The document discusses the complexities and myths surrounding Google Shopping, emphasizing the importance of optimizing bids, feed quality, and location-based strategies for better campaign performance. It highlights the need for specialized technology to efficiently manage these components and the advantages of using Google Shopping over traditional marketplaces. Best practices for maximizing returns include ditching spreadsheets, leveraging mobile and location-based insights, and split campaign management.

1. Jodi Birkett
Partner
1

2. Elizabeth Clark
The Google Shopping Specialists
#shoppinggurus @dreamagility

3. Dream Agility – Google Shopping Platform
SECURITY

4. Google Myths we see every day
 Keyword mentality
 Google arbitrary recommendations
 Day of Week, let alone hour of
week still largely ignored.
 Spread sheets
 Present periods of high search
volume as an opportunity
 Google Tools almost always
exclude client targets or strategy.

5. Google Myths Debunked – Keywords are DEAD!
 Big uplifts from location;
country, region, city,
postcodes and even airports
 Good uplifts from day of
week, hour of week, search
terms.
 Traditional Marketers have
used locations for years.
 Hugely useful data for your
offline colleagues.

6. Google Myths Debunked - Location
 At best, most advertisers merely
increase London bids +10% or nice
round numbers (guesses rather
than calculations cost ££££)
 On many campaigns, far higher
uplift through location modifiers
than any other lever available i.e.
product IDs, negative search
terms or even keyword bids on
text ads.
 With bid tech for locations,
thousands of recommendations can
be generated within minutes based
on client goals.
 Bid tech or not, huge £’00,000 left
on the table without location.

7. Google Myths debunked – Why location matters:
Client has 40% Gross Margin and wants a 25% ROAS – Release the tech!
How bad would Google’s +10% uplift for London be for client goals?
Even on ‘small campaigns’ 000s of bid adjustments can be made to max £ returns

8. Google Myths Debunked - Mobile
Mobile often performs differently
from desktop campaigns. Why?
Pareto of products, locations, search
terms, day of week, differs.
How do we improve it?:
1. Mobile needs switching off in the main shopping campaigns
2. Set up a new mobile shopping campaign with separate ad groups. Can be done in
minutes with shopping platforms (not spread sheets / Adwords which takes hours!).
3. Set product ID bids low, and increase mobile bid modifiers to 300%. Prevents
desktop / tablet bids corrupting your split.
4. Advertisers need to then analyse mobile performance across the big levers -
Location, Day of Week, Product ID, Keywords, Search terms.

9. Google Myths – Mobile Before vs. After
From £-750.95 loss with £0.49 CPC to £0.28 CPC and £37.16 profit.

10. Day of Week
 Day of Week, let alone hour of week still largely ignored.
 How to make 7% increase on even a small campaign £2k gain from
£27k spend…..

11. Individual Product ID

12. Spreadsheets for Feeds don’t work – Product Titles
A spreadsheet cannot do this for
your Product Titles…..
Spreadsheets and automated feed
generators are about just turning up.
Dedicated Google and Bing Shopping
Mappers put your product titles on
steroids.
You appear for ‘00s or even 000s
more terms as even identical
products in different sizes have
different titles to target different
search terms.

13. Spreadsheets for Bidding – death by 1000 knives
• It takes far longer and more staff to run
spread sheets across all the new Adwords
levers – location, search terms, keywords, day
of week, hour of week, keywords, etc.
• You cannot portfolio bid in spread sheets!
• You cannot throw bodies at portfolio bidding.
• Google is throwing itself at retailers to offer
it’s services for free – they’re eating the
agencies lunch at the lower to mid levels.

14. Return on solution mix
Free feed
plugins
Optimised
feed
solution
Bids Spread sheet
managed
Bidding tech applied

15. Google advice to take cautiously
• Black Friday / Mega Monday overtaken
Boxing Day on Volume
• However, both Deloitte and PWC Post Xmas
Retail Reviews showed that the Black Friday
/ Mega Monday had been a disaster for
many.
• Mobile has been a nightmare for many
retailers, especially on Shopping.
• 50% increased bid recommendations on
retargeting ads.
• 10% increase on London bids.

