Learn what Smart Shopping on Google Ads is and how you can use it to automate your campaigns and maximise your return.
Martin Langborg Hansen
If you are using standard Shopping campaigns on Google Ads, you are very likely limiting your target audience. Google knows much more than YOU or I do when it comes to ad targeting, click prices, and your customers. That is why you should consider Smart Shopping.
In short, Google Smart Shopping is a much more intelligent shopping campaign where you hand everything over to Google’s algorithms and vast data knowledge. When Google first launched Smart Shopping a few years ago, it was fairly poor, but since then it has become one of Google’s strongest tools. Google collects statistical data about all its users across websites, providing a huge insight into user behaviour. You can leverage this through Smart Shopping, which isliterally worth its weight in gold.
Display campaigns
Additionally, Smart Shopping uses display campaigns shown across Google’s vast display network, such as on BT. If you have properly set up your product feed and dynamic remarketing tag, it will display products in the display ads that users have previously viewed on your website.
Google is smarter than you and me
By using Smart Shopping, you no longer need to focus on click price, demographics, or interests. This is because Google simply knows BETTER than YOU or I do who should see your ads and when, based on your bid strategy, budget, products, remarketing lists and more.
The reason you should use Smart Shopping is, as previously mentioned, that Google is smarter than you and me 9 times out of 10. This often results in better outcomes and therefore a better ROAS or POAS in the long run. This is also because humans typically can only focus on 10-20 parameters at a time in a Google Ads account, such as demographics, platforms, target groups, bids, etc. In contrast, Google assesses millions of parameters in a split second and never sleeps. In other words, it optimises around the clock.
There is always a catch! Google knows a lot, but it does not know everything… yet. Therefore, Google can never perform better than the knowledge it is given or already possesses. Likewise, Google is never better than the product and the price. In other words – if there are no Google searches for the product, or if all competitors are cheaper than you, Google cannot perform optimally.
If Google is provided with data, remarketing lists and sales, it becomes more knowledgeable about your target audience every day. That is why you often see the best results when your remarketing lists have been filled and tested. This typically takes around 30 days, depending on the number of visitors and sales. Your most important role in relation to smart bidding is therefore to feed Google with data and insights about your customers and their behaviour, as well as ensuring you have popular products and competitive prices.
Furthermore, there is a big catch when it comes to search terms. In traditional Shopping campaigns, you can usually see which search terms your products are being shown for. You can also create brand campaigns and segment them by generic and brand searches. However, this is not possible with Smart Shopping. This is both good and bad.
The benefit is that Google often knows better than we do, and the less we know, the fewer restrictions we impose on the account. Conversely, it is difficult to see which keywords are performing well or poorly, and subsequently expand on these in search campaigns or exclude them. In other words, Google will test things you would not normally try. This can go either way, but in most cases, it turns out well.
When it comes to optimising Smart Shopping campaigns, this is quite different from standard Shopping campaigns. Below you can see the most common optimisation opportunities.
The more you tell Google about your product – for example, in the product title or structured data in the product feed – the more Google knows about the product. This makes it easier for Google to match people’s Google searches with your product. Read more about data discipline and how to provide Google with all relevant data about your products here.
Dynamic remarketing is a very powerful tool to give Google better insight into what your visitors are interested in. Dynamic remarketing involves adding tags to your website so Google knows exactly which products a customer has viewed and the total value of the shopping cart. Google then uses this information to display ads with the products the user has viewed or added to their cart. In addition, automated audiences are created based on behaviours such as “abandoned cart”, “viewed product” and much more.
When it comes to the bidding strategy, Smart Shopping is a little different from standard Shopping campaigns. It can “only” use smart bidding.
I often recommend starting with the “Maximise conversion value” bidding strategy until it has generated enough conversions to identify your customers. This typically requires more than 30 conversions. After that, you can try switching to target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). Here, you can set it to your desired sales in relation to spend. For example, if you set a target ROAS of 1000%, Google will try to generate 10 times your investment in sales. I recommend adjusting the ROAS target every couple of weeks, as this can help kickstart the campaign. Using a target ROAS is a very important tool in Smart Shopping, as it ensures that Google tries to use your budget as efficiently as possible.
If you are not using a ROAS target, for example, if it is performing best or you have just started a Smart Shopping campaign, you can also manage performance through your budget. For example, if you use the “Maximise conversion value” bidding strategy, you can control the campaign by increasing or decreasing the budget and then analysing ROAS or POAS accordingly.
Similarly, if you use a ROAS target and you are close to the target but often hitting the budget cap, try increasing the budget, as many people limit performance by restricting the campaign with a low budget.
One way to optimise Smart Shopping campaigns is by segmenting products into product groups, such as by brand, product type, profit labels or similar. This helps you gain a better overview. You can also split products into different Smart Shopping campaigns with different ROAS targets based on different profit margins. In addition, you can exclude products you do not want to show, for example if they consistently perform poorly. Often, the best results come from grouping all products into a single campaign, as this gives Google more options and data. If you want to group all products in one campaign while assigning different ROAS targets, you should read about POAS further down.
As mentioned earlier, the more Google knows, the better. Therefore, one of your most important tasks is to provide insights into your visitors, for example, previous customers, loyal customers, newsletter subscribers, and people who perform a particular action on your website. The way to provide Google with these insights is through customer lists, audiences from the Google Ads tag or Google Analytics, and so on. Google can then use this to increase bids if one of the audiences performs well.
One of the “easiest” ways to optimise your Smart Shopping is by using CSS, which gives you a 20% discount on click prices and therefore a better ROAS. Read more about CSS here.
If you want to scale your Google Ads account and gain a deeper understanding of how your ads impact your business, it is a very good idea to include profit in your optimisation. This allows you to focus on selling the products that generate the most profit and thereby grow your bottom line.
By calculating the profit on all conversions, you can then determine POAS (the same as ROAS, but with profit instead of revenue). Read what POAS is and why ROAS is NOT the best KPI for your webshop.
Would you like to hear more about Smart Shopping, or do you need help setting up Smart Shopping? Then do not hesitate to contact us here!
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