This year’s online holiday shopping season will be one for the record books. Most people say they’ll shop more online or exclusively online this year. And online shopping will also start earlier this year, indicated by Google study results where 69% of holiday shoppers say they will shop earlier this year to avoid items being out of stock.
To dominate the Cyber 5 this year you need to:
- Get the most from your remarketing efforts,
- Cover any gaps you have in your search and shopping efforts,
- Run compelling offers and ads that compliment your brand, and
- Get your Top of Funnel efforts dialed in.
Check out our latest blog outlining these helpful tips and the video replay from our recent webinar with Google, and be on the lookout for the audio version in this week's episode of eCommerce Evolution.
Mentioned in this episode:
Brett Curry - CEO of OMG Commerce
Chris Brewer - Co-Founder at OMG Commerce
Episode Transcript
Brett:
Well hello, I want to welcome you to a very exciting webinar. I really appreciate you taking the time to attend this. Our commitment to you, is we want to deliver the goods on this webinar and give you hopefully some strategies, some tactics, tips, and ideas to really help you make the most of this holiday shopping season.
Brett:
So we're going to talk about five ways to dominate the Cyber Give. This is going to be an interesting year, guys. I mean really, there's still a lot that's certainly up in the air about holiday 2020, but I think there are several things we can be confident in. So we're going to highlight those on this webinar. Then talk about these five ways to help you get the absolute most from the Cyber Five.
Brett:
So quick intros to the team that'll be presenting today. I'm Brett Curry, I'm the CEO and co-founder of OMG Commerce. Right there in the middle, Mr. Chris Brewer, co-founder of OMG Commerce. What's up, Chris?
Chris:
It is good to be here. I always like looking at my fatter self on these calls.
Brett:
Yeah, quick shout out. Chris has been on dieting, exercise, all that. Really looking good.
Chris:
The COVID diet. It's amazing what pandemics do to your waistline.
Brett:
It's so interesting, and it's just totally ties into the whole 2020 thing. I think there's a group of people that said, "Hey, I'm stuck at home. I'm going to reach my fitness and just go nuts." Then there are other people that said, "Hey, I'm stuck at home and I don't care. So I'm going to go nuts and eat." That's all yoga pants.
Chris:
Just eat nuts.
Brett:
Eat nuts, exactly. Then really, just thrilled to have the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Rohit from Google. Rohit has worked with OMG now, he's been our Senior Agency Account Strategist. For how many year, Rohit? How long has it been?
Rohit:
Entering four next year, early next year will be four.
Brett:
Yeah, I think it's four years. We may need to have you talk a touch louder, Rohit. You still sound good and very astute, but maybe just a tad quiet. Then, how long have you been with Google?
Rohit:
Been at Google for about seven years now.
Brett:
Seven years. Then Rohit is just extremely intelligent. He knows the Google products, search shopping, remarketing, YouTube, all of that inside and out. But he also gets business and he understands the strategy behind it. So we love working closely with him on our top accounts. Then he's going to be delivering the goods here as well. So I'll be delivering a portion of the content today, Rohit will be chiming in, Chris is going to be running color commentary and chiming in. Then also answering questions too, so if you have questions as we go, please type that into the chat. Chris will answer some of them, Chris will bring those to our attention as they come up or he may just answer it in the chat. Then some questions we may just wait until the end to answer.
Brett:
So with that, let's dive in. Let's talk about some of the things we can expect for holiday shopping this year. There's a lot that's up in the air, guys, whole lot but eCommerce was poised for a breakout year. It's already been a breakout year for eCommerce, we've seen different stats. There are lots of ways to slice and dice the retail and eCommerce stats that are published, but I've seen as much as five years of eCommerce growth condensed into a couple years during the lockdowns, in terms of retail penetration.
Brett:
But here's what we're seeing, and these are based on surveys done by Google with shoppers. So 72% of shoppers say they'll shop more online this year than last year. No real surprise there, but here's what's interesting. 41% of the in-store Black Friday shoppers from last year, so those crazy people. I am not one of them who get up early or look at the papers still or online ads or whatever and then go stand in line at stores to get the deal. 41% of the people that did that last year say they're just going to stay online this year. Now, a couple things about this, this is just surveyed data, so what people actually do could be different. So much can change in a matter of a few months or even a few weeks during a COVID-19 world, but I think it's very safe to say a lot of shoppers are going to focus online and many of them are going to focus online exclusively. So for us in eComm, it's actually good news. It has been good news for most of the year so far.
Brett:
Then I think this is really key, and this is where I'm really glad you're tuning into this, I'm glad you're preparing, but. This is the same survey, 69% of holiday shoppers say they'll start earlier this year. So if the pandemic and lockdowns taught shoppers anything, it's hey, when everybody orders online it creates backlogs. So delivery can become an issue, items becoming out of stock can become an issue. So almost 70% of people said they're going to start shopping earlier this year.
Brett:
I think that's going to be compounded by a few things. One, the trend in the last few years has been to start holiday promotions early. Right? Last year some big retailers like Lowe's and a few others did Black Friday all November long. So starting November 1, their Black Friday deals hit. I think the shoppers are used that to a certain degree, that holiday deals may start earlier. Then when you compound that with the fact that Amazon Prime Day is tentatively scheduled at least for October, we just heard an updates potential date today of maybe October 13th, 14th, but we don't know. Amazon has not announced that, but that could start some of the holiday shopping frenzy when Prime Day launches this year, which is usually in July. This year it's in Q4. So really, interesting.
Brett:
Gentlemen, Chris, Rohit, any thoughts on this before we go any further?
Rohit:
Yeah, just one other fact that I want to add is, a lot of people will be that, I have to shop online anyways. So which is the reason that they might not actually wait for that late. So I think that is one other reason what contributes to why people might shop early this year.
Brett:
Yup, exactly. Then a couple other things, and really I was saying is that price and promotion is still a huge deal. Right? So 50% of shoppers list price as the most important factor for holiday shopping. Now, I would argue that there's a lot of things people consider when they're shopping for the holidays. I got to get the right gift, I need to get it in time, all of those things but price does play a major role here. So we need to at least keep this in mind as we're structuring our deals, and if we're not a big discounter, which a lot of our clients aren't and we'll talk about that and that's fine. Just know that price is a consideration so we need to be mindful of that as we put together our deals. Cool.
Brett:
Then Rohit, do you want to talk a little bit about brand loyalty? Because this has been super interesting to me how... I think this trend has been happening anyway, but the pandemic has definitely added to it, but talk a little bit about brand loyalty right now.
Rohit:
Yeah, so the same way price is such a huge factor for customers these days, that they're not necessarily that loyal to the brand that they usually buy from. Given the pandemic that there are a lot of people who are going through financial hardships. So brand loyalty is not top of mind for them, but price is. So if they get a better price for a similar product somewhere else, so there's a good chance that they would be willing to make that transition. So that actually opens up the opportunity for the smaller businesses who don't necessarily focus so much on brand building or don't spend so many dollars on brand, will have an opportunity to get these new customers in the door.
Brett:
Yeah, and what's been really interesting and probably everybody who's listening to this has experienced this. You placed a delivery order at Walmart, which we've done a million times since the lockdowns, or some other buy online, pick up in store, whatever. You've probably experienced substitutions, where hey, this thing was out of stock so hey, we just replaced it with this other item, we're substituting. It's created this need to be flexible, but it's also created this forced sampling of other brands. I think that's also fueled this trend as well, where hey, I don't know. I'm open to new things. Beggars can't be choosers, in certain ways. So it is a great time to be an online marketer. People are willing to try new products if you can prove it's a good value, and it's going to be the perfect gift, in our context here. We deliver on time, and all those things. You've got a real opportunity to win.
