Advanced Google shopping Strategies for Q4 2015

Innovating Your

Google Shopping Strategy for Q4

Implementations to Test & Evaluate for the Holiday Shopping Season

R E T A I L A D V E R T I S E R C O U R S E

Before We Get Started

Session Recordings Will Be Sent Next Week

Q&A Following the Presentation

Submit Questions In the Chat Box to the Right

Logistics Speakers

Rick Backus

CEO

CPC Strategy

Jason Bell

Senior Retail Search Manager

CPC Strategy

Last Q4, Google Shopping was…

Poll For The Audience

A. Our highest volume sales channel

B. A rather successful sales channel for us

C. An underperforming sales channel

D. A nonexistent channel for us

• Founded in 2007

• Over 300 active retail clients

• Top 50 fastest growing company in San Diego 3 years running

• Recognized as an Official Google Shopping Partner

• Custom-built retail search technology platform, CAPx

Solutions

Retail-focused Paid Search (PPC)

Google Shopping Management

Shopping Channel Management

Amazon Sales Acceleration

CPC STRATEGY HAS BEEN FEATURED ON

DELIVERING LASTING RESULTS FOR OUR CLIENTS

VISIT CPCSTRATEGY.COM

Jason Bell

Senior Retail Search Manager

Experience managing accounts for Riddell, Deluxe, ABT, & Sears

Over 6 years of SEM experience

Flag football superstar

Course Overview

• Pros/Cons of the Conventional Approach to Google Shopping

• Using Multiple Campaigns for a More Aggressive Approach

• RLSAs for Shopping

• Competitive Monitoring with Auction Insights

• Isolating Mobile Traffic

• Negative Keyword Sculpting

• Improving Geo-targeting Control

• Improving Ad Scheduling Control

• Testing with Search Query Optimization

• Live Q&A

Refining Your Google Shopping Strategy for Q4

We Would All Like To Be More Aggressive On Shopping In Q4

But how can you do it while maintaining – if not improving – profitability?

• CPCs will increase

• Big box retailers will inflate their budgets

• Spend will be less manageable

• Experienced Shopping advertisers need more control over their inputs

www.CPCStrategy.com | 619.501.6138 | [email protected]

Pros/Cons of the Conventional Approach to Google Shopping

Typical Bread & Butter Approach: 1 Campaign – 1 Ad Group

Pros:

• Comfortable, most have mastered this type of approach

• Capable of achieving acceptable results

• Easy to breakout & manage

• Ability to quickly & easily adjust bid levels across all products/brands/product types/custom labels

• Quick bidding within AdWords Editor

Cons:

• Limited options when it comes to Budgeting, RLSAs, Auction Insights, Device Settings, Best Sellers (or key product

lines / brands), and Negative Keyword Sculpting

• Perception of being less “evolved”


Management Features on Google Shopping

Management Features

• RLSAs – Remarketing Lists

• Auction Insights

• Mobile Only (Robust Bid Control)

• Brand/Line/Group Breakout (Feature Control)

• Negative Keyword Sculpting (to a degree)

• Budgeting Control

• Geo-Targeting Control

• Day Parting Control


Using Multiple Ad Groups & Campaigns for a More Aggressive Approach

Multiple Ad Groups per Campaign

Benefits:

• RLSAs – Remarketing Lists

• Auction Insights

• Mobile Only Control

• Brand/Line/Grouping Breakout

• Negative Keyword Sculpting

When Should I Use Multiple Ad Groups? Why?

• Interested in seeing more competitor data for your top selling products/brands

• Targeting visitors of a specific landing page with a specific subset of products using RLSAs

• Clear search term data across each ad group allowing you to control negatives for specific subsets of products

• Splitting out mobile traffic to keep spend in check while adjusting bids based upon what is actually performing


Using Multiple Ad Groups & Campaigns for a More Aggressive Approach

Multiple Shopping Campaigns per Account

Note: All benefits of an Ad Group are also benefits of a separate Campaign because each must have at least 1 Ad Group.

Benefits:

• Budget Control

Budgets are only controlled at the Campaign level (or Account level)

• Improved Geo-Targeting

• Ad Scheduling

• Priority Settings

Potential Cons?

When Should I Use Multiple Campaigns?

• Increasing exposure on a top brand using a capped experimental budget

• Overlapping products within 2 campaigns using priority settings. Focusing on negative keywords.

• Mobile only control with specific bid adjustments for geo-targeting & ad scheduling as well as budget.


RLSAs for Shopping

Greater targeting control & bid adjustments based upon URL or tag rules created

within the Google remarketing tag

Bid Only:

Add lists or categories to set bids on them but still show ads when other targeting

methods match.

Bid & Target:

Show ads only to people associated with these lists or categories, with the option

to bid on them

Campaign Ad Group


RLSAs for Shopping

Recommended Starting Lists:

• Cart Abandoners

• Product Viewers

• Specific Category/LP Viewers

Where Can You Edit/Create

Audience Lists?

