Ecommerce projects are always scouting for new capabilities to improve their online promotional strategies and certainly when all regular methods of profit maximization no longer seem successful. Businesses should be looking at taking advantage of less straightforward solutions to these tasks and in this article, we cover some tools which are rarely used in setting up contextual advertising campaigns, nonetheless, which demonstrate quality results. Find below the most effective examples.
1. Dynamic search campaign (DSAs incorporating feeds)
Using feeds is a relatively new technique. Only 1% of advertising accounts employ this method today. In distinction from standard campaigns, DSA campaigns let advertisers select the pages to which users will be redirected to when clicking on an ad. Thus, this will be shown to users who are interested in the particular item.
The ad content of a dynamic search campaign is automatically sourced from the feed – a list of available products and services data. Using this method, you will expand the campaign coverage to include quality targeted traffic.
To associate a feed with a DSA campaign, you should do the following:
- First, create a product feed of all categories associated with an advertising campaign, and upload this to your Google AdWords advertiser account.
- Create a DSA campaign with the selected setting ‘Use URLs from my page feed only’.
- Devise and form your ad groups and launch an advertising campaign.
Here is an example of a feed-based campaign running concurrently with DSAs:
Cost-per-click in this type of campaign is usually more expensive due to highly competitive search requests, but its conversion rates are also higher than that of a normal DSA campaign with no associated feeds. This can be explained by the fact that the requests are more relevant to ads and pages, and therefore engagement is much higher too.
Configuring feed-oriented DSA campaigns greatly improves CTR and advertising engagement. But, please keep in mind that AdWords moderators do not have fixed terms of campaign approval or review, and hence, your ads verification may take a while to go live.
2. Smart Display
Smart campaign is Google’s next step towards full contextual advertising automation. There are two possible options for configuring this type of campaign – with or without a dynamic remarketing feed.
Dynamic remarketing provides the opportunity for online stores to show ads of items a previous visitor had viewed but had not yet purchased by promoting these within the Google Display Network.
A smart campaign uses feed data to find potential clients.Though this type of campaign resembles dynamic remarketing, its algorithms work otherwise. Companies which use feeds have a higher CPC than those which do not.
Moreover, as such companies have more data for processing, they usually demonstrate higher CTRs and conversions. A competitor which doesn’t use feeds have a lower conversion cost and rate because the processed data is less accurate.
During testing, we would advise to launch both types of campaigns at the same time and then choose the strategy which performs best for your business. Google Adwords lets you compare these scores by key indicators.
Bear in mind though:
- your account must have at least 50 conversions from the Google Display Network or at least 100 – from the Search Network over the last 30 days;
- your campaign budget must be sufficient for the testing period. Google recommends having a daily budget available for at least 10 basic cost-per-conversions. In other cases, if this was lower than the recommended budget the campaign may not perform correctly, the audience would not be explored to its potential, and consequently, the campaign would not receive the expected results.
3. Adding conditions
Using logical operator IF can help better tailor your ads to an end-user. With its help, you can dynamically change ad copies for owners of mobile devices, and for users from your lists and audiences.
Due to IF function you can show particular ads according to certain conditions that were defined previously. For instance, if a user is included in your customer list, they will see an ad similar to: “30% discount for regular buyers”. If this user follows the link from a smartphone, you could also include this in your message: “15% off for orders via smartphone” and so forth.
4. The price extensions
This extension allows you to display goods and services prices beneath ad text content in the form of 8-cell blocks.
Regrettably, many ecommerce projects in countries which the currency is not supported or included in the provided list cannot take advantage of this option. But there is a way to bypass this issue if needed. You have to download the extension as an Excel file, replace USD with your national currency in the provided “Currency column”, and then upload this file back to your account.
5. Promotion extensions
This is another option available in Google Adwords that supports more than 10 languages and their supported currencies. This is a great solution for companies which organize large or thematic promotions for New Year, Valentine’s Day, Black Friday and so forth.
You can choose an appropriate event, a discount in a currency or as a percentage, a promo code or a minimum order, as well as dates for the start and end of a campaign (including hours) so that a user will know when your promotion is going to end. To do this, set start and end dates for an extension of the Additional Settings.
For example, during the Black Friday 2017 sales season we obtained excellent results using this extension: CTR reached 17%.
Google Adwords constantly expands the list of new features that are indispensable for online businesses. They are invaluable to e-stores as they help to distinguish them from the crowd of competitors and bring the target audience you need to the website. But please, do not forget to perform preliminary testing of any chosen tools. This will help you spend your marketing budgets wisely, employing only the best techniques.
About the Authors
Anastasiia Romanova
Junior Specialist in Contextual Advertising at Promodo
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