Brett:
So let's talk about this. Rohit, you want to talk through some of the planning stages? Where we find ourselves right now as we record this, and you may be watching it later but we're towards the end of August, we're right in the middle of that middle stage there. You want to talk about these planning stages just a little bit, Rohit?
Rohit:
Yeah, sure. So as you can see we're almost towards the end of August, but I mean, this is just something that they planned very early. So you can still, in fact not you can, you should still go and do the first stage which is, check your feed health. Feed is basically what feeds everything into your Google Ad, so obviously you want to make sure that everything is in good place, and products that you don't have in your feed, you make sure you add them. Any disapprovals or what the reasons are, and try to fix those..
Rohit:
The second thing you want to do in the prepare stage is to try and make sure that you adopt automation. So smart shopping, which we'll talk about a little more as we go further in the slide, is going to be a huge play this year because all these themes creates success coming from smart shopping. Also, using smart bids. So smart shopping in combination of smart bids, is more or less capable of taking care of all these things that are, as we know, there's a lot of uncertainty in the market this year. So all that will be taken care of by that automation. We strongly suggest that you take that into consideration.
Rohit:
The next thing is budget, so as Brett mentioned that this will be a year unlike others. So no matter how much we do research and how much we suggest that they know what's going to happen, nobody really knows how many people are going to buy online or how much it's going to move online. So make sure that you have your budgets in place, and you will have to extremely nimble with your budget, so you have to move those budgets to make sure that you're addressing whatever market is out there for your product.
Rohit:
The second piece is revisit your automation strategy. So we'll again, get into the details of how to manage smart bidding, specifically when you are expecting a surge in sales, or expecting a surge in conversion rates. So you will have to continuously make changes to some aspects of it, but as I said, we'll get into the details of that as we get along.
Rohit:
The last thing is when you are in the season, as I said, you have to be nimble, you have to be quick. So you will see data moving, you'll see your budgets running out, maybe halfway through the day or if you're seeing that your conversation rates are spiking a lot, then you might have to make some specific moves and we'll be looking at those slides as we go along.
Brett:
Awesome, very good, thank you. So just a quick note and I know a lot of people, they're on here live are existing OMG Commerce clients. If you are, we love you, if you're not, we love you too. So just quick 15 seconds on the agency.
Brett:
We're a Google Premier Partner, we're a team of, I think 42 now. We just hired a new person a day or two ago. For agencies our size, one of the top spenders on YouTube ads. Several years ago, I wrote the Ultimate Guide to Google Shopping that Shopify published. Quick spoiler/teaser, rewrote the guide completely for 2020. That's going to be announced sometime in the near future. I don't actually know, Shopify will announce that. Then we've been doing this since 2010, and Chris and I speak at events all over the place. So we like to think we're though leaders and want to contribute to the industry, and hopefully help you achieve your goals and rock with your ad channels.
Chris:
Because we're not going to events right now, you might as well take this opportunity to plug your podcast since-
Brett:
Yes, yeah.
Chris:
So if they want to get good stuff while nobody can go anywhere.
Brett:
Yup, absolutely. So do check out eCommerce Evolution. You can go to OMGcommerce.com and look at the podcast there or go to wherever you like to consume podcasts, look at eCommerce Evolution. Going to be some really good stuff there for prepping for holiday as well. We just released an episode today about some Amazon advertising, so check that out. Then we're also working on several different other video initiatives, video training initiatives that you need to keep your eyes out for that I think will benefit you as well.
Brett:
So good, all right. Fantastic, so let's dive into five ways to dominate the Cyber Five. This first one is going to be relatively quick. It's super important but it will be relatively quick. So one of the things we want to do when holiday hits is we had to cut through the clutter. Everybody's going to increase their advertising budgets, there's going to be ads all over the place. We have the disadvantage this year of this also being an election year. Now, I think some of the platforms are going to limit political ads, I certainly hope so. That's the worst thing in the world, in my opinion, but we got to cut through the clutter. We got to make sure our message lands to the right prospect. We want to keep ad cost low, efficient. We got to still hit our ROAS targets or our CPA targets.
Brett:
So one of the keys, one of the really important things we can do now is start building our lists. Our remarketing lists and other lists now, because we can leverage them fully once holiday shopping kicks into full gear. So what kind of lists are we talking about? These are I think four must build lists and we can get more detailed with these lists, but just want to highlight them. One is a viewed video audience. So we do a lot with YouTube, a lot of the people listening live here are heavy YouTube advertisers as well. So build those viewed video audiences because we can take those audiences, leer them into search and shopping to increase our performance on search and shopping. We can also build a YouTube funnel where if someone interacts with maybe one of our cold targeting videos and they don't purchase but they engage with that video, we'll run more ads for them to woo them and get them to take the next steps.
Brett:
Also, remarketing. We can slice and dice remarketing lists in a lot of different ways. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Also, SMS and Messenger lists. That's a list you should be building now, so while you're driving traffic to offer pages and PDPs, also try to get someone to enter their mobile number or get on your Messenger list. Then of course, email lists as well. So if we make a secondary goal right now, building these lists, these lists are going to come in really handy once Q4 hits.
Brett:
What's interesting, something that we're noticing a lot of right now and we're benefiting from this and so are our clients, is that watch time on YouTube has exploded since the beginning of lockdown. So this is just actually looking at watch time of YouTube on TVs, which I know in my house my kids are watching YouTube all the time on TVs but it's up 80% year over year. Watch times of YouTube on TV screens. So what's important about this is if you think about what inventory means, and I actually I have a bit of a background in TV ads. With traditional TV, inventory is just based on time, it's based on the number of 30 commercial breaks we can fit in or the number of commercials breaks in a given program, or in a given live sports event or whatever. On YouTube, inventory is based on people, based on eyeballs. So the more people, the more inventory is available. So we've been able to capitalize on this where costs are relatively low and relatively stable right now. So we can capitalize on that.
Brett:
We invest in YouTube and top of funnel efforts now, with obviously the goal of driving sales now. That's how we do it, but also with the secondary goal of building our lists, because those lists, we're going to be able to target specifically and directly once we get into Q4. So that's super important too.
Brett:
Guys, any other thoughts you want to chime in with on this topic?
Rohit:
Just that in my experience, seeing over the last six months and especially with a lot of OMG clients that they work with, that our CPAs have dropped considerably and performance on video has never been better. So as Brett mentioned, this is the best time to capitalize on it.
Brett:
Yup.
Chris:
Yeah, I would agree with that. My role here at the company is dealing with all of the inbound inquiries of people reaching out, seeing if they could run YouTube ads or or whatever they're coming to us for. Brett, you and I were talking about this earlier, six, seven months ago, which is not that long ago, we were having much different conversations with eCommerce stores about their readiness to advertise on YouTube based on their CPA requirements. We have now seen that, I would say, drop by as much as half of what those standards used to be from what we would look at.
Brett:
Yup, and we're seeing new launches on YouTube. So we did the big event in LA in February. New launches since them have been fantastic. A lot of this is because inventory is at an all time high, costs are relative low and pretty stable. So it's a great time. More on YouTube in a minute. We're going to circle back to top of funnel YouTube here in just a minute but the idea here is, build those remarketing audiences. Build those audiences now, you will thank us later because you can leverage those audiences once we get into the thick of holiday shopping.
Brett:
All right, so tip number two, key number two. Think about your messaging, think about how to build a compelling offer because like we said in the beginning, 50% of people say price is the most important thing but a lot of people say price is the most important thing because they don't know what else to say. People will always default to price if you don't give them a reason why price isn't the most important thing. But keep in mind, people are looking for deals, so they're looking for deals and on-point messaging. So how can we be ready for that?
