKUs (100 or less) might even consider SKU-level bids for their highest-volume products in terms of clicks and CVR.
Pull SKU level reports – These find the most wasteful products with high spend and low CVR. You can then exclude these troublesome products. These reports can also find VIP SKUs with the highest clicks and CVR. Make sure to exclude any SKUs that were separated out in this process – getting those structural negatives in place will ensure that your poor performers don’t get the traffic your VIP SKUs should be.
Brand vs. Non-brand campaigns – Setting brand and non-brand campaigns in the same Shopping campaign will yield a blended efficiency number that likely means you’re overbidding (wasting spend) for non-brand.
To avoid this problem, Jake Favaro suggests:
Create two versions of your campaign – First, the non-brand campaign set to high priority, for which you should exclude brand negatives extensively, and which will likely have higher bids than brand. Your second campaign, the brand campaign, should be set to medium priority and will catch any spillover traffic. To avoid overspending, it’s a good idea to scrub for pesky nonbrand queries to exclude, and bid below your non-brand as a safeguard.
Brand campaigns sit at the bottom of the funnel – They can almost be thought of as an “attribution piece,” since it’s very common to see non-brand clicks at top of funnel drive clicks to brand.
Caveat for Showcase Shopping Ads – Google has verified a bug which will destroy a brand/non-brand split when using Showcase Shopping Ads. Opting out of Showcase means you can’t get your split campaign back – which means that Showcase Shopping Ads should be used with caution.
Bidding on Google Shopping – Once your account structure is set, bidding should be simple – bid higher on VIP SKUs, and bid lower on inefficient SKUs.
Some additional tips on bidding:
Budget caps – Favaro recommends avoiding these in general. Uncapped budgets lead to cheaper CPCs and more clicks, which drive higher CVR at lower CPA. In a non-brand/brand split campaign structure, a capped budget will cause non-brand queries to eventually waterfall into your brand campaigns, which defeats the purpose of making the initial split.
Avoid standard delivery – Favaro also recommends not using this to rely on AdWords to tell you how and when a campaign is limited by budget, and instead recommends sticking to accelerated delivery.
