Accelerating retail
Hello everyone.
Welcome at the Academy on Air, “Accelerating retail” session.
My name is Catharina de Vlieg, and I work as the EMEA Retail Lead.
I’m very excited today to talk about
how you can grow your sales with your advertisers,
during these dynamic times, as well as during the peak season.
I’m here, not alone.
I'm here together with my colleague, Justin,
who will introduce himself as well.
Thank you, Catharina for the introduction.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Justin and I am a strategic agency consultant.
So, I consult for
some of the most digitally advanced marketing agencies in the UK,
such as yourselves.
And, I also represent the agency perspective
internally in our retail taskforce.
So, I'm very excited to kind of share
a lot of the learnings that I take
partnering with agencies and clients throughout the EMEA
and helping bring those learnings to you guys,
to make sure that we're using the best solutions possible moving forward.
In case you have any questions, please feel free to ask them
in the comment button, under the video.
We will make sure to answer these live.
Today, we're going to discuss
the trends we’ve been seeing within EMEA
during these dynamic times
and how you can grow the sales of your advertisers
during the dynamic times, as well as during the peak season.
We will discuss
what kind of strategic pillars you can utilize
in order to increase the performance of your advertisers
as well as be a true business partner today.
Tomorrow, we will have another session
where we will deep dive into the main challenges
that you called out,
that you're facing with Smart Shopping campaigns.
Thanks so much for everyone who filled in the pre-survey
and gave us the main challenges that you are facing.
I would like to invite my colleague, Justin,
who is going to talk you through all the trends that he’s been seeing
during these dynamic times.
So, the reason we're here today, is to talk about Smart Shopping
and how we can really use it
to drive your goals around maximizing sales.
At a very high level,
we see across the industry or various verticals
that Smart Shopping drives 30 percent more volume in sales
versus Standard Shopping.
And around times of peak,
whether that be Black Friday or Cyber Week
or the individual peaks within your verticals,
we see additional percentage points,
up to four percentage points there as well.
So, it's a really good solution here that drives the performance
that you and your clients are looking for.
To make this a bit more relatable,
I want to share a success story
from one of our partnered agencies,
Rakuten Marketing, and their top client, “magazines.com.”
By implementing Smart Shopping
in some of the best practices that we're going to discuss today,
we were able to see 180 percent increase in revenue
over a very important peak period,
between Thanksgiving and Black Friday for this client.
But not only that, we were able to see sustainable long-term growth,
with 95 percent increase in sales over the whole fiscal year.
Now, results like this with Smart Shopping
have been very prominent in the past,
but now it's a bit more relevant than ever
as we're seeing a lot of influences from
COVID and consumer behavior and purchasing patterns.
That not just involves
where they're buying and what they're purchasing,
But also, how they're purchasing and how that research phase is defined.
We're seeing a lot of people search for things
they wouldn't normally do, or they haven't searched for before.
Some of the ones that we may think,
from personal experience,
is a lot of people getting involved in DIY, home and gardening, cooking.
And a lot of these trends don't just involve
what people are searching for, but how they've been searching for it.
So, using solutions like Smart Shopping,
allow us to kind of cover the whole consumer journey
in making sure we're showing up when needed.
Now, that doesn't mean
once this period of time and uncertainty is over,
that things will go back to the way they were before.
What we've found from various Ipsos studies
is that consumer behavior patterns are going to be everlasting
after this period of time.
And so, using a product like Smart Shopping,
that really accounts for this uncertainty and the volatility,
which we'll speak to more in this presentation,
is more crucial now than ever.
So, these changing behavioral shifts
actually provide a really great opportunity
for advertisers, our clients and brands
to really show up in this space.
What we actually see
from one of the more recent Ipsos studies is that
about between 20 and 50 percent of consumers in EMEA
have shopped with a retailer that was new to them.
So, this was someone that they had never really engaged with
prior to COVID-19.
This is showing us a few things.
As I said in the last slide,
not only are people researching more
and engage more in this research phase,
but they also have an increase in willingness
to engage and purchase from brands that are new to them.
So, the question is,
"How do we become one of those new brands,
or help our clients that we partner with
become one of those new brands that
potential customers want to engage with?"
So again, one point that I really want to make clear
is that it's not just that
individuals are open to purchasing from new brands,
but they're also really emphasizing that research phase before purchasing
because now, they have more comfortability
and interest in researching brands online
that they might not have been able to do so in store
or don't feel comfortable about doing in store at this point and time.
