Day 1: 2016 Google Shopping Virtual Summit

The 2016 Google Shopping

Virtual Summit

2016 Summit Layout

Day 1

Crafting Your Google Shopping Strategy to Drive Direct ROI Growth

Day 2

Using Your Competitors’ Data to Drive Performance on Google Shopping

Day 3

Leveraging Customer Reviews to Boost Performance & Efficiency in PPC Channels

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

The CAPx Shopping PlatformProgrammat i c B idd ing & Management So f tware

fo r G oog le Shopp ing Adver t i se r s

What is The CAPx Shopping Platform?

• A Programmatic Approach to Google Shopping Management• Product Feed Optimizer – Product Title Changes• Efficient Custom Label Management• Granular Programmatic Bidding Rules

cpcstrategy.com/CAPx-Shopping-Platform/

Crafting Your Google Shopping Strategy to Drive Direct ROI Growth

Day 1 | Innovative & Lucrative Google Shopping Strategies

Jason BellSenior Retail Search Manager

✓ Experience managing accounts for Riddell, Deluxe, ABT, & Sears✓ Over 6 years of SEM experience✓ Flag football superstar

Course Overview

• Basic Product Data Quality – “The Easy Stuff”

• Improving your product titles for search intent

• Manipulating Custom Labels to Strengthen Bidding Efficiency

• Exact & Phrase Match Targeting for Google Shopping Campaigns

•Q&A

Poll For The Audience…Are you making optimizations to your product feed?

A. Yes, consistently making optimizations

B. Yes, but only periodically

C. Not as much as I would like to

D. Not making any optimizations

Basic Data Quality – “The Easy Stuff”

Google Merchant Center Diagnostics Tab

Before We Get StartedIf you already have a Google Merchant Center account and Shopping Campaign rolling, I suggest we start here.

Diagnostics TabFound within ‘Diagnostics’ on the left side navigation bar within your Google Merchant Center

• Shows most of your current warnings and disapproved product issues

Feed ReportFound within ‘Feeds’ button on the left side nav bar

• Shows issues the system picks up during import of the product feed

Designated GTINs (Global Trade Item Number)

May 16th Deadline For GTIN Inclusion on Select Products/Brands• Google is now requiring GTIN values for Brands/Manufacturers who are

known to register this for their products• Officially enforced Thursday 5/19

GTINs include the following• UPCs (North America), EAN (Europe), JAN (Japan), ISBN (Books), & ITF-14

(multipacks)

Importance?• Products are disapproved and eventually a suspension could be applied to

your account if not taken care of

Best Practice• Gather GTINs from all Manufacturers and request them moving forward (if

available)• Easier said than done but will ensure quality data in the long term• Manufacturers are (or should be) aware of this recent enforcement

and willing to assist

Basic Product Data Quality – “The Easy Stuff”


Fully Populated ColumnsTypically focus on required columns first, then move onto optional columns.• A list of required columns can be found here

Pro Tip:• Ctrl + Down in desired columns• Filter for Blanks (recommended)

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


Links (Product Page & URLs)

Do They Work?Test 5+ links. I recommend testing at least a couple of higher AOV items & best sellers with and without tracking attached.

• Tracking could include Google Analytics UTM tracking or other variations such as Omniture SIDs• Ensure your expected unit drivers & sale items are correct and working. These are your bread & butter during Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales.

Do You Have Variations Of Your Products? If So, Does The Landing Page Show The Corresponding Variation When Loaded?

How Are Your Landing Pages Set Up?1. Single parent page with a drop down to select size/color or other variable options

• Is the variation option pre-selected when URL is loaded?2. Multiple pages per variation product

• In this case, ensure the correct variations are showing up

f you have variations but are only sending a parent product in the feed, potentially building the variations out and sending them will help visibility of your business during the holiday shopping season.


Images

Check SizesGoogle recommends 800 x 800, what size do we receive?

• Is it possible to change the dimensions within the URL itself?• Do you have access to multiple image columns?

• You are eligible to send additional image URLs to Google within the feed

• Recommended to send the highest quality image as the main image

Watermarks / Promotional TextThese can be hard to spot if they are on select products out of a multi-thousand product feed. --- Spot check for these and be on the look out for Google Warnings (or history of them)

*Note: Any text within an image could be flagged by Google as “Promotional Text” be careful.


IDsAre They Unique?Typically you will want to check all Unique IDs to find any duplicates. This includes SKU, MPN, UPC, ISBN, GTIN. Ideally all values are unique even if they are variants however MPNs aren't penalized if they are duplicated.

