3 Action Items for Google Shopping To Take Before The Holidays

Andy Splichal  0:52  

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichal. And today's topic is three action items for Google Shopping to take before the holidays. Now the last week's podcast has featured a bunch of interviews in case you missed any of these, these episodes, have been able to feature quite a few of just incredible guest. Some of these guests have spoken on the mindset of business owners. Those interviews included Steve Sims, the author of Blue Fishing: the Art of Making Things Happen, and Michael Levine, the man who was dubbed America's branding expert by CNN. These were both fantastic episodes, as those experts brought their fresh opinions and missed her ever changing world on what we should be doing with mindset concerning being business owners today. In addition, other recent podcast have included guests that have brought different tools for ecommerce businesses. From Chris Schelzi of App Sumo to Anthony Confrancesco of Pickfu to Stephen Carl of Needle Movement and Don syncovich of Dom syncovich.com. Each of these different guests have introduced useful tools for the upcoming holiday shopping season. In fact, I think each one of these guests had a special offer for listeners near the end of each episode. Therefore, if you're searching for ways to help increase conversion rates over the next few months, I'd encourage you to go back and and listen to those episodes. Now on today's episode, however, I am not having a guest. Instead, what I'm going to do is a little bit more technical, and I'm going to dive into what you should be doing regarding your Google Shopping campaigns before the holiday shopping madness kicks in kicks into high gear. If you're not using Google Shopping and have an e-commerce Store, my question would be why not? Google Shopping continues to consistently deliver the highest ROI of any marketing channel for my private clients. If you are not using Google Shopping because you think that it is too complicated, that I have resources to allow you to get started before the holiday crush. For my newest book Make Each Click Count using Google Shopping available at www.makeeachclickcount.com or available on Amazon. To my Google Shopping simplified course available to members of the Academy of Internet Marketing. I can show you exactly step by step how to properly configure and optimize your Google Shopping. For those of you who are using Google Shopping, today's episode is going to discuss the three things that I'm doing for each and every one of my private clients accounts in order to properly prepare Google Shopping campaigns for the upcoming holiday shopping season. Look. As we enter the final months of 2020 many of our standard holiday traditions they remain in limbo. Last week, the number of children trick or treating here in Pasadena was about 10% of normal. Usually there are between four to 500 100 children four to 500 children that come knocking in search of candy this year only about 25. Likewise, Thanksgiving with extended family also is in peril. And my children's role in this year's Christmas pageant is anything from certain. However, for those of us that are involved in E commerce one tradition is upon us that is vitally important that we get it right. It's preparing our marketing for the holidays. In 2019, online shopping accounted for approximately 15% of all holiday shopping in 2020 due to COVID this number could skyrocket skyrocket to around 50% of all holiday shopping 50% That would be incredible for us in ecommerce. It would be amazing the yearly increase and it's going to stress many ecommerce companies to their absolute limits. I can foresee problems arise isn't due to inventory order fulfillment, and general shipping delays. However, I also see huge opportunities for those who are ready for the holiday rush with both their operation and their advertising to generate sales at levels never before realized.