How Do You Add Audience Lists To

Your PLAs?

• Product Type Viewers using [Tags] --- I typically like to split these up

into day buckets. (1-5 / 6-10 / 10-20 / 20-30 days for example)

Campaign Ad Group


Competitive Monitoring with Auction Insights

It provides competitor insights on your Shopping campaigns & Ad Groups compared to other advertisers

participating in the same shopping auctions.

• Ad Group is the most granular you can get for Shopping

• Auction Insights will show you insights on the products eligible for the auction within the selected Ad Group

Pro-Tip: Creating separate Ad Groups (or Campaigns) for top sellers, specific brands, etc is a good way to gather

more competitive data & monitor any trends in impression share.

Where Do I Find Auction Insight

Data?

Campaign Ad Group


Isolating Mobile Traffic

Mobile-Only

• Greater mobile bid control at the Brand, Category, Custom Label, or even Product Level

• No longer will your mobile bids simple be a blanket percentage bid of your desktop bids

• Manage your products based on strictly mobile device traffic, no guesswork

• Important: None of our mobile bids must be over our normal desktop bids for those same items. If they are, you will

receive desktop & tablet traffic within that Mobile Only Campaign or Ad Group.

Ad Group-level

Campaign-level

• Allows for Budgeting, Geo-Targeting, & Ad Scheduling to be adjusted for Mobile only campaigns

• Note: Auction Insights & RLSAs are available on the Ad Group level thus can also be done on the campaign level

• Important: Keep an eye on your bids as you implement % bid adjustments using other features

Notice The Lower CPC On This Mobile

Campaign?

Campaign Ad Group


Mobile-Only Setup

Steps:

1. Check your current mobile bid % adjustment within your current campaign/Ad Group – remember this value

2. Download current product group bid data

3. Create new Ad Group (or Campaign) – Notate its Mobile

4. Mimic Structure of Primary Campaign/AdGroup for New

5. Upload Bids via AW Editor

• Update Spreadsheet w/ new AdGroup/Campaign Name

6. Using Step 1 Value – Decrease Bids Accordingly

7. Set Mobile % in main Ad Group/Campaign to -100%

Step 5

Isolating Mobile Traffic

Pro Tips

• If done at the Ad Group level, be sure to set primary Ad Group mobile

bid adjustments at the Ad Group level (set @ campaign level if creating

new campaign).

• In Step 5 you can decrease the bids within the spreadsheet using a

formula or simply select all products in your product group and

decreasing those bids by X% using “Edit > Change max. CPC bids”

• Bids in your Mobile Campaign must be lower than your primary

campaign or this new Ad Group/campaign will steal all your traffic!

Campaign Ad Group


Negative Keyword Sculpting

• Normal usage of Negative Keywords simply disqualify your products/campaign from showing up for a specific or

related search query

• Placed at an Ad Group and/or Campaign level

• Added at an [exact], “phrase”, or broad match type (broad not recommended)

• Sculpting = funneling search queries from one campaign/Ad Group to another which contains the products which

are preferred to receive this traffic

Example (using Trademark related Search Terms)

Goodyear

Campaign A • Main Campaign

• All Products

• Negatives Added For

“Goodyear” & Related

Trademarked Terms

Goodyear Campaign B • Trademark Focused

Campaign

• Only Performance Tires

Added To This Campaign via

Filtering @ the Label Level

Google Search

“Goodyear”

Products in this campaign

WILL NOT enter this auction

Only products within this

campaign will show up for

the search

Campaign Ad Group


Improving Geo-Targeting Control

• Most use Geo-Targeting to separate traffic into all 50 states and high population cities in the US

• Is it worth building out separate campaigns to have more control over Geo-Targeting where we can target specific

products to specific areas? Maybe!

When Would We Use This?

• Data supports a specific subset of products does better in some areas over others

• Products are only available in specific areas

• Seasonality?

Outdoor Furniture may sell better in states such as California, Arizona or Nevada during the winter months

where it is more likely to be hotter year around and are less likely to have hindering weather such as snow

How Can We Test This?

• If you have multiple campaigns already, you are likely collecting geo-targeting data b/t the two separate campaigns


Campaign Ad Group

Improving Geo-Targeting Control

• Running the following report will allow you to pull performance data from your campaign even if you previously never

had anything set up.

• Important: You can also run Geo-Targeting reports via the Dimensions tab

Note: For this example I took the portion of time ~4-5 weeks of data where I had yet to build out State & City level

geo-targets to illustrate that you can use this lump United States data to run the reports.

Pros

• Segment data down to several layers

from States, Cities, Postal Code, &

More!

• You don't need to have set up any

specific segments prior.