• The item_group ID column is a great way to signal to Google that there are several variants that relate to 1 parent item_group ID

• This helps Google tell if there are variants of a product and helps to unlock the ‘Show all’ feature below:

Feed Example - Important: A Parent SKU should be present for variants of a productSKU MPN Item_Group_ID TitleA4-N6152-0001 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Black - SmallA4-N6152-0002 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Black - MediumA4-N6152-0003 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Black - LargeA4-N6152-0006 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Grey - SmallA4-N6152-0007 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Grey - MediumA4-N6152-0008 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Grey - Large


Do The SKUs Match What You Previously Sent?

This is important because relevancy is attached to the product SKU and not the MPN or UPC (unless those were being sent as the merchant SKUs previously)

• It is not recommended to change your product IDs once they are set and have gathered data.

Pro Tip:• SKUs are typically unique to each merchant• MPNs should be unique to each product, similar across all merchants (can contain variance)• UPCs will be unique to each product bottom line (shouldn’t contain any variance)

MPNs / SKUs

Are The MPNs Modified?Some retailers will add Brand or Vendor Part Number Prefixes while some add or remove dashes or other

characters.

Do MPNs Match What Other Retailers Have?Google searches should help us figure this out.

Do Our Skus Match Up Between The Feed And Google Analytics? •If not, I recommend adding a new column into the feed with those values or keeping a legend handy in case you want

to match GA data.•The benefit of the above is the allowance for historical GA data to be used at the SKU level to pull top sellers site-wide

or through specific channels.•The “utm_term=“ tracking parameter will help us collect matching IDs after they are installed but will not help us with

historical data.•Much of this can be ignored if using ‘Auto Tagging’ but I find it useful to pass the values just in case


PricesAre Prices Accurate? Are Prices > $0?These are easy checks that we should run after the exported are created.

• Check a few large AOV prices & some best sellers (if you have them on hand)• Use the filtering option to search for $0 items• The quickest way to a bounced user is to show a price higher on your landing

page than what is in your ad

Product VariationsAre We Missing / Not Sending Product Variations? Why or why not?

• During Black Friday & Cyber Monday (if your budget allows) I recommend including variations and dominating the search impression share

• Optional to only do this on top performers or unit drivers• We don’t have to send them, but it is helpful to have them available should we

need them in the future.


Shipping & Tax DataAre we accurately providing Shipping & Tax data?• Depending on how complicated your Shipping or Tax rules are will decide if it is more accurate to use the

Google Login or Feed

Easy Shipping & Tax Rules?• Using the Google login will like be your best bet to quickly set up your rules as well as adjust them on the

fly.

Complicated Rules or Special Considerations?• Depending on what this entails, it may be best to send these within your feed directly• This can be tricky and more information can be found here


https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/160162?hl=en

Improving Your Product Titles for Search Intent

Title / Description Enhancements

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:

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

Other Options:

• J.W. Hulme Mens Heritage Leather Brief Bag in Brown• J.W. Hulme Heritage Leather Brief Bag for Men - Brown• Mens Leather Brief Bag by J.W. Hulme – Brown

vs.

J.W. Hulme Leather Brief Bag

Leather Brief Bag by J.W. Hulme vs.




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

• Research into Google Analytics or Search Query Reports to see if MPN or Style Numbers are being used to search for products.Feed

:

Search Query Report:

Google Results:

Product TypeDoes the title actually say what the product is?Example: “J.W. Hulme Mens Heritage Leather Brief In Brown” works but it doesn’t have the key word “bag” or “case”


Excessive CapitalizationThis is something that can easily slip passed even the most cunning eyes.

Pro Tip: Excessive Capitalization•SB can use the =PROPER() function to change the 1st letter in each word of a cell to uppercase, leaving the rest lower

case.•Be careful with this function if you are dealing with MPNs in the titles which look much better with full capitalization.

HTLM & Other Encoding ArtifactsThis is also very common and can easily be missed. I typically find these during my search for larger issues. The encoding artifacts are common when apostrophes, commas, ampersands, etc. are used in the text but not decoded properly.

Pro Tip:• Usually a quick FIND (CTRL + F) within Excel for the following characters will help me spot theses earlier. < , Â , € , { , %

Does The Title Make Sense?Does it read well? Does it look out of the ordinary? Make sure its not just keyword soup.


Electronics & AppliancesTitle / Description Additions or Manipulations

MPNs•Targets users who know the specific model #

Specifications•Size, Features, Additions, Color, etc..

