Smart shopping campaigns - the e-commerce boost with Google Ads

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In the world of work, the maxim of working smarter and not harder has been valid for quite some time. This principle can also be applied to Google Ads transferred. Because smart Shopping campaigns can make your job easier and help you reach more potential customers at the same time. How exactly this works, why machine learning campaigns are worthwhile for your e-commerce and how to create these smart ads, we'll tell you here.

How can you successfully generate leads with Google Ads? - Download

Smart Shopping Campaigns vs. Standard Shopping Campaigns

The smart campaigns are a bundling of Google's previous standard Shopping campaigns and display remarketing. Here, you also work with automated bids and can present your brand and products fluently across the Google Ads Apply across network.

This includes the external ad network, Gmail or even YouTube. Thus, you can centrally place your ads across multiple platforms. But even at the core, there are significant differences between smart campaigns and the standard ones Shopping campaigns.

Smart shopping campaigns
Smart Shopping campaigns can be run across multiple platforms (source: channable.com)

Commandments rethought

The most important might certainly be the Management of bid strategies be. Manual bids are a thing of the past with smart campaigns; instead, all campaigns are based on the maximum conversion value aligned. This requires you to not only track, but also set the values for different conversion types - determining when your campaign is considered a success.

Of course, you can still make adjustments, for example, via regions or time periods. This gives your campaign more of a boost in the run-up to Christmas, for example, or you bid more for ads for swimwear in coastal regions.

Nevertheless, it is managed by Google's own algorithm, which has sound data sets and advanced machine learning implementations. Don't worry, the success of your campaign is ultimately in Google's interest.

Dynamic remarketing

Smart Shopping campaigns will henceforth use dynamic remarketing, i.e. target potential customers who were not quite ready for conversion. Triggers include, for example, the display of product pages within the last 15 days, an abandoned shopping cart within the last 30 days, or visitors who have not viewed a product page for more than 15 days.

Dynamic categorization gives you more flexibility to target the right incentives and lure users back. Basically, dynamic remarketing segments into active and inactive product views and further splits these groups. This provides you with a dedicated overview of your customer base, their habits and the most successful remarketing strategies for your business.

Combine different types of ads

Smart Shopping campaigns are ideally suited to make your multimedia display to mix and match with different display types enhance. Whether you use text, your brand logo, images or videos, it doesn't matter, because the distribution across the Google network means you have the right ad in every context.

When creating different media ads, it is important to make sure that your ads are not only shown to users who are explicitly searching for your company. If you supply knitting accessories, your ads could also be displayed to users who have searched for knitting tutorials on YouTube. Accordingly, you should clearly formulate and design your ads.

Fewer setting options

Google's simplification of the Shopping campaigns you can perceive as a blessing or as a curse. Depending on how deep you've gone into standard campaigns, it can be quite disruptive.

The regular campaign offers you to prioritize the ads against each other, so you can prefer ads for high-value items. These are then prioritized over generic ads or banners for low-value items. Smart campaigns, on the other hand, no longer offer this setting option.

Negative search criteria can also no longer be used and this can become problematic. For example, if you sell golf accessories, you can set VW as a negative keyword, because the golf in Wolfsburg has little to do with the lawn game. Smart campaigns don't allow that (currently), don't even show you the keywords your ads are being served on.

Easier integration through smart shopping campaigns

Fewer manual settings are a disadvantage in many scenarios, but the campaigns offer other advantages that also help you in performance analysis. With the easy-to-understand Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) metric, you have a value that tells you about good comparative values across the entire ad network offers. More than a simple return on investment for your ads is often not even necessary to break down your campaigns.

For many e-commerce systems, the smart Shopping campaigns even particularly simple. For example, there are simple integrations for Shopify and WooCommerce. So you can use the smart Google Ads on Shopify simply launch it as a new campaign via the Marketing tab, on WooCommerce you only need the Google Listings & Ads extension. Of course, you can use your Shopping campaigns also make it smarter via the Google Merchant Center.

In addition to simple functionality, smart Shopping campaigns advantages for you, especially if you operate in a competitive segment. However, the new bidding system makes it difficult to convert existing volumes of products in many scenarios. Therefore, it may well be that you achieve more conversions per ad and spend less on your Google Ads but the absolute number of conversions may fall (initially).

The more niche you are or the more emphasis you place on covering generic keywords, the less you should use smart campaigns for that. Smart Shopping campaigns always work best when you want to promote high value products in high volume, are still looking for the right price point of your goods or are focusing on popular products with high demand.

This is precisely when the new machine learning system shows how useful it can be to make greater use of user behavior.

Patience and quality - how to optimize your campaigns

Machine learning uses large data sets, but it also needs large data sets. This can mean that your smart campaigns optimize themselves over time - but don't perform as well as you would like at the beginning. This is where strategic thinking is needed.

Distribution across networks also requires a good knack for knowing how the media used will work on different platforms.

In e-commerce, speed, know-how and flexibility are required so that you can also make the best use of your marketing budget. Smart Shopping campaigns are a good tool for your Google Ads. If you master the right adjusting screws here, you can achieve even more even faster.

How can you successfully generate leads with Google Ads? - Download

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