It’s not always easy to make the right choice when it comes to bidding strategies on Google Ads. While Smart Bidding allows you to take advantage of the power of Google’s machine learning, there’s a first time for everything: without campaign history, machine learning can do almost nothing for you. And in order to launch an effective campaign for your business, some bidding strategies make more sense than others. And often, it’s the “Target Impression Rate” and “Maximize Clicks” strategies that advertisers are most interested in. Should you start with the former or the latter? Which strategy might work best for you?
What about bidding strategies based on impressions and clicks?
Google Ads offers many different bidding strategies. These include impression-based bidding and click-maximizing bidding.
– The “Target Impression Rate” bidding strategy offered by Google Ads allows you to automatically set the bids to show your ad in the absolute top position. This can be at the top of the page or anywhere on the Google search results page.
– The “Maximize clicks” strategy ensures that as many clicks as possible are delivered within budget. This strategy is available in standard form, in a single campaign, or as a bid portfolio strategy for multiple campaigns.
What are your goals? What exactly are you looking for?
If you’re looking to make a name for yourself, the “Target Impression Rate” bidding strategy will enable you to benefit from Google’s virtually infinite pool of qualified potential customers ready to take action.
However, if you’re primarily looking to convert, wouldn’t the real issue be the quality of the traffic? What’s more, it’s important to bear in mind that Google also wants to make as much money as possible. The consequence? First and foremost, it wants to get as many clicks as possible. So the better your ads perform, the more clicks you’ll get, and the better Google will tend to rank you.
In short, it’s all a question of organization: first and foremost, find the right ads for the right people, to get the best possible click-through rate. If you haven’t yet determined your personas, now’s a good time to do so. Only then will Google position those same ads strategically, which will only increase the impression rate.
As is often the case, the prerequisite for a good bidding campaign is sufficient preparation, thanks to accurate demographic data, but also a good knowledge of Google’s affinity audiences, your market’s audiences, and so on.
Among the tools offered by machine learning are automatic bidding or Smart Bidding. A service offered by Google, which enables you to optimize the performance of your digital campaigns. But before embarking on an automatic bidding campaign, it’s important to understand how they work. Because while they can have a major positive impact, it can also be a negative one if you don’t control potential unforeseen events. What is Smart Bidding? What are its objectives? How can you avoid the pitfalls?
Download our white paper
What is Smart Bidding?
The question inevitably arises when you start looking at Google Ads auctions. What is Smart Bidding? According to Google itself, it’s “a subset of automated bidding strategies that maximize conversions or the value of conversions”.
Simply put, these intelligent auctions use machine learning to optimize your bids. The aim? Maximize both the number and value of conversions in your campaign. And within Smart Bidding, there are a number of different types of intelligent bids to optimize CPC (cost per click) or maximize conversions, among others.
Targeted strategies to meet specific expectations
Because not everyone has the same expectations when it comes to Google Ads auctions, a variety of strategies are available. They are sufficiently varied to meet every specific need:
Improve visibility: the “Impression rate” bidding strategy automatically sets the bids for your ad to be displayed in the absolute top position.
Increase the number of visits to a site: “Maximize clicks” ensures that you get the most clicks for your budget. This bidding strategy can be applied to a single campaign or to several.
Achieving ROAS (return on ad spend): the ROAS strategy enables you to obtain as many conversions as possible based on a defined return on ad spend target. This bidding strategy can be applied to a single campaign or to several.
Get more conversions with a target CPA: the Target CPA bidding strategy automatically sets your bids on the Search (or Display) Network to generate as many conversions as possible for the target CPA you specify.
Achieve more conversions while using the entire budget: the “Maximize conversions” bidding strategy automatically sets bids so that a campaign generates as many conversions as possible, while using the entire budget.
Increase conversion value while leveraging your entire budget: the “Maximize conversion value” automatic bidding strategy automatically sets bids so that a campaign achieves the highest conversion value, while leveraging your entire budget.
What criteria are taken into account for Google Ads Smart Bidding?
Google Ads intelligent bidding strategies take a wide range of criteria into account when bidding. These include :
The device used ;
Time of day ;
Geographical area ;
The remarketing list ;
Language ;
OS (operating system), etc.
What are the main advantages of Smart Bidding for Shopping campaigns?