16. New kids on the block……

17. Summary – tips for Christmas shopping success
• For optimal returns, ditch the market place
feed and get a ‘Google first’ feed for
Shopping.
• Use Mobile, Location, Day of Week, Hour of
Day, Search Terms and Product ID level bids.
• Split out Shopping Campaigns into mobile,
along product lines, or specific search terms
• Eradicate spreadsheets where possible – its
2016 in a few weeks!
• RSLA’s for shopping.
• Give Bing a punt.
• Google local inventory ads…….

18. #shoppinggurus @dreamagility

19. Google Shopping
The shifting sands in paid search and how agencies need to adapt

20. • Brief history
• Operational challenges for advertisers
• Who’s joining these 2 functions together?
• Query optimisation
• The media agency issue
Agenda

21. Brief history
December ‘02
• Launched as Froogle
• Free
April ‘07
• Rebrand to ‘Google
Product Search’
• No cost = great ROI
May ‘12
• Rebrand to ‘Google
Shopping’
• Pay to play
• Integrated into
AdWords

22. • When Google Shopping was free everyone had a great ROI.
Then things changed…
• Disconnect between development & paid media practices
 Developers seldom know about PPC
 Focus on building a feed that’s “good enough” to be accepted by
Merchant Centre
 PPC people are seldom developers
 Understand AdWords best-practices for structuring campaigns but
not feed structure
• Manually making the changes to the feed that are required to
unlock the value of Google Shopping would be a costly exercise
• Feed quality just as important to success as AdWords
implementation
 Titles & descriptions are 2 of the most important signals to
Google
 Availability
 Accuracy of pricing
 Categorisation/taxonomy
 Iterations of same product to target larger query volumes
Operational challenges for advertisers
Technology delivers structural
refinement & iteration of
product feeds at scale

23. Who’s joining these 2 functions together?
Feed Quality
AdWords
Implementation
Stock Status
Simple Colours
Taxonomy
Pricing
Unique URL for each
product configuration
Data Freshness
Dev Team Paid Media Team
Promotional Copy
Location & device bid
modifiers
Search Term Reports
& Negative
Keywords
Campaign delivery
settings
Campaign & Ad
Group structure
SKU Segmentation
Without tech filling the gap it’s
difficult to make work in isolation

24. • Title & description for each product
needs to be optimised for a specific
query
 Items are unisex
 Segmenting out iterations of a product
to target gender-specific queries
 Age specific iterations
 Size specific iterations
• 1 line item in the feed segmented
into multiple lines to target larger
number of relevant queries &
increase visibility
Query optimisation
Children’s
green
waterproof
jacket
Boy’s green
waterproof
jacket
Girl’s green
waterproof
jacket
Toddler’s
green
waterproof
jacket
6-12 month
boy’s
green
waterproof
jacket
Technology provides scale

25. Traditional agency roles
Client
Media
Creative
Web
D&B
• Media agencies handle all aspects of
media planning & buying
 Sometimes multiple media
agencies for larger advertisers
• Creative agencies handle aspects of
 Branding
 Creative strategy
 Planning & execution
• Web D&B agencies typically handle
 Back-end
 UX/UI
 Deployment of analytics
• Client can end up ‘stuck in the middle’

26. • Feed creation & management often the
remit of the web development agency
• Often very separate entity to the media
agency & little incentive to support
• Puts onus on clients to push any
changes through but often with partial
information or lack of clarity on key
issues & priorities
• Bureaucratic & costly exercise that can
have significant cost impact
The media agency issue
Take control & own the process

27. • There is a disconnect between Development & Media teams
 Very different disciplines
• Multiple stakeholders can slow down or halt progress
 Design by committee
 Budgetary constraints
• Google Shopping is still in its infancy in many ways
 High on hype, low on support
 Technology like Dream Agility is crucial
 Integrating with technology will drastically improve campaign performance
 The frequency & speed of change and structural feed refinement required cannot be easily
replicated manually
 Creation of smaller, more targeted feeds can be even more time-consuming & expensive without
tech
• Agencies need to drive the process
In summary

28. Thank you
p.oconnor@amaze.com
@paoconnor

29. Andy Speake
Ecommerce Manager
Mozimo Shoes / Peter Kaiser UK
An In House Success
Story
Twice the sales for less than half the
extra cost

30. The Challenges for an Independent
Retailer…
• Competing with the ‘Big Boys’
– Not a recognised brand outright, key to success is the brands that we
sell.
– Can’t compete Organically or through generic PPC e.g. ‘Ladies Shoes’
– Text Ads difficult because of Budget constraints / Limited by
characters and relevant information you can get across.
- Resource & Time Management more difficult for smaller Independents.
- The same issues are relevant to Google Shopping also.