Brett:
So one of the things, a few of things I think you need to consider is okay, if I am going to do a deal, what is that deal going to be? How can I incorporate holiday messaging? Giving someone a message of finding the perfect gift, buying the perfect gift, delighting that special someone. You want to talk about your product with a holiday messaging theme. Then address concerns. So some of the concerns that will happen this year, delivery times, will it be in stock, things like that. So addressing those concerns also really important.
Brett:
So how can we both motivate customers to get them to take action to get them to buy our product over our competitor, but also protect the brand, also not sacrifice longterm results just for short term gain? Because we could just go in and slash prices. We could go in, do a 50% off sale, and that could lead to a really nice bump in sales right now, but then that could just train customers to maybe wait for the next deal. That could train customers to never purchase that full price. Every retailer has their own strategy, we do have some clients that do deep discounting frequently and it totally works for them, but their whole pricing structure is based on that. We know a lot of clients that don't really discount at all, or only discount once or twice a year. That's fine too, but think about that combination of what's going to motivate customers versus what's going to protect your brand, as we look to map out these deals.
Brett:
Also, consider convenience. That is the really convenience and safety wrapped into one this year, but how do I get exactly what I am looking for at the right time with hopefully low delivery fees guaranteed and permits me from getting out of the house? So fast shipping, guaranteed shipping bundles. Bundles are also a huge deal that we need to consider as we map out our offers here and find what's going to really motivate clients.
Brett:
So let's look at some specific examples, some ad examples and talk through why they work. Maybe this will spark a few ideas for you. So our friends at Groove Life Silicone wedding rings. Love this product, I've owned multiple rings. They started doing this sale where you get a mystery ring with your order. So sometimes they'll do, hey, buy two rings and then get a mystery ring or just buy one ring, get a mystery ring. I know this is a form of discounting. You may have to get creative to apply something like this to your business, but what's beautiful about this is, well, why would you guess? I'll open this stuff to Chris and Rohit. Why do you think they do a mystery ring? Why a mystery ring instead of letting people pick out their free ring?
Chris:
Because it's the stuff that they can't sell.
Brett:
Yup, it's inventory that's sitting there, stuff they can't get rid of. It also makes it fun and interesting. There's this bit of anticipation. What will I get? Studies have shown that sometimes people anticipating a vacation or anticipating winning the lottery or anticipating a gift, that's almost as fun as actually getting it. So there's an anticipation thing, but I 100% agree with you, Chris. That's the thing. It's them saying, "Hey, how do we take this stuff that we can't sell and let's turn it into a nice little bonus."
Chris:
Hey, Honey, I'm replacing my gold ring with this mystery ring that they couldn't sell.
Brett:
Right, yeah. So but this has a high perceived value.
Chris:
Absolutely.
Brett:
So the one way to look at this, it doesn't have to be... this is a gift of their key product. You don't have to do that, but you could do some other gift or something else related to your product that doesn't lower the perceived value of your product but now you're adding an additional gift. Think about it, what if you're about to buy a ring for yourself and then you saw this and you thought, I got to get a stocking stuffer for my brother in law. So bingo, mystery ring freebie, stocking stuffer..
Chris:
Yeah, these can also come from relationships with other sellers that aren't directly competing that could be wins for both.
Brett:
Love that idea, we've seen that with a few of our clients. Everyday California, an awesome California based apparel company and adventure company. They're doing a promo with another company called Sunday Scaries, which is a CBD company, which that creates some issues with ads, but. They're doing something similar where you can do a joint venture opportunity where you say, "Hey, let's partner with someone who wants maybe to get in front of our customers. Let's offer their product at a deep discount or as a free gift add on." Again, it's a way to increase the perceived value without diminishing the value of your core product. So lots of things you can do with gifts.
Brett:
Okay, love this one. This is for our friends at Original Grain watches. I did not wear my Original Grain watch today but I have one and I absolutely love it. So what's interesting, and this is a client, they do some discounting. So they have sales going on frequently. This is a 40% off, so this deal will move product. 40% off, but if you look at this ad, it's really highlighting the uniqueness of these watches, they're wood grained, wood and steel combo, really cool watches. So, give him a gift he'll cherish. This ad could work with or without a discount. Could work better with a discount because they're cool with that, matches their strategy but this ad could work with or without a discount. So keying in on, this is a gift that he'll cherish. It's something he does not have, it's unique, it's different. You're going to be a hero, you're really going to deliver this holiday season.
Brett:
Now, these are our friends at Boom, so obviously probably everybody here knows Ezra and company at Boom. So they are a company, they don't do a lot of discounting. This is one of the only times a year they do a discount. So for some a 10% discount, that seems like, well, that's not a discount hardly at all. But when you don't discount, 10% is huge and it creates a frenzy of people shopping and wanting to get the deal. So this was a quick teaser of a Gmail ad. This is actually an ad that we would run to both existing customers and to remarketing and viewed video audiences. We'll talk about how to do that in just a little bit, but if you're not a big discounter, mild discounts can create big wins. So keep that in mind as well.
Brett:
Then here's our buddies at Live Bearded, this is a partnership they did with Mossy Oak which was really cool, but what if you just talk about free shipping? Shipping guaranteed, guaranteed delivery, and some social proof. So loading and the reason why social proof is always important especially with display and YouTube ads, social proof is important but hey, if you're trying to appeal to a gift giver, if I'm buying something for a friend one mine that's got a beard and he may want some product. That thousands of happy beards-men may help me feel more confident that okay, I'm not buying a cruddy product, I'm not going to look dumb if I buy him this product. He's going to potentially like it. So talking about the convenience and free shipping, plus social proof.
Brett:
Other thoughts, guys, on how we're getting our messages ready for this holiday season? Both to cut through the clutter and grab attention, but also to line up with our brand and protect our brand.
Chris:
I've got an idea but I was going to let Rohit go first.
Rohit:
I was just going to say that I think Brett covered it pretty well. I don't really have any additional ideas. I think we discussed these deeply before we got on the call.
Brett:
Yeah, great.
Chris:
Yeah, just in terms of messaging and things like that, this is just a quick tip I shared with our specialist team not too long ago. This really goes in and outside of the holiday times, but look at what your customers messaged you about during last year's holiday season, in terms of customer support tickets. Be aware of actually what happened last year. Don't just start with new messaging. Go back and look at what converted the best in the previous season. Then how does that need to be adjusted for what you're offering this year? Sometimes, it can just be a replacement of a word and you can grab some of those higher converting bits of copy that you had in previous times.
Brett:
I love that suggestion. The last piece that I'll tie into this part of it is, potentially be ready early. So if you're talking about doing your Black Friday sale around Black Friday and the Cyber Five, you may consider having something ready, locked and loaded to go early November if it looks like most merchants are moving early and there's a frenzy of activity, you may want to earlier. We even know some clients that are looking at potentially doing an early bird in late October or maybe doing an early bird starting around Prime Day, because Prime day even for people that don't shop on Amazon, even if you're promoting stuff on your own dotcom, there will be an increased shopping around Prime Day. So consider having some of these messages ready early even if it's just a, get the perfect gift, now is the time to prepare for holiday even if you don't do huge discounts. Get your messages ready early, consider starting mid to late October or beginning of November. So really important.
Rohit:
I do want to point that apart from the fact that you want to get your messages early, it'll also be valuable if you get those messages in the system and get it approved a few days before you actually launch your campaign because sometimes the whole approval process takes a while and you don't want to reach the day of your campaign and realize that your ads are not approved.
Brett:
Yes, yeah. Always want to get those ads uploaded early, as things get busier. Every holiday season, Google, some of those approval processes get delayed a little bit. This year with COVID and people working from home, it could be and probably will be extenuated a little more. So get those ads ready sooner, absolutely. Love that advice.
