Google Smart Shopping: Run Your Campaigns Directly from Shopify

Remove the guesswork from finding your target market with Google Smart Shopping

If you’re a Shopify merchant looking for a way to surpass targets, then I’d place looking into Google Smart Shopping a top priority for your eCommerce store.

Without further ado here’s how you can get Google Smart Shopping working on your side to drive revenue, boosts sales and provide a healthy ROI.

Google Smart Shopping

Up until this year, I wouldn’t have advised clients to go down this route. Google Shopping was a cumbersome ordeal and needed a whole lot of management and time to create campaigns. You can see that the last year Google’s put the shoulder to the wheel in giving the platform an overhaul and it’s really paid off.

How Google Smart Shopping trumps regular Google Shopping campaigns

Between ads on Youtube, promotions in Gmail or Google Shopping ads, there’s few stores who’s target market doesn’t use these platforms. Although working on SEO tactics is of course important, Google ads allow you to position your products right in front of your target market’s eyeballs. The best way to describe it is buying the sweet spot on SERPs. Hang on, let me get a screenshot so I can show you what I mean...

Alright, as you can see here even if your marketing team is nailing SEO techniques and you manage to become the #1 results you’re still beneath the Google Shopping results. Not only do these links get a large amount of space right at the top of the page, but it’s also highly visual with a lot of metadata.

So, if a regular Google campaign can achieve this for you, then why do you need to enlist the assistance of their Smart Shopping Campaign?

Well, successful ads in regular Google Shopping campaigns boil down to how well you understand the system and boy does it have a lot of components. Google Merchant Center and Ad Words power the platform. The former houses your products’ data and arranges it into a Google-friendly format (beep-boop-beep). The latter is where your campaign is nestled, and you manage bids, set budgets and use performance optimisation techniques.

It’s a lot to manage.

Google Smart Shopping uses Google’s clout in AI and machine learning to create an impressive force of marketing. It gets rid of manual work that prevents merchants to work on their brand’s direction. Google’s systems pull different products from your site and test different combinations of images and copy to create winning ads that connect with your target audience.

Smart Shopping Campaigns span across the entire Google empire which includes remarketing ads on Youtube, Display Network and Gmail. It’s completely automated, so you don’t need to bid, research target audiences, reach or timings. This revolutionary system responds to online retailers’ needs.

 With the demands on a marketing team to deliver across an ever-increasing social media stratosphere, Google grasps that it needs to provide merchants with a more automated approach to enable them to better connect with their audiences.

Use Shopify’s marketing feature to manage your smart shopping campaign

If you’re a Shopify merchant, this is where things get exciting. This year Shopify announced itself as the first platform to collaborate with Google on this new service.

To set up a campaign, you can begin by adding the official Google Shopping app on Shopify.

Once you’ve done that, it’s a matter of:

• Setting a daily budget
• Launching your campaign
• Getting back to business while Google takes care of ad placements and bidding

Our top tip when adding products to these campaigns is to segment your products into groups. This way you can create more granular reports and better gauge each product’s performance.

A telltale sign of the quality of this new Google venture is in their pricing system. You only have to pay for shoppers who click-through on your ads.

Being able to manage both Facebook and Google advertising via your Shopify account is a game changer. Streamlining your business in this ways gives you a clearer picture of your online store as a whole and frees up a lot of time otherwise spent trying to collect and organise data from different touch points.

What you need to know about creating a Smart Shopping Campaign strategy

When venturing into the world of Google Smart Shopping, you’ll need to know two key terms:

Target ROAS (return on ad spend): this is the average conversion value you receive for every dollar you spend on an add. Your target ROAS will alter the bidding strategy by way of campaign type and network settings. What this means in for your business is that you can set minimum return goals for a campaign. Here’s how to calculate it:

Return on Ad Spend = Revenue / Ad Spend x 100

Maximise Conversion Value bidding strategy: this is an approach based on revenue intake, which is quite a bit different from the norm. With ROAS, your goal is to stick to targets, whereas with Maximise Conversion Value you’re looking to increase ROI within a set budget. The Maximise Conversion Value strategy is only available in Smart Google Shopping campaigns.

How machine learning makes a difference is in its decision-making based on unique contextual signals for each auction. Google’s AI will position your ads where they’re relevant and manage your bids so that they maximize your conversion value.

Smart Google Shopping solves the major eCommerce problems

Constructing a merchant feed

Shopping ads work differently to search ads in that the content stems from your merchant feed. Before Google SSCs merchant would need to form this data using Google Sheets or tools combined with automation, depending on the store’s product size.

The Smart Shopping Campaigns come with the new Automated Feeds feature created by Google. Now, your shopping ads are generated directly from your website.

Need a custom feed created? We can create bespoke feeds for most shopping platforms, contact us to enquire about shopping feeds.

Finding the best combination

Creating winning ad campaigns demands continuous adjustments to product combinations, copy and images. Not only that but you’ve also got to test how these ads succeed on multiple platforms at varying times.

Again, Google comes to the rescue with machine learning algorithms. It recommends fifteen days to give their systems time to learn how best to capture sales. However, once your campaigns are up and running, you can think of the process as an employee. The Smart Shopping system ticks away and you can check in to monitor customer acquisition, lead generation and click-throughs.

Staying connecting with marketing endeavours

2018 has been a year of automation. AI and machine learning tools have made an enormous to marketers productivity levels and increased marketing ROI and better campaign management, according to this report.

However, it’s reasonable to ask whether too much automation makes for a marketing team that isn’t completely clued into their customers. This issue is where Google Smart Shopping Campaign’s supplemental feeds come in handy.

These feeds run parallel to your automated processes but are independent to the data that Google uses to runs your Shopping ads. With these isolated campaigns, you create a testing space to tweak and experiment. You don’t have to worry about it affecting how Google runs your campaigns. It’s useful for performance testing, restructuring a campaign, or testing the waters with new products.

Google’s Smart Shopping campaign is an excellent toolkit for managing ads online. As we’ve discussed what’s even more enticing is that it’s available right on your Shopify account. If you’re looking for more information and assistance in running your store’s marketing campaigns, we’re on the other side of the contact us page. We’ve also got helpful, straight-to-the-point articles that give you a headstart on the latest and greatest in managing and marketing a Shopify business.

*images via Shopify