For those wishing to optimize their shopping campaigns, Smart Bidding has several strong points:
Benefit from Google’s ” Real-time bidding“, for optimized bidding speed.
The ability to focus on core objectives and let intelligent bidding strategies do the rest.
Being able to take advantage of historical performance data: simply enter the objective to be reached, and Smart Bidding does the rest, taking into account not only previously recorded clicks, but also conversion data.
The right questions to ask before taking on Google’s Smart campaigns
While Google Ads’ Smart Bidding can be a great asset to your campaigns, it does require you to ask yourself a few questions before getting started. One of the first questions to ask is whether smart bidding strategies are compatible with your campaign.
If you want to switch to Smart Bidding, you’ll probably need to reorganize your account. For example? It’s not a good idea to keep your semantic field hyper-segmented into several ad groups. In fact, the best strategy would be the opposite, with a varied volume of words for machine learning to work with.
Volume and variety
To take full advantage of the possibilities offered by automatic bidding strategies, several criteria must be met:
Volume: we generally recommend a minimum of 3,000 impressions per week per ad group. And don’t overlook the volume of conversions per campaign.
Variety: multiply tests as much as possible to “feed” machine learning. The more keywords per landing page, the more effective you’ll be.
Conversely, it’s best to avoid campaigns structured by device, location or theme if the landing page is the same. This means taking the time to restructure your account beforehand, and not when you launch your Smart Bidding campaign.
Before launching a campaign, there are a number of things you need to know to avoid disappointment:
Don’t neglect A/B testing, to take into account the learning curve of the algorithms and try to set a strategy that will last over time;
Track your conversions and set up conversion tracking according to your objectives;
Take the time to study your campaign history.
Smart bidding yes, but not necessarily
You should also bear in mind that some markets may not be suitable for Smart Bidding. This is particularly true of highly competitive markets. A case in point? Using a bidding strategy such as “Maximize conversions” would be totally counterproductive in markets with a high average CPC.
Therefore, the golden rule is to carefully analyze your expectations and your market before deciding whether or not to switch to automatic bidding strategies. Another important point to remember if you decide to take the plunge: take the time to learn and adapt each campaign.
To do this, it’s not uncommon to need the support of an SEA specialist who can understand your objective and develop your campaign accordingly.
Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information and/or support.
The data provided by Instagram Insights (or Instagram Statistics) helps you understand your users.
They tell you how they do things, what they prefer and who they are. You can certainly make business decisions based on intuition, but you’re much more likely to achieve your goals by validating your assumptions with hard facts.
Measurement: the sinews of war!
The data and analytics provided by Instagram Insights (or Instagram Stats) help you measure the impact of your marketing efforts to determine whether you need to act differently, for example by targeting a different audience, posting at a certain time of day or experimenting with a new content format.
Social media is no different from other aspects of your marketing strategy in that it can be measured and improved continuously. In this article, we explain how to use Instagram Insights to build a more effective Instagram strategy
Download our white paper
What is Instagram Insights?
Instagram Insights is a feature that allows users of professional accounts to see analytics related to their profile and posts. From this data, you’ll be able to identify what your audience likes and engages with most, so you can improve your Instagram strategy.
Here are the key data marketers need to know, understand and use.
How do you convert your Instagram profile into a professional profile?
To understand how to use Instagram Insights, you first need a professional profile.
If you already have a personal account, you can switch to a professional profile.
Here’s how to convert your account in just a few simple steps.
1. Create a professional Facebook profile
An Instagram business profile will give you access to additional features and tools to help you grow your audience. However, in order to create a professional Instagram profile, you need to have a Facebook page for your business. It’s through Facebook that you add payment credentials and the like.
2. Make sure your Instagram profile is public
You want to grow your audience and get your posts seen by Instagram users who don’t know your brand. For this reason, your Instagram profile will need to be made public before you convert it into an official Instagram business profile. Here are the steps to follow:
Step 1: On your profile page, press the hamburger icon in the top right-hand corner.
Second step: press the cogwheel icon to access your settings.
Step 3: Select “Privacy”.
Step 4: Activate the checkbox next to “Private account”.
3. Return to your settings page and press “Account”.
Return to your Settings page by clicking on the hamburger icon and pressing the cogwheel icon. You can also use your phone’s back button to access it.
