As we approach the second half of the year, we are getting closer to the holiday season, a crucial period for businesses aiming to enhance their sales and revenue. Google has introduced new tools and insights features to assist advertisers in facilitating their eCommerce strategy efforts.

Google Ads

Strategy 1: Performance Max New Tool (New Customer Acquisition with High Value optimization)

Performance Max has consistently been recommended and endorsed as a campaign type for advertisers from various industries. This recommendation comes from how the way people shop has changed. Nowadays, shoppers use different channels like websites, apps, and physical stores. Google found that during just two days, more than half (61%) of holiday shoppers use five or more of these channels.

For advertisers who want to sell things online through their Performance Max campaigns, there is a tool called New Customer Acquisition with High-Value Optimization. This tool lets advertisers bid more for new customers than for existing customers. The idea is to target new customers who are likely to spend more overtime, while also focusing on regular new customers. This tool helps increase sales from all types of customers and brings in more new customers for the business, all in one campaign.

Strategy 2: Test Your Campaigns Ahead

Conduct early and frequent testing to allow advertisers to learn and apply the appropriate bidding strategies to their respective campaigns. For businesses with brick-and-mortar stores, it is crucial to ensure that their bidding strategies can seamlessly transition between online and in-store environments for shoppers through A/B testing. This allows advertisers to assess the effectiveness of online-only bidding vs. Smart Bidding for both store visits and sales. Currently, this feature is available for Standard Shopping campaigns and will be expanding to Search campaigns in the future.

i. Smart Bidding For Store Visits

ii. Smart Bidding For Store Sales

However, store sales conversions feature is only eligible for certain business types. Check here for more information.

A. Search campaigns
For better store sales conversions, use a value-based bid strategy (Target ROAS or Maximize Conversion Value) and make sure that store sale conversions hold a higher relative value compared to other conversion actions. On the other hand, Target CPA or Maximize Conversions are bid strategies focused on boosting conversion volume, treating each conversion action as equally important.

B. Shopping campaigns
Advertisers who transitioned from Standard Shopping campaigns to Performance Max campaigns achieved a significant 25% rise in conversion value while maintaining a similar ROAS. If you haven’t explored Performance Max campaigns yet, this great tool is a valuable opportunity to boost your sales during the holiday season.

Strategy 3: Utilize Videos

The holiday season is a great time to share holiday gift guides and curate video content that sparks inspiration for gift lists and increases sales. Google reports that advertisers who incorporated at least one video into their Performance Max campaigns saw an average increase of 12% in total additional conversions. To effectively reach shoppers browsing on YouTube, Performance Max now incorporates images from your product feed. This approach expands the range of available inventory and formats, including YouTube Shorts. Creating your own video is simple as there are numerous customizable templates offering pre-designed layouts, themes, fonts, and animations to suit your campaign objectives and branding.

Google Merchant Centre (GMC)

In the GMC Local Shopping Feed, Google has taken several steps to ensure a consistent omnichannel experience that bridges the gap between eCommerce and in-store interactions.

1. Enabled ‘Pickup Later’ Labels: Google has activated the ‘Pickup Later’ labels for all vendors who don’t have a nearby inventory feed.
2. Expanded Search Top Slot Ad Style: The availability of the Search top slot ad style has been expanded to businesses using Performance Max for store goals. This dynamic format highlights essential business details such as operating hours and encourages customers who have shown specific local shopping interest (such as searching “near me”) to take actions like getting directions or making calls.
3. Reduced Onboarding Time and Introduced New Ad Style: The average onboarding time for local inventory ads has been significantly reduced, and a new local store unit ad style has been introduced. This ad style combines available inventory data from your local product feeds in your business profile to better enhance the visibility of your store to potential customers.

Advertisers can make use of these various insights features for different channels or platforms to effectively enhance their sales during the upcoming holiday season with ease. However, it is important to consistently test and experiment beforehand to identify the best practices that ensure your campaigns perform optimally.