The only optimization for smart shopping campaigns (leaving out feed optimizations) is changing the target ROAS for the campaign. If you have different margins across your catalog you will likely want to split out your smart shopping campaigns so that you can have a different target ROAS set for each of your margin levels. Or run a campaign without a target ROAS for some products.

It is important to note that there is no such thing as campaign priority in smart shopping campaigns. You can’t have the same products across multiple smart campaigns using campaign priorities and varying levels of target ROAS. When you split out the campaigns make sure that each product is in only one smart campaign.

You can now also optimize for new customer acquisition in addition to sales to existing customers. This allows you to add in the LTV on top of the order value when you acquire a new customer through the smart shopping campaign.

Keep in mind that if you have a product in a standard shopping campaign and in a smart campaign the smart campaign will always take priority even if your standard campaign has a high priority level. If you notice a certain product or product group has completely stopped spending in standard shopping campaign check your smart campaigns and make sure that group is not in the smart campaign.

Why else would you split out your campaigns?

If you have a set of top selling products that you know sell well and will likely hit or likely exceed the target ROAS you set you might want to have these products in a separate campaign with the target ROAS set lower than the rest of your catalog. The goal of this strategy is to maximize visibility and increase revenue. Make sure you test this and watch the metrics because the results might not be what you are expecting but in the testing I have done this strategy has worked well.

Keep in mind that you can split your smart campaigns too much. If you are consistently not hitting your budget that means you either need more products in the campaign (more options & data for the machine learning) or you need to lower your ROAS.

Sometimes having too many top sellers together doesn’t work either. Google is going to always give priority to the products it believes can hit the goal of maximizing conversions or hitting target ROAS (if it is set). This makes sense for Google because it makes it look like Smart Shopping campaigns work. The issue is that you are losing search impression share, clicks and sales if they are consistently giving spend to one or a few products in a Smart shopping campaign.

For example recently I had a Smart Shopping campaign with ~100 products in it with a target ROAS set to 300%. Over the past 6 months that campaign has performed very well with ROAS always above the target. This is mostly because these are great selling products that is why they are in this campaign. The issue is that about 65% of the spend went to 5 products. The other products would receive receive clicks and hit target ROAS numbers but overall revenue was small in comparison. Then the top 5 products went out of stock and guess what happened? The campaign performed better. The other products that are also top sellers when given the budget actually produced more revenue and a higher ROAS.

What is the take away? Smart Shopping campaigns still get locked into what they think the winning products are which means you are losing impression share for the other products. I split this Smart Shopping campaign into two campaigns and have been able to increase revenue and profitability.

Ad Relevancy

With Smart Shopping campaigns you get one ad. If you have a diverse catalog one ad might not work for you. You get to select one marketing image, one video, one headline, one long headline and one description. If put 10,000 products into a Smart campaign there is very little chance you can create an ad that is relevant for everything. For example you sell both men’s and women’s apparel, you will likely want at least two Smart campaigns so you can use marketing images and videos that appeal to the gender.

New products

If you launch new products and they are included in a single smart campaign with existing products it might take longer than you want for those products to receive clicks and sales. Smart campaigns are trying to maximize sales while maintaining the target ROAS you set. They do this with data and machine learning so when you introduce new products into the campaign there isn’t any data for those products. The campaign will likely only slowly allocate budget to the new products because with the existing data Google knows that allocating budget to certain products will be the most likely way to hit target ROAS numbers.

I suggest not using smart shopping campaigns at all. I prefer to launch new products into standard shopping campaigns. Why? I want to monitor the search queries to see what the new products are being displayed for. This data can be used for feed optimization. Launching in a standard campaign also gives me a better idea for benchmark CPC, CTR and the overall market for the new products.

Only a few products receive clicks

If you run your entire catalog in one smart shopping campaign you will likely notice that only a small number of products use the majority of the budget. Again this is Google trying to get the most sales they can while hitting the target ROAS you set. You can split out your products into multiple smart shopping campaigns to get around this. Each campaign will have its own budget and the products that were not receiving budget allocation will start to spend.