And what we see is that
about 80 percent of individuals during this research phase
are switching between search and video,
and these upper funnel type of products.
So, it's not all about just trying to capture that intent,
but it's about showing up during that research phase.
For my own personal examples working with agencies and clients,
we know that a lot of potential customers are looking for videos, around reviews
or how-to videos around products.
So, making sure that we're up there at the upper funnel
and that we're showing up and capturing this, is essential.
And again, as Google,
we want to make sure that we're partnering with you here.
We have one billion active users on almost all of our platforms.
And so, if we can make sure
we're using products such as Smart Shopping,
that show up across this funnel,
we can really capture that potential.
So, I guess the big question is, “Why now?”
and "Why are we talking about Smart Shopping today for you guys
to bring value to your clients?"
I think products like this,
ones that are able to
not only identify those pockets of opportunity,
but also use machine learning to make sure
we're capitalizing on those areas of performance
is really what makes you guys as an agency,
a true business partner for your clients.
It's being able to understand this type of products,
but also implementing best practices
to make sure they're driving that type of performance.
Now, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to hand over to Catharina,
who's really going to help you guys understand this
and break down what are these best practices look like
and how can we drive that strategic value
as a partner to our clients.
Thank you so much, Justin, for sharing these trends with us.
And of course, I would love to share a little bit more detail
on how Smart Shopping campaigns
is able to capture the fluctuations in demand
and can help you grow the businesses of your advertisers.
First of all, Smart Shopping campaigns
is able to acquire both new customers
as well as ensure that your advertisers
are able to acquire their high-value customers as well.
So, why is it so important to acquire these new customers,
especially during times like this?
As Justin mentioned before,
we have seen that 20 to 50 percent of consumers
now purchasing something online within EMEA,
are actually purchasing something from a brand
they have never bought from before.
So, you have a unique opportunity
to help your advertisers acquire these new consumers.
As well as with retaining the high-value consumers,
you have a unique opportunity
to increase the profitability of your advertisers.
Because we have seen that
if you increase the retention rate of your advertisers by just five percent,
you have the opportunity to increase your profitability
between 25 and 95 percent.
So, let’s discuss how Smart Shopping campaigns
can help you find the right user for your advertiser.
So, first of all, we've talked about that
Smart Shopping campaigns is able to acquire both new customers,
as well as acquire those high-value returning customers
in order to get a more loyal customer base
for your advertisers.
In terms of the new customers, we're able to acquire customers
who, one, are searching for the products of your advertisers,
as well as people who have shown interest
in the products of your advertisers,
but have not particularly searched for it yet.
So, in method, we identify that someone is a new mom
because they have been watching a lot of YouTube videos
about what to do when you're a new mom.
We've seen that
they visited a lot of new mom blogs online,
and we have the understanding that that's their interest.
And your advertiser is selling baby clothes.
So, we will show ads to that new mom
in order to make sure that
you can acquire new customer base for your advertiser.
As well as, it's very important to create
a more loyal customer base.
As I mentioned before,
increasing the retention rate of your advertiser
is going to increase the profitability of your advertiser.
So, we will also make sure to focus on
those repeat purchases of your high-value customers.
Smart Shopping campaigns show ads at scale.
It shows ads across Search, Display, Gmail,
as well as YouTube.
In this way, we're able to capture clients
wherever they are on the Google network
and make sure that they purchase something
at your advertiser’s website,
in order for you to grow the sales for your clients.
In the next session, we'll discuss four main pillars
on how you can add strategic value to your advertisers
and be a true business partner to them.
First of all, Smart Shopping campaigns,
not only is able to utilize Google signal data,
but it's also able to utilize
the first-party data of the retailer itself.
So, you can give strategic advice
on what kind of first-party data
your retailers should start collecting.
And then, you can help them to make the connection
between the data they collected and added
to the Smart Shopping campaigns
in order to drive true business impact for them.
So, think about
adding their high-value customers in a customer max list,
or think about adding all of the consumers
who purchased something over a certain value.
The second pillar that we are going to discuss
is to make sure that the campaign structure
of the Smart Shopping campaigns is aligned with
the business goal of your advertiser.
So, there are different campaign structures that we advise
depending on the business goal of the advertiser.
Think about whether they want to increase their revenue
or whether they want to increase their profitability.
In the session tomorrow,
we will go into a little bit more detail
on how you can set up the different campaign structures
and align that to the business goal of your advertiser.
But this, again, is a strong way
to really be a true business partner
to your advertiser and really add strategic value.
We already see strong results
of advertisers who use this new acquisition, too.
