ELIZABETH CROOK: Hi, Happy Holidays
from America's Shopping team.
I'm Elizabeth Crook.
GLORIA: And I'm Gloria.
ELIZABETH CROOK: The season has launched
and today, we're going to provide
strategies to help you stay strong to the end of December.
GLORIA: I'm going to walk you guys
through the ever-evolving Shopping behavior.
Shopping behavior and trends have been changing over
the years in terms of when consumers are researching,
buying, and going into stores.
So let's dive deeper into a couple of trends
that we are seeing.
Shoppers are browsing and buying earlier than ever before.
According to a recent Google study from 2017,
we saw that 60% of consumers are finalizing their gift ideas
by Thanksgiving, which means they're doing all
of their research beforehand.
And we've also seen that 42% of consumers
finish buying their gift by Cyber Monday.
This means that while a large bulk of shopping
is done before and during the picking shopping holiday
weekend, there's still a lot of demand
to be captured post Cyber Week.
As you can see on this trend, only 7%
of holiday commerce searches occur
between Black Friday and Cyber Monday,
which is a small percentage of total consumer demand.
So for this reason, we think it's
important to be aggressive throughout the holiday season.
But many Google Shopping advertisers
fail to capitalize on these trends.
What we have seen is that shopping queries show us
a lot more demand than what customers
are investing in earlier in October and November.
And after the Black Friday and Cyber Monday
weekends in December.
So you want to make sure that you
are staying active before the peak week
and after the peak week.
And now, Liz is going to walk you guys
through some of the tactics.
ELIZABETH CROOK: Great.
So let's move forward.
Sorry about that.
So now, we have October showing here,
but it's really important to note that we just
want to make sure that you're ready for the coming holiday.
So if there's some of these items
here that you haven't covered off on,
we want to dust a really quick refresh.
So basically, you want to shore up
on your data feeds to maximize your SKU footprint.
You want to prepare your budgets and promotions for top SKUs
to make sure that you have maximum coverage.
And then you want to also, launch
on showcase for all your relevant categories.
Remember, we no longer serve up the automatic showcase ads.
There's a lot more folks that are now investing in showcase.
And so it's really important that you're
present for those key categories.
In November, it's all about capturing the early demand,
while also winning Cyber Week.
You'll want to focus on increasing CPCs at least
21 days before key events.
Leverage automation.
Bid to absolute top impression share--
again, that is the impression share
that pushes you further up the carousel.
So for critical products and categories.
And monitor your audience performance.
In December, it's all about finishing strong and capturing
the post-holiday demand we talked
about earlier, while also taking advantage
of post-shipping cutoff behavior and demand in-store.
Monitor the conversion rates and your CPCs
until shipping cutoff.
And push hard on local inventory ads if you're an omniretailer.
And capitalize on post-Christmas item exchange
demand in key categories.
Remember, shopping is not a sprint, it's a marathon.
Now, let's start talking about shoring up data
feeds to ensure you're maximizing your SKU footprint.
Basic actions to take include making sure
that you have GTINs for all your new products
to maximize your visibility and relevance.
And keep your price and availability
data fresh via automatic item updates.
Advanced actions include setting the schedule sale prices
and advancing your feed and using merchant promotions
to stand out among competitors.
Now, don't worry about seeing these links
in this presentation-- we will be providing this deck for you
later.
And you'll be able to access all this information
at a later date.
So while it's important to make sure your feed is optimized,
it's just as important to make sure it doesn't go down for any
data quality or policy issues.
So these are steps to take to prevent those disapprovals
and suspensions during this critical holiday period.
First, stay informed by making sure relevant contacts
in Merchant Center are correct for notifications.
So make sure that all those emails are up-to-date.
Be proactive and regularly run diagnostics in Merchant Center
to avoid suspensions.
Surface those high impact SKUs using
diagnostics and opportunities in Merchant Center.
And finally fix issues with supplemental feeds and manual
reviews.
GLORIA: So as shoppers are shopping both earlier and later
than ever before, it's really important to make sure
that you're keeping your brand visible in those moments
of discovery and consideration.
From our previous study, we found that six in 10 consumers
will buy a gift from a retailer they haven't previously
purchased from this holiday season.
So we want to make sure you are launching showcase
ads on all relevant categories to make sure
that you're getting in front of those consumers who
are in the research and inspiration mode.
In the top categories of apparel, home, furniture--
we are seeing that 20% to 25% of shopping queries
are now serving showcase ads.
And we want to give you a few tips
to maximize holiday showcase performance.
Most importantly, be there.
And focus on achieving high impressions share
via [INAUDIBLE],, budget, and bids.
Ensure that you have max coverage
with catch all campaign, but break out
top categories separately.
Stand out-- position matters.
The first position sees higher engagement rate.
And bid to absolute top impression
share to increase prominence and engagements.
Use video to really stand out and tell your brand story.
And finally, drive results.
Measure showcase adds as a mid to upper funnel format
and differently from shopping ads.
We see that on a first click attribution model,
showcase ads show a 20% conversion credit uplift.
The other thing you want to consider
is measuring how showcase ads are driving new customer
acquisition.
Smart bidding-- really important.
