[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER: If you're anything like me,
you're always on the lookout for a great deal.
In fact, about 60% of consumers say that finding a good deal
is what they enjoy most about shopping.
This is especially true during the holiday season.
The National Retail Foundation reports
that one third of shoppers said that their holiday weekend
purchases were driven specifically by promotions.
This also applies to retail locations.
Research shows that local shoppers are hunting for deals
before they go to the store.
With the holiday season rapidly approaching,
many retailers are gearing up to offer their biggest
promotions of the year.
These promotions provide your business a chance
to stand out from competition and to ultimately
drive a high volume of sales and revenue.
Having a digital strategy that drives customers
to your website, physical storefront, or both
during these promotional periods can largely
contribute to the amount of sales you're able to drive.
For this reason, many retailers ask,
how do I highlight my holiday deals and promotions
to drive purchases?
And once I'm doing so, how do I ensure
that my business is prepared for the expected spike in sales?
While we've got you covered with digital strategy
recommendations, it's important to note that planning is
crucial prior to the holidays.
Determine what products you want to promote
and for how long with your merchandising team,
identify which promotions historically
drove the highest profits or conversions,
and be sure to account for new products, doorbuster
deals, and sitewide promotions.
If you offer international delivery,
you can promote your products alongside
international holidays, such as Diwali, Hanukkah,
Christmas, and Boxing Day.
In addition to identifying which of your products to promote,
machine learning and automation will be a major key to success
this holiday season.
Google Ads features, like Smart Creatives and Smart Bidding,
not only ensure your promotional offers will
be shown to the right person, but will also
do so at the right time and with a message that resonates.
Today's holiday shoppers have heightened expectations
for both quick and relevant messages.
For this reason, it's more important than ever
to have a creative strategy that takes audience, messaging,
formats, and more into consideration.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
A great place to start is with formats,
like responsive search ads and responsive display ads.
Both formats allow you to create ads
that adapt to show more relevant messages to your customers
on the search or display networks.
For responsive search ads, simply
include five to 15 distinct headlines and two to four
distinct descriptions, and machine learning
will automatically do the mixing and matching
to create new search ads.
While it may take some time to create high quality assets up
front, responsive search ads can save you
time with A/B testing and ad optimization, which
is especially important when running
brief or flighted promotions.
In the event that you want to ensure
a message for a limited time offer is shown
to everyone seeing your ads, you can
control where individual headlines and descriptions
appear in a responsive search ad by pinning them
to specific positions.
To maximize the reach of your performance
and utilize your existing high performing assets,
make sure to have at least two expanded search
ads in the same ad group with your responsive search ad.
You can further engage last minute shoppers
and deal-seekers looking for end-of-year sales
using additional creative features.
Countdown timers dynamically update time
left for a sale in your ad copy to create urgency and drive
shoppers to your site and store to take advantage of deals.
Promotion extensions provide another space
to catch the eye of customers that
are searching for special offers relevant to your business
by allowing you to display monetary or percent discounts
to your products or services.
Lastly, you can attract customers
by using sale price annotations and merchant
promotions on your shopping ads to help your products stand out
from the competition.
Remember, it's not just about showing the right message
to shoppers with your Creative--
timing is everything.
Servicing a limited promotion to someone
for a product or an offer that they're not currently
interested in will not necessarily drive sales.
That's why Smart Bidding is pivotal to ensuring your offers
and deals are shown both to the right person
and at the right time.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Smart Bidding automatically optimizes your bids
for every auction to help improve
your return on investment.
There are four auction-time Smart Bidding strategies
you can take advantage of this holiday season,
depending on the goals you have set
and the actions you're looking to drive from your ads.
For many, this means sales and store visits.
If you're looking to drive as many sales as possible
within your campaign budget and do not
plan on tracking values in Google Ads,
Maximize Conversions bid strategy
will allow you to do so.
If you have a return on investment goal,
such as a target cost per acquisition
or a target return on ad spend, you
might want to use a Target CPA or Target ROAS bid
strategy instead.
Similar to Max Conversions, Target CPA
is intended to drive sales volume.
However, it does so while optimizing toward your cost
per acquisition goal.
Target ROAS is great for advertisers
that value conversions differently and want
to maximize revenue instead of sales volume
while optimizing toward a return on ad spend goal.
For this reason, it's a popular bid strategy
for retailers that sell various products of different values.
Target ROAS is especially important
for omnichannel retailers, because it
can optimize for both online and offline customer actions
with different values.
Lastly, a Maximize Conversion Value bid strategy
is available for shopping--
and as of recently, search--
to drive the most sales revenue within your budget
without the constraint of a Target ROAS.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We recognize that retailers often
know in advance the events that may
lead to increased sales, and even increased purchase rates,
during specific periods and want to understand how to use Smart
Bidding during those periods.
For example, an upcoming weekend sale or a scheduled TV
spot during Black Friday.
When it comes to Smart Bidding, the good news
is that in the event you're expecting increased traffic,
the more volume, the better.
However, in many cases, when you're
running some of your biggest annual promotions,
we understand that there's also an expected increase
in the rate at which customers purchase from you
after clicking on an ad.
In this case, the recommended action
will depend on whether this change in conversion rate
is a longer trend or is a short spike.
An example of a longer trend where
you might be expecting to see a gradual increase in conversion
rate is over the Christmas season.
For longer trends of three or more days,
no immediate changes to your Smart Bidding campaigns
are recommended.
Not only does the system take into account
the gradual shift in conversion rate in these instances,
but it also learns from how behavior
changed on a particular day of the week in the past.
So seasonality is explicitly accounted for.
However, if you do have a different marketing
goal for the season--
for example, if you'd like to achieve a 20% higher
return on investment based on previous holiday performance--
you'll want to make this adjustment
to the Target CPA or ROAS.
Be cognizant of how budget is being spent
over these high traffic days.
In many cases, you'll need to increase
it to ensure your campaigns aren't limited by budget, which
can prevent your bid strategies from being
able to work their magic.
For promotions like Black Friday, on the other hand,
you might typically see a spike in traffic that
lasts for less than three days.
If you're not anticipating a significant change
in your conversion rate, then no changes are necessary.
However, if you're anticipating a sudden and significant
increase in conversion rate--
for example, over 30%--
we recommend you adjust targets before the sale starts
and revert back to your original target
after one conversion cycle or when the sales end,
whichever comes first.
For example, let's say you expect your conversion rate
to change from 2% to 4% for an annual one-day sale.
For your search and display campaigns,
you can change the target metric in accordance
to this expected change, meaning you
would double your Target CPA or cut your Target ROAS in half.
You can do this via manual target adjustments
or with the help of seasonality adjustments.
Seasonality adjustments are an advanced tool
that can be used to inform Smart Bidding of expected changes
in conversion rates for future events,
like promotions or sales.
Festive promotions are your opportunity
to stand out and capture sales, so be sure
your digital storefront is open for business.
Don't miss out on relevant and converting traffic
by cutting your campaign bids and budget short.
This is your time to shine by attracting new customers
to your online and physical storefronts
and enticing them to close the deal.
With the right planning and digital strategy in place,
we're confident you'll rise to the holiday occasion.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
For more holiday readiness tips, check out
the Google Ads YouTube channel.