When a product doesn’t receive clicks does it mean that it isn’t possible to profitably advertise that product in shopping? No, while smart is in the name that doesn’t mean they always are. However here are a few things you should check when a product isn’t receiving any spend:

• The campaign might not be spending on those products because of your feed. Check the products that are not spending and double check your feed attributes. It might be the case that the products spending are doing so because they are better optimized.
• How does your pricing compare to the competition? If you have higher priced products relative to competitors it will be more difficult for the smart campaign to continually increase spend on the product and maintain ROAS.

The post Running Multiple Smart Shopping Campaigns appeared first on Konnected Interactive.

Google Shopping App from Shopify

Price: Free included with Shopify

Pros

• Great to get started.
• Relatively simple to setup your products and get them listed in Merchant Center.
• Easily launch Google Smart Shopping campaigns.

Made by Shopify Google Shopping App

Cons

• Limited ability to customize your feed.
• You will only be running Smart shopping campaigns for the campaigns you create in the marketing section of Shopify.
• DIY model. You will need to setup the feed and maintain it on an ongoing basis. The amount of maintenance and ongoing optimization will depend on how often your product catalog changes.

Google Sheets inside Merchant Center

If you have a small catalog that is static you can choose to build your feed using a template inside Google Sheets. Google has instructions on how to do this https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/2364758

Price: Free

Pros

• Setup is easy as long as you are comfortable with spreadsheets.
• The template sheet provided by Google provides all of the attributes available to include in the feed and gives pre-built dropdown lists of applicable attributes for some fields.
• Easy to make updates and test optimizations
• Updated data can be sent to Merchant Center almost instantly

Cons

• Not a scalable solution if you have a lot of products or your product data changes frequently. For example if you inventory levels or prices change daily or several times a day you will need to update the feed. You can of course use automatic updates for inventory and price changes but you want that clean optimized feed.
• You can’t easily use this feed across other channels.
• It is difficult to apply automatic rules and optimizations that could be scaled using a 3rd party tool.

Manual creation in Merchant Center

Google is making it easier and easier to get your products online and eligible for shopping. Recently the made an update that allows you to manually create products inside Merchant Center. The entire process is similar to building out a product in Shopify.

Price: Free

Pros

• Very simple and fairly easy to use.
• You have the ability/option to add every possible feed attribute.
• Easy to edit your titles, descriptions, product types, etc.

Cons

• By far the most time consuming and tedious process. This is 100% not scalable unless your product catalog doesn’t change.
• You can’t this product data across other channels.
• Not possible to apply automatic rules and optimizations that could be scaled using a 3rd party tool.

3rd party Shopify apps

There are numerous options for 3rd party Shopify apps that help create, compile, customize and submit your product data to Merchant Center. Here is a starting point in your search https://apps.shopify.com/search?q=product+feed

Price: Free – several hundreds of dollars per month depending on features and catalog size.

Pros

• Most of these apps have a simple setup process
• Made for Shopify specifically
• Depending on the app you choose you may have a lot of customization abilities for optimizing your product feed.

Cons

• Sometimes less customization and power user options than 3rd party tools.
• Most are DIY model so you will need to handle the setup and management of the feed.

3rd party feed tools not specific to Shopify

You don’t need to limit yourself to what you find in the Shopify App store. There are a lot of great tools available that are not exclusive to Shopify but are the leading providers of product feed tools and services.

Price: Wide range from $30/month to hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month depending on features, catalog size & services provided by the vendor.

Pros

• Complete control of your feed. You can customize as much or as little as you want.
• Use the feed across channels e.g. Google, Facebook, Bing etc.
• Option to have the feed created, maintained and optimized for you.

Cons

• Can be over whelming and time consuming to get your initial setup completed if you choose to do it yourself.
• Costs tend to be higher than Shopify apps and obviously more than the free options.

The post Create a Shopify Google Shopping Feed appeared first on Konnected Interactive.

Shopify Metafields can be a powerful resource to customize your Shopify store experience and product data.

Learn about your options for creating Google Shopping feed for Shopify.

Table of Contents

• Common use cases for Shopify Metafields.
• How to use Metafields to optimize your Google Shopping Feed.
• Creating Metafields
• Editing Metafields

Common Use Cases for Metafields

• Used by apps to customize your store’s functionality. For example adding recommend products or adding product customization.
• Add extra images or videos to product pages.
• Add custom data to customer account.
• Add custom sliders or header to blog posts, pages and collections. 