Press Account in the Settings menu.
4. Select “Change account type” and choose “Switch to corporate account”.
By choosing Switch to Professional Account, you effectively convert your Instagram profile to a professional Instagram profile.
5. Configure your company profile
You’ll be prompted to review and edit your business details, including business category, contact information, and more. You’ll also be asked to select the Facebook page you’d like to associate with your profile (from step 1).
6. Press “Done”.
Once you’re set up as a business account, you can start using Instagram Insights. Here’s how to get started.
How can I read the statistics on Instagram posts?
1. Open the hamburger menu and click on “Insights”.
To view Insights on your entire Instagram account, start by going to your profile. Then, at the top, click on the hamburger icon and select Insights from the menu.
From here, you can access the recent highlights page, where you’ll find general information about how people are engaging with your profile, such as how many followers you’ve gained or lost in the past week.
2. Measure the reach of your posts with Instagram Insights
Click on the Reached Accounts section. Reach reflects the number of unique users who have seen one of your Instagram posts.
3. Track profile visits and followers
On the Reached Accounts page, under Account Activity, you’ll see Profile Visits. Profile visits show the number of times your Instagram profile has been viewed.
4. Determine website clicks
Website clicks can also be found in the Account activity section. This overview reflects the number of times the links you’ve included in your company profile have been clicked.
5. Track content interactions
Return to the Recent highlights section and press Content interactions. You’ll see a page showing how your content is performing in terms of engagement, with a breakdown of metrics by content type.
6. Follow your followers
Return to Recent highlights and click on Total followers. This takes you to the Follower Breakdown page.
This page reflects the number of followers you’ve gained or lost over the past week, as well as the average times of day your followers use Instagram – data that can be very beneficial when planning posts.
7. Learn what actions have been taken on your post
To view insights on a specific Instagram post, start by visiting your profile. Tap the post you’d like to focus on, then click View insights below the image.
This information indicates the number of actions users have taken on your profile after seeing your post – for example, visiting your profile, then taking an action such as clicking on your website link or following you.
8. Use “Discovery” to see where your message has appeared in the feeds.
As the name suggests, this information shows where your publication has been seen – or discovered – most often, including how many accounts weren’t already following you when they first saw the publication.
This section includes impressions metrics, which reflect the number of times your post was discovered from a particular Instagram location, such as the user’s home feed, a search, your profile, a location tag or a hashtag.
Discovery insights also include data on a message’s reach – which reflects the number of unique accounts that have seen your message.
9. View Story previews
Finally, Instagram users with a professional profile are able to view insights from their ephemeral Stories. To view insights from your Stories, return to Insights and scroll down to the Content you’ve shared section on the Recent Highlights page.
Scroll down to the Story section, and you’ll be able to see information on older Stories, as well as those that haven’t yet expired. Next, we’ll look at more specific information you can explore.
Impressions
This overview represents the number of times your Story has been viewed. When viewing this information, remember that you can add multiple images or videos to your Story. In this case, each piece of visual content in your Story is counted as a single photo or video in your post. Let’s say you add six photos to your Story. Whether someone views just one or all six, Instagram only counts your entire Story as having received an impression. The same applies to Story content that has been viewed by a single user more than once. Instagram still only counts this interaction as the entire Story having received a single impression.
Range
This overview reflects the number of unique users who have seen your Story.
Forward jump
This preview reflects the number of times a user has touched the photo or video in your Story to move on to the next multimedia item.
Back to the past
This preview reflects the number of times a user touches the photo or video in your Story to return to the previous media item.
Answers
This overview reflects the number of times users send messages via the “Send message” text box in your Story.
Transfers to next account
This indicator reflects the number of times users swipe their finger to move to the next account Story – not to be confused with “tap forward”, which reflects users moving to the next element of your Story.
Outputs
This overview reflects the number of times a user leaves the Stories section entirely to return to the home feed.
Measure your effectiveness with Instagram Insights
Now that you know how to use Instagram Insights to access user data, you can analyze that data and determine what works for your audience (and what doesn’t). From there, creating content that gets better engagement will be much easier. All the more reason to boost your digital strategy on Instagram!
1001 coques is a company specializing in phone covers created in 2014. The company offers over 70,000 references. The aim? To enable consumers to find the protection they need for their smartphones.