Brand Name (typically to the front)•Let your data decide if brand should be closer to the front

(recommended)

Product Type / Google Product Categories• Granularity helps create more levers within your product groups•Ability to target and bid on specific products types easily

Custom Labels•Product Types•Price Ranges•ROI Margins•Product Group IDs (variations)

Category Specific Data Enhancements

Category Specific Data Enhancements

ApparelTitle / Description Additions or Manipulations

•Brand Name (typically to the front)•Product Descriptors

•Gender, Size, Color, Material, etc..•Including ‘Style Names’•Product Types (e.g. Boots or Leather Briefcase)

Product Type / Google Product Categories• Granularity helps create more levers within your product groups

•Product Type e.g. Apparel > Womens > Boots vs Apparel

Custom Labels• Price Floor•‘Style Names’•Product Types e.g. ‘boots’ or ‘briefcases’•Colors•Size•Material

Poll For The Audience…Are you currently utilizing Custom Labels?

A. Yes, consistently

B. Yes, but only periodically

C. Not as much as I would like to

D. What are custom labels?

How to Manipulate Custom Labels


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 work great to fill up empty custom label columns. Collecting data on “color”, “material”, “style”, “size”, etc may not have any immediate benefits but it does allow you to run some interesting

reports.


Custom Labels

Custom GroupingsLabeling specific groupings of products easily allows you to adjust bids up or down

•Best Sellers•Promotional SKUs•Seasonal Items (ie: Winter Jackets / Sandals / Air Conditioners / etc.)•Price Buckets or Price Floor (ie: Under $30)•Parent Groupings (When dealing with Child Variants)•Performance Based•Margin Based

Several different options, adjust based upon your needs and what makes it easiest to manage and improve the performance of your campaigns.

Implementing Keyword Insertions


Questions to Explore• Do PLAs show up for these keywords when running a manual search?• Does at least one of your products show up when running this search?• How much does your Shopping campaigns currently spend on these keywords?• Do your product titles or descriptions include this keyword?

Leveraging Current PPC Campaigns/KeywordsGreat place to start when trying to ensure you dominate the PLAs within your top performing SERPs

• Shopping typically has a higher conversion rate, having your text ads and PLA ads visible on the same

search result can help strengthen the credibility to potential customers.

Finding Search Term ReportsYou 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

Improving & leveraging Categorization

Improving & Leveraging Categorization

Product Types / GPCsProduct Types are very ImportantThese have been confirmed by Google to be indexed for search. No longer are they only used for manipulating your campaign builds.

• These should be more accurate and granular than the GPCs which can make them useful for grouping products aside from the GPCs or Custom Labels.

ProTip:• Product Type is the retailers categorization• GPCs / Google Product Categories are the closest Google equivalent

Improving & Leveraging Categorization

Does The Retailer Have Multiple Delimited Categories?These could be separate by commas, dashes, backslashes, or carrots (ideal) for example.

ProTip:• Create granular Product Types using carrots ( > ) as delimiters. It is recommended that this

goes down to 3 – 5 levels.•Bad Product Type

Apparel > Shoes•Good Product Types

Apparel > Mens > Dress Shoes•Ideal Product Type

Apparel > Mens > Dress Shoes > Salvatore Ferragamo > 'Regal' Pebbled Leather Loafer

Product Names in Product Types?This is something we have been experimenting with and it comes especially in handy when dealing with apparel items however with Google now indexing product_types, we recommend adding product names to the ends of all your product_types.

Overall Data Quality

Important Considerations When Dealing w/ Data Quality

Important Features Or Data Points Of The Products You Sell• These should be highlighted within the titles & descriptions and readily available within the feed• Different depending on product types – e.g. Electronics vs Apparel

Audience & Typical Searches Done By Your Customers• Are MPNs or Part Numbers used often? e.g. Electronics & Appliances• Are there several sizes to distinguish? e.g. Apparel & Hardware

Your Current Data Quality• Are you receiving this data from the manufacturers?• Are you supplying this data to Google / on your site / within your feed?

What Your Data Points Tells You•Running the reports previously outlined, where are your highest conversion rates or orders coming

from?•What opportunities do you have to grow or improve ROI based upon these reports?

Exact & Phrase Match Targeting for Google Shopping Campaigns

Google Shopping ISO Strategy

ISO Strategy – [Exact] or “Phrase” match targeting

What is it?•Ability to target an exact keyword or phrase within Google Shopping w/o the

need of a daily negative keyword addition (ie: SQO Strategy)•Shifting focus away from only product level performance to search query

performance

How is it accomplished?•Through the use of both the campaign priority settings and negative keyword

sculpting

Pros?•Target high or low value queries•Better control the product mix for these queries on the SERP•Control spend/bids on the search query level and not only the product level

Cons?•Potential overexposure of specific products which can lead to lower overall CTR

for a given search query•Limiting of traffic on Shopping tab if not careful


Example Initial Uses

Impression Share Targeting / SERP Ownership

•Targeting very high impression share (90%+) on specific key terms

Improve ROI on poor performing queries

•Grouping of poor performing keywords into a single campaign where the average bid will be lower

