Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Reminder: Transition To Expanded Text Ads Before January 31, 2017

17 January 2017 by

This is a friendly reminder that starting on January 31, you’ll only be able to create and edit text ads using the expanded text ads format. You’ll no longer be able to create standard text ads. While this will be the last date to create them, existing standard text ads will continue to serve. Expanded text ads can deliver great results, particularly with a commitment to testing new creatives.

As one of the top places people go online to search for apartments, Apartments.com knows the importance of having a strong digital presence. Wanting to provide renters with even more information about its listings, Apartments.com added expanded text ads to its Search campaigns. Apartments.com’s results were strong across its campaigns. It saw 15% and 10% increases in CTRs for expanded text ads on mobile and desktop, respectively.
While making similar improvements to your ads, keep these best practices in mind:

  • Implement multiple versions of your ads. Aim for at least 3-5 per ad group.
  • Leave your standard text ads running.  You can’t create new ones, but the old ones can still serve. Don’t delete them until they stop receiving impressions on their own or the message is no longer accurate.
  • Plan to optimize your ad rotation for clicks or conversions. These options give preference to ads that are likely to perform better.
  • Focus your testing on headlines. They’re the most important part of your ads.
  • Consider shorter headlines on things like brand terms where someone might not need more info.
  • Iterate new ads based on previously successful creative. Learn from what already works.
  • Add terms from user queries and your keywords in your longer headlines whenever appropriate.

Along with those best practices, remember that after January 31 you can pause and resume standard text ads, but it’s best to create new expanded text ads.
As you prepare for expanded text ads to become the only way to create new text ads, check out our best practices guide for creating effective ads or our previously-hosted Hangout-on-Air for more advice. Take advantage of AdWords Editor, the AdWords API, or the ETA Transition Helper to make these changes across your entire account.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

Video Campaign Management Gets Easier With AdWords Scripts

13 December 2016 by

If you were wishing for an easier way to manage your video ad campaigns in AdWords this holiday season, the AdWords product team has the perfect gift picked out. Today we’re announcing AdWords scripts support for TrueView and six-second bumper ads.

This means for the first time ever, you’ll be able to programmatically create and manage video ad groups, targeting and other campaign features alongside your Search, Display and Shopping campaigns. The new script support is available for standard YouTube ad campaign types like TrueView in-stream, TrueView discovery and bumper ads – and we’re hoping to eventually expand functionality to additional campaign types like shopping.

Making this tool available for video means multi-step campaign management tasks will be much easier – like scheduling regular reporting, creating new campaigns en masse and even automating adjustments to campaigns based on real-time factors, like the weather.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Save Time By Applying Audience Lists At The Campaign Level

8 December 2016 by

Reaching your most valuable and engaged customers at the moment they’re ready to act is critical in moving them along the path to purchase. Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) and Customer Match can help you do that by customizing your campaigns for people who’ve previously interacted with your business. However, getting started can be time-consuming, especially if you have a lot of ad groups. To make it easier for you to manage your audience lists at scale, you can now apply them at the campaign level. 

Campaign-level audience lists also make it easy to measure and change your bid adjustments. Instead of trying to change your bid adjustments for each individual ad group, you can confidently optimize at the campaign level where you’re more likely to have enough data to make an informed decision. Learn more audience bid adjustment best practices here.

Many advertisers are already using campaign-level search audiences to save time and make better optimizations:

“Campaign-level audiences have proven to be a great way to apply our remarketing lists at scale. Our campaigns often contain so many ad groups – using RLSA in the past required hours spent applying audiences to each one and analyzing the results by ad group. By applying them at the campaign level, we can be confident that no ad group is overlooked, while saving us time that can be better spent on helping our customers find their new home.” 

– Debra Carroll, Senior SEM Manager at Redfin 

“Being able to apply all of our audiences at the campaign level has drastically simplified the process of adding lists to multiple campaigns, as most of our campaigns have hundreds of ad groups. This allowed us to apply our bid adjustments in bulk, which has resulted in smarter spending and increased ROAS from our search campaigns.”
– Nathan Eagan, PPC Specialist at Webstaurant

With campaign-level search audiences, you now have more flexibility than ever in how to engage with your customers. Learn more about using campaign-level audiences in the Help Center, and read our best practices guide to learn how you can reach the right audience with a message that resonates. 