Assimilated and accompanied by the explosion of the smartphone market, the shell market has gradually emancipated itself to become a market in its own right. As a highly competitive market, our customer needs to be able to differentiate itself from the competition, and there are many competitors advertising on the Google network.
So the key question is, how do you get people to click on one ad instead of another?
That’s what our teams have been working on. In fact, to ensure good positioning in search engine results, companies use paid listings. With Google’s advertising platform, companies benefit from a wide range of features to highlight their ads and capture the searches of Internet users.
One of Google’s features is the dynamic ads function. This dynamic title feature enables a site to generate ads in direct relation to a user’s search query. In this way, Google will automatically display ads in relation to user queries. Dynamic titles are a real way to take advantage of the large number of visitors Google directs on a daily basis.
The methodology used to carry out the test was as follows:
Test ads with dynamic titles
Using a control segment
Allocation of 50% of the budget to current ads and 50% of the budget to new ads
After 2 months, the results validated the test. On the various campaigns, we were able to observe a 20% increase in the click-through rate. So 20% more qualified traffic to the customer.
Adenlab, expert in Google Ads campaign management for Ecommerces, is a certified agencyGoogle Partner Premier
Google Partner Premier
A fixture on the e-commerce landscape since 2013, Adenlab helps e-tailers sell better. Now certified Google Partner Premier, Adenlab is the partner of choice for advertisers!
This status, entrusted to a handful of partners in France, attests to the knowledge of our teams and our expertise in Adwords tools (Search Network, Google Shopping, Display, AdWords on Mobile, and Google Analytics).
The Google Partner Premier badge rewards companies that have the technical and strategic skills to exploit all the levers offered by Google and achieve the best performance.
Our campaigns are guided by an objective set with our customers. Once this objective has been reached and surpassed, they no longer hesitate to increase their daily budget in order to maximize their return on investment!
Get a head start on your competitors by working with real Google Ads experts! Don’t hesitate to contact us, and let’s define together the digital advertising strategy that will maximize your ROI, and increase your visibility.
Adenlab: 100% adapted to all its evolutions
At Adenlab, we’ve developed strong expertise in Brand & E-commerce catalogs, both in terms of analysis (competitive & pricing) and in terms of flow optimization and Adwords campaign management for e-tailers;
Our solutions enable us to quickly analyze our customers’ competition, increase product visibility across their entire catalog, and boost the performance and ROI of Adwords campaigns thanks to our predictive and automatic algorithms.
Our E-commerce & Shopping experts are available to answer all your questions; you can also reach me directly on 01 83 81 90 60 or by e-mail: contact@adenlab.com
Every day, 20 billion sites are visited on Google. With this reality in mind, to have a strong digital presence and gain visibility, you need to become a must-have site on this search engine. In order to obtain a privileged position in Google rankings, it’s a good idea to call on a Google Partner Premier agency.
Download our white paper
Since 2015, Adenlab has received several certifications and was quickly identified by Google and Bing as a top agency.
Thanks to its Machine Learning technologies for Ecommerce and Google Shopping campaign management, the agency has become one of the first to be certified as a “Shopping Partners”.
Thanks to its expertise and technology, Adenlab has joined Google’s exclusive Channel Partner program. Google selects agencies whose technological efforts enable more effective development of Google Ads accounts and campaigns. Since 2016, Adenlab has been a certified Google Partner Premier agency.
Here are a few key figures to help you understand the strength of this search engine:
93% of French Internet users use Google to search the web.
86% of consumers use Google to find a product or request a quote.
All the benefits of working with a Google Premier Partner Agency
A Google Partner Premier agency is one that has been certified by Google. This is a guarantee of trust and quality for all advertisers. In fact, being one of Google’s certified agencies means that the company meets a set of specific criteria. Only teams with the technical and strategic skills to exploit the levers offered by Google obtain this certification.
Work with a Google Partner Premier agency to create and develop your Google Ads campaigns
When an e-commerce site launches a Google Ads campaign, the aim is to achieve the best possible return on investment. Thanks to a Google Partner Premier certified agency, your online store can benefit from expert knowledge. They know all the ins and outs of how to take advantage of all the Google options available.
What’s more, while respecting your online store’s brand image, our teams are qualified to implement a relevant SEA strategy while taking into account the customer journey and your conversion funnels.