Shopify Metafields can also be used to create an optimized Google Shopping Product Feed.  The easiest solution for getting started with Google Shopping ads with your Shopify store is using the free Made by Shopify Google Shopping App. This app makes it easy to connect to Merchant Center and setup your products. However for stores with extensive product catalogs or store owners who want to customize their feed data you may need another solution.

Metafields can be used to create custom feed data which can then be used by your feed creation tool of choice.

If you look at the Product Data Specifications for Google Shopping feeds you will notice that there are lot of fields that are required and even more that are optional. However keep in mind that the most complete and optimized your data is the better your chances are for creating a high return Google Shopping campaign.

Use Cases for Metafields

Basic Feed Data Optimization

• Creating logical and optimized product types.
• Categorizing your products into the correct and most appropriate Google Product Category.
• Set Age group, gender, size type, color.
• Setting the pattern of your item, e.g. Stripe, Polka dot, Argyle etc.

Setting the material of your item, e.g. Leather, Suede, Stainless Steel etc.

Depending on how your site is structured a lot of this basic data can be set using your tags and product types.  However you may find that the you cannot be as granular as you want to be with your product data. I also find that using Metafields is typically faster to edit the product data when combined with the Shopify Bulk Editor.

Advanced Feed Data Optimization

Even if you are using tags combined with logic in your feed tool you still could benefit from Metafields when it comes to setting some of the more obscure product attributes.

Custom Labels

Custom Labels are as the name suggests, custom and can be used in any way you want. You can set up to 5 custom labels per product using custom_label_0, custom_label_1, custom_label_2….

You can create custom labels using the Metafields and then push those labels to your feed which allows you to use them in reporting and structuring your shopping campaigns. One example is setting products by seasonality using custom_label_0.

The labels would be Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer. Inside of AdWords you could then separate your products using the custom label.

Another example would be using custom labels to organize products by price. For example using custom_label_1 to separate products $10-$50, $50.01 – $100, $100.01 – $150 and so on.  You could then use this custom label to create separate campaigns filtered by the price of the product.

Promotions

Running a promotion using Google Merchant Promotions? You can set the promotion_id attribute using a Metafield which would allow you to run the promotion on a set of products in your catalog.  You can use a Metafield to set the promotion id to for example BlackFriday and using Merchant Center promotion create promotion for products that have the promotion_id set to BlackFriday.

Create Shopify Metafields

Use an App

To create your Metafields you will need to use an app, there are plenty of apps (free and paid) that give you the ability to create and manage Metafields. I will leave up to you to select an app based on your needs.  I have tried many of them and for the most part they all offer the same functionality.  

Some apps will allow you to export and import your product data with your Metafields.  This can be a big time saver when you need to sort, filter, and edit your product data and Metafields in Excel or Sheets. 

My preferred app right now for creating, managing and editing Metafields is Custom Fields by Bonify. The app allows you to create and manage Metafields in the app or on the Shopify product page itself when you have their Chrome browser extension installed. You of course can always manage any Metafields you create using the bulk edit as well.

Use a Browser Plugin

This is my preferred method.  I use ShopifyFD which has some issues with loading and display but to quickly create and view Metafields associated with a product it works very well.  I prefer this solution when I know that I will be editing the Metafields in the Shopify bulk editor and don’t need an interface for managing the Metafields.

Unfortunately due to changes made by Shopify this browser plugin no longer works. The developer has plans to launch an updated version but until that happens this tool will not work.

Use the Metafields API

Using the Metafields API is beyond the scope of this post but this is another option that will give you the most power and allow you to quickly create and edit Metafields.

Edit Shopify Metafields

Use an App

Like I mentioned above some apps will allow you to export and import your Metafields to a CSV.  These will typically be paid apps but if you are more comfortable using Excel or Sheets then this will be the easiest way to edit.  The other great feature of doing an export of your product data and Metafields is that you can then sort and filter by your Metafields, inside the Shopify bulk editor you can’t search for or filter products by a Metafield. With the new product grid in Shopify you do have more advanced search and filtering capability so once you refine your search you can enter the bulk editor and edit Metafields.