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Shoppers Gobble Up In-Store Black Friday Deals On Mobile

28 November 2016 by

As another Black Friday weekend wraps, we saw super shoppers continue to turn to their devices for ideas and information as well as use them as a “door-to-the-store.” In fact, Black Friday had the highest mobile shopping searches of any day during Thanksgiving week this year. Thanksgiving Day was a close second, with searches peaking at 8:00 p.m.1

Further, shoppers across the U.S. turned to mobile to not only find the best deals online but also to discover the best deals in-store: Rhode Island and Delaware had the most local shopping search interest  — searches that contained “near me,” hours and stores — of any states in the nation.2

This strong link between the online and physical world lives beyond the holidays too, and store visits reporting in AdWords is helping advertisers understand it year round. In fact, in just under two years, advertisers globally have measured over 3 billion store visits. 
What else did we see in stores over the holiday weekend? Store foot traffic jumped 65% on Black Friday, compared to an average weekend day in November, showing that consumers still care about going into stores for holiday shopping. Clothing, toy, and electronic stores were all popular destinations. Clothing stores and toy stores saw more than double the foot traffic on Black Friday compared to an average weekend day in November.3

Electronics stores were particularly popular, with more than double the foot traffic on Thanksgiving Day and more than triple the foot traffic on Black Friday, compared to an average weekend day in November.4 That makes sense given electronics, including the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sony PS4 Pro, are topping shoppers’ gift lists this year.5

Popular Times feature in Google Maps: Live store foot traffic on Black Friday in Best Buy as indicated by pink bar 

Shoppers also spent more time in stores. For example, in electronics stores, they typically spent between 35 minutes and 1.5 hours on Black Friday compared to 25 minutes on an average day in November. Shopping malls showed a similar increase in visit duration compared to the average day in November.6

To get deeper insight into store visits performance, visit the AdWords Help Center and learn about two new distance and location reports coming soon that will help you understand where your store visits come from.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Introducing The AdWords Marketing Goals Website

3 November 2016 by

As marketers, you’re always looking for more effective ways to achieve business goals – from getting customers to discover your brand to encourage them to buy something from your site, and everything in between. Today, we are introducing a new AdWords website that puts your goals front and center and shows you which ads work best to accomplish those goals. You can also use this site to find info on our latest ad innovations, success stories from other marketers, and best practices guides.
For example, if you’re a multi-channel retailer driving foot traffic into your store, learn about Google solutions like ads with store directions that can help people find your nearest business location.

Or if you just launched a new app and want to make sure the right people discover it, you can find best practices to get more high-value users to engage with your app. You can also draw inspiration from businesses like GrubHub that ran ads to connect with customers the moment they’re searching for new apps in the Google Play store. 

Check back in on the site regularly as we’ll continue to add content. Also, help us ensure that the site is as useful as possible by sharing your feedback. We look forward to hearing your ideas and suggestions.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing

Click-To-Message Ads Bring A New And Easy Way To Talk To Customers

18 October 2016 by

If you’re inviting a friend to dinner or asking them about the best hotels in New York City, you’re probably doing it through mobile messaging. Nearly two-thirds of smartphone owners use messaging more than five times a day to communicate with others.1 And people aren’t limiting their use of messaging to social communications – 65% of consumers say they’d consider using messaging to connect with a business to get information about a product or service, or to schedule an in-person appointment.2

In the coming weeks, we’re introducing click-to-message ads to bring the efficiency and effectiveness of messaging to search ads. By setting up a message extension, you’ll give users an easy way to text you to start a conversation and continue it whenever is most convenient for them.

Tapping on the texting option launches a user’s SMS app with a pre-written message tailored to the product or service they’re interested in. For example, if you’re a travel advertiser and someone messages you after searching for New York City hotels, they can send or edit your pre-written message text, “I’m interested in a reservation. Please text me back with more information.”

Many advertisers are already using click-to-message ads to take advantage of a new and faster way to connect with consumers on mobile to increase conversion rates:

“Click-to-message ads have proven to be a great way to help prequalified customers start the hotel reservation process in a way that is convenient and easy for them. They can text an agent to get questions answered, continue the conversation on their own timetable, and trade booking information before completing the final checkout over the phone or on our website. It’s a seamless and streamlined process that helps increase brand trust. The conversion rate on message extensions is 41% higher compared to other ad extensions. Paired with customer support software, they’ve also allowed our agents to respond to requests in a more efficient and cost-effective way. ”
– Gabe Thayn, Director of Search Marketing, TravelPASS Group

“Click-to-message is a useful tool that allows consumers to engage with our business in a way that’s comfortable and efficient for them. They could be on their commute or in a rush, so they can text us quickly through click-to-message. It’s also a good medium to get questions answered that aren’t addressed on our website, or to reach us during hours when our office is closed. Our main performance objective is to help customers as much as possible – when we take care of their questions and needs in a helpful, relevant way, that leads to better business results.”