IT Cosmetics is an example of an advertiser
who used this new acquisition to acquire new consumers.
From the moment that they activated this,
they saw a 188 percent increase in revenue
from their Core campaign.
Additionally, they saw a 65 percent increase
in overall ROAS from their Core campaign.
And I'm going to recommend to implement this new acquisition, too,
in case you want to acquire new customers,
as well as want to have an understanding
what percentage of the sales came from new customers
versus what percentage of the sales came from returning customers.
We have discussed two strategic pillars now.
First of all, is ensuring that you give strategic advice,
on what first-party data your advertisers should start collecting
and enrich their Smarts Shopping campaign
with this first-party data.
Secondly, is to make sure that the campaign structure
is aligned to the business goal of your advertiser.
And thirdly, is to ensure that there's operational excellence.
So, for this, think about having a strong feed health,
having the right creatives added to the campaign,
having the right product images, et cetera.
You can add a lot of additional information to the feed
in order to make the systems smarter,
set up the campaign structure
in such a way that you can steer towards the data,
as well as you can give them
a lot of interesting insight afterwards.
So, think about any information, such as stock levels,
and setting up campaign structure
based on stock levels of your advertiser.
Or, think about adding margin data to the feeds
so that you're able to steer towards profitability.
Additionally, you also then have the opportunity
to provide a lot of interesting insights to your advertiser
by adding this information to the feed.
And I will discuss this in the next pillar,
which is coming right now.
And this brings me to the fourth pillar,
being a true business partner to your advertiser
by providing them with strategic insights.
As I just mentioned,
when you add a lot of interesting information
to the data feed of your advertiser,
which is margin data, stock levels, et cetera,
you're able to show them
whether the products which are high in-stock are being sold,
or you're able to show them the difference between
the high-margin category products as well as the low category products.
Additionally, you can really give them advice
on which product they should have in-stock,
because there's an increase in demand right now.
We're going to discuss two main reports today.
First of all, we're going to discuss the shopping reports.
And secondly, we're going to discuss the best-seller report.
The shopping reports, you can find at “Reports,” “Predefined reports”
and then “Shopping.”
Here, you can find a lot of
interesting insights for your advertiser.
So, for example,
here, you can see that there was an increase in demand for slippers.
And that makes a lot of sense.
We're all working from home.
We want to be comfortable.
So, most likely, we're not going to buy high-heels,
but we're going to buy some slippers.
So, it's important that
you provide that advice to your advertisers
and ensure that they have this in-stock.
Additionally, here you can filter on the custom labels
that you have created.
So, in case you have created custom labels,
on, for example, stock levels, margin level,
products which are in sale,
you're able to filter on these and show your advertiser
how these different categories are performing.
So, loads of interesting insights that you can get from these reports
and it ensures that you can be
a true business partner to your advertisers.
The best-seller report ensures that you are able to see
what the best-selling products are on shopping
per country, per category.
And, this is of course, very interesting
because in this way,
you're able to give strategic advice
on what kind of products are high-in-demand at the moment,
are selling well
and should also be added to the inventory of your advertiser.
So, these were the four main pillars
that you can utilize
to be a true business partner to your advertisers
and add strategic value to your advertisers
by utilizing Smart Shopping campaigns.
So, in conclusion,
Smart Shopping campaign is the best solution
to capture the fluctuations in demand
during these dynamic times, as well as during peak moments.
As an agency, you can add a lot of strategic value
by adding, first of all, first-party data
to the Smart Shopping campaigns
and giving advice on
what kind of data your advertisers should start collecting.
Secondly,
the way the campaign structure is set-up,
makes a lot difference in terms of the performance.
And you can set up the campaign structure
in such a way,
that it drives the business goal of your advertiser.
Thirdly, operational excellence is key.
And especially the feed health is very important.
And think about what kind of
additional information you can add here
to provide your advertiser with more insights,
as well as to set up
a better campaign structure for your advertiser.
So, as I mentioned, think about adding margin data.
Think about adding stoke level data, et cetera.
And the last pillar is ensuring that
you really leveraged the shopping report
as well as the best-seller report
to provide all the interesting insights
that your advertiser might ask for.
Thank you so much for watching this session.
I hope it was useful to you
and please feel free to watch this session tomorrow as well,
where we go into a little bit more detail
on the main challenges
that you are facing with Smart Shopping campaigns,
as well as best practices
in set-up of Smart Shopping campaigns.
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Thank you so much for attending this session
and I wish you all an amazing day.
Thank you