Google Shopping Is A Gem For Acquiring New Buyers
And not just because it is currently free
When people think of Google ads, they are typically thinking of the Adwords program, which shows text-based adverts at the top, side and bottom of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
However, all the way back in 2002, Google launched it’s Shopping program, which allowed Business-to-consumer (B2C) organisations to display ad campaigns for its products complete with reviews, details, and the ability to purchase from a vendor.
The platform is more popular than ever, with Hubspot recently publishing the ultimate 2020 guide to Google Shopping.
Whilst it might seem like Google Shopping is an online marketplace, competing with eBay, Amazon, Etsy and others, it is actually an advertising platform, and therefore a more powerful marketing tool.
So if you are able to produce a product feed and are willing to spend a few hours in optimising your product mix for the merchant center now would be a great time to include this channel into your distribution mix.
What is Google Shopping?
Formerly Google Product Search and Froogle, in 2020 it is one of the search giant’s major products and has been updated multiple times with additional capabilities for retailers including the ability to showcase multiple products in a single ad, including shipping details, and local products.
They continue to enhance and improve the product and a 2019 study from Search Engine Land concludes that Google Shopping ads enjoy a higher conversion rate, increased value of basket and an increase in new customers.
Why is it relevant today ?
Well for starters, as a response to the crisis (and the overall drop in ad spending I will safely assume) they made it free !
So no better moment to at least dip your toes than the present.
I currently use it (with a very limited budget) to acquire mainly new buyers or aid in keeping top of mind with the existing customer base. 25% of the purchases happens from ‘cold prospects’, the rest is mainly incremental revenue creation from segments we deem ‘churned’ in our CRM view.
Another benefit of using google shopping is the insights into your local market. Below a screenshot of Google telling me which shoes are currently best selling through google shopping in one of the countries where we are active.
Benefits of Google Shopping:
Google shopping enjoys a whole host of benefits that you won’t find anywhere else, including:
- Connectivity to the Google Display Network (such as YouTube) via the Google Merchant Center
- Powerful targeting at a geodemographic level
- Powerful analytics to allow for optimisation of your ads
- Optimised for mobile
- Simple set-up
- Flexibility in ad creative and descriptions
- Integrated promotional campaigns
- Automated bidding strategies including one targeted towards providing a positive ROI
- Near-instant results once you turn it on
- An improved, streamlined shopping experience for your customer
- The ability to use more advanced strategies for veteran online merchants
Should you be using Google Shopping ?
Because Google Shopping ads allow you to display your products right above the organic search results directly related to the searcher’s product-specific inquiry, these adverts enjoy stronger clickthrough and conversion rates.
Ultimately Google Shopping is going to be sending extremely warm leads in the form of highly-targeted and engaged web browsers to your website to make a purchase. This is definitely a good investment for any online retailer.
There are other various indirect benefits of using Google Shopping too, like brand awareness and increased online visibility and competitiveness.
In short, if you’re not using it, you’re missing out.
From a personal experience we see conversion results from google shopping that are typically only achieved by member get member campaigns which require a push on the most loyal customer base and thus is only scalable once you have a viable sized customer base and a thorough understanding of your CLTV triggers.
The cost of new customer acquisition seems rather high (averaging 12 euro in month of May) , yet the cost per new buyer (average 47 euro) is currently unmatched by other paid media channels. Definitely given that we don’t see google shopping as a pure customer acquisition channel but mostly a retargeting tool. So to shed a correct view on pure ‘new customers’ view we can divide the cost by 4 (retargeting is roughly 75% of the budget usage in our setup) meaning a new member comes in at 3 euro, an a new buyer at roughly 12 euro.
Below a screenshot of a specific campaign and its month to date view.
Based on these metrics continuous optimisation on budget per category happens as well as optimising our search impression share based on our own internals (stock depth/availability)
Given the current free exposure, even utilising only small budgets could give you great results to validate if this channel should be part of your new marketing distribution mix.