Use The Shopify Bulk Editor

If you are using a structured system of tags and product types you should be able to accomplish most of what you need to do by using the bulk editor. The bulk editor with Metafields is the same as you use when editing price, product name, etc but the additional fields will be displayed and can be edited.  

The most difficult part of using the editor will be creating a URL that contains your Metafields.  Unlike the standard fields like price, name, SEO title, tags, product type, etc that you can add in the bulk editor the Metafields will not be visible as options. Instead you need to type these in as additional parameters at the end of the URL.

This post is great starting point for learning how to do this.  I would recommend adding all of the standard fields you want included in your view and then build on the additional Metafields parameter.  For example I usually look at the product name, product type, and tags in addition to viewing the Metafields I have for product type and field title.

Use the Metafields API

The Metafields API can do accomplish all of this if you have the technical ability or resources to use it.

The post Shopify Metafields for Google Shopping appeared first on Konnected Interactive.

Requirements to participate in the program

If you have a Merchant Center account with a live data feed you should already be eligible.  All you need to do is make sure that you have enabled the “Surfaces across Google” program.

If you don’t have a product feed Google has updated their help file and has promised to streamline the process in the coming months. The process will be the same as if you were going to be running paid Shopping ads in the past.

1. Create a merchant center account.
2. Provide a product feed or product data manually.
3. Make sure your opted into Surfaces Across Google.

How will I track performance?

Google has enabled the performance tab in Merchant Center with a simple dashboard. Currently this is very simplified and you are not going to see much data. You will only see the number of clicks over a selected date range. Over time I am guessing that Google will build out this performance section so you can more detailed data about what products are receiving clicks.

Inside merchant center you can also now add filters for unpaid clicks in the All Products section to view what products are receiving free clicks.

If you are using UTM tracking or another tracking solution in your product feed you should also be able to filter those landing pages in Analytics by source, for example google / organic.

How will this affect my existing shopping ads?

The change is still very new so it is hard to say what it will mean to advertisers already using paid listings. To understand where you currently receive your clicks and conversions for your shopping campaigns you can use the Top vs. Other segment to view performance.  Google search: Top is when your ads are displayed above the search results in search or shopping and Google search: Other is when your ad would have been displayed in the shopping tab.

If you have large percentafe of your clicks and conversions are coming from the other segment you should closely be watching your data over the next few months to see if you see a drop in performance.

In the long run your organic listings in the shopping tab may be more than enough to counter any losses but keep in mind that there will be more competition in the free listings moving forward.

The post Google Shopping Now Free appeared first on Konnected Interactive.

1. Inside Merchant Center select All products under the Products menu on the left side.
2. At the top of the product grid select the blue circle with a + sign in it.
3. Now you can add all of your product details.

In each section you can toggle to Advanced to fill out additional product details. Using the Advanced toggles you will be able to enter just about every attribute you would want to include with your product.

This is a nice addition to Merchant Center if you have a small number of products and could be used in conjunction with the Google Sheets feed option. If your product attributes like price, inventory etc are changing a lot this is not going to be a long term option but for small static catalogs this gives you another free option to add your products to Merchant Center and make those products eligible for Google Shopping Campaigns.

The post (New) Manually Add Products To Merchant Center appeared first on Konnected Interactive.

Smart shopping campaigns give you little insights on where the ads are running. If you segment by Network (with search partners) you will only see cross-network. This is because smart shopping campaigns are not just shopping campaigns, instead Google is using a mix of traditional shopping placements and remarketing. 

When you look at your smart shopping campaign it might be difficult to understand how the campaign performance compares to your existing shopping campaigns and display remarketing campaigns.

• What percentage of my budget is going to traditional shopping placements?
• What percentage of budget is going to remarketing?
• What is the mix of webpage placements vs mobile app placements?
• What is the ROAS for the traditional shopping placements and remarketing?
• Should I be adding account wide display exclusions for specific placements?

Get The Data

If you go to the prebuilt reports you can see some data on your smart shopping campaigns. You can view where ads are being placed in the display network and some other interesting metrics.

1. Go to Reports
2. Predefined reports Display/Video
3. Automatic Placements (group).

When you open this report, you will see all campaigns, including any display and remarketing campaigns you are running.  You can filter this report by campaign name or add in campaign type into the report and filter on that.

