There are many challenges faced by the modern day marketeer, on the battlefield that is e-commerce. With the role of the internet increasingly becoming the main place where customers and brands connect getting yourself noticed can be quite a daunting task. The constant tidal wave of information suggesting where you ‘should’ be marketing on such as Social media, Google and Bing just to name a few, with that no clear guidance as to how or what to do to get the most out of these platforms but that's where we step in.
Within this blog we aim to outline 5 opportunities 2020 marketeers can take advantage of to further their eCommerce marketing plans & website designs and aim to change the way your brand interacts with its online customer base and help you formulate your ecommerce strategy for success.
So what are these areas and how can I use them?
- Smart Display…
- Dynamic Search ads…
- Responsive Search ads…
- Automated Bidding...
- ECommerce Marketing Strategy & Planning...
Smart Display & Ecommerce
So first on our list is the role of Smart Display campaigns.
So what are Smart Display Ads? Well smart display campaigns are a way of a marketeer optimising and automating the campaigns bidding and ads powered by Google's machine learning by automatically identifying, personalising and setting the right bids to increase the chance of prospective customers converting through the campaign.
‘’Why should i use them?’’ I hear you ask. Well on average marketeers who used smart display saw a 20% increase to their total conversions (that's pretty good). This can be largely attributed to the personalised approach that smart display ads offer. Being one of Googles ‘newer’ features it appeals directly to one of marketing's biggest trends when looking at how 21st century consumers interact with brands. This being the increased importance of brand participation, this concept suggests that rather than customers only wanting to buy goods and services they make their decisions based on much larger multitude of factors associated to that brand elements such as the way the brand approaches its corporate social responsibility (CSR) the way it handles its customers and its social image where in the past it used to be a very detached relationship now in our predominantly e-commerce focused society customers have become very attached to brands and the images they portray.
You might be wondering how I can use this in my business's paid ecommerce search strategy? Well it is quite simple by using smart display in tandem with both search, shopping and social media content strategies you are able to increase the frequency of how regularly people in your target demographic interact with your content thus building trust between you and your target customers and guiding them effectively through the marketing funnel to eventually become revenue generating assets and if done well keeping them loyal to your brand increasing their long term value to the organisation.
Dynamic Search ads & Ecommerce
Secondly we will explore how 2020 marketing has evolved and the role that dynamic search ads will play in the final months of 2020 leading into 2021.
Before we begin that though its important to answer the question of ‘’What is a dynamic search ad’’. Dynamic search ads are Google’s way of connecting you with customers who are searching for precisely what you are offering. The way Google does this is through crawling your ecommerce website and building ads using your website's content this allows marketeers even those with well managed and long established ad words accounts to ensure that they do not miss out on relevant searches. Not only this but it also allows for ad copy to remain current and relevant as well maintained websites will reap the rewards as things such as offers and flash sales within moments of being finalised on the website can be added to hyper relevant ad copy generated by Google.
Now how can this be an asset to my business? I hear you ask. Well in short it is a way to stay ahead of the curve by being open to a wider range of relevant searches allowing your brand to rank highly and bid effectively ahead of the competition. This can be especially valuable as trends in 21st century e-commerce can come and go in the blink of an eye and by the time the competition has moved to take advantage of the week's latest trends the early adopters have made the money and the bubbles burst and you have missed out.
Although these may seem daunting to manage as you have less control over what your ads are showing for due to the automated nature of Display search campaigns you will be happy to know that similar to search campaigns they have the same level of interactivity between you and the campaign so minor adjustments can be made reactively to data as and when it comes in such as negative keywords and location specific targeting should the need arise.
Responsive Search ads & Ecommerce
As we stay cresting the wave that is Google ad words and aim to stay ahead of the curve and ontop of all the new features one of the most effective new features added to Google adwords through 2020 is the Responsive Search Ad.
Now the responsive search ad you might think this sounds similar to the dynamic search ad? This is infact untrue so let's dive into the responsive search ad and explore what it actually is.