The digital world is evolving rapidly. For anyone outside the industry, it can be difficult to keep up with the latest developments and implement the best actions. By working with a Google Partner Premier agency, you’ll have early access to all the latest Google updates. Our experts can help you benefit from new developments before your competitors, and boost the performance of your campaigns. Adenlab ensures that the implementation of new Google campaigns meets the new Google Ads quality criteria. In addition, Adenlab is in permanent contact with the Google teams; the agency benefits from privileged support, enabling direct consultation with Google experts on all issues relevant to your sector. This support benefits the agency’s customers.
Get a return on your investment with a Google Partner Premier Certified agency
A Google Ads campaign only benefits your e-commerce business if best practices are followed. Otherwise, Google Ads are a waste of time and money. To avoid this situation, work with a Google Partner Premier certified agency. Unlike people without Google badges, Google-recognized experts have the knowledge and a clear reading of all the data and performance of the ads set up. This is a real advantage for identifying the elements to be improved and the criteria that really work to increase sales for your business.
Get a preview of Google Ads options and new features
Before launching new features, Google tests them with Google Partners agencies first. Because they have all the knowledge required, they are in the best position to understand whether the new features really work. Calling on a certified agency therefore means gaining access to these options in advance, and setting yourself apart from the competition.
Aligning with your goals
A Google Partner Premier agency takes all your objectives into account, and implements the right strategy to achieve them. For maximum performance, the Adenlab team uses high-performance in-house tools to exploit your data to the full.
Guaranteed quality for your Google Ads campaigns
Google-certified agencies work hand in hand with the search engine. To retain the Google badge, companies have to meet certain criteria. This condition is an assurance for online stores wishing to collaborate with a SEA consulting and management agency. In addition, if an e-commerce business has a problem, certified teams are able to contact Google immediately. This responsiveness is made possible by the availability of Adenlab consultants, who are on call 24/7.
Continuous follow-up with your teams and your company
When making an investment, it’s important to monitor and improve your approach and strategy in terms of target, content and presentation. A Google Partner agency analyzes the impact of Google campaigns. Professionals focus on audience attitudes to increase sales and build a high-performance digital presence. At Adenlab, we’ve developed a number of alert systems that enable our teams to respond quickly and efficiently to problems and their resolution.
Adenlab’s various certifications
Adenlab, expert in managing Google Ads campaigns for e-tailers, has become a Google Partner Premier agency. A status entrusted to few French companies, obtaining this badge proves the knowledge and expertise of our teams concerning Google Ads tools (search network, Google Shopping, Google Display, Google Ads on Mobiles, and Google Analytics).
The combination of our specializations means we can work with you to develop a complete marketing strategy to significantly increase your online sales and acquire new customers:
Search ads
Mobile ads
Display ads
Shopping ads
Google Analytics
Tag Manager Our teams have the necessary expertise in brand and e-commerce catalogs:
How did we obtain our Google certifications to become a Google Partner Premier certified agency?
To earn Google’s trust and become a certified Google Partner Premier agency, we followed several steps:
Register on the Google Partners platform
Detailed training on Google Ads to familiarize our teams with the tools used on a daily basis (videos, diagrams, illustrations and simulations)
Professionals take a test and must achieve a score of 80% to be certified. If they fail, they have to wait a week to retake the exams.
Working with a Google Partner Premier agency is a real time-saver for online stores and other sites needing to develop their visibility. Thanks to our strategic and technical approach, increase your sales and your online presence.
We’re e-commerce & shopping experts, and our agency’s strength lies in our automation tools and techniques, our creativity and our proximity to our customers.
If you have any questions or would like to ask our experts for advice, please contact the Adenlab team on +33 (0)1 83 81 90 60 or by e-mail: contact@adenlab.com.
These new features should help you during the peak periods of your business and the end-of-year season peaks.
Here’s some valuable information on how to improve your performance with Google Ads and Performance Max.
Reminder: What are Performance Max campaigns?
Performance Max campaigns enable you to use all Google Ads advertising inventories in a single campaign, displaying your ads on Shopping, Display, Youtube, Gmail and the Google search engine.
This campaign format is still new, and was rolled out in April 2022 to replace Smart Shopping and Local Ads campaigns.