We want to make sure you are using as much automation
and as many signals as possible to take advantage
of the ever-evolving shopping campaigns.
Our recommendation would be to increase your CPA target
and reduce ROAS at least three days before your peak holiday
days.
And change it back after the sale.
But one of the things I want to call out
is that we want to make sure that you guys are
staying on target ROAS and not reverting back to manual
bidding during key days.
Target ROAS is perfectly equipped
to handle the highest peaks of the days.
Audience-- very important.
So we want to start with early November.
And you want to make sure that you are leveraging
your marketing list to launch a similar audience
tactic to capture new users.
During Black Friday, you want to make sure
that you increase your CPCs for cart abandoners.
And by Cyber Monday, you want to continue
a strong mix of RLSA, customer match, and cart vendors.
December-- you might be throttling down bids
on similar audiences and increasing RLSA and customer
match.
And for Christmas, you want to increase your CPCs
and recent purchase audience to capture post-holiday sales.
ELIZABETH CROOK: So now that we've
talked about shoring up the feeds
and making sure products are serving,
let's talk about budgets.
So what are we looking at here?
We're looking at the demand line throughout holiday.
So I want to just, again, reiterate the fact
that we see that 93% of Q4 2017 shopping search demand
occurred before and after the holiday shopping weekend.
So again-- we can't stress this enough--
the importance of staying strong prior
to that critical week and then post that critical week.
So make sure that you're managing your budgets
effectively.
GLORIA: Again, we want to make sure
that you are using absolute top impression
share to gain prominence, both on shopping ads and showcase
ads.
We want to make sure that you're well-positioned
against your competition.
And you're getting over three times higher clicks
and engagements for shopping and showcase ads
when you are showing in first position.
ELIZABETH CROOK: Also, if you're an omnichannel retailer--
it's extremely important to properly plan for local demand
trend, as well.
So what are we looking here?
This is the demand trend for local
and you can pull this on Google Trends.
Just look for a specific query nearby and then,
you'll be able to see the trend for your category.
And then, look at how you've got your budgets rolled out.
Make sure that you are aligned to that demand
so that you can really be optimizing
at the right periods.
You can see here, we just have an example
of a retailer last year who didn't plan well,
unfortunately, for this demand.
So they missed out on some critical peaks
throughout the holiday season.
So this is just a reminder for any of your local merchants.
Also, a strong surge in local last-minute gift
demand in December.
Pay attention to this, as well.
Shopping is not done quite that quickly.
So remember that a lot of your ecomm
retailers-- they'll have shipping cutoff.
But also, remember the consumers are also
looking for quick gift ideas.
There's a lot of parties leading into December.
There's a lot of things prior to the actual peak of holiday
or the end of the holiday season that people are
preparing for and shopping for.
They want convenience.
They want to be able to get what they need quickly and easily,
whether that be online or in-store.
So it's really about being present for those shoppers.
So make sure that your budgets are strong.
And that you're able to capitalize on those people who
are doing a lot of last-minute shopping
or picking up hostess gifts along the way.
And then after Christmas, remember
that many consumers are continuing to buy,
or return items, or exchange.
So again, these are just some categories here,
that we know have a high item exchange demand.
But there's also categories that begin
to peak at the end of December-- for instance, pets.
People get new pets or they get new cell phones
for the holidays so they want to buy the accessories
for these gifts.
And so just remember to stay strong.
You know your products better than anyone so
be sure to stay strong post-holiday.
Finally, we want to make sure that we just
run through this quick checklist for you.
So first of all, data feed health--
this is the foundation of everything that you do.
So are your feeds optimized to maximize your SKU coverage?
This is really important.
Budgets-- budget allocations are critical.
Make sure that they are reflective of consumer demand.
Be discoverable.
Your descriptions and titles are really important.
Make sure that you're consumers when
they enter those queries, that your ad is
the one that's popping up.
GLORIA: And don't forget about showing
up there with showcase shopping ads, which
is a discovery format.
ELIZABETH CROOK: Exactly-- that's a good point.
And then, pay attention to your competition.
So it's really important to not only pay
attention to those competitors that you're always competing
with, but also, make sure to look at auction insights
and see if there's new competitors who have entered
the auction that might be taking impression share away from you.
Are you well-positioned against all of them?
And then automation and audience--
Gloria mentioned this earlier.
This is really critical for efficiency.
You want to really leverage-- pull
all those levers of efficiency that you can
and really make sure that you're targeting really well.
And then, finally, keep the lights
on with local inventory ads.
This is very important.
Myself-- I will shop, sometimes I will figure out the night
before what I'm going to shop for the next day.
It's really important that if I'm
looking for a specific product and I
know that I can purchase it at my store
right around the corner rather than having
to wait for shipping or pay for shipping-- that I can do that.
So make sure that your consumers know
that you carry those products.
GLORIA: Well, I think this concludes our presentation.
We hope that this quick wins were helpful to you
to succeed this holiday season with Google Shopping.
This recording will be available on our YouTube channel.
Again, my name is Gloria.
ELIZABETH CROOK: My name's Elizabeth.
GLORIA: And happy Holidays.
ELIZABETH CROOK: Happy Holidays.