It's not too late! Optimize your Google Shopping campaigns in time for the Holidays.

transcript

Thursday, November 10, 2016 1:00 EST (10:00 PST)

Speakers:Kirk Williams, Owner, ZATO MarketingAndreas Reiffen, CEO, Crealytics

It’s Not Too Late! Maximize Your Google Shopping in Time

for the Holidays

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Kirk WilliamsOwner (and minion), ZATO Marketing@PPCKirk

Andreas ReiffenCEO, Crealytics@AndreasReiffen

Today’s Presenters

Topics, we’ll cover today …

Google Shopping: Why you should care…

How to segment Google Shopping campaigns to capture high quality shoppers

Speak your customers’ language and write more compelling product titles

Why you can’t win in Google Shopping when you fail in pricing

What image testing could add to your Google Shopping campaigns

My entire screen on a 13” Macbook

Crealytics: Shopping = 56% Spend Share

Merkle: Shopping = 46% Click Share

hot snot, look at that

trend!https://www.merkleinc.com/thought-leadership/digital-marketing-report

A look at the future of Ecom SERPs

But how is Shopping growing like this?

For starters, people just like clicking them.

PriceImageInfo

Words!Reading!

Work!Abort,Abort,Abort!

Pictures!Prices!Data!Buy,Buy,Buy!

Andy Taylor

NOT HIM

http://searchengineland.com/google-shopping-ads-so-hot-right-now-the-meteoric-rise-of-plas-248055

Andy Taylor

NOT HIM

Andy Taylor

(him!)

July 2015 Micro-Moments in Shopping (i.e., mobile)

August-ish 2015 BIG retailers showing more PLAs

September 2015 YouTube Shopping Ads (Search Partners)

September 2015 Massively Large Shopping Ads on Mobile

December 2015 Shopping Ads in Image Search

“Heck, what else can we monetize?”

- Google Boardroom

March 2016 PLA Imp Up 174% YOY

But also, Google has invested heavily in Shopping changes

April 2016, New GMC Feed Rules

May 2016, GTINs Required

Keeping up with the Joneses Amazon.

July 2016, Showcase Shopping Ads

August 2016, YUUUGE GMC Overhaul

Finally... PLA placement matters!

Shopping in its infancy

circa 2013

PLA placement matters

Shopping as 2016 ends

and a variant...

PLA placement matters

So, whatever you may think about SERPs...

Google Shopping campaign segmentation

Different intents disrupt bidding by product

[designer + product name]

[designer + category]

base CR

[category]

Typical differentials:

[nike + mercurial]

[shoes] [nike + shoes]

Example:

Nike Mercurial Superfly

Soccer Shoes

Different intents, but identical product bid Compare conversion rates by specificity

Nike Mercurial Superfly

Soccer Shoes

Designer queries

Genericqueries

Bid higher for the best performing queries

Segment your shopping campaigns by specificity of search queries.

Use campaign priorities and negatives to allocate traffic.

Bid higher for your best queries.

Segment traffic by designers vs generics How to game AdWords

Semantic segmentation drives performanceWe kept sales stable and decreased CPO by 27%

8.410.2

8.17.3

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3

-27%testcontrol Segmentation allows us to

set bids beyond product averages.

Queries with a high conversion probability get more exposure.

We save money on low quality queries.

CPO ($) on campaigns split up by specificity vs normal Explanation

Use negatives to segment your campaigns and to control where search queries are assigned to

Generics

Designers

Designer + Product name

medium

Designer namesProduct names

Product names

Campaigns NegativesPriorities

Campaign priority itself has no impactPriorities allow you to direct traffic to specific campaigns

We scheduled campaigns to run intermittently throughout the day.

Only a single campaign was running.

We set different priorities.

101.4%99.8%100.0%

Medium LowHigh

Clicks

Traffic per campaign setting Test method

Impressions (in k) before / after Key insights

CPCs are difficult to control and vary without segmentation

bid = 1.50

0.60.4

bid = 0.50

generic terms designer terms designer only term CPC

0.220.09

We tested a designer-only term which is stable in impressions.