– Gavin Chan, Digital Marketing Manager, AnyVan

“The results from click-to-message have been phenomenal and we’ve seen a 80% higher conversion rate when compared to other similar channels. We can now tap into an important consumer base that prefers to use SMS to learn more about our insurance products. Besides giving users a new way to get in touch with us, we feel this is by far the fastest and most cost-effective way to connect with them.”

– Gavin Parker, Paid Search Manager, Auto & General 

“We started testing click-to-message as soon as we heard about it. Text messaging is a popular medium of communication among young professionals and the opportunity to engage them through SMS is very exciting. We sell industrial equipment and supplies, which can be very technical. Sometimes customers don’t have time to talk over a web chat or phone conversation, but still need more information. Messaging helps simplify these exchanges and the customer response has been very positive since they can post a question and follow up in their own time.”
– Ashar Mairaj, VP of Marketing, Global Industrial

Mobile users have more flexibility than ever to choose how they want to connect with businesses. Through messaging, you can initiate valuable conversations with them by tapping into one of their most preferred modes of communication. Learn more about click-to-message ads by visiting the Help Center. Also read our new best practices to learn how to use click-to-message ads to build a faster consumer experience on mobile and deliver useful information that gets customers closer to purchasing.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Google Shopping Partners With E-commerce Platforms To Make Selling Online Easier Than Ever This Holiday Season

17 October 2016 by

When it comes to attracting customers over the busy holiday season, showcasing your products online can help you get in front of more people, and many retailers already use e-commerce platforms to upload and promote their products online. Today, we’re excited to announce partnerships with three major e-commerce platforms — BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and Magento — to make it easier than ever before to get started on Google Shopping for the holidays, and beyond. If you’re using any one of these platforms (or if you’re thinking of using one of these platforms), our new partnerships let you easily submit your product information to Google Shopping and quickly reach millions of new customers searching for what you sell.

Get up and running on Google in just a few clicks

With this direct integration, you can save time and extra work by using your existing BigCommerce, Prestashop, or Magento account to easily submit your product data to fuel a new Google Shopping campaign.

With just a few clicks, your product information is populated in your Merchant Center account, helping you reach new shoppers on Google.com and other Google properties. This integration lets you:

  • Find new customers, right where they’re searching. Connect your products to the customers who matter most — the ones searching for what you sell.
  • Easily display your rich product imagery and details. Put your product images, price, and other differentiators front and center, so that searching shoppers can easily find you.
  • Get up and running quickly, minimizing your holiday workload. Use the product information you’ve already entered in your ecommerce platform without needing to submit this information separately to Google.
  • Showcase your newest inventory. Roll out new products to Google Shopping, simply by adding products to your ecommerce store.

Early successes

We’ve been testing this technical integration with our ecommerce platform partners, and have already seen impressive results from small businesses, brand new to Google Shopping.

Peter Baseio, founder and CEO of baby product company Organic Munchkin, connected his BigCommerce account to Google Shopping to reach new customers with rich, visual ads. “Google Shopping allows our products to be listed in a visual format, increasing brand awareness for our niche market, as well as revenue,” said Baseio. “It has tripled our revenue stream, bringing in customers we never knew we had access to.”

Sam Gong, co-founder of Man Crates, used the integration to help tens of thousands of new customers find their unique assortment of gifts. “Google Shopping is an incredibly cost-effective way for us to reach new customers on long-tail search terms and recapture visitors that have found Man Crates through one of our primary marketing campaigns,” said Gong. “It’s well integrated with BigCommerce, incredibly easy to setup, and easy to measure and manage on an ongoing basis. It’s an absolute no-brainer for just about any ecommerce business.”

Ready to get started?

If you’re not using an ecommerce platform today, find out how to sign up for one by checking out the BigCommerce, PrestaShop, or Magento website. If you’re already using one of these platforms, visit our Help Center or the BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and Magento help pages to learn more.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Fine-Tuning The Layout Of Search Ads On Google Play

7 September 2016 by

Google Play reaches more than a billion people on Android devices in over 190 countries — providing a platform for consumers to find the coolest new apps and enjoy the latest music, movies, and books.

We introduced search ads on Google Play last year to improve app discovery and help developers reach users right when they’re looking for new apps to install. It’s one of several platforms, alongside YouTube, Google.com and the Google Display Network, where developers can introduce your apps to high quality users. Developers all around the world, like GrubHub, have seen tremendous success in terms of reach and install rates with Google’s app promo products. See full story. We’re building on this momentum by fine-tuning the ads experience on Google Play to deliver even more growth for the developer community.

First, for app-specific searches on Google Play, ads in their current form will not be shown at the top of the page. Instead, the organic result for the app will show at the top of the page, followed by additional organic results and possibly ads for other relevant apps. So when a user searches for “Google Express,” she will see the organic result for “Google Express” without an identical “Google Express” ad above it. This change is part of our ongoing commitment to improve user experience and advertiser performance. We encourage developers to monitor your campaigns as there may be some natural changes in performance metrics as we roll out these updates.

