how to apply automation to your google shopping strategy

How to Apply Automation to Your Google Shopping Strategy

A Programmatic Approach to Your Google Shopping Strategy

Logistics

Session Recording Will Be Sent out Tomorrow

Morning

Q&A Throughout the Presentation

Submit Questions In the Chat Box to the Right

Resources In the Handouts Section to the Right

Today’s Resources

OVERVIEW

•Founded in 2007

•Recognized as an Official Google Shopping Partner

•300+ Active Retail Clients

•Top 50 fastest growing company in San Diego 3 years

CLIENTS

About CPC Strategy

SOLUTIONS

• Retail-focused Paid Search (PPC)

• Google Shopping Management

• Shopping Channel Management

• Amazon Sales Acceleration

Upcoming CPC Strategy Events

May 23rd - May 25th 11am-12pm (PST)

Register: Link in Chat Box

Today’s Speakers

Rick BackusCEO/Co-Founder

David WeichelDirector of Paid Search

Lewis BrannonRetail Search Manager

Poll For The Audience…Are you currently applying automation to your Google Shopping Strategy?

A. Yes

B. No

Q&A Overview

•Product Feed “Speed Round”

•Manipulating Custom Labels to Reduce CoS & Increase Bidding Efficiency

•How Programmatic Bidding Rules can Strengthen Your GS Strategy

•Search Term Harvesting & Shopping Campaign Analysis

•Improving Account Vitality through Budget Pacing & Monitoring

•Live Q&A

Product Feed “Speed Round”

Basic Product Data Quality – The Easy StuffThe essentials for a good quality Google Shopping product feed•(The full list of requirements can be found here.)

The Basics:• Item IDs - Are they unique?• Item IDs - Are they consistent?• MPNs - Are they modified? Do MPNs match what other retailers have?• SKUs - Does the Feed match the ItemIDs in recorded in Google Analytics transactions? • Prices - Accurate? How often are you syncing price? Make sure no $0 values.• Links - Do they work? Check for 404 errors & 302 redirects that strip tracking parameters.• Stock Status - How are we handling out of stock items?• Images - Are we including any Watermarks or Promotional Text?• Product Variations - Are we missing/not sending these? Why or why not?• Product Variations - Are we loading the child variations on the landing page?• Shipping & Tax Data - Accurate? Set it up in the GMC, or the feed.• GTINs - Are we in compliance for the required brands? Full list here.• Custom Labels - Are we taking advantage of these 5 customizable fields?• Complete Data - Do we have fully populated columns? Any empty fields?


https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/188494?hl=en

https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6239390


Basic Product Data Quality – The Easy StuffYour needs are going to be somewhat unique. Choose a solution that works for you.

•Shopping cart plug-ins•godatafeed•merchant advantage•datafeedwatch•productsUp•CPC Strategy (shameless plug)

Use a solution or service you trust.

Manipulating Custom Labels to Reduce CoS & Increase Bidding Efficiency

Custom Labels

Attribute-based Custom Labels•Color, Size, Weight, Age Group, Gender•Parent Groupings (for variations)•Style or Collection Names•Price Buckets•Product Margins



Custom Labels

Fill Your LabelsEven if you don’t plan to actually build out the campaign and pull these levers at launch, it is always a good idea to collect data along as many points as possible. What data would be useful for you to collect? Pro Tip:

•Product attributes are a great way to fill up empty custom label columns. •Collecting data on color/size/style/etc. can allow you to run some interesting reports in the future.


Custom LabelsPerformance-based Custom Labels

•Top Sellers•Non-Converters•ROI Buckets•Seasonality•Sale Items

Custom LabelsHow to Approach Adding Your Custom Labels


Custom LabelsUsing Custom Labels to Manipulate Product Bids at Scale


Imagine this is your product catalog in your Google Shopping campaign.



High Margin

Low Margin

Partition your products based on like attributes, such as product margin.



High Margin

Low Margin

Item A - $100 margin

Item B - $112 margin

Item C - $105 margin

Item D - $10 margin

Item E - $12 margin

Each partition contains a subset of products within it.



High Margin

Low Margin




Item D - $10 margin

Item E - $12 margin

$1.10 max cpc

$0.25 max cpc

Each margin tier has it’s own default bids that matching the potential margin made from a sale.




High Margin

Low Margin



Item D - $10 margin

Item E - $12 margin

$1.10 max cpc

$0.25 max cpc

But what happens when an attribute changes?

Say, for example, a supplier raises prices on an item therefore reducing your margin.

Item A - $9 margin



High Margin

Low Margin



Item D - $10 margin

Item E - $12 margin

$1.10 max cpc

$0.25 max cpc



We can re-merchandise our catalog so that our items are inheriting the proper bids from their root product grouping.