If you have a campaign naming structure in place that allows you to filter by shopping or more specifically smart shopping campaigns simply go to the campaign column and select filter and add your filter e.g. “shopping” or “smart shopping”.

Another option is adding in the campaign type and filter that column by filtering by Shopping.

Using this data you can start to look at trends in what type of placements are being used and how your Smart shopping campaign performance compares to legacy shopping campaigns.

You can also start to compare the dynamic remarketing aspect of Smart shopping campaigns to your traditional dynamic remarketing campaigns.

Summary of campaign #1

• For these specific campaigns the ROAS was better than traditional campaigns.
• Most the spend, clicks, conversions were coming from traditional placements.
• The majority of the clicks are going towards traditional shopping ads.
• The majority of impressions are going towards traditional shopping ads.
• Most conversions still coming from traditional shopping ads.
• Display conversion rates and view-through conversion rate is lower than standard remarketing campaigns.
• In all campaigns Gmail placements were the majority placement in the Smart shopping campaigns.

These campaigns are limited to a subset of product in the catalog. The display numbers might be better if a larger percentage of products were included in the campaigns.

Campaign Data

Note that view-through conversions are currently not reported in shopping campaigns.

New Smart shopping campaign running few a weeks which should still be learning.

• 7.1% of clicks
• 4.1% of impressions
• .5% of conversions

Mobile app placements 42% of clicks – Almost all of which are Gmail

Smart shopping campaign that has been running for several months:

• 4.3% of clicks
• 7.4% of impressions
• .2% of conversions

Mobile app placements 68% of clicks – Almost all of which are Gmail

Smart shopping campaign that has been running for several.

This data is from a different account in a completely different vertical. 

• 5.5% of clicks
• 1.4% of impressions
• 0% of conversions
• 10% of all conversions

Mobile app placements 63% of clicks – Almost all of which are Gmail

Summary of campaign #2

These specific campaigns were tests run against campaigns targeting the same products. Those existing campaigns were both eCPC and target ROAS campaigns. The ROAS and profit for these Smart shopping campaigns were better than the control campaigns.  It is a positive that the Smart shopping campaigns were able to beat the performance of the control campaigns that were already performing pretty well.

One big difference is that the Smart shopping campaigns saw higher conversions, clicks, and impressions than the target ROAS campaign while maintaining a higher ROAS.  Now knowing that that those conversions were coming almost exclusively from traditional shopping ad placements I feel comfortable keeping this campaign running, knowing that we are not losing impressions and clicks in those traditional placements. The downside of not having search term or other data in the Smart campaign is still a negative but the performance of these campaigns make that loss worth it for these product categories.

The post Google Smart Shopping Display & Retargeting Data appeared first on Konnected Interactive.

• One campaign, One Ad Group, One Product Group
• Smart Shopping
• One Campaign, One Ad Group, Multiple Product Groups
• Multiple Campaigns, One Ad Group, Multiple Product Groups
• Multiple Campaigns, Multiple Ad Groups, Multiple Product Groups, and Priority Settings

How you structure your shopping campaigns can have a dramatic impact on the performance you see. Choosing the best structure for your campaigns comes down to:

• How much time you have to setup your campaigns.
• How much time you will have to manage the campaigns on an ongoing basis.
• How much data you have when you start.
• How much data you want from the campaigns when they are running.

Here are the most common shopping campaign structures I see in Google shopping and the pros and cons of each.

One campaign One Ad Group One Product Group

Who Is It For?

You don’t have a lot of time to manage the campaign and you can live with a lower ROAS.
In reality with Smart campaigns now an option very few should select this shopping campaign structure unless you have a very small set of products and those products are all very similar. If you have a larger product catalog and limited time to work on your campaigns I would suggest looking at Smart shopping campaigns as a start.

Pros

• One budget to manage.
• Quick and easy to manage bids.
• Simple bid modifier management. Locations, devices, and audiences.
• Simple negative keyword management.
• Easy reporting.
• Easy visibility into all your product group segments (Google Product Category, Product Type, Custom Labels, etc). You can see all of you segments in one view.

Cons

• You lose a lot of control of what products are served for search queries.
• You can have a small group of products using all of or most of you budget.
• Only one budget means you cannot allocate budget to top performing categories and products.
• Negating keywords that are at the top of the funnel will mean you lose all visibility for those search terms.
• If you have different types of products, then it will become difficult to manage negative keywords and filter certain search queries to specific products you want displayed for those search terms.
• You can’t tailor your bid modifiers to certain products and product segments.