Brett:
All right, number three. Fill in the gaps in your search and shopping approach. This is one of those things where I'm always... I guess not anymore, I used to be surprised when we would audit some accounts and look at search and shopping. We'd have people say, "Oh yeah, search and shopping is fine. I'm getting a 3X on search and shopping or a 250% return on ads spend on search and shopping. Everything is fine," but we look a little closer and we realized while that's true, while search and shopping is going okay, we're missing so many opportunities. There's so many opportunities to achieve scale and likely achieve scale at the same or better performance. So okay, what if you could keep that 250% or 300% return ad spend, but double your volume or get 30% or 40% more volume? That's the kind of thing we see all the time is that search and shopping, because sometimes wins are relatively easy in search and shopping. It's motivation for people not try very hard or to just settle when things are okay.
Brett:
So let's look at some ways that you need beef up your search and shopping efforts. One of the first things we want to talk about is, capitalizing on free listings. If you missed this, Google announced, I guess at the time of the recording here, it's been maybe a month or two ago, that there are few areas in Google shopping that are now free. So if you look at the shopping tab like we have here, that carousel of ads across the top, that is still sponsored, that still functions just like Google shopping ads always have. As you get below that though, those are free listings. You do not pay for those listings. Still powered by your feed, and that's how you get those listings is by having a good optimized product feed and merchant center, but they're free listings, which is super powerful.
Brett:
Also, on the Google app, so this would be the discovery app. These are free listings as well. These actually, you can see the little Google colored cart, those are actually buy on Google. So that's the customer facing, that's what shoppers see is buy on Google. That's where someone can click on that listing so I could buy that pour over coffee maker, which I actually think I have that exact one. It's good, but if you click on that and buy that, Google will handle the whole transaction. Google will take your credit card, they'll process everything. They guarantee it, they also have standards on shipping and returns and all that, so you're protected because you're buying on Google. Then Google just sends you over to the merchant, the merchant fulfills it. In this case it would be Target.
Brett:
What's interesting is that used to be commission based. So used to, if an advertiser participated in that, Google would keep 5% to 20% of that sale, like Amazon does as a marketplace. Well, Google announced recently that that's free too. So this is no longer commission based. You can now participate, it's call shopping actions, that's what we as merchants see. Consumer sees buy on Google, but that's now free as well which is super powerful.
Brett:
So this is what the shopping tab looks like if you're looking for some new Adidas kicks, which I think I actually have that. I have that same pair that that arrow's pointing. I only have all black, which is cool, but this is the shopping tab. So again, if you look below that carousel paid ads, those are all free.
Brett:
Then if you were to look on the images tab, which especially if you're in apparel but also in other categories. People will often go to the images tab to look for ideas. If I'm looking to buy home décor, furniture, apparel, a variety of other categories, I may look at the images tab just because I want to see, what's this going to look like and what will this look like in my home or in these various areas? So again, that top carousel is paid, but everything below that is free.
Brett:
So how do we take advantage of that? How do we capitalize on that? Well, the free listing portion, the free listing program that I just showed that appears on the bottom of the shopping tab and the image tab and the Google discovery app, that's called surfaces across Google. So the way you set that up, this is actually a quick look inside merchant center. If you're an existing OMG Commerce client, we can totally help you with this. You're likely already taking advantage of it but we can definitely talk about it, if not, then you look inside merchant center in an existing feed. This is actually the set up of a new feed but you'll still see these options in settings. Shopping actions, that's the buy on Google, the previous. Previously that was the commission based listing, now free. That's how you enable that. You do have to opt into that and there is a form you have to fill out to opt into it, which we can make sure that everybody here gets that. We'll have some resources to go with this webinar that we can send out. The the surfaces across Google, those are the free listings.
Brett:
So Rohit, you want to speak to what we're seeing and what Google is projecting if you're a current Google shopping advertiser and you enable these free listings? What kind of lift of what kind of bump will you see?
Rohit:
Yeah, so in general we see about 3% to 5% bump in the total traffic coming to your website, which is if it's organic then it's even better. So we're seeing sales go up for a lot of our clients, which is why we introduced, we did a lot of testing in the background before we launched this externally. So 3% to 5% bump is quite a bit.
Brett:
It's fantastic, and it's all free. I think this is also going to help get more products in Google merchant center from a variety of merchants, which will make it a better shopping destination. It's already awesome but make it a better shopping destination for shoppers. That's going to help fuel the whole thing as well. So got to take advantage of those free listings.
Brett:
Also, highlight promotional pricing. So this is something that we would do inside the feed. This is where we put the promotional price. So you can do this one of two ways, you can either do a coupon code, or you can just highlight a sales price. The sales price you're going to highlight with a begin date and an end date. What this looks like if you do the sales price with a date that it starts or a date that it ends, is it'll show up as a sale. There's actually a few ways that Google can denote this, but let's actually look at that Adidas Ultraboost 19. The third shoe over on the left was $160, now it's $80. Special offer and you get that sale little call out there that's begging to be click, and that Asics next to it also really jumps out at you.
Brett:
If you're doing a coupon code, then it looks like this. Someone clicks on your ad and then they can copy and paste that coupon code. So both approaches can work, it can either just be a drop in price that's automatically realized once they get to the store, or it can be coupon code based. In some ways, I favor just the drop in price because I think that's easier, people don't have to worry about the coupon code, but whatever works for you, whatever you've tested in the past, that's fine as well. So highlight that promotional pricing.
Brett:
The way you create promotional pricing is also in merchant center under marketing and promotions. You can create there, a new promotional feed. Basically, you're titling that promotion, you're indicating what items that applies to, and then you're either indicating a percent off or savings or you're spelling out that specific price. So highlighting promotional pricing, huge. Just like we talked about, 50% of people look for a deal, if you're offering a deal, highlight it in Google shopping.
Brett:
Okay, next point. RLSA is remarketing lists for search ads. This has been huge. I'll talk a little bit about Boom, because this is one of their key strategies. So with Boom, we do a lot with top of funnel marketing. So we do a ton on YouTube. YouTube, prior to working with OMG, YouTube was nonexistent for Boom. Now it's their second biggest source of leads and sales. So we do a lot of top of funnel YouTube. They also do a lot of Facebook advertising. So you get a lot of people that are introduced to the Boom Stick or other products, they check it out but they don't buy. Maybe they even forget about the product, they forget the name of the product.
Brett:
So with RLSAs, we can take our remarketing lists and we can layer those lists into our search and shopping campaigns so that we can either target them exclusively or just make sure we have special emphasis on those audiences so that if someone sees our video, maybe forgets the name of the product or they see the video and click the site, and now they're coming back to find it again. We want to make sure we show up to that audience.
Brett:
So here's a quick look, this is actually one of the campaigns and Ezra doesn't mind if we share his data, so that's why I'm sharing it. So this is a Google shopping campaign that's specifically... this was just targeting RLSAs. So there's a few ways you can do it. You can either layer in your remarketing lists for a search ad into the campaign. This one we decided to just target that list exclusively. So get a little context, for top of funnel, they're trying to hit about a $60 cost per acquisition or a little bit under. Their remarketing goals, so remarketing traffic, like $20 CPA or under. This campaign's at a $5.78 CPA, so it's fantastic, killing it. What we see a lot of times with this campaign is people will see the Boom video, not remember the name of it, and then go search for skincare for older women or moisturizer for older women or something like that indicating hey, they probably still have the video or we know they saw the video because they're on the audience, and now they're going back to search. So we're capitalizing on them. Super, super, powerful.
Brett:
Let's talk about dynamic search ads. This is one of those, so we rarely see people using RLSAs for search and shopping. We also rarely see people using dynamic search ads. This is a great strategy for the holidays. So Rohit, do you want to talk through DSAs?