Campaign performance and ROI are achieved through real-time optimization across channels and intelligent bidding.
What are the new features of Performance Max campaigns?
🤓
1. Predict the impact of Performance Max using the Performance Planner
The Performance Planner, previously only available for Search, Shopping or Display campaigns, is now supported by Performance Max campaigns.
With the Performance Planner it’s possible to forecast performance and simulate what can happen to your campaigns when budget, target, CPA and other elements are adjusted.
🤓
2. Asset group programming
It is now possible to create automated rules for asset groups. You can, for example, schedule your ads to run at specific times and on specific days.
🤓
3. Add more text resources with more titles
From now on, the number of titles for your text ads will be increased from 5 to 15. This will enable you to find more hooks for your ads and increase your click-through rate.
This feature should be operational by the end of the year.
🤓
4. Explanations
In Performance Max campaigns with the Online Sales objective, you can easily identify performance fluctuations, diagnose problems and receive recommendations for improving the future performance of your ads.
You will find several types of explanations on this report:
Auctions explained
Budget explanations
Explanations on conversions
Explanations for assets and asset groups
For more information on Explanations of changes in Performance Max campaigns, please visit the official Google page on the subject or simply your Google Ads account 😉
🤓
5. First-Party Audience Signals
You can add data segments as audience signals. This enables Google to accelerate its automation capability to find the customers most likely to convert.
In the coming weeks, these data segments will be added to the audience statistics, helping you to better understand the value of your first-party data and to see which customer lists convert best in your campaigns.
Three best practices for Performance Max holiday campaigns
🤓
Before the peak of the holiday season, adjust your Performance Max campaign budgets and ROAS or CPA targets. This will provide greater visibility when your future customers make their purchases.
🤓
Before the peak of the holiday season, adjust your Performance Max campaign budgets and ROAS or CPA targets. This will provide greater visibility when your future customers make their purchases.
🤓
If you’re running promotions or an event for which you want to improve conversion rates in a short space of time, consider using seasonal adjustments. If you’re promoting a specific product during the holiday season, create separate campaigns with their own objective and budget.
Conclusion
Since its launch almost a year ago, Performance Max campaigns have aimed to increase conversions by using all advertising channels on Google.
According to Google, in 2021, 54% of shoppers used more than five channels to make their purchases during the vacation season.
And that’s the great advantage of Performance Max campaigns.
Your offers and products can be displayed on the different channels where your customers are, and optimize your campaigns based on data and insights to boost your e-commerce results during the holiday season.
Google Shopping is one of the most effective search engines, with hundreds of millions of users searching every day. The good news is that, since the end of 2020, your products can also be displayed free of charge.
We tell you more about the performance of free product listings on Google Shopping, in particular how to benefit from better SEO on Google Shopping and boost your organic sales!
Free product listings on Google: where are your products visible?
The first piece of good news is the presence of your products free of charge in many countries and on several Google tabs:
Google Shopping Google search (web tab) Google Maps Google Images Google Lens
You’ll be able to reach your customers and prospects at different points of contact, which you can analyze in detail using your Merchant Center performance reports.
Please note that the information provided to web users on the various surfaces depends on whether your data complies with Google’s requirements.
Your product files, listed free of charge, can only be distributed on these different platforms if they meet the eligibility criteria specified by the search engine.
If your products are already displayed via Google Ads and your product feed, then you meet the requirements to be displayed in the Google Shopping Free search results.
Are certain product sheets favored over others?
Since bidding is no longer the ranking factor for free product sheets, it’s the best referenced products that will be valued.
But what are the selection criteria?
The quality and relevance of your product sheets and Google Shopping product feeds are the only way for Google to distinguish between different brands.
Certain elements are essential for the performance of your product sheets, such as :
**1 The GTIN code ** (for “Global Trade Item Number”) most often supplied by the manufacturer. Google uses it to compare your ad with those of other retailers. This allows you to stand out from the crowd through your ratings, for example, or to make yourself known if some of your competitors are out of stock. Please note: Google favors sellers with the best ratings, even from different sources (Trustpilot, Verifies Reviews, etc.).
2 Optimized titles (with the most sought-after keywords…).
3 Adapt your prices, for example by equipping yourself with a dynamic pricing tool, or by having your promotions appear directly in Google Shopping (to find out more, contact us).