Item A - $9 margin



High Margin

Low Margin



Item D - $10 margin

Item E - $12 margin

$1.10 max cpc

$0.25 max cpc



Item A - $9 margin



High Margin

Low Margin



Item D - $10 margin

Item E - $12 margin

$1.10 max cpc

$0.25 max cpc

We can re-merchandise our catalog so that our items are inheriting the proper bids from their root product grouping.



Custom LabelsThe role of technology...



Custom LabelsThe Custom Labels approach to product-level bidding allows you to:

• Create a customized approach to product-level bidding.• Make product-level decisions at scale.• Re-merchandise your products without changing the product group architecture.• Move high-performance products to campaigns with more budget. • Move low-performance products to campaigns with less budget.• Go beyond top-line cost & revenue, and bid according to a product's’ impact on your bottom-

line..• Adjust for seasonality at the product and category levels.

Build the strategy that works for your business.

Questions for the Experts?Submit your questions in the chat box on the right

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

cpcstrategy.com/retail-search-audit/

Schedule A Free 60 min. Retail Search Evaluation

How Programmatic Bidding Rules Can Strengthen Your GS Strategy

Simplifying bidding in two steps:

• Automate those decisions

• Map a decision tree that fits your business and campaign strategy.

It’s All About EnablementThe more time that you give back to your team, the more you allow them to think strategically and focus on higher-leverage activities.


Decision Trees, or RulesMap a decision tree that fits your business and ad strategy.


Source: Predictive Analytics; Written by Eric Siegel



• Do I have at least one converted click? No.• Did I spend more than $50 on it? Yes.• Is it one of my Best Sellers? No.

Let’s start with a simple decision:

Give this decision a name → Wasted Ad Spend



• If you have a default date range that works for you, use it. e.g Last 30 Days

• If not, go to Google Analytics’ Time Lag report in the Multi-Channel Funnels section.

But what was missing from our decision tree?

Set the duration for each decision to operate under → Last 45 Days

Time, or duration.



Schedule your rules. Set your action. Rinse & repeat.

• You should end up with a rule for each cohort of products. • Each rule or decision will execute one action - either increase or decrease bid.

• Be intentional and specific.

Allow yourself (team) to become more strategic and methodical w/ bidding:

It’s All About EnablementThe more time that you give back to your team, the more you allow them to think strategically and focus on higher-leverage activities.


• Gain more insight into how your catalog interacts with each performance segment.

• Improve the consistency of your changes.

• Identify when your bidding logic isn’t as effective and take take action.

Search Term Harvesting & Shopping Campaign Analysis

Title Enhancements & Testing

BrandThese should almost always be added to the front of the titles however we can also test adding them to the end of the titles if we want to push more weight to other parts of the title.

(e.g. ‘J.W. Hulme’ is not searched often or included in most of our search terms)

Example: J.W. Hulme Leather Brief Bag

Leather Brief Bag by J.W. Hulme

vs.



Attributes: Color / Size / GenderThe addition of attributes in the title is very important as attributes are often keywords used by customers who are looking for something specific.

Example: J.W. Hulme Leather Brief Bag

J.W. Hulme Mens Brown Leather Brief Bag

vs.




MPN / Style NumberTypically these are more useful for Electronics or Appliance merchants where customers are looking for a specific model or style number.

Feed:

Search Query Report:

Google results:

Finding Significant Search TermsYou can run this on all your campaigns as well if you want to know your account wide top performing search queries

*Note: These are typically not the keywords you are bidding on (PPC). Instead this shows you metrics on the auctions you are winning based upon what the user is actually typing in the search bar.


Finding Your Site Search DataThis is where you pull the data through Google Analytics

Finding Significant Search TermsBut the problem with search terms is the sheer volume of raw data that you need to sift through.


Challenges:

• Each record represents a single variation of natural language used to find your ad.

• Massive amount of raw data.

• Hard to extract insights at this layer to apply at the product-level.

Because not all our data looks this clean...



Solution:

• Count the number of unique occurrences of that term or phrase to signal impact & prevalence.

• Extract individual terms and phrases rather than entire queries.

• Attribute values to each term based on historical performance.

Text Mining

“Nike Air Jordans”

1 conversion, $90 revenue

“Nike” 0.33 conversion, $30 revenue“Air” 0.33 conversion, $30 revenue“ Jordans” 0.33 conversion, $30 revenue

For 1 term attribution:

Editing TitlesOnce we’ve found the new terms we want we can input them into Titles and then measure performance before/after.


• Record what performance was prior to the title change, and compare it afterwards.

• Use the terms to inform Title enhancements.

• It should be clear as to whether your changes are generating any “lift” in performance.

Improving Account Vitality through Budget Pacing & Monitoring



Budget:

• Forecasting helps you to prepare for the future, e.g. ask for more budget or adjust campaigns

budgets.

• Budget alerts remind you to take action.

General Monitoring:

• Feed Export Monitoring

• Feed Processing Summaries

• Campaign Down alerts

• New Product alerts

Poll For The Audience…Are you interested in seeing how automation could help your Google Shopping strategy?

A. Yes

B. No