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If you’re an online marketer, you’ve probably heard of Google’s good old Shopping Campaigns: promote your online and local inventory, boost traffic to your website or local store, and find better-qualified leads.

You may also know how tedious and frustrating it could get if you don’t really understand how to set up the product feeds, target your customers, categorize your items, and many other things you need in order to have a successful campaign. Or, maybe you just don’t have the time for it!

It really is hard work.

Google knows this, and they found out that instead of working hard, it’s better to work smart. This is why they have presented users with a new addition to their incredible portfolio of solutions: Smart Shopping Campaigns.

The word smart really is key here, as Smart Shopping Campaigns use machine learning (which Google has been greatly improving this year) to make automated biddings on unique situations in which a customer is most likely to buy your products. It chooses the right bid for every user through unique contextual signals for each auction. Automated ad creation and placement means that your ads will appear in the ad spaces where they’re relevant and that your bids will be set to maximize your conversion value.

How Are Smart Shopping Campaigns Different?

Smart Shopping Campaigns work in the same Networks as regular Shopping campaigns. The difference is that they simplify campaign management, maximize conversion value, and expand your reach. This campaign subtype combines standard Shopping and display remarketing campaigns, and uses automated bidding and ad placement to promote your products and business across multiple networks.

By analyzing the user’s behavior on the Search Network, Google uses search queries and historical browsing data in order to predict which product from your feed should be shown to each particular user. On the Display Network, it tailors ads based on the engagement they’ve had with your website or similar websites with similar products.

Specific ads for specific users, now how’s that for smart?

Before jumping into a Smart Shopping campaign, make sure you meet the requirements listed below:

• Set up Conversion Tracking with transaction-specific values
• You need to have at least 20 conversions over the last 45 days across existing Shopping campaigns before you can set up a smart campaign
• Add a global site tag to your website
• Have a remarketing list of at least 100 active users associated with your account
• Meet the requirements for shopping campaigns
• Follow the shipping ads policies

Be Smart, Because It Works

Here at White Shark Media, we love to try new things, and that is why we’ve been test-driving Smart Shopping Campaigns since it was launched. The results we’ve seen are amazing!

One of our customers had a 31.50% increase in transactions, 24.34% increase in revenue, 23.15% decrease in CPA and 36.28% growth in ROI.  

Best Practices to Manage Smart Shopping Campaigns

We’ve also learned some tips and tricks that could improve your experience and performance:

• First, keep in mind that by default, this campaigns will focus on maximizing conversions and conversion value, directly correlated with your budget, as the goal is to deliver the highest conversion value and ROAS as possible.
• Give Google’s AI some time in order to learn and pick up trends from your desired customers. 15 days should be just fine, as most retailers will see performance after two to three weeks. This period may be longer or shorter depending on your conversion volume.
• Start by targeting only a specific product group, and leave the rest on your standard shopping campaign. This is so you don’t abruptly interrupt the performance of your current Google Campaigns.
• Keep your feed updated! Optimizing titles, descriptions, and images are always a best practice across every Google Ads campaign.
• Keep track of performance, and measure the performance of your campaign after you implement Smart Shopping campaigns in comparison to the time period when you were running standard Shopping.
• Google recommends using a standard Shopping campaign with a maximize clicks bidding strategy to fulfill conversion and remarketing requirements.

So go ahead, make sure you meet the requirements, and start setting up your campaigns! We promise it’ll be a smart move.