CPC for the same queries increased by +186%.

Spike in generic queries affects traffic quality and ROI.

Outcome of raising bids depends on where bid is positioned on the Google Shopping S-curve

Budgetbidding

Designer-only term

Generics term

+17%CPC +286%Imps

+320%Imps+213%CPC

Shopping query elasticity CPC and imps change

Key take-aways

Segment your Shopping Campaigns by specificity of search queries to get much

better results.

For the most effective bid management try to identify the tipping point by starting with the highest bid you are

willing to afford and then decrease your bids

gradually.

Constantly monitor CPCs and search query

impressions to find out where the cliff is.

Segment by specificity Constant monitoringS-curve bidding

Product title optimization

Optimizing product titles by including top-performing search queries

Do search query impressions related toparty dresses increase?

Lipsy Lace Panel Body-Conscious Dress – Navy

Title after

Title before

Party Dresses Navy Blue Lipsy Lace Panel Body-

Conscious

Party dresses query volume increased

18,552

18,115

title changed

18,971

original

22,138

on other products on product

Party dresses query volume before and after title change Key insights

Title modification allows you to direct traffic to specific products.

Adding search queries to titles improves the overall traffic.

Specifics about the Google algorithm to keep in mind for title modification

The first words SynonymsThe word order

Words at the beginning of a title are considered more important

If people search for ‘green shoes,’ your title should ideally contain these two words in the same order (instead of ‘shoes green’)

If a dress could be called ‘party dress’ or ‘evening dress,’ make sure that you don’t use the same term across this product category.

Speak your customers‘ language and make your titles similar to what they search

ProductDynamic title

inspired by real search queriesRule-based title

Columbia Down Jacket Black …

Columbia Down Jacket Dusty Purple …

Black Down Coat Columbia …

Columbia Jacket – Purple, Down, Feather Fill …

columbia jacket

We use thousands of data points from different sources to come up with the optimal title

Optimized product titles

Data source OutcomeUsed data

AdWords AccountsSearch query performance

Product performance

Merchant CenterProduct details(produdct ID, brand, title, taxonomy, color, size, gender, price, URLs, ...)

Semantic Database(or a human brain)

Similarity of attributes(brands, categories, colors, gender, material)

The result including performance uplift are displayed in the camato user interface

Identify important keywords which are missing completely in product titles

1-grams

women (1,618,221)

mens (1,415,367)

outerwear (68,645)

ugly (1,415,367)

gifts (34,851)

pregnancy (23,035)

hoodies (21,959)

onesies (21,876)

sale (19,899)

discount (16,458)

dressy (13,454)

3-grams2-grams

Manually add the n-grams to the right products

Shown data are impressions (last 30 days)

jewelry shoes (708,111)

women dresses (690,700)

athletic shoes (415,769)

women's sneakers (218,281)

maternity clothes (34,851)

timberland boots (171,002)

mens clothing (129,003)

women jeans (79,965)

camel coat (46,703)

party dresses (41,059)

second hand (684)

masquerade ball gowns (149,619)

plus size clothing (130,983)

thigh high boots (93,429)

wedding guest dresses (34,119)

overalls for men (32,109)

casual white dresses (28,235)

plus size lingerie (27,739)

white maternity dress (27,240)

lace up flats (24,606)

used evening gowns (458)

cheap shoes for (284)

Google Shopping & competitive pricing

Impressions and clicks in Google Shopping are often very sensitive to price changes

0510152025303540455055

Price in $ ClicksProduct price Clicks

Time in days

Clicks drop off after product price increase Chart Info

Google product category: Apparel & Accessories > Shoes > Sneakers

Brand:

5% price increase coincides with a 60% decrease in clicks

We compared cheap vs. expensive products and used a test setup to guarantee meaningful results

We compared:

• cheap products (below avg. price)

• with expensive products (above avg. price)

