Paid Search & Google Shopping

I watched a documentary on Hotel Chocolat recently. The dedication to their product was exemplary; over two years to perfect a chocolate liquor. I pondered on how profitable that could be, surely they’re losing money developing a product for two years? Later on it turned out that chocolate liquor is worth millions to the business and therefore worth the time it takes. I love chocolate ... would I spend £20 on a chocolate liquor? Probably not, but there are people who will and with Paid Search, finding them is much easier thank you think, easier than it’s ever been before.

Account Reviews

Getting under the skin of your Paid Search account is critical.

To begin with, we’ll work with your data and analytics to understand what is working and what isn’t. We’ll audit the account to understand the low hanging fruit and the quick wins that can drive you some instant revenue, before working to craft a long term strategy.

Paid Search is more than keywords, but keywords are the foundation of the overall strategy and must not be taken lightly. Remember, that’s how your customers are actively searching, and ultimately the only way that you’ll be discovered if you’re participating in Paid Search. For this reason, extensive keyword research is fundamental to any Paid Search activity. Beyond this, we will consider all of your targeting options and work with you to craft high quality, persuasive adcopy. Combined, these techniques will encourage your customers to click through to your website, discovering that you have everything that they were looking for.

The journey doesn’t end there, in-fact, it’s only just begun. Following the initial launch, comes the ad reviews, the tweaking, the testing and the optimisations. It’s where the fun begins, we work tirelessly to discover the “sweet spot” the golden nugget in terms of keywords, audience targeting and clickable content.

Google Shopping

This is where the fun begins, particularly for retailers; Google Shopping is an essential for our E-commerce clients. And of course, it’s never been easier.

To get started, you need an active data feed and an expert from our highly trained, highly talented team. Before you know it, you’ll be hitting targets beyond what you ever expected.

Launching as an ad service in 2012, Google Shopping took over “Froogle”, the free version of the shopping channel, initially launched by Google. Since then Google Shopping Ad space has been encroaching on the real estate of Organic and Paid Text Ads, making it an impossible space for advertisers to ignore.

For e-commerce business with hyper-mobile users, the space is even more critical, as Google features Shopping Ads ahead of any other ad format, leaving very little in the form of mobile advertising above the fold on mobile.

Mobile First

Everyone’s mobile. Even if you have an ageing audience, the chances are they’re moving towards a mobile device, if not their mobile phone, then certainly a tablet. But faster than we ever predicted, many consumers are becoming a lot more confident when it comes to browsing, and purchasing, from their phones: 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last 6 months and about 85% of online shoppers start a purchase on one device and finish on another [source]

The importance of mobile is not to be overlooked, however we do need to consider the customer journey across all devices, not just mobile. Whilst the vast majority are becoming more confident, this isn’t necessarily true for the audience of all brands, perhaps it’s not correct for your business. We can identify this by understanding the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for each device at each stage in the journey, and making relevant optimisations to ensure that we are making their journey seamless, at that particular point in their purchase point.

Competitor & Landscape Analysis

You know the saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer ... that statement is never more true than in business. Most of the businesses that I have had the pleasure of working with in the past, know their competitors KPIs just as well as their own, I would highly recommend that every brand adopts this approach. Maintaining a competitive edge and staying ahead of the competition is critical, however what is more important is remaining profitable. Brands who are competing on price and driving down the cost of their product are devaluing their product, and that is never a good strategy, it’s an excellent way of putting yourself out of business though.  Instead, retailers should be working to understand their customer more, finding out what motivates her to make a purchase and tap into how they can encourage her to shop without a discount.

Beyond this, we carry out a complete competitor audit, identifying areas of Strength, Weakness, Opportunity’s and Threats (SWOT) and compare this to your brand. The results help us to understand your competitors value proposition: Why prospective clients may shop with your competitors, and not with you, and take steps to ensure that we can overcome this, in a profitable way, not simply by undercutting one and other.

There are arguments for and against competitor brand bidding. Whilst it can generate great quality traffic (depending on how similar your offering is) it can also lead to inflated brand CPCs if your competitor retaliates with a similar brand bidding exercise. Whilst this may only lift CPCs by 1p - 2p, over time these nominal values can amount to serious sums of cash, so it’s worth bearing this in mind before commencing battle.

International PPC

Whether you have dominated the UK market, or your product lends itself more to an overseas customer, expanding your brand internationally has never been easier.

International PPC is a low risk, cost effective way of testing the market and an incredible launch pad to expanding overseas. One area of great importance is understanding language slang and how words can have different meanings in other languages. For example “trainers” in America are referred to as “sneakers”, whilst in France “preservative” means condom. The former is probably more forgiving than the latter!

Understanding the detail is what is likely to give you an advantage over your competitors but more importantly research supports that customers are more likely to purchase from a brand that personalises the shopping experience to their country.

Customer Match

Do you have a large customer database? If so, we can use this data to identify your existing customers and target them with highly relevant ads. (Google requires a minimum of 1,000 emails).

Returning customers are much more likely to convert, and quite often have higher average order values too. Those retailers who recognise the importance of their existing database are often those who have higher net profit margins; not only do they convert higher and spend more, but encouraging a returning customer to purchase costs a lot less than acquiring a new customer. The result? An increased lifetime value ... THE main KPI that all retailers should be focusing their attention on (honestly, you’d be surprised how many don’t know this stat).