31. Where we were…What we’ve done.
• Initial Focus
– Building the overall brand and identity – Organic, PCC & SEO.
– Increasing awareness of our brand – Through the Brands we sell.
– Growing Peter Kaiser Site and awareness.
– Not essentially about increasing SKUs, but increasing depth and
selling more of what we had.
• Getting to grips with AdWords account
– Completely overhauled account.
– Became smarter surrounding management.
– Google Shopping & PLAs weren’t utilised.

32. Google Shopping vs Amazon…
• Both have benefits
− Credibility and trust of Amazon.
− If small organically, little investment can drive rankings on
Google Shopping.
− Large customer base on Amazon.
• Future focus is on Google Shopping
– More control on branding, creating own adds etc. Google
Shopping.
– Can’t capture details for marketing, or associated branding with
Amazon.
– Associated branding and quality results through keywords on
Google.

33. The Business in Numbers…
• Where is the business at YTD
- Overall +40% vs LY
- Mozimo +20% vs LY
- Peter Kaiser +65% vs LY
- Amazon Sales 30% of Overall Sales LY vs 25% TY
• Google Spend
- Average Spend per month
Before £1K  £4K Revenue
After £1.5  £7K Revenue
Now £2.5K  £15K Revenue

34. How have PLAs helped us?
• Helps with the fundamental issues of an independent
business.
- Competing with the ‘big boys’
- Almost a level playing field.
• Far more efficient on spend and conversion.
- Since focussing on PLAs, looking at a 3mth LFL sales period.
- Total Revenue +101%
- AdWords Cost +48%
- Converted Clicks/Orders +140%
- Cost / Conversion -38%
- Conversion Rate +126%

35. Improving Google Shopping Performance…
• To trade and work efficiently on Google Shopping
issues needed fixing
- Capitalisation in titles – 4% of Feed

36. Improving Google Shopping Performance…
Other issues highlighted – HTML code in Descriptions

37. Improving Google Shopping Performance…
Other elements we’ve looked at and addressed through
the DA system
- Optimising bids – day of the week/time of day etc.
- Ease of creating new Shopping Campaigns.

38. PLA impact & the future ahead..
• Stats don’t lie!
- Impact has been tremendous for our business.
- Creating new budget.
- Expanding and growing the team to cope with demand.
- On RSLAs for Shopping for months now (beta trialists).
• The Future is bright…
- Looking to expand and almost double the budget.
- Success means eager to roll out a similar program on
Peterkaiser.co.uk
- Introducing Product reviews/Local inventory ads/Trusted store

39. (PPC+Retail)xManchester=
Win
by Richard Gregory

40. Whothehellisthisguy?
Co-Founder of SAScon
Former MD of Latitude
Manchester Digital Council
Member
18 years in Digital
https://about.me/richardgregory

41. Doyouwanttoplay
game?

42. Whichofthefollowingcountrieshasthehighestdigital
searchspendpercapita?
a)USA
b)UK
c)SINGAPORE

43. Whichofthefollowingcountrieshasthehighestdigital
searchspendpercapita?
a)USA
b)UK
c)SINGAPORE

44. HowManyDigitalandCreativecompaniesintheNorth
West?
a)around 650
b)around 1,200
c)around 8,000

45. HowManyDigitalandCreativecompaniesintheNorth
West?
a)around 650
b)around 1,200
c)around 8,000
Employing circa 45,000 and generating £2bn in economic output

46. Great events
WhyisManchestergreatatdigital?
Great Ecosystem

47. DigitalPacesetters

48. TheEvolutionof
paidsearch
...or,whybeingaPPCerkeepsgetting
harder.

49. TheDemiseofKeywords

51. Social

52. theriseofidentitybasedtargeting
Remarketing Lists for Search
Advertising (RLSA)
Customer Match - a better name!
Gmail Sponsored Promotions (GSP)

53. Gettingpredictive

54. Export-Globaldominationin3steps
1. Advertise in
English speaking
countries first
2. Google Translate
as low cost option
3. Develop specific
site for most
valuable
country/region
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/research-study/global-retail-empire-report/

55. ….andwhenwe’ve
fixedallthat...

56. Context

57. That’senoughfornow.
Anyquestions?