Rohit:
Yeah, 100%. So I actually wanted to add some context to DSAs as well. DSAs have been around from the first day I joined Google and as Brett mentioned, I don't really see DSAs as often, but I think over the last three to six months, our teams have identified that DSAs are performing really, really well. Have started, the client and we start seeing it in accounts. Very often, you will see that DSA is performing. Branded campaigns always perform the best performance. DSAs are somewhere very close to non brand. The fact that DSAs are actually driving traffic towards keywords that we haven't even thought about, gives you the additional traffic that we would've not gotten otherwise.
Rohit:
So I think 15% of the searches that come into Google are new every day. It is extremely hard for us to identify what kind of-
Brett:
Meaning 15% of the searches Google has never seen before, so brand new to Google.
Rohit:
People come up with new ways of searching and they're always coming up with new ideas of how to find the key products. We are always a step behind and trying think of those keywords proactively. So having DSAs actually helps you address those traffic and those search queries.
Rohit:
The other element is searches. So Google assistant has become very popular, so a lot of people are now asking questions to the assistant and those again are not the kind of queries that we think of or we add as keywords in our account. So searches, new queries, and if you have a very complex website, if you have thousands of SKUs, then again, it's sometimes it's very easy for us to miss out on a few keywords that you did not add to the account. It's possible that you got a new set of products that you have not created specific key words for. So, DSA helps you address all these key things. You basically just tell the system that, that with this one webpage, everything that is there is eligible to show ad. The system will create the ads for that and show them proactively so whenever people are using web searches or those queries that they never thought of.
Rohit:
So basically, what you are doing is you're future proofing your business. So as I said, things that you're not even thought about but people are still searching for it. So you don't want to let go of that. One of the things that I always tell my advertisers to do with DSAs is that, think about DSA as a catch-all strategy, which is going to inform your future strategies for your search campaign.
Rohit:
So you look at your DSA campaigns and you can look at the search terms report and you identify the spike, keywords that are converting really well. As things stand now, everything is automated but you could also choose to add those keywords in your campaigns and now you are proactively targeting thosekey words. You could set what bids you want to set, and things like that. So I always suggest, bring the best of DSA into your normal search campaigns, and then keep DSA running because it acts as a catch-all and brings you additional traffic that you will not known otherwise.
Rohit:
So DSA will, as I said, incremental search, you've already spoken about.. those products that you never thought about, those smaller products. So we don't have say, if you have accessories that you sell and you don't always add all the accessories as keywords, so it takes care of that long tail automation. It also increase your expansion because as I said, 15% searches are new, if you just apply that to every business then every business is technically losing out 15% of traffic every day. So it helps you expand further. The best part about DSA is that it's completely automated so all you have to do as I mentioned, is that you add the website pages, all the categories, there are different ways to target, and once you do that, the system will automatically create the ad and show them. So it's just completely hands-free and it helps to grow your busineses. There... . Yeah, so the kind of performance you see from DSAs, 15% more directly attributes to that 15% additional searches that are coming in. Rise 35% higher CPR on 30% lower CPA.
Rohit:
One thing that I do want to mention about DSA is that as I said, it's completely automated. In my experience working with Google, seven years ago if I came across an account that was using automation, especially if they're a small business, I would suggest them to move away from automation because it didn't really work that well back then. But over the last three, four years, automation has gotten supercharged. The kind of performance automation can drive, it's very, very difficult for us to humanly do that. I think that is what contributes to all these numbers that you are seeing. So even though there's 15% more, the CPRs are a lot higher and the CPAs are much lower because the kind of ads we are creating, the kind of customers we are finding, the kind of moments we are finding them in, has improved a lot significantly.
Brett:
We love DSAs. Most of the accounts we audit, most of the new accounts we take over are not using DSAs. It's often a quick win, and just like you said Rohit, there may be some areas of your site to build out an elaborate search campaign structure for certain products may not be worth the time, but using automation can totally be worth it. So DSA is definitely something to consider.
Brett:
Okay, let's talk about getting your bid strategy ready because we all know competition is about to ramp up as the shopping frenzy begins. So one thing that's really important to remember is, and we're big believers in automation as well. There was a period of time when we didn't like target return ad spend or target CPA, but both of those are amazing. I think if you run into someone who's telling you that Google's automated bid strategies don't work, then they have not tested it recently because over the last couple years it just crushed essentially anything else we can test. We've run that against some other top notch third party bid softwares and Google's software, or Google's bid automation wins. I think a lot of that is because Google's leveraging data that can't be made available to other people. That's part of the process. So, something to think about.
Brett:
We're going to enter into this period when conversion rates are going to spike. Buyer intent increases, everybody's shopping, they're looking to buy a gift. So if your conversion rate is going to increase 30% or more for a given window, so take the Cyber Five or if you're earlier in the month of November, whenever, that period. If you expect conversion rate to increase more than 30% then you may want to give the smart bid or the smart big algorithm a little help. So if the conversion rate increases less than 30%, all systems go, just use target ROAS or target CPA, and the system will get it. If you expect for the Cyber Five your conversion rate is going to increase 35%, you may want to make an actual adjustment.
Brett:
So the way to look at this is look at what the performance was like last year. What was your conversion rate during the Cyber Five last year? If it was maybe a 35% increase versus the previous period, then you want to go in and make a seasonal adjustment. So this is actually done in tools and settings and bid strategies. Then you can make a seasonal adjustment, but this can basically, what this does then is you can go in and tell the system, "Hey, from these dates, November whatever to December whatever, we expect an increase of X percent." So then that's going to allow the system to calibrate.
Brett:
Now, Rohit, do you want to speak a little bit about this also? This was more for short spikes, if the increase in conversion rate is longterm, for a month or more, then this is maybe not necessary. Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit?
Rohit:
So yeah, as Brett mentioned, that for the most part automation will take care of most of these things. The only portion that you need to focus on is the 30% plus increment. Even if it is for a longer duration, if it happens within three days, is when you need to put in a seasonal adjustment, but if it's happening over a period of say seven days or 10 days, then you may not need to do that because the system again, has the capability of taking that into account.
Rohit:
One other factor that I would also look at is, everything that we're talking about is within the Google ads ecosystem so you're seeing the data there, but businesses sometimes get a sense of things from other sources. It's possible that your Facebook sale are spiking, it's possible that just the number of orders coming in from various sources are spiking. So that is also an interesting insight to take into account, that if you're seeing that spike then you will probably start seeing that spike within the Google ads ecosystem too. That is the time that you want to go and proactively make that adjustment in the system to allow for it to accommodate for that 30% spike.
Brett:
Awesome. Let's talk about smart shopping. Smart shopping has been one of those interesting areas where again when it first came out, just being transparent, I wasn't a huge fan, but now my attitude is definitely changed towards smart shopping. There are definitely ways to use this. Rohit, why don't you dive into smart shopping and why it's so powerful?
Rohit:
Yeah, so smart shopping is basically our effort to try and simplify Google ads. We also have smart display and things like that, but smart shopping is specifically relevant because given the holiday season. So what we are seeing in terms of performance with smart shopping is that we've seen about a 30% improvement in conversion value over standard shopping campaigns. We're expecting a 30% further increment on top of that for the holiday season.
Rohit:
So smart shopping as I said, our automations have gotten a lot, lot, lot better. Just the amount of unknown in the market right now, smart shopping is going to be a very, very important player this holiday season and we are capitalizing on it.
Rohit:
So what you want to do is, when you set up your smart shopping campaign, there are some elements that you are in control of, which you want to set correctly. The rest the system takes care of. So the first thing is to choose the right bid strategy. If your goal is to drive more conversion than choose target CPA, if your goal is to drive higher conversion value, then choose maximize conversion value. So make sure that you have that right bid strategy selected when you set up the campaign.
Rohit:
The second thing is the budgets. The budgets as I mentioned earlier, is going to be a very, very, very key moment because usually we see a 30% spike year over year during the holiday season. This year, we're expecting 40%, 50% higher users wants to shop online, so that is going to have an incremental impact on that end. That is again, just an estimate. So make sure that you have right budgets set in the system, at the same time you want to have something in your back pocket that if you see good performance come in and your campaigns are getting limited by a budget, then you should be able to allocate more budgets to it.