• Don't need to use the Dimensions tab

to fetch this data

• Lets you know if you have already

Added a specific area - Helpful to see if

you may have missed the addition of

certain States / Cities or if you should

be focusing higher bids on these areas.

Cons

• Let me know if you find any!

Campaign


Campaign Ad Group

Improving Ad Scheduling Control

• Most use this to adjust based on a percentage for how much more/less aggressive we want to be

during specific days of the week and/or times of the day

• An example default build out would be as follows:

Important: You can only have 6 partitions max per day

When Would We Use This?

• Should always have ad scheduling enabled, even if minor adjustments are made.

How Can We Test This?

• Simply add the default ad scheduling build-out to your current campaigns or run the reports on the

following page to figure out the best way to build our your partitions

Partition Time of Day Bid Adjustments

Overnight 12am – 6am -15%

Early Morning 6am – 9:30am N/A

Morning to Noon 9:30am – 2pm N/A

Mid Day 2pm – 5:30pm N/A

Evening 5:30pm – 10pm N/A

Late Evening 10pm – 12am -15%


Campaign Ad Group

Improving Ad Scheduling Control

• If you weren't previously running Ad Scheduling then you wont have any data within the Ad Scheduling tab.

Instead you would use the Dimensions tab to pull numbers to analyze.

• If you set up every day of the week without an hourly breakout then you could use this report to drill deeper.

Pros

• Dive down by day of the week and hour

of the day without adjusting segments

within the Dimensions tab

• Regardless of how you built out your ad

scheduling this reporting will still drill

down to hour of the day .

• Easy to find and use!

Cons

• You have to have been collecting data

within the Ad Schedule settings tab in

order to be able to run this

report meaning if you neglected setting

up any schedule then you will have to

use the Dimensions tab to use this

section.

• Does not allow you to individually adjust

bids by hour of the day within this

section.


Campaign Ad Group

Testing with Search Query Optimization

What is Search Query Optimization?

• Advanced form of negative keyword sculpting to push very qualified traffic to a specific subset of products.

• Google Shopping can drive a lot of traffic to shorter tail keywords which may signal someone is higher up the funnel.

• Our goal is to funnel that traffic away from our search query optimized shopping campaigns but continue to target them

within our “catch all” campaign given performance allows.

• Negatives are already a prominently used feature of Shopping, but this strategy takes that approach to another level.

Important Questions for You:

• How many negatives do you currently have in your Shopping campaign?

• How many of these are short tailed keywords that are driving up costs with little to no conversions?

• Would you like to be able to target your best selling products to potential customers who are searching for that specific

product or would you prefer to keep paying a premium for the short tailed keyword traffic?

Campaign Ad Group



Why is it a valuable management feature to use?

• During Q4, we will want to be very aggressive on at least our top selling brands/products or

expected revenue drivers.

• Creating separate search query optimized campaigns allows us to have control over which search terms/potential

customers we are being aggressive on.

• Why throttle bids up on non-profitable search queries during Q4 just to ensure you are not losing ground

to competitors when you can throttle bids up on only highly relevant bottom of the funnel keywords?

• Dominate the impression share and top of the page ranking for highly relevant search terms.

• Have more control over which specific products show up for these high value search queries.


Campaign Ad Group


Important Notes Regarding Search Query Optimized Campaigns

• Performance will vary depending on your product selection & targeting decision.

• This strategy can be adopted and adjusted in several ways:

Brand focused where we are more lenient and only target non-branded search queries with negatives to ensure

we are prominently shown when brand searches occur.

Single product focused to control and be aggressive on just your top selling product in an effort to ensure top

placement for only your highest converting search queries.

• Use in conjunction with RLSAs and other levers to create an even more aggressively targeted campaign.

• Keep another campaign or ad group live with lower bids to act as a catch-all.

Unless your budget is very tight and you only want to target highly relevant search terms, you can severely hurt

your order volume and revenue if you only use a search query optimized campaign.

• Always be testing.


Campaign Ad Group


How to setup a framework for implementing Search Query-level

campaigns

• Step 1: Create separate Campaign or Ad Group which we will use for testing prior to Q4.

• Duplicate settings in this new campaign to ensure we get a solid A/B test

• Step 2: Start with a very targeted subset of products

• Step 3: Keep this product(s) live in the old campaign which will be used as a “catch all”

• Step 4: Aggressively add negatives daily and closely monitor Search Term Dimensions Report

• Step 5: Throttle up bids if you are seeing highly qualified search terms in the report & solid performance

Keep In Mind:

• We can use auction insights to check on our impression share and run competitive analysis.

• Use Product Id reports to keep an eye on order volume to spot any upward trends.


Campaign Ad Group

Evaluate Your Potential on

Google Shopping

Questions for Jason?

Submit your questions in the chat box on the right

CPCStrategy.com


Advanced Google shopping Strategies for Q4 2015

Marketing

Transcript of Advanced Google shopping Strategies for Q4 2015