Week 6: Google’s Shopping Campaigns Transition Recap

Google has announced that all retailers have until late August to transition their current Product Listing Ad (PLA) campaigns to the recently released Shopping campaigns format. After the transition date, Google will automatically force all remaining PLA campaigns into the new format without optimization or input from the retailer. Join us here each week for our ongoing Shape Up Your Shopping Campaigns series, as we count down to August and help you prepare for the switch. Be sure to email us at marketing@channeladvisor.com with any questions you have along the way.

So six weeks into the transition prep — how’s it going? All done shaping up? Or maybe you’re just getting started? At the halfway point in our ten-week journey, it’s a good time to stop and review what you’ve done over the past five weeks. Before going further, make sure you’re on the right track for the healthiest Shopping campaigns possible.

The checklist below recaps all the important steps so far. How are you shaping up?

Week 1: Educate Yourself

Learn all you can about Google’s Shopping campaigns with our bundle of resources below.

Watch the recorded webinar with Google that explains the transition in depth

 Follow up by reading the webinar recap

 Check out the first blog post in this Shopping campaigns series

Week 2: Organize Feed

The first step in preparing your existing PLAs for the makeover is to ensure that all information under your category headings is complete and accurate. Focusing on the organisation of your feed will help you make the most of your new campaigns.

 Re-evaluate your segmentation to take advantage of the better granularity

 Set up granular bidding to make sure your feed isn’t missing important attributes

 Create custom labels in your feed if the standard attributes aren’t sufficient

Week 3: Develop Campaign Structure

A healthy foundation is key for future success. Fill in any missing information and set the stage for upcoming successful campaigns.

 organise your campaign based on how your customers search for your products online

 Prioritize products within your existing PLA campaigns

 Build your basic campaign structure in a spreadsheet pivot table to experiment with the order of granular layers

Week 4: Build Campaigns with the Product Group Generator

Now that you’re organised and have mapped out your structure, build your campaigns with the ChannelAdvisor Product Group Generator — which, in an internal test, structured a campaign 37 times faster than building it manually.

 Set up your new campaign in AdWords, choosing ‘Shopping campaigns’ as the campaign type

 Use the Product Group Template to assign a global order to your segment levels

 Use the Product Group Template to choose appropriate attributes

 Assign a default bid

 Repeat steps of assigning attributes and bid levels until you reach the level of detail you want

Week 5: Begin Testing

To know what’s working and what’s not, allow time to compare the performance of your old campaigns to your new Shopping campaigns. Carving out time to test is vital for your campaigns’ long-term health.

 Select three to five ad groups from your new Shopping campaign, preferably ones that performed well under the previous structure

 Keep old ad groups and campaigns live, as they serve as a metric benchmark

 Pause all newly created Shopping campaigns except for the ad groups you selected for testing

 Keep the cost per click (CPC) of those chosen campaigns the same as your old PLA groups

 Pay attention to conversion rate as well as to new queries that may be hindering it

 Let the test campaigns run for 10-14 days to gather enough data

Be sure to check back next Monday for details on examining the performance of your test campaigns. Until then, use this Shape Up Your Shopping Roadmap to help keep track of your progress.

And as always, if you have questions, feel free to email us at marketing@channeladvisor.com and we’ll do our best to incorporate the answers in future blog posts.