Rohit:
Then setting the right targets. This again, goes back to what your goal is. Some customers might want to drive higher efficiency, where some customers may want to drive higher volume. So if you're trying to drive higher efficiency, then keep your target ROAS relatively higher place so that you can drive that performance, but if your goal is to drive volume and you're okay with a slightly lower ROAS. For example, a lot of clients that we talk to the ROAS number that we look at, the return on ad spend, does not take into account the volume. So if you were driving say 5,000 sales at 20 ROAS, it's possible that at 18 ROAS, which is lower, if you sell 10,000 you'll probably make more profit. So try to identify what that goal is, the volume versus efficiency plays is very important, and basis that you should set your ROAS and change it as and when you need it.
Rohit:
The target ROAS system within smart shopping does not require a time to accommodate. A lot of our automation takes a while for it to... it goes into a learning feature, and then it will eventually start performing but for smart shopping we don't need things like that. So if you see a change and if you want to make a change, make it and it should start getting impacted immediately.
Rohit:
The last thing, so I think this is an extremely, extremely interesting piece about smart shopping. That is -
Brett:
This is brand new too, this is yeah. You heard it first here, probably.
Rohit:
Yeah, this is so brand new that it's actually rolling out right now. I think probably about 10% accounts right now have it, but before holiday season this year, all accounts will have this. This will be in the setting section of your smart shopping campaign. So basically what this is saying is, I know for a fact that Boom has specific goals to drive new customer sales. A lot of our clients come to us and say that we want new customers. Now existing customers, yes, we want them but new customer is where we want Google ads to help us. So what this allows you, it allows you to put a premium on a new customer. When you do that, the system understands that you are willing to pay more to get new customers in the door, in which case it will accommodate for that. So every time it uses Google data, it uses your customer match data, third party data, to try and identify which customers are new, what is not. If a customer is new, then it will just be more competitive and it goes into the auction and therefore helps you win more new business.
Brett:
Yeah, and this is really powerful especially for business where you've got a clear idea of your lifetime value of a customer and you have a lot of reorders, repeat purchases where you can say... because usually the way Google shopping works is they're looking at that item someone's shopping for and is trying to achieve a return on ad spend for that item. But if you tell Google, "Hey, really, this is what a new shopper is worth." Then the system can be more competitive and more aggressive to reach that new shopper regardless of what product they're looking for. So I think for certain businesses, this will be amazing. So this is only available for smart shopping or only will be available. It's probably not in your account yet but it will be soon if you run smart shopping.
Brett:
Now, one thing I'll say to wrap up the smart shopping section as we move on is, if you have standard shopping that's just crushing it, there's a few ways we like to launch smart shopping that are low risk because when you launch smart shopping, it tries to field all the budget and it gets really greedy, which is fine. There's a way we can do it, it's too complex for this webinar, but that's something to talk to your AM and specialist team about or reach out to us if you're not an existing client. We can walk you through that, but smart shopping, lots of opportunities this holiday season, for sure.
Rohit:
To that point, Brett, smart shopping is actually proactively created in a way, it has the higher over standard shopping, so which is why it takes away all the traffic from standard shopping.
Brett:
Yup, yup, exactly. It prioritizes itself, which makes sense but you have to be ready and there's a way to launch smart shopping that we think is a little better that also mitigates any risks for you.
Brett:
All right, so number four, install a four-pronged remarketing structure. Now, I'm going to say this next part playfully. Your remarketing potentially sucks. You don't suck, we think you are awesome, we think your product is awesome, but it's possible, maybe even likely if you're not an OMG Commerce client or if you're not really astute with your remarketing efforts, that your remarketing efforts may be lacking. Our advice is, don't settle for anemic remarketing. So, what does this four-pronged remarketing approach look like?
Chris:
I like that slide too, Brett, because that vacuum cleaner looked like it sucked as well.
Brett:
Indeed. So what's going to make for a successful remarketing campaign? Right channels, right formats and right message, and right audience with proper segmentation. So let's break this down. So the right channels, so this is where the four prongs come into play. First channel I'm going to recommend that I bet a lot of you are missing, if you're an OMG Commerce client, then you either have this where it's on the roadmap. We always launch this, not always right out of the gate but we do launch it. So discovery ads, this is what discover ads could look like, these are some samples. On the left there, you've probably seen this if you've been on the YouTube app. Scroll into watch videos, that's the cutoff of the LaBrant family, that's what my kids always watch, but above that is an ad. So this is a display ad, but it's very prominent. When you're looking on your phone, man, it really jumps out at you. So this is actually for a digital marketing course, but when you see that ad, it's really hard to miss. So your product ad could be right there and you can run that as a remarketing ad.
Brett:
That ad in the middle, that's actually a look at Gmail. So Gmail is included in discovery, so as you run discovery ads, one of the placements is Gmail. That's for a Cannon camera, the EOS Rebel T8I. Then on the far right, that's in the Google app, the discovery app. So if you're on your phone and you've got the Google app here, that's where that ad could appear. So again, it really stands out, can really grab your attention. Discovery ads, if you're not running them, you absolutely need to be.
Brett:
Next, GDN. This is what most people think of when they think of remarketing, but unfortunately this is where also most people stop when they're thinking about remarketing. They just think GDM and they don't think beyond it. So with GDN, one thing you may be missing is you can actually run video ads inside GDN. So this is a quick look at a couple of Boom ads. These are both ads that appear on the Google display network. So these appear on blogs, news sites, any site that's part of Google display network. The one on the right is just a static, that's actually a responsive ad. The one on the left, that's one of the tab YouTube ads. So what this allows you to do is get some video placements outside of YouTube on the display network, but again, reaching your remarketing audiences. For this particular campaign, that YouTube ad again, showing on the display network was one of their top performing assets.
Brett:
So that's a piece that a lot of people are missing. You're probably running GDN ads, hopefully you're running responsive ads, if not, you should be. If you're not testing your video ads, you should be doing that as well.
Brett:
All right, next piece is YouTube. So we got discovery, we got GDN, we got YouTube. So run remarketing on YouTube. The one on the left there, that's Live Bearded, and you can see the bearded man there is delighting his girlfriend or whoever that is, but this is more of a true view for action type ad where you're encouraging people to click on the link and go shop the product. The one on the right, that's Original Grain and that's a preview, this is in the Google ads preview interface so obviously the ad doesn't look exactly like that but this is what's called true view for shopping. This is where we like to run true view for shopping is for remarketing. So this was an awesome video that tells the story of Original Grain. Then next to it would be actual shopping ads. So your actual Google shopping or your PLAs, they would show up right next to that video. This is really powerful. So if I'm already familiar with the brand, now I'm being reminded about the brand and I've got products right there by the video that I can click on and start shopping. So true view for shopping is very powerful for remarketing.
Brett:
Then the fourth area, so again, our four-prong remarketing, is choose Gmail. Now, I mentioned that discovery ads also include Gmail, but we like to set up specific Gmail campaigns as well. So this just ensures we're getting great delivery on Gmail and then the ads are a little bit different. So we like to run both, but this is what ads can look like. Again, this Boom. That view there on the right, that's what the ad looks like if you click on the email. So these ads show up like emails, they show up like emails in your inbox or in your promotions tab. Then as you open it up, it can be a combination of images and videos.
Brett:
We found that for discover in Gmail, we're often seeing CPAs 30% to 50% lower than standard GDN ads. So that's just our client data, but that's what we're seeing. So and I think a lot of that is because it's novel, it's new. Those discovery ads on YouTube, the Gmail ads on Gmail, they really stand out and they captures attention. So we're seeing CPAs 30% to 50% lower with those channels, if you're not using them, you got to be using them for retargeting. So highly recommend that.