But on a simpler level, the criteria for improving the performance of your free ads are :
4 Image quality to encourage clicks, but also uniqueness (one image per product color, for example).
5 Clarity and richness of information to satisfy web users’ need for information (from the most global to the most specific),
6 The relevance of titles to encourage categorization by the algorithm (their uniqueness is essential).
In short, the attractiveness and accuracy of your product sheet is essential. User ratings and reviews will also be taken into account in the ranking on the results pages.
Focus on… The title of your product page
Title optimization is a key factor in boosting the performance of free product listings on Google Shopping. Here’s a study from Search Engine Land, highlighting the importance of title optimization.
Three types of merchant campaigns are compared.
The first with a classic title,
The second with an optimized title,
Third, with optimized titles based on terms that are particularly popular with web users.
The optimization of your titles must be based on concrete information: Google Analytics statistics, Google Trends (most popular queries according to seasonality, for example), etc.
Free performance analysis of your Google Shopping product listings
Data analysis on Google Merchant Center
Once you’ve categorized and optimized your product flow, it’s time to analyze the results of your work!
The first thing you need to know is that you don’t need a Google Ads account to do this.
You can check the performance of your product listings directly on Google Merchant Center.
Click on “Performance”, then “Dashboard” in the navigation menu, and finally on the “Free product sheets” or “Free local product sheets” tab.
In particular, the Dashboard lets you segment data by category, brand or product type.
Comparison of free product listings VS paid Shopping ads
On Google Merchant Center, you’ll find data showing the engagement generated among your customers across all your products, or the performance of individual products. However, this data is relatively succinct.
In fact, the Merchant Center reports won’t show the sales generated by your product ads. To date, only Google Shopping’s paid campaigns allow you to analyze sales and ROI via Google Ads and Google Analytics.
Performance tracking with Google Analytics
If you’d like to use Google Analytics to track this data, you should know that by default, the statistics from your free Google Shopping ads go back into organic traffic.
In fact, if you’re looking for a more in-depth analysis of the performance of free product listings, it’s not really that easy.
Google offers 2 methods:
Option 1: Use URLs from [link]/mobile link [mobile_link] attributes and Google Ads automatic tagging
Option 2: Use separate URLs in Merchant Center feeds using the [ads_redirect] ad redirect and [mobile_link] mobile link attributes, and the Google search index canonical_link attribute
Find out more about these options in the recommendations About performance reports for free product sheets
If you’re not used to creating rules or changing your Google Shopping feed settings, I recommend readingInflow. The wrong settings could well distort your reading of the performance of your available products.
However, once set up, your reports will be able to distinguish several sources of traffic for your product sheets:
Being visible on Google’s search engine, and even more so with your Google Adwords campaigns, is a key issue for a large number of companies and ecommerce businesses looking to improve their visibility: whether you want to display your ads, sell products (e-commerce) or offer services (lead generation), you need to be on the first page and ideally in the top positions of Google’s search results.
Google Ads campaigns offer serious advantages for rapidly increasing qualified traffic.
But as you know, you’re not the only one positioning your ads via Google Ads campaigns. Keeping an eye on the competition is therefore essential if you don’t want to lose valuable traffic and audience for your business.
This is what we’re going to show you in the following points. Which competitive indicators should be monitored and analyzed? Which indicators ensure that you maintain your visibility with a given budget? When do your competitors take over, and what can you do to avoid this?
Download our white paper
Impression rate: make sure you’re visible
Definition: “The impression rate corresponds to the number of impressions presented by the number of impressions you could have recorded.”
When analyzing the impression rate of a Google Ads campaign (Shopping or Text), there are in fact 2 indicators to take into consideration to know if you have the upper hand over your competitors:
printing rate (IS)
the number of impressions in absolute first position.
1. How to use and analyze the “impression rate (IS)”?
If your impression rate is high, it means your ads are performing well in user searches.
Conversely, if your impression rates are low, you have the potential to reach more users. In this case, you’ll certainly need to increase your bids and your budget.
Advice :
Increase your campaign budget to increase the frequency of your ads.
Increase your bid to win the bidding for your ads
Improve ad quality so that future customers click on your ads rather than your competitor’s.