Anything is but normal does here. Amazon held their annual Amazon day in October. Black Friday sales are starting right now in early November. And General holiday shopping season, it's going to be fast, it's going to be furious as companies try to recruit from a turbulent 2020. The question you should answer is what are you doing to prepare your Google Shopping campaigns and will you be prepared for the holiday shopping season? The good news is that you still have time, although it is growing short, but there is still time for you to properly prepare your Google Shopping. Here are the top three action items to get your Google Shopping campaigns ready for the holiday season. Number one, review your Google Merchant Center. Number two, identify your best sellers and how you are advertising them. Number three, review last year's data and discover some lessons. So number one, reviewing your Google Merchant Center. Now within an article on my blog, there gonna be no Google Shopping without Google Merchant Center, I discussed the importance of Google Merchant Center. Not only do you need to have your products approved before they're eligible to appear. Best practices also suggest that you format your data with a purpose before you begin to advertise. Now, if you have been running ads already on Google Shopping campaigns, you're probably quite aware of all this. Most likely you have spent the time formatting your data with custom labels. Likewise, hopefully you have already worked on your product titles and how they appear for Google Shopping listings. And you have formatted the other important attributes that make up Google Shopping product listings. So they're to your liking. However, when was the last time you have reviewed your Google Merchant Center for many of my E commerce advertisers, checking Google Merchant Center sometimes gets pushed into the back burner of importance. Maybe it's because that is not where the ad bidding is controlled. And most of the data collected in Merchant Center can also be accessed or other locations, such as your Google Ads account. However, Google is always reviewing Merchant Center listings inside Merchant Center, and they will disapprove product listings for a variety of reasons. If your products are disapproved, and you are not aware of it, you may go days, weeks, or even months with products not running within Google Merchant Center. And if this happens, for one or two of your best selling products during the holidays, well, best not to find out. Here are the steps to review which items if any are being disapproved inside your Merchant Center. One, you log into your Google Merchant Center. Two, you click on Products and the left hand menu and three select diagnostics. The diagnostic section of your Google Merchant Center will show you any items that are currently being disapproved within the item issue section. Within this section, advertisers can discover both which items may be disapproved, as well as the reason why for their disapproval. In addition, if there are any issues with the feed or the account, these issues will also be listed within the diagnostic section of your Merchant Center. For my private clients, I typically review diagnostic section of merchant centers every two weeks. However, during the holidays, I recommend that you look at reviewing this weekly or even daily if you have products that are prone to disapprovals. Remember that even after you fix a disapproval, it could take Google up to 72 hours to re approve an item. Those can be valuable delays during the holidays. So you will want to make sure you are keeping a close eye monitoring any disapprovals. Number two, you want to identify your best sellers. And you have been selling your products throughout the year. And now you're armed with the data to make decisions on how to best advertise your best selling products during the busiest shopping period of the year. And Google Shopping I find the 8020 rule is very much alive in most accounts. This rule says that 20% of your products generates 80% of your revenue. And what is your 20%> Once you identify which of your 20% is driving the bulk of your sales, you will want to make sure that you're advertising these products within Google Shopping at optimal levels. First, make sure that these products are not being disapproved by reviewing the Google Merchant Center as we just discussed. Second, make sure your best selling products are appearing when and where they should. Something that I like to do for important items is review as a shopper would open an incognito window using Google Chrome and search for the keywords that you identify in your search terms report is triggering your products to appear. For those of you that might no not know and incognito window, it's a browser window, it doesn't contain any of your past browsing history. So I recommend searching for your products this way. So the results that you see aren't skewed by your past browser history. Now to open an incognito window, right click on Chrome and choose incognito window, and then proceed as normal. Now mind you, when you're looking at your products, don't click on them when you're reviewing because that will cost you but do pay attention on how your products appear in relation to your competitors. How does your pricing compare? How do your images compare? How does the title compare? Are there any things such as reviews that your competitors have that you don't? You want to be able to identify anything you can do now, to make your listing stronger and provide higher click through rates before the holiday shopping season begins in earnest. Number three is review last year's data and discover lessons. So I teach quite a bit. In my latest book Make Each Click Count using Google Shopping and within my blog blog dot true online presence DICOM about creating a profitable report profitability report. By generating a profitability report, advertisers can naturally increase their bids for profitable items in Google Shopping, while decreasing bids for items that are not profitable. If you run on a consistent basis, this strategy allows advertisers to seamlessly raise and lower bids to optimal level based on account data. However, the issue with this strategy is that it's a bit reactive being reliant on sales data, as well as how often it is implemented. Therefore, for hot holiday selling items, you're 20%. By the time you increase your bids to optimal levels for the season, you may have missed quite a bit of sales potential. So in order to adapt what I like to do for my private client accounts, where I see a significant spike in q4 sales, is to go back to last year's holiday season for the data. Typically, I create a profitability report for the last 30 days. Instead, what I do is I create a profitability report from 2019 from Black Friday, through the last shipping day before Christmas, usually around the 21st of December. By running a profitability report for last year Q4 holiday shopping season, I will be able to start the holiday shopping season this year, with product bids already at the bid levels that they were last year. By starting the bid levels at that point, you will have a jumpstart on your competitors during the early part of the holiday shopping season. Now for more information on running the profitability report, read chapter 12 from Make Each Click Count using Google Shopping or you can review my article on my blog effective li optimizing Google Shopping based on your past history, and nothing more. So a final word. What we have discussed today is far from a comprehensive list, but it is what I deem to be the most important action items that you can take to prepare for the holiday shopping season this year. Depending on your business, you may want to focus on mobile bidding adjustments, location bid adjustments, time adjustments. All of these which can be found within my newest book, Make Each Click Count using Google Shopping. However, by implementing the three action items that we just discussed, you will be more prepared than the majority of your competitors, especially early in the shopping season. Now holiday shopping 2020 It's going to be just like the rest of the year it's going to be something like none of us have ever seen before. Make sure that you are ready. You know one last thing before I forget the COVID credits that Google provided retailers earlier in the summer are set to expire the end of December. If you haven't yet used those credits make sure you do before the end of the year while they are still available. Well that is it for today. Remember, if you liked this episode, go to Apple podcasts and leave a five star review. And if you're looking for more information on the three actions to take prior to the holidays, you can download a free report by visiting www.makeeachclickcount.com/holiday_actions. Again that is www.makeeachclickcount.com/holiday_actions. In addition, if you have any questions for me, I'm always available within the private Make Each Click Count Facebook group. If you're selling products online, make sure you apply to join this free group as is as it is an invaluable resource especially this time of year. In the meantime remember to stay safe, keep healthy, and happy marketing and I will talk to you in the next episode.

This has been the make each click count podcast. Remember those that want to make more sales and profits online. Listen to this podcast. The ones that want to do it faster are members of the Academy of internet marketing join our private Facebook group. Make each click count or send us an email to info at true online presence.com. We want to know who you are and any questions that you may have regarding online marketing