In the era of machine learning, Google Smart Shopping takes eCommerce to the next level by its power of 100% automation. Unlike standard shopping campaigns, Google Smart Shopping saves advertisers from the tedious work of removing negative keywords with its priority settings. Powered with artificial intelligence, Google Smart Shopping auto-optimises shopping campaigns to drive the best results over time. The automated optimisations include bid adjustment per end-user, ad exposure to thousands of websites and most significantly, the right ads shown at the right time in the right channel. 

Ultimately, Google Smart Shopping can optimise marketers’ budget for the best return on investment when campaigns are set up efficiently, and below are three tips to do this.

Optimise the elements of your product feeds

Marketers should optimise product titles by inserting the converted or most relevant keywords to get the products easier to find. Product descriptions can be also optimised to synergise the brand story and details with keywords. With this, Google Smart Shopping can become familiar with your products and automate faster to get the best return on your ad spend. Additionally, ensure your product images are high quality and represent your products well, since images are the critical backbone of your Google Smart Shopping ads.

Provide a reasonable budget to reach adequate visibility

A general minimum daily budget threshold is $20 per day to allow Google Smart Shopping to gather consumer behaviour data. Of course, this depends on your target markets. But given a higher daily budget, Smart Shopping’s algorithms can learn faster to stop presenting ads to users who are not likely to buy and on channels which will not create conversions. Smart Shopping campaigns should also be run for at least a month before making a judgment of the results. This is because machine learning makes changes every day to improve its performance, and it requires time to fine-tune its algorithms. Additionally, marketers should opt into smart bidding to manage budgets, and Google recommends advertisers have at least 50 conversions before using Target ROAS.

The third and final tip regards product page optimisation

At the end of the day, the product pages of your e-commerce sites and your shopping landing pages are what your audience will interact with. Thus, it is fundamental to have mobile-friendly landing pages and smooth services to build trust in the purchase journey. This can refer to easy payment, a good refund policy, fast shipping and delivery, and good customer reviews. When there is a seamless shopping experience for your customers, there is a higher chance that they will remain loyal to your business for years to come after making their first purchase.

In general, to get the most out of Google Smart Shopping, advertisers should continuously compare their performance with competitors and make adjustments accordingly, so that customers will always reach the lowest stage within the conversion funnel. And bear in mind that patience is needed to run a Smart Shopping campaign—it is not uncommon for advertisers to get low conversions at the beginning, since the campaign needs historical conversion information to optimise itself. As it matures, results will improve automatically.

Interested in Google Smart Shopping? Feel free to reach out to the PPC Team at MediaGroup.