Hannah McKie discussed optimizing Google Shopping campaigns through data-driven testing and iteration. She emphasized that there is no single best practice, and campaigns should be structured based on business goals like return on ad spend or margins. Custom labels allow segmenting products in strategic ways. Proper feed setup and maintenance is also important, including optimizing fields like title, keywords, and Google product categories. Testing different approaches is key to continuous improvement, as the market is always changing.

1. Small company or large, everyone has to start somewhere
Hannah Mckie

2. Bio
Started at Add People as an Account Manager - Learnt how to build a feed in Excel
Moved onto Missguided as their PLA Assistant….became slightly obsessed with
Google Shopping (in a good way)
Now in between PPC Manager @ Missguided and Digital Marketing Manager @
Cotton Traders

3. Agenda
Market overview
Make friends with your Data Feed
Think, Test, Review - Repeat
Use your Data
Question why/how/where/when

4. 2010: Text Ads:
2018: Combination of Shopping Ads
and Text ads depending on commercial
intent

5. Google Shopping Ads
now appearing on
Image searches….

6. No one size fits all best practice:
Hybrid
Custom structure based around an overall
business objective (i.e ROAS, Margin,
Stock) or a combination of brand/category
builds. Requires custom labels
Use Case A
Brand Led
Structure primarily based around brands.
Usually due to reporting, budget or
promotional considerations
Use Case B
Category Led
Typically reflecting website structure i.e
Womens > Shoes > Boots
Use Case C

7. Three areas of Shopping
HygieneDisapprovals
Strategy
Keep Shopping
activity live with as
many SKUs active as
possible
Maximise results
within existing
Shopping strategy
Design and execute
most appropriate
Shopping strategy for
your business goals

8. Three areas of Shopping
Campaign
Structure
Bidding Best
Practices
Feed
Excellence
Define
Success
Measurement
Hygiene
Disapprovals
Strategy

9. Start at the…...Beginning
Have you ever seen your feed? - Don’t be scared…...Make friends with it.

10. What fields are required and which are recommended?
Do you know about the ‘silent, but deadly’ field attributes?
Custom Labels
Product Type
‘Keywords’
Google Product Category
Product Titles

11. What are Custom Labels?
title
id
price
description
brand
availability
product type
custom label 0
custom label 1
custom label 2
custom label 3
custom label 4
Required attributes for products in your
Shopping feed. You must submit these for
every product. They help Google identify your
products, match them to user searches and
they provide important information to
potential customers.
Custom labels are optional attributes for your
products. This is what allows retailers to
align Shopping strategy to specific
commercial objectives. This Dress could be
a Best Seller for MG so we would use a
Custom Label to pull this product and others
out to bid separately.
red floaty
gypsy swing
dress
£15.00

12. Other uses for custom labels:
● Profit Margin
● ROAS /CPA
● Best Sellers
● High/Low/Medium stock levels
● Promo products
● Sale/Discounted products
● Seasonal Products

13. Product Types - Silent but deadly
● Indicates the category of the product being sold.
● You can include more than one 'product type' attribute in your feed
● Use the full "breadcrumb" information. Wherever possible include more granular categories as it provides Google
with more precise classification signals.
For example, Books > Non-Fiction > Sports > Baseball is better than Baseball. You must use " > " as a separator, including
a space before and after the symbol.
Add in Keywords that don’t naturally appear in your title:
Christmas Party Dress, New Years Eve Dress, Festival Clothing

14. Google Product Type
Use the most granular option

15. UK USA
Make good use of the Google Taxonomy:

16. Keywords….In Google Shopping you ask?!
Analyse your data - What does it tell you?
EG. Missguided Colour searches : ‘Black Midi Dress’ has a higher intent to buy in
the USA than ‘Midi Dress’ so we use negative Keywords to channel the traffic to
different campaigns with different budgets/KPIs.
If you sell washing machines….a specific model type will have a higher intent to
purchase than just the brand….

17. Title Optimisation
● Keyword rich
● Under 70 Characters (Max is 150)
● A strong title that will fit nicely in the limited space provided (currently 70 characters) might be “Patagonia Women’s
Down Jacket.” If you need to have a longer title, be wary of truncation, and front-load any key terms so that if the title
is truncated the critical item details show.
● Avoid overly descriptive Keywords : such as “High quality & Gorgeous Patagonia down jacket”. Your products will
serve best when using simple and product focused language.
● Test and test again.
.

18. Past Missguided Examples:
Amaline Cross Over Tailored Dress In Black- Dress is the most searched term in the
title so needs to be prioritised.
Kiana Palm Tree Print Neoprene Bomber Jacket- Bomber jacket is the most important part of
this title yet to Google it is seen as the least important
Sparta Textured Split Wrap Shorts In Lemon- not many people will use the term ‘lemon’
where we can we should use colours that customers will search for- Yellow of the title.
Now:

19. Our competitors should take note
Imogen?
Dress - is the very last Keyword, when in reality it is the
most important Keyword - this does also impact SEO.

20. Pick your ‘A-Team’
Put your ‘best products’ forward….
Ps - Advise not to remove these 2nd/3rd/ reserve products as they may well
progress into the first team.
Got 1000s of Skus?....
Do they all need to compete on Google?
Use your data and pick the ‘A-team’ -
remember this list shouldn’t be stagnant….
That Best Seller Maxi Dress won’t be a
Best Seller for ever - REFRESH

21. Understand why biddable attributes are important
Brand
Google Product
Category
Item ID
Product Type
Custom label 1
Segment by brand
Segment inventory by category, either
Google’s or your own
Set a bid for each individual product
Segment by the things that matter to
your business
Custom label 2
Custom label 3
Custom label 4
Custom label 5
Margin
Stock Level
Promotion
Best / Low Seller
etc

22. Testing
Try, Test, Learn, Repeat
The market is forever changing, therefore a test you ran last year
might not be the right/wrong approach for you now.

23. Google VS EU Commision
$2.7 Billion
90% off Google's Revenue comes from Ads
90+% market share since Froogle launched
Other CSEs
RedBrain, Kelko, Summit

24. Summary
One Size doesn’t fit all
Size doesn’t matter
Try, Test, Learn, REPEAT
Don’t forget Bing : )
Questions…….