Responsive search ads allow the marketeer to create an ad that adapts to show more or less text, more relevant messages to the right customers. The way this is done is through the entry of multiple headlines and descriptions and over time using Google’s high level AI it will be able to analyse each different combination of headlines and description and understand what performs best, with this information the ads will then be shown in the best combination they have experienced in hyper relevant ways to relevant searches aiming to satisfy a customers individual need as and when requested. The effectiveness of which is vastly underestimated as people who are searching for specific problems are six times more likely to engage with content that has been personalised. To us that is a no brainer!
Automated Bidding & Ecommerce
As the robots slowly begin to take over and things such as automation and AI become more and more relevant in 21st century business these developments have played into the hands of the markateers who are now grinning from ear to ear. Why you ask? Well with increased automation and the development of smarter and smarter AI solutions it gives us marketing professionals more options!
One of these options that has come to the forefront of Paid advertising especially in the e-commerce space is the role played by Automated Bidding strategies. Now to answer the question ‘’What is an automated bidding strategy?’’, Automated bidding is the method of taking the heavy lifting and guesswork of guessing and setting specific bids off your shoulders and laying it on the shoulders of Google’s AI to help you meet your performance goals. The approaches taken by google can be broken down into six different approaches.
- Maximise Clicks - This approach automatically sets bids to help get as many clicks as your budget allows.
- Target Impression Share - This approach automatically sets bids with the goal of showing your ads in poll position number 1.
- Target CPA - Automatically sets bids to help get as many conversions as possible.
- Target ROAS - Automatically set bids to help get as much conversion value as possible at the target return on ad spend that is set on the campaign.
- Maximise Conversions - This approach adopts an automatic bidding strategy to help you get the most conversions whilst spending your budget.
- Maximise Conversion Value - Automatically set bids to help you get the most conversion value for your campaign whilst also spending your allocated budget.
These automated bidding strategies can be individually applied to campaigns where you might think they’re best utilised. If you are still scratching your head and struggling to know where to apply each approach then Google has the perfect strategy for you in one of their newest updates to date. This comes in the form of ‘Smart Bidding’.
Smart bidding is Google's new conversion-based bid strategy incorporating : Target CPA, ROAS and Enhanced CPC in parallel with their machine learning to help tailor the right bid to each and every auction factoring in factors such as the Time of the auction, Device, Location, Time of day, Remarketing list, Language and Operating system. This allows Google to capture the unique parameters of each and every search and take the pressure off you to make the right decision and instead entrust the data driven algorithms within Google’s ad platform.
Ecommerce Marketing Strategy & Ecommerce
Plan...Plan...Plan and plan some more.
As with all things without a plan the chances that things go well it is slim. It has been said that without proper planning and preparation you fall into the old trap of ‘’fail to prepare, prepare to fail’’. This is why especially here at Bidmark we think that planning is the first and only step that is essential to the success of any and all things digital marketing, this is even more true when applied to the context of E-commerce.
Why is planning so important you might think? Well without a clear roadmap of where to go and how to get there you can fall into the trap of allocating too much time into things that ultimately will not get you to your goal. This is particularly true with paid search and digital marketing as a whole, an industry where you could spend 5 minutes managing the account two hours later you are behind and panicked and begin to rush.
Planning an ecommerce strategy can be the difference between an effective ecommerce strategy or a complete flop that ultimately wastes not only your time but the time of your customers and could lead to a sour taste in their mouth. So it is an essential part to any successful ecommerce strategy.
How can you formulate your company's strategy…
- Determine who you are!
- Identify what's important!
- Determine what you want to achieve!
- Who is responsible for it!
- Review!
With these in mind you can effectively map out key areas for the success of your ecommerce strategy.
Final thoughts
Looking forward to the future of digital marketing it is impossible to ignore the rise of automation and the ever increasing role that AI will play. Rather than resist it like so many do wondering what life would be like if things just stayed the same, organisations should embrace the change and understand how they can harness it to help improve their digital marketing. Why not try and implement some of these ideas into your ecommerce marketing strategy or alternatively bring on the Bidmark boffins onboard to talk about how these could help your business.
