Although Shopping Ads have been part of Google’s suite of advertising products for around five years, New Zealanders have been slow to realise their potential. As a strategy, Google Shopping Ads are different from keywords and SEO, as they display a product image at the top of Google’s search page – a tool that is optimised for a clothing brand such as Barkers to attract active customers looking to purchase.
With up to twice the volume of traffic shopping online – compared with pre-pandemic – there are more opportunities to sell online than ever before. But also a lot more competition. Barkers had primarily relied on keyword campaigns, but now the focus was on Google Shopping Ads, and how our team could drive better performance from this type of campaign.
Increased return on ad spend compared with previous campaigns.
Increase in the number of online purchases.
Increase in online revenue.
By calibrating the ad campaign tools properly,
Barkers was more visible, competitive and profitable throughout the quarter.
Google offers two types of campaigns: Smart and Standard. Most digital marketing agencies default to Smart Shopping Campaigns; however, this plug-and-play solution gives algorithms almost full control over the ad delivery.
To maximise online sales, we use Google’s Standard Shopping Campaigns for the best control and insights. This option also lets us to decide on which websites the ad can reappear – the retargeting elements, a context that is crucial for a premium brand like Barkers.
Many retailers dump all their products into one shopping campaign and then start advertising. This only leads to poor conversion and wasted spend. Instead, we monitor real-time data each week to tell us which products to showcase.
This requires the set-up of filters and rules to handle the dynamic nature of retail. It’s not simply displaying the best sellers; we also need to ensure those products are in stock across the size range. Additionally, clothing demand changes with the season and the weather, so shopping ads need to constantly respond. In other words, online ads are not a set-and-forget solution.
These requirements are bespoke for each client and critical to achieving cost efficiencies. With such a large number of products within a defined advertising budget, we focused on the highest converting ads and garments for the best advertising ROI.
This budget also had to contend with increased competition in retail advertising, which means increased cost-per-click (CPC), making it critical we present the right garments to the right people at the right time.
Google offers two types of campaigns: Smart and Standard. Most digital marketing agencies default to Smart Shopping Campaigns; however, this plug-and-play solution gives algorithms almost full control over the ad delivery.
To maximise online sales, we use Google’s Standard Shopping Campaigns for the best control and insights. This option also lets us to decide on which websites the ad can reappear – the retargeting elements, a context that is crucial for a premium brand like Barkers.
"In an ever changing environment, we know we can rely on Web Antler’s guidance to keep us ahead of the game. Over the last year we've seen phenomenal growth from our paid media, while always improving our ROAS."