Rohit:
I have something there. So I agree with you there, Brett, but lots of clients don't really use discovery in Gmail, which probably makes it cheaper, but at the same time these are all ads that show up on Google properties. I do believe that people who are on Google probably like YouTube, Gmail, et cetera, they are more engaged than people on all of the internet. So which is why I feel like we see better performance and discovery in Gmail too. So 100% you should have the ..
Brett:
Totally, totally agree. Just like with most of these, now is the time to get these going and get these ramped up so that you've already got data, you've already got a little history in these campaigns. Then when Q4 hits, you're ready to just pour gas on the fire. This is what these ads look like, so this is an ad we created for people that have purchase Live Bearded but not in a while. So the subject line in the email is, we miss you, brother. Then so come on back. Once you open the email, again, it shows up like an email, that's what it looks like on unopened. Then when you open it, it is an email but it's an ad. So these are extremely powerful.
Brett:
So what lists should we target? Viewed video audiences? We talk about that, if you've got an elaborate top of funnel YouTube strategy, build those viewed video audiences, and then target those people in discovery, GDN, YouTube, and Gmail. Product detail page viewers, so people that get to the product detail page level of your site, they're shopping aggressively. Build an audience around those people. Cart abandoners, someone's gotten that far in the shopping process, they abandon cart. Man, you want to win them back. Again, hit them in all four of those areas.
Brett:
If you don't have a ton of visitors or if your PDP viewers are cart abandoners, audiences are not huge, then we recommend all visitors. Just target all visitors and exclude previous buyers in that particular audience. Then depending on what your product makeup is, maybe you want to target previous buyers as well. Someone like Boom, someone like Live Bearded, they do that all the time. We either create a bot X not Y campaign. I bought the moisturizer not the mascara, or I bought the beard butter not the lotion. So then we're going to promote the product that they have not purchased. So those are the audiences you need to look at building, starting building them now, populating those lists now, making them robust, and dialing in these campaigns so you really leverage them later.
Brett:
All right, number five. Fifth way to dominate the Cyber Five. We are admittedly biased. We love YouTube, that's been an area of focus for agency for the last three plus years. Last couple years even more so, but we believe in the power of top of funnel YouTube, specifically for eCommerce. If you want to run YouTube during the holiday shopping season, which we've seen this year in and year out where once we get into November and buyer intent goes up, YouTube can work great then. It works especially great if you have remarketing audiences and viewed video audiences, but if you want to run top of funnel YouTube, get it dialed in now. Test now, full throttle later.
Brett:
So a couple of just quick things. 70% of shoppers say they're willing to learn about products on YouTube directly from brands. So like we talked about before, people are open to new brand ideas. Brand loyalty is at an all time low, and we're willing for the source of information, the source of truth, we're willing for that to be the brand itself. We may take it with a grain of salt, but we're willing to learn from a brand. YouTube is just exploding, it's the world's second largest website and the world's second largest search engine. Both of those stats are right behind Google itself, Google is number one in both those categories. So YouTube is a huge opportunity.
Brett:
We recommend as you're getting started, I mentioned what's called true view for shopping a minute ago, that's the true view ad with the shopping PLAs next to it. For cold traffic, we like true view for action. So that's these pre roll videos, here's a couple samples. So you go to YouTube, you're watching a video, this is the pre roll ad that pops up. These are the calls to action, you got the call to action on the lower left and in the upper right. This is where you can bid on a CPA basis, so a target cost per acquisition basis. We recommend starting with this ad type.
Brett:
What we've seen, and again, since the stay at home orders, lockdowns, even since those have been lifted, the return, the number of conversions that advertisers are seeing on these true view for action campaigns has gone up. So between March and April, true view for action campaigns saw 31% more conversions. I talked about this a little bit before, since we did that big event at the YouTube LA offices, which we do plan on another teaser. When the world opens up again, who knows when that will be, late next year, something, I don't know. We will have you all back to a Google office and do an event, we don't know when. That was one of the immediate questions we got after that LA event is, "Hey, when are you going to do Chicago or New York?" The answer to that was, we don't know but we will at some point. All of our launches since that event have been really strong and we've seen scale and performance, which has been great.
Brett:
Is there something you were going to add to that, Rohit?
Rohit:
Yeah, I just want to... everything they asked because the lockdown and everything, but I just want to quickly break down what true view for action is. The true view that you mentioned is pre roll, so the users have to option to skip the ad, which I think helps improve the performance. The true view for action part is I think what is also contributing a lot to the 30% number. We as Google have worked very hard over the last two years to create an ad format that actually helps drive conversions. Like Brett showed in the different screenshots, when that ad gets over, it just covers the whole screen and just sits there from five to seven seconds. I think the fact they created an action specifically to drive conversions is also contributing to this. So you may have tried YouTube in the past, but if you haven't in the last couple of years, then I 100% suggest true view for action is the way to go.
Brett:
Yup, absolutely. We started experimenting with YouTube prior to true view for action, and once true view for action hit, results really went up. It's been awesome.
Brett:
So, let's talk about one of the audience types that we recommend you start with. This is one of our favorite audience types, it always has been, especially when we're launching new accounts, so new to YouTube advertisers. We like starting with custom intent. So what is custom intent? Custom intent is taking someone's Google search behaviors, so what are they typing in? What products are they searching for? What problems are they searching for solutions for? What are they looking for on Google? Let's target them on YouTube. So we build a list of search terms, terms that people are searching for on Google, then we target them the next time they're on YouTube.
Brett:
What's interesting, and if you're in an advanced YouTube user, here's a brand new thing. I think this was, we can announce this right, Rohit?
Rohit:
Yeah.
Brett:
The increased targeting? Yeah, so I think this just happened yesterday I think is when it became official. We started noticing though, we started noticing a couple months ago, custom intent audiences used to be very efficient, very targeted, but we couldn't really get them to scale. They'd spend some money but we couldn't get them to scale. A few months ago, we started seeing some of these campaigns scaling. Some of these audiences spending $3,000 a day, $6,000 a day profitably. Really scaling. So then Rohit informed us yesterday was, it was officially announced that now Google is not only taking searched conducted on Google.com, but searches made on YouTube. So now, you give Google a list of these search terms that you want to target and they're going to build an audience of people that have searched those search terms on Google and on YouTube. So this really expands it, opens it up. It's actually the first time you've been able to target actual search queries on YouTube. So super powerful, you got to try this audience type if you have not, or if you're an advanced advertiser, you've looked at custom intent in the past and it just didn't scale for you or whatever, re-look at it because it's working.
Rohit:
I just want to add, so Brett mentioned towards the end that is the first time we are being able to target actual search query. So it's not just actual search query, actual people searching for actual search query, as opposed to in the past it was contextual. So it'd be a bucket of people looking for a bucket of things, but now it's actual people searching for. So if you add a particular key word in your custom intent audience, they'll find all people who searched for that exact search term. That I think creates that specificity of who I want to reach out to, than being contextual, which plugs in a lot of other factors which I don't want in my advertising.
Brett:
Yeah, and it's so awesome because now you can get really specific and you can target people looking for something very related to your products, or maybe someone's even shopping your competitors or something. You can use that type of keyword, but then you can also get creative and think, okay, well what could someone be searching for that's related to my product? Or, what could they be searching for maybe just before they would buy a product like mine? We have some clients that sell fun things to do around the home like games and activities and stuff. So there could be people searching for staycation ideas or fun things to do with the family, or whatever. They're not looking for your specific product but they're looking for ideas and suggestions. So you can get really creative with these audiences, we love them. They're not the only audience type, there are lots and lots of audiences we recommend you test. We have a progression we like to walk our clients through, but this is a great place to start. So custom intent, definitely check it out.
