Is Google Smart Shopping right for you?

5MIN READ

What is Google Smart Shopping? 

As the name suggests, Smart Shopping uses machine learning across Google’s suite of ad networks for your campaigns. It is a new Shopping campaign type that is simple and optimal at reaching a retailer’s business goals. This new campaign type combines Shopping campaigns, Display Remarketing and Display prospecting to drive sales across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Gmail, the Display Network and more. Smart Shopping campaigns automatically manage ad creation, targeting, bidding, and budget allocation across all of these networks — so the retailer doesn’t have to.

Key benefits:

• Simple: Easy way to start advertising with Google
• Performance: Maximize revenue
• Reach: Find customers across Google 

Suitable for: 

• Retailers with limited experience and resources in using Google shopping ads
• Retailers finding a fuss-free way to optimise performance-driven campaigns
• Retailers with multiple SKUs

Not suitable for:

• Retailers who need to collect search term data  
• Retailers wanting to change campaign goals based on real time data
• Retailers who wish to implement negative keyword campaigns   
• Retailers who want absolute control of how campaigns are running

How it works 

Simply prepare your campaign objectives and budget, Google will take care of the rest. 

Using Google’s machine learning, your existing product feed and assets are combined to show a variety of ads across networks. Google tests different combinations of the image and text you provide, to show the most relevant ads across Google networks, including the Google Search Network, the Google Display Network, YouTube, and Gmail. You can create up to 100 enabled or paused Smart Shopping campaigns in your Google Ads account. 

How to use smart shopping effectively

1. Complete the checklist for smart shopping campaigns
2. Consolidate your Smart Shopping campaigns to maximise performance. Only create separate campaigns when necessary due to business requirements (e.g. different ROAS goals for different parts of your product inventory).
3. Be selective on your product listing in smart shopping campaigns. It is said that smart shopping campaigns take priority over existing campaigns for the same product. To avoid wasting your budget, review your campaigns and make sure you have sufficient SKUs and quantities before campaigns. 

Smart Shopping Campaigns Drive Results 

2. When a consumer is faced with both shopping and text ads, +83% make a purchase vs a consumer only exposed to text ads.
3. Smart Shopping Campaigns find the most valuable audiences for your budget in real-time. Automation creates real, measurable value for businesses.

Smart Shopping Case Study 1: KeaBabies

KeaBabies is a baby & maternity lifestyle brand that inspires modern parenting.

“Google shopping ads has allowed our brand to reach out to more of our customers and our sales on our store have grown significantly from google shopping visitors”

Ivan Ong  

Keababies CEO & Co-founder

The Challenge

KeaBabies was new to Google ads and the initial campaigns were converting at a low ROAS (40% in June’20). The initial goal was to improve the ROAS eventually to 200% and then increase the number of conversions to 500+ a month.

The Approach

Google teams supported  the client in the first 6 months with Google Ads, aiming to provide the best experience and find the best media mix for their marketing objectives.  Strategic and tactical advice were passed to the client including feed optimisation, running Search for Brand Terms, YT4A, Smart Shopping, Dynamic remarketing and Discovery with the right audience list. 

The Results

The client was happy to invest in one internal headcount to drive Google Ads  initiatives. The account did see a rise in conversions after moving campaigns to smart bidding.  After  6 months working with Google ads, Keababies’ saw conversions improve by 208%  and ROAS improve by 200%.

Smart Shopping Case Study 2: Zelos Watches

Zelos – Established 2014 in Singapore is a company that designs and produces watches from the ground up.

Key Results

• Sales from Google ads was over 140K in less than 6 months.
• Average ROAS for Smart Shopping was 262%. Highest was 361% in January 2021.
• ROAS for Dynamic Search Campaigns was on average above 500%

The Challenge

The client was new to advertising on Google Ads and was very conversion focused. They did not want to bid on their own brand terms and initially said no to any display / video branding campaigns too. 

The Approach

Initially focused on Campaigns that would drive conversions. We saw the best results from Smart Shopping campaigns and Dynamic search ads. We tried to replicate this to AU and UK, however, volumes were low from these countries. Products that did not work well were Discovery campaigns and Dynamic Remarketing. The reason Dynamic Remarkting did not work is probably because the products sell out fast and the list size for product viewers etc cannot serve then.

The Results

The client was happy with the overall ROAS. We were able to achieve this constantly monitoring the shopping feed and making tweaks to improve ROAS. For Dynamic Search the results improved after we started reviewing the search term report on a weekly basic and building on the negative keywords list. 

The two case studies are successful examples of how businesses have grown through Google Smart Shopping campaigns over the span of just 6 months.

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