Smart Shopping Campaigns Only

Who Is It For?

You have limited resources and or time to manage your shopping campaigns.  While putting your entire catalog into one shopping campaign will usually not be the best structure it is preferable over using the One campaign One Ad Group One Product Group campaign structure. With Smart campaigns you will benefit from machine learning, automated bids, and multiple placements (Search, Display, YouTube, etc.) without needing to put much time into management of the campaign.

 Pros

• The easiest way to run shopping ads. There is literally almost nothing you can do to manage these campaigns; you can view results and change the target ROAS if you have one set.
• Automated bidding and machine learning should provide you with ROAS you can live with.
• Easy reporting. 

Cons

• You have no visibility into what search queries are driving impressions, clicks, and conversions.
• You have no visibility into where your ads are being displayed. For example, you will not know what % of clicks are coming from display vs. search. Update, look at a recent post on breaking down how Smart shopping campaigns are using display.
• You might limit your visibility for high converting searches if you have a target ROAS set and your entire catalog is in the campaign.
• You can’t allocate budget to top performing products and searches.

One campaign One Ad Group Multiple Product Groups

Who Is It For?

You don’t have a lot of time to manage the campaign and your products are similar.  

Pros

• One budget to manage.
• Easy to manage bids.
• Simple bid modifier management. Locations, devices, and audiences.
• Simple negative keyword management.
• Easy reporting.
• Easy visibility into all your product group segments (Google Product Category, Product Type, Custom Labels, etc.).  You can see all of you segments in one view.

Cons

• Only one budget means you cannot allocate budget to top performing categories and products.
• Negating keywords that are at the top of the funnel will mean you lose all visibility.

Multiple Campaigns One Ad Group Multiple Product Groups

Who Is It For?

You have a wide selection of products and product categories and you want to be able to allocate your budget to different product segments. 

Pros

• Control of budget for different product segments.
• Control of negative keywords.
• Ability to adjust bid modifiers for different product segments.
• Drive new revenue from high performing products and search queries.

Cons

• With only one ad group you will still be somewhat limited in how you use negative keywords. You might have to negate a top of the funnel keyword because of poor performance.

Multiple Campaigns Multiple Ad Groups Multiple Product Groups and Priority Settings

Who Is It For?

You have experience with Google Ads, shopping campaigns, and you have the resources to manage your campaigns on an ongoing basis.

Pros

• By using priority level settings, you have the most control of search queries and bid levels for those searches.  You can use low bids for top the funnel more generic keywords, mid-level bids for product searches, and high bids for product searches, branded searches, and top performing searches.
• With the correct configuration and time, you should be able to maximize your ROAS.
• You have complete control of your bids, bid modifiers, budgets, and negative keywords.

Cons

• The initial configuration of this account structure will take more time.
• You need to research past product and search query performance to create your negative keyword lists for different levels of your funnel.
• There will be more campaigns and ad groups so ongoing management will take more time.
• Reporting will be more time consuming. Hint use a consistent campaign naming structure and labels to make reporting easier.
• When using campaigns that contain the same products and different priority levels if you change the structure in one campaign you will need to do the same in the corresponding campaign.

The post Google Shopping Campaign Structure Guide for 2020 appeared first on Konnected Interactive.

Google Shopping Product Category and Product Type look similar and are both used top categorize your produces but they are different in how they have work.

What’s The Difference Between Google Shopping Category and Product Type?

Google Shopping Product Category (google_product_category )is a product feed attribute that categorizes your product into the Google taxonomy.

Google Shopping Product type (product_type) is a product feed attribute that categorizes your product however choose to do so.

Up until March 2019 the google_product_category was a required attribute in product feeds and you needed to categorize your products in one the published categories which you can see a full list of here.  Product type has never been required, meaning your products would be approved and eligible for advertising but has always been an attribute that should be completed and optimized.

Why Isn’t Google Product Category Required Anymore?

One reason is that Google is pretty good at categorizing products themselves. If you don’t submit a a product category or if enter a category that doesn’t exist or is incorrect Google will automatically apply one themselves. In some testing I have done the categories Google has selected has been correct. Keep in mind that the products I tested this on had optimized titles, descriptions.