Brett:
A couple of other things related to YouTube top of funnel. Definitely consider that YouTube is a real shopping destination. It really influences shopping. Now a third of all shoppers say they've purchased something that they discovered on YouTube, either through YouTube ads or YouTube organic. So it is influencing actual product purchases, so keep that in mind.
Brett:
Then really the way we like to use it and we've talked about both of these on this presentation, but we do use YouTube for top of funnel reaching brand new shoppers at scale, so reaching the right person with the right message at the right time, based on our audience targeting, but then also using it for remarketing. So really, those two things, if you leverage YouTube in the right way, it can be extremely, extremely powerful for your business. Okay?
Brett:
So, we're going to open it up to questions here in just a second, but a couple of quick testimonials. So Boom, I mentioned this went from nonexistent to now one of their top channels. Live Bearded, same type of thing. They were doing well with Google but we were able to grow revenue 78%, while increasing ad spend only 56%, and made YouTube a viable channel for them.
Brett:
So let's open it up to questions, guys. Let's see what is in the chat and let's also open it up. So any question related to anything we talked about. You also have someone from Google on the webinar, so any Google related question, feel free to fire away. Do we have anything yet, Chris?
Chris:
Not anything that has already been answered.
Brett:
Okay, cool. So other thoughts as we wrap a bow on what we've talked about so far. Other thoughts, Chris and or Rohit, while we wait on any potential questions to come in?
Rohit:
I just want to share with you my perspective of what this year's holiday season is going to be like. Every client that I have spoken to, I had mentioned to them that this is an unprecedented opportunity for them. There are a lot of people who have never shopped online who are going online for the first time. A lot of these people are not going to go back to the store because shopping online has been convenient. So just think about that and think about your strategy, which is why I was saying earlier that we just need to be nimble and prepared for everything that might be getting thrown at us. There are multiple factors that could play into the virus itself, the vaccination for that, the stimulus checks, so there are a lot of factors to be played, so things will change very quickly. Be nimble, be quick, and have that budget and the plans.
Chris:
I think one thing that I would share, I don't think this was mentioned, Brett, but we have seen over the last several years of running Q4 holiday campaigns is that Q4 is becoming earlier and earlier for holiday advertising. I think that the early birds who focus on holiday promotions early and position it that way are going to win. I think winning can mean from an auction standpoint, but it also can be from just as simply as shipping and fulfillment standpoint.
Chris:
This is very anecdotal, but I've got a buddy of mine who works for UPS. I won't say who it is, but he posted a picture that he sent to me showing the inside of his truck. He said that they are completely at capacity, many days of the week right now and they have no idea how they're going to handle fourth quarter. Then you look at the mess in the postal service right now. Those of you that get out early are going to take advantage of at least the amount of capacity that's in the system. Hopefully, we don't have those kinds of issues, but I think it'd be wise to consider your actual timing here.
Brett:
Yeah, we were at a little back to school event and I was talking to one of the other dads who works for UPS and he said they're all working 12 hour days right now. So everybody's at capacity, so it's going to get worse as we get into holiday. There's just not that much extra capacity that can drawn upon from the existing system. You can't build out that infrastructure at will. So it's going to be interesting, it's going to be interesting. You do want to start early for sure.
Chris:
Brett, Isaac asks, are there any ways that strategy should or could change between the period through Cyber Five, and the period between then and Christmas? Does buying intent or behavior change at least in a typical year that's not 2020?
Brett:
Yeah, so it's really interesting. A lot of times we'll see right before the Cyber Five, so a few days before the Cyber Five, buying actually decreases a little bit. Conversion rate can decrease a little bit because if you're a few days away, some people are like, eh, I'll wait and then buy when there's likely to be a deal. So right before it we'll see conversion rate decrease. Then of course Cyber Five is always amazing. Then right after the Cyber Five, again, once your deals go away, then there's often a little bit of a dip. Then there's another spike as we get closer to last day to ship. Now, historically that's been anywhere from the 17th to the 22nd for some merchants. This year, who knows? That could be the 10th for some people. So I think that is one thing you definitely need to be prepared for, is last day to ship type promotions and messaging.
Brett:
But I think you also have to look at, hey, there may be some people that are just late to shop and they know they're not going to get it in time but they still got to buy something. So I think there's still going to be some shopping that even extends beyond that last day to ship, but you got to be prepared with that as well. So yeah, and we've mentioned multiple, multiple times on the webinar, but it's likely all are going to start earlier. So you can take your existing calendar and shift that forward two to four weeks, potentially, that could be possible. So my advice, and Rohit alluded to this as well, get your ads ready sooner, maybe even way sooner than you think you'll need them because you may need to pivot and say, "Hey, when we were planning on running these last day to ship ads, like the 15th through the 19th, we need to run them the 7th through the 10th." Have that stuff ready now so you can run it when appropriate.
Chris:
Brett, there's one additional question that I thought you might be able to answer there. It's from Carrie, and do you need to enable dynamic remarketing in the Google merchants center in order to set up the dynamic ads that we talked about earlier?
Brett:
So the ads, I'm really glad she brought that up. That's something I didn't really talk about much in the remarketing approach. That is another remarketing type that we like to run. It often works great, so for those that don't know, dynamic remarketing is where if everything's set up properly, Google will populate the remarketing ad with products from your feed. So your shopping feed, your product feed that's in merchant center. Google will populate the ad with products from that feed based on what someone actually shopped for, based on what someone actually viewed on your site, if everything's set up properly. Some of your tags are off, then the system will get it wrong, but that's called dynamic remarketing. So yeah, that takes proper setup in merchant center, and then enabling it in Google ads.
Brett:
What I showed was actually responsive ads, which people get confused between those two all the time. Responsive just means where we're giving Google some images, some headlines, some descriptions, and then they're mixing and matching to build an ad for a size that's available online. So to fit online at a proper size. So responsive ads, we recommend everybody run. We do like to test dynamic remarketing a lot but yeah, that takes proper setup in merchant center, and then enabling it in Google ads. Anything you would add to dynamic remarketing, Rohit?
Rohit:
Yeah, and the tag. The fact that you pass all the right information to the tag. The tag setup is generally where I see a lot of remarketing ads fail because the website is not transferring the data that we need it to. So as long as you have all that set up correctly, dynamic... you've probably seen it so many times, slice some here to there. Something that you searched for a week ago follows you around on the internet. So that's what dynamic remarketing will do for you.
Brett:
Fantastic. So a couple of quick things and we'll give it just another minute to see if any other questions come in. If you are an existing OMG Commerce client, we've been meeting multiple, multiple times, account managers, specialists, our strategist, the whole team, talking through holiday strategies. So this is something we've been proactively thinking about, talking about, planning, for some time. We're working on plans for you, we're talked about it with you, so good things are in store there.
Brett:
If you're not an OMG Commerce client, we're happy to chat with you, offer a complimentary audit and review for you. We are filling up, our wait time, it's a little bit right now but still, would love to chat with you and give you a complimentary audit. That's something we can do relatively quickly. You'll likely be talking to Chris in that process.
Brett:
So, with that, do we have any other questions at this point, Chris?
Chris:
Nope, I think that's pretty much a wrap.
Brett:
Awesome. Chris, thank you for joining. Thanks for chiming in, manning the chat, doing what you do. Rohit, thank you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and insights and being available to us. Really appreciate all you do for OMG Commerce and for our clients. To all of you tuned in, man, thank you for watching. I know that it's hard to carve out time, and carve out 80 to 90 minutes of your time. We really appreciate it. We know that that is a sacrifice. Hopefully this helps, we want to make this the most successful holiday season you've had. This replay will be made available along with some links and resources and a blog post that goes with this. That'll be coming to you shortly. With that, we really appreciate it, and best of luck to you this holiday season. Talk to you soon.
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