• At least six competitors

• Available at all times

• Similar products (all sneakers)

• Products were excluded from normal shopping activity

• Results were not influenced by regular bidding activities

Setup TestCriteria

For all products we often see S-shaped curves, but cheap products generate traffic much earlier

Max CPCImpressions per product

5/16/165/12/16 5/14/165/11/16 5/13/16 5/17/165/15/16

cheap products Max CPCexpensive products

Imps. of differently priced products while bidding up Key insights

Impression volume for expensive products significantly lower

Cheap products hit Impression limit after 5 days

Average CPC is higher for productswith prices above average market price

5/15/165/13/16

Max CPC

5/16/165/12/16 5/14/165/11/16 5/17/16

-12%-8%

expensive products Max CPCcheap products

Avg. CPCs of differently priced products while bidding up Key insights

Avg. CPC of expensive products is about 15% higher despite same bids

Cheap products generate the lion‘s share of total traffic

1.828.412

4.282.611

+134,2%

44.122

+135,3%

103.803

Clicks

2.047+9,1%1.876

# of products

expensive products cheap products

Traffic of similar products within one shop Key insights

Cheap products generated much more traffic despite similar number of products in both groups

Despite getting more traffic, the performance of the cheaper products is much more efficient

28-29,5%

Conversions

+61,3%

expensive products cheap products

Traffic of similar products within one shop Key insights

Number of orders through cheap products almost 3 times higher

Higher CR resulting in CPO being ~30% lower

Cheap products generate 280% more conversion

There is not really a long tailA small number of products drive the majority of the sales

Top 10% products = 58% conversions

*Only products with conversions (448)

ExpensiveCheap

Conversions per product (UK multi brand retailer) Key insights

More significantly than in search, shopping conversions are driven by just a few products

Concentrate on those products for account optimization.

How to optimize pricing for Google Shopping

$.47$.47Expensive products Price vs Bid managementSelective discounts

Don’t overbid on expensive products, rather consider

price changes

Discounting only a few select products to bring

traffic to your site could be a killer strategy

Price and bid management will be merged one day

Product image testing

Ad copy split testing is one of the fundamentals of paid search optimization

Write additional ad copy

Gather data

Delete/pause the loser ad

Although everyone has several alternative images available, nobody is split testing images

There are always several images available in the shop

However, we just use one and let it run forever

Who guarantees us that this image is the best?

ASOS Christmas Sweater

Challenge 1: Google doesn‘t necessarily show your image

Search Engine Results Page Shopping tab

Products sold by multiple retailers can be aggregated in the Shopping tab.

Although you get a click, your product image may not have shown up.

There is currently no way to distinguish clicks from the SERP page and the Shopping tab.

Challenge 2: Google doesn‘t change the images immediately

Average result of several live tests with few changes at once.

Search Tab

Shopping Tab

up to 1 hour 1-3 hours 2-4 hours

Google needs time to index the new images• Up to 72 hours when URLs are changed• Up to 6 weeks if URLs remains the same (server-side image swap)

During the first hours after the image change, Google may not serve the product at all in the SERPs

Short-term solution: Test model shots vs. product shots across entire product categories

Product shot vs. model shot Bulk split testing

Testing images on a product level is difficult today• no tools on the market

yet to support image split testing

• technical challenges

We recommend that you pick a few product categories where you are using e.g. model shots and replace them all with product shots

In the future, the responsibilities of Paid Search managers will go beyond managing campaigns

$.47$.47How to name products? How to merchandize?What price?

Paid Search managers will influence what product information is provided, especially how products

are named.

Google Shopping can be used as tool to test price elasticities of individual

products.

Today, merchandizing is often driven by gut feeling. Google Shopping allows for

a more data-driven approach.

Thank You! Questions?

$.47$.47www.crealytics.com

http://digitalmarketingdepot.com webcasts@digitalmarketingdepot.com#DMD

It's not too late! Optimize your Google Shopping campaigns in time for the Holidays.

Data & Analytics