Second, a relevant, additional ad will start to show on Google Play for some queries like “music streaming app” and “exercise app.” This new ad spot gives developers an additional opportunity to promote the apps you’ve worked so hard to build.

Innovations like search ads on Google Play have proven to be a useful way to surface new apps for consumers and provide additional value for developers. We look forward to building on this momentum with new tools and best practices to bring even more success to the developer community.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

Track Your Goals With Campaign Groups And Performance Targets

6 September 2016 by

AdWords provides powerful tools to help advertisers grow their business. For example, if you’re about to launch a new holiday campaign, you can use TrueView ads on YouTube along with banner ads on the Google Display Network to drive brand awareness and more holiday sales. To make it easier for you to track and forecast the performance of these campaigns against your advertising goals, we’re introducing campaign groups and performance targets.

Create a campaign group

You can now package AdWords campaigns (including Video, Display, Search, and Shopping campaigns) into a single campaign group. For our holiday example, set up your YouTube and Display campaigns, select “campaign groups” from the left menu, and group those two campaigns together to create a campaign group called “Holiday Launch”.

Set a performance target

Performance targets make it easier to monitor and reach your performance goals for each campaign group. Tell us how many clicks or conversions you want to receive, how much you want to spend, and what average CPC or CPA you wish to maintain. We’ll then automatically show you a single view of how your campaign group is performing against those goals, and what we think you’ll likely achieve by the end of the campaign period.

 Here’s an early success story for campaign groups and performance targets:

“Previously I needed to export all my campaigns into a spreadsheet, group them together, and create a pivot table simply to see how they are performing. With campaign groups & performance targets, we can much more easily see how our groups are performing relative to our goals, all from within the AdWords interface.“

– Oleg Monakhov, Senior Lead Generation Manager at Wrike

Note that creating performance targets does not change how we serve your ads or optimize your campaigns. Instead, use it to evaluate whether or not your campaigns are working together toward your broader goals.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Ecommerce Marketing | Google Marketing

Introducing The New Google Merchant Center

30 August 2016 by

Retailers have long been using Merchant Center to connect their product data to Google — letting millions of shoppers find their products on Google.com, YouTube, and partner websites. Today, we’re excited to introduce an updated version of Merchant Center, which offers the same functionality you’re used to, with more streamlined navigation and easier access to additional Shopping programs.

Navigate the new Merchant Center 

With updates to Merchant Center, you’ll see a fast, responsive new interface, aligned with the modern look and feel of the rest of Google’s products. We’ve changed Merchant Center navigation by bundling common tasks and actions. For example, you can use the new Home page to view recent announcements and dashboard data for your account, and you can find consolidated product feed and product data quality information under the Products page. For more information on navigating the new UI, visit the Help Center.

Explore and enable Shopping programs in Merchant Center 

Merchant Center now lets you discover new ways to apply your data to promote and sell your products. Use Merchant Center to explore additional Google programs for your products, including Local Inventory Ads, Merchant Promotions, Product Ratings, and more, while continuing to manage and configure your product data for Shopping ads.

You can access the Merchant Center Programs page under the 3-dot icon. Continue exploring the various programs by selecting the Learn More option in each card, and express your interest in participating in a program by selecting Get Started.

Updates to existing features: Feed Rules, Diagnostics, and Currency Conversions 

In addition to the user interface changes, we’ve updated some of our most-used Merchant Center features to improve speed and functionality, helping you get your products online more quickly:

  • Feed Rules. In response to feedback we’ve heard from you, we’re updating Feed Rules to more closely align with how we see retailers commonly using the tool today. 
    • Change or update specific values. For example, you can update specific values of the color attribute while keeping other existing color values intact. 
    • Create new values by combining static values and/or values from different attributes in your feed. For example, you can add size type values to your product title values. 
    • Extract values from other attribute values. For example, you can populate a color value by searching in the description attribute for pre-selected values (blue, green, red, yellow) that will be suitable for the color attribute. 
  • Diagnostics page. We’ve increased the freshness of data in the diagnostics page. Now, the latest results from your feed uploads and product updates will be displayed in near-real time instead of twice a day — meaning that you’ll have fresher data to update and optimize your product feeds. 
  • Currency Conversions. Last month, we announced that we were testing currency conversions, which allows you to convert the currency in your product data locally. With the launch of the new Merchant Center, we’re expanding this feature more broadly to let you easily advertise to users in other countries, while allowing you to continue using your existing website and landing pages without change. Learn how Berlin-based myToys is already using currency conversions to increase their sales abroad. 

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

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