2. How to use the “rate of impressions in absolute first position” information?
Definition : “The absolute top impressions rate (ATIS) corresponds to the percentage of impressions of your Shopping ads published in the most visible position (Shopping campaigns).
There is only one “absolute top print” per auction.
Consequently, the corresponding rate is an important indicator of your overall prominence.”
The top positions are always the most sought-after and therefore the most expensive.
However, in the context of performance and return on investment, this higher cost is often highly commendable!
To recap a bit of history, the absolute position impression rate replaced the “average position” indicator at the end of 2019, which showed where your ad was positioned in the search results.
Overlap rate: who is present at the same time as you?
Definition: “The overlap rate indicates how often your ad and another advertiser’s ad have registered an impression at the same time.”
Why is this indicator important and why should it be analyzed?
Whether you’re an e-business or a service provider, it’s important to know who’s present at the same time to make the difference.
After all, your competitors also have advantages and attractive offers, and their ads may be more appealing than yours. And you’ll need to ask yourself the following questions: Are their catchphrases better than mine? Are their prices more competitive? Do they offer a more interesting promotion?
All these elements can impact your traffic and cause you to lose sales.
Analyzing the overlay rate will enable you to anticipate and identify new players entering Google Adwords that you hadn’t previously identified as competitors.
Overpricing – What’s your competitive edge?
Definition: “The outranking rate shows how often your ad was ranked higher than another advertiser’s during the auction. It can also indicate whether your ad was shown, but theirs was not.”
Maintaining a competitive edge and making sure you’re visible more often enables you to capture more qualified traffic than your competitors, and therefore more business.
A higher upgrade rate is your guarantee of maintaining your competitive edge.
But don’t forget your priorities!
Maintain a high overlay rate on the campaigns and ads that have generated the most growth and profitability for you.
The upgrade rate is not an end in itself 😉
We are of course available to discuss your Google Ads strategy and acquisition projects with you.
Over the last few years, bid management on Google Ads has come a long way.
Indeed, Machine Learning technologies and campaign objectives have changed the game, and manual bid management is no longer an option.
Assigning a bid for each of your keywords used to be the norm and also best practice: this is no longer the case.
So how can you control your bids and reduce your cost per click, which has a direct impact on the cost of your campaigns and your profitability?
Here are a few tips
Cutting expenses and saving money never hurt anyone. Especially when you spend a regular budget on Google Ads.
Your level of profitability on Google Ads is controlled above all by your Return on Advertising Investment(ROAS) and your cost of acquiring a sale or customer(CAC).
However, if you start at the beginning, you also need to control your Cost Per Click (CPC).
Here are a few tips for reducing the cost per click (CPC) of Google Search ads.
1. Be selective when choosing your keywords
Once you’ve launched your text campaigns on Google Ads, you’ll need to analyze the search terms that have brought you conversions.
Therefore, quickly identify the keywords that convert and focus on those same keywords.
Its keywords won’t necessarily be the cheapest in terms of CPC, but if you remove the terms that don’t earn you anything, you’ll save money.
You therefore need to reduce your list of keywords for your campaign.
2. Improve your quality score
The quality of your ads plays an essential role in yourAd Rank.
Your ad must meet the needs of the Internet users who are looking for you. What’s more, your ad won’t be the only one in Google’s search results, so be relevant and make your future customers want to click on your ad!
It’s all about taking the time to update your ads regularly A high-quality ad is likely to get a click at a lower cost.
I understand that it’s sometimes difficult to find the right words and phrases for your catchphrase. So tell yourself one thing:
My first sentence should make you want to read the second sentence 😉
3. AB Test your bidding strategies
As explained in the introduction, bids are no longer managed on a granular, keyword-by-keyword basis. Bids on Google Ads are now managed at campaign level, according to the objectives you’ve set for your campaign.
It’s Google’s Machine Learning algorithms that assign the bid to your keyword and ad.
A method for optimizing your costs per click and your bids can be tested.
You’ll then need to use the AB test tools of your Googel Ads campaigns to see which bidding strategy is best suited to lowering your CPCs and achieving your conversion and acquisition objectives.
With its tools, Google Ads allows you to test 2 bidding strategies for the same campaign. This can sometimes produce excellent results. Stay consistent with your objectives.
To manage your campaigns and ensure your profitability on Google Ads, don’t forget to monitor your conversions and conversion tracking.