If you looks in merchant center at a specific product you can see if the product was categorized for you.

I looked through all of the products that were automatically categorized and in every case what was selected is exactly what I would have selected.

I have not seen any resources on how they do this but I would guess they are using a mixture of analyzing the other attributes like title and product type and possibly even machine learning to look at the image you submit. Google has a solution called Vision AI that does this as part of their cloud services.  I would guess they are using a combination of text and image analysis and the end result in my testing is that the outcome is correct.

The second reason is that Product Category is not the best way to organize products.  Simply put the number of product categories in their taxonomy limits how granular a search query can be matched to the best product match. Take the example of a dress.  The best product category match would be Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses  but that simple categorization misses a lot of the sub-categories like cocktail dress, maxi dresses, formal dresses, etc that the searcher might be looking for.  If you look at the filters in Google Shopping you can see that the filters offered are not related to the product category:

The filters used under style are Cocktail/Party, Casual, Workwear, and Formal/Gown.  Instead of relying on Product Category and instead more heavily using Product Type Google can provide better results by offering products that closely match the users intent.  

Should I Still Optimize Google Product Category?

Yes, while in limited testing Google assigned the correct category to products that didn’t have a Product Category associated with it, I would still highly recommend categorizing your products. This will ensure that your product is placed into the correct category. If you look at the black dress screenshot above again you will notice the there is a Category filter but Dresses is the only filter. Having the correct category is table stakes to get your products into the main topical bucket that can then be filtered on.

With the change in March 2019 nothing has changed in terms of how you should optimize your Google Product Category, you want to select the most accurate category, in our example your would want to use Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses not Apparel & Accessories > Clothing  or just Apparel & Accessories > Clothing.

The post Google Shopping Category vs. Product Type appeared first on Konnected Interactive.

Basics of Google Smart Shopping

Google Shopping Campaigns are according to Google:

“This campaign subtype combines standard Shopping and display remarketing campaigns, and uses automated bidding and ad placement to promote your products and business across networks.”

The campaigns use a mix of display and shopping across their entire network including YouTube and Gmail.

via GIPHY

Steps in Creating a Smart Shopping Campaign

• Product selection. What product types, categories or products are you going to use?
• Select image assets. 
• Write headlines and copy.
• Make sure you have an logo in Merchant Center
• Preview your beautiful ads.

What this means for you is that after you create your Smart Shopping Campaign you can go grab a cup of coffee because there isn’t a whole lot you are going to be able to do to optimize this campaign. 

The product selection is what I think is the most important. When you have Smart shopping campaign running it is automatically going to be given priority over your other campaigns, regardless of priority settings. For example, if are running a campaign for top performing products with a campaign priority of High and you turn on a Smart shopping campaign targeting those same products, your existing regular shopping campaign is going to see a serious drop in impressions and clicks.

Be careful about what products you add so you don’t disrupt a campaign(s) that is performing well.

You only get one ad per Smart shopping campaign so when you are selecting your marketing image (specs here) make sure it matches the products you have selected to use in the Smart campaign. If you are going broad, selecting an entire product category, product type or…gasp your entire catalog select a very generic image that represents your brand as whole.

You can run multiple smart shopping campaigns in the same campaign. This creates a lot more options for how you split out your catalog across multiple smart and standard shopping campaigns.

If you are being more strategic about product selection you can select an image that is geared towards the products that will be included.

The same principles apply to the text that goes along with your ad:

• Short headline
• Long headline
• Description

The more broad you go with the products in the campaign, the more broad you should at least start with in the copy. If begin to segment your shopping campaigns and have logical groups on products, your copy can be more targeted and representative of the products you have selected.

Google Smart Shopping Bidding

By default the conversion strategy is Maximize Conversion Value. Your other options are Maximize Conversion Value.

You can however set a target ROAS for the campaign. Keep in mind that you only have one Ad Group for each Smart Shopping campaign so the target ROAS you set is going to be used for all products you are targeting. This is different from using the Target ROAS bidding in a normal shopping campaign where you set the Target ROAS differently across Ad Groups.  