Search Intent Sculpting

•Ability to separate search query traffic based upon user intent.•Top vs Middle vs Bottom of the funnel traffic

Brand vs Non-Brand + Desktop vs Mobile

•Splitting up traffic between branded & non-branded searches with the goal of owning more of the SERP on branded searches•Addition of splitting up Desktop & Mobile traffic as well using these settings


The Setup

In a nutshell…

•You want your more targeted traffic to actually be housed in your lower priority campaigns•Use negatives in your higher priority campaigns to funnel either the [exact]

match or “phrase” match queries into your lower priority campaigns•If multiple ISO campaigns are created, be sure to exclude their [exact] or

“phrase” queries from each other as wellPro-Tip: typically I use negatives lists for each ISO campaign I create to make it

easy to wrap my head around where these lists should be applied

Catch All – High Priority: This will act as our main campaign to catch all traffic outside of our ISO targeted traffic and any extra added negative keyword traffic

Low Bids – Medium Priority: This is used to only capture our negative keyword traffic if we decide not to create an ISO campaign around these specifically

ISO Brand – Low Priority: Our actual ISO campaign, in this example used to target queries which include our brand name


The Setup cont.

Further Explanation•Think of it instead from the most targeted campaigns to the least targeted

campaigns instead of highest priority to lowest priority – its backwards•Our most targeted campaign (Bottom of the funnel) is the lowest priority•Followed by our Middle of the funnel campaign•Lastly by our Top of the funnel campaign which receives the highest priority

Why?•It comes down to how the priority settings are used•Google’s Priority Settings information page can be found here•The key is, that the highest priority campaign will bid unless there is

something holding the higher priority campaigns from bidding. We force negatives to remove the higher priority campaigns from the ability to bid on these specific search queries.•If you were to structure the priority settings opposite of what I have laid out, you

will need to constantly monitor negative keywords in your highest priority campaigns.

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6275296?hl=en


Example BreakoutsBrand vs Non-Brand + Desktop vs Mobile

•It is easy enough to create a Brand vs Non-Brand breakout without using ISO/priority settings.•This is used for the ability to break out Brand vs Non-Branded while

simultaneously splitting out your Desktop vs Mobile traffic

•Note: I am using a negative list which includes a phrase match term for the

brand of this client. This is added to all [NB] campaigns which stands for non-

branded


Poor Performing Search Query StrategyAKA Red ISO Strategy

•Test this out on some of your poorest performing keywords. Include some of the keywords that you have previously added as negatives (unless they are totally irrelevant)•Idea is to re-introduce these search queries into a separate campaign with

lower bids than the queries had previously. I recommend keeping bid levels around half of what your current average Max CPC bids are (not avg. cpc)

To Get Started

•Create a new shopping campaign, set to lowest priority. •I typically leave all other settings similar to my other campaigns (ie: device,

location, ad scheduling, etc.)•Create an [exact] match negative list that you can share with all of your non-red

ISO campaigns.•Either build out your product groups into your normal structure (recommended)

or leave as an All Products list if you would like. Our main goal is to keep an eye on search queries & their performance.•Turn this on and monitor – take a look at the search queries that come in to

ensure the structure is correct.


Results From Red ISO Strategy TestSubjects of the test

•115 Search Queries in Total•30 Days prior – We had a 2.87 ROAS on these keywords•Spent $562.62 with only $1,614.84 in return•Results may not be typical, seasonality & sale pricing on certain items also likely

to cause even further improved performance (from a conv. rate standpoint)

Campaign Structure

•Created a new low priority campaign•Added [exact] match negative keywords into a list and applied to all of my other

campaigns•Pushed a blanket bid of $0.30 on all products. I still built these out into my

normal structure including brands & product types.•Main goal was to lower CPC on these queries and improve ROAS.


Results From Red ISO Strategy Test30 Days Before & After Results

•Cost down 66%•Avg. CPC down 73%•ROAS up 370%

•I am only concerned with my main metrics of testing during this test due to the introduction of previous negative keywords which could skew click and overall order totals•One main difference is that I also allowed ALL products to be available for this

campaigns where as in other campaigns I may have bid down or suppressed specific products. Here, I am focused on the query level and not necessarily the product level.•These numbers can still be a bit misleading but performance improvement is

clearly visible and we will be continuing to add search queries which are not profitable but still relevant to this campaign to further testing.

Upcoming CPC Strategy Events

June 15th 11am-12pm (PST)

Register: Link in Chat Box

Client Case Studies

Client Case Studies: www.cpcstrategy.com/clients/

Are you interested in test driving the CAPx Platform and/or talking about your current Google Shopping Strategy?

A. Yes, please

B. No, thank you

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

cpcstrategy.com/retail-search-audit/

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

Apply For A Free 60 min. Retail Search Audit