Google Smart Shopping Tips

After running several Smart shopping campaign test across multiple products, product types, and product categories here are some tips before you get started.

Make sure your conversion tracking is working and is accurate. If your conversion tracking is not reporting all conversions or the correct conversion value you are having the campaign optimize to the wrong metrics. For example if you are double counting conversions, something I see a lot in Shopify, you are giving the campaign a false sense of success.  The campaign will begin to bid more aggressively because it things the ROAS is 600% when it is really closer to 300%

Start the campaign start without a Target ROAS, let it collect data and then apply a target ROAS that makes sense. If you set it too high you are going to lose impression and click share. Set it too low and you will not be able to hit your ROAS target. These campaigns need signals and the more data you can provide at the beginning the faster you are going to get to a profitable campaign. I’ve had similar success with setting a very low ROAS target.  This allows the campaign to start collecting so the machine learning can determine what is and what is not working.

Expect to invest at the beginning of a campaign. The initial days, weeks or possibly months of the campaign will be to collect data and allow the machine learning to determine the best CPC, keywords, placements, and other modifiers. The amount of time in the investment phase is dependent on how much you invest and the amount of data you can collect.

DO NOT turn on Smart shopping to replace all existing shopping campaigns. I have seen several accounts do this and in every case, they have seen significant drops in revenue and ROAS from their shopping programs. Take a targeted approach to test Smart shopping campaigns. Find what products work best.

While you can’t add negative keywords or change bids you can see what products are taking up the majority of the budget, receiving the most clicks, and what their click-through rates are. If notice one product is taking up most of your budget and producing poor ROAS you can exclude it from the campaign, while letting the other products continue to run. This is a dramatic step but is a quick way to see if by removing the one poor performing product can increase the overall performance of the campaign.

The post Google Smart Shopping Campaigns: What You Need to Know appeared first on Konnected Interactive.

Today researching and analyzing the top competition for your local keyword got a lot easier.  In a joint effort from Darren Shaw of Whitespark and Garrett French and Ben Wills from Ontolo the Local Citation Finder is now available.

Why are citations important?

In the Local Search Ranking Factors report published by David Mihm, volume of citations is #4 on the list of ranking factors.  After the process of claiming your profile, completing it, and having in the correct categories is volume of citations. Citations basically back up and validate your listing.  In algorithm’s eyes the more sources that support that that your local profile is your business and that the information is correct the more likely they are to rank your business higher.

How does the tool work?

There is a great break down on the methodology of the local citation finder tool on the Ontolo blog phone number co-citation analysis local link builders and I highly recommend reading it so that you have a full understanding of what the tool is automating for you.  Basically what is happening is the by analyzing the top listing of your local keyword you can look for the citations that Google is recognizing and is using in ranking those businesses.  The unique piece of the listing used is the phone number, this is because you need a unique identifier for each of the top listings.

The Local Citation Finder works by simply entering the keyword you want to analyze the citations for and choosing the search engine you want to use (Google.com ; Google.ca; Google.co.uk).  As the tool points outs you also want to do regular search first to make sure that the keyword returns local results.

After you input your keyword you will receive an email in a few minutes that gives you the top listings for the keyword and a list of citations.   In addition to the top listings the report gives you all of the unique domain’s that are being used as citations and a complete list of all the URL’s that were found.

How did I use it?

The Local Citation Finder gave me a list of over 230 unique domains that were potentially great citation sources but you still need to use the data.  I took each of the citation sources in the unique domain sections and did some basic research on the domain.  If the site only offered a basic listing with the company information including phone number and no link I usually submitted to the site.  If the site did offer a more featured profile where I could also include a link to the site I did some research into the authority and rank of the domain.  I did not want to get a citation in exchange for listing the company in a low quality directory which could have an affect on regular organic rankings.  Most would agree that getting citations from domains that are in your specific vertical or for your specific area will have a greater impact on your local rankings.  I could definitely see a better process for filtering the citation sources that are returned (future post) but I thought doing some manual work would help understand the entire process.

There really is no common method for how to submit to these sites, a lot offer a submit listing feature but others don’t, so I sent an email through what they gave as a contact email and crossed my fingers.

If you are search strategy involves local I would highly recommend using the Local Citation Finder, it will give you hours worth results in minutes and give you some insight into how your competitors got to the top.

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