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Google Shopping campaigns can be managed manually, in-house or by a Google Shopping agency, or automatically using a technology platform. Manual account managers will use their knowledge and expertise to optimise campaigns. Technology platforms like Google’s entry-level Smart Shopping automate the entire process but remove the opportunity for marketing experts to add value.
Bidnamic goes one step further: an advanced, transparent bidding platform that also uses human insights to drive results. In this video, Oli Mountain discusses how PPC agencies works and if they will be the right fit for you.
Transcript
Managing Google shopping campaigns can be tricky and often time consuming, with so many PPC agencies claiming to the best. It's really hard to find the right digital partner to work with. In this video, we'll be taking a look at Google shopping management options, how agencies manage the channel, Now Smart Shopping fits into this agency fees, and whether or not use it is the right fit for you and your business.
So there's two main options for managing Google shopping, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. For retailers that are new to Google ads, typically with a lower number of products, using an in-house team to manage campaigns might be the most efficient and cheapest way to oversee the shopping.
However, for larger companies; brands and retailers, campaigns that are looking to scale, Google Shopping can quickly become very complex and often very time consuming. In response to this need, digital agencies, especially PPC companies, will often include shopping ads in their range of services.
PPC agencies all have different methods of management often share similar techniques. Agencies have account managers, and they are each responsible for one or many clients. Specialist agencies might even have an accredited expert for certain channels, and this niche specialization can help performance, but it can also lead to a siloed approach whereby cross-channel campaign attribution, and not lines, insights and data go unshared. Usually only the largest digital agencies have got account managers equipped with such a broad range of expertise across multiple channels.
However, your campaign might be managed more consistently across different channels, but you risk being outperformed in each channel by competitors with a specialist expert or ones with a bigger budget. It's common for agencies to use workflow tools that save time, often in the form of a spreadsheet-based script to automate the report inside.
Scripts can be a great option for retailers with with few SKUs and small inventories. They work well with a limited number of rules. However, when your inventory grows and you struggle to maintain growth at the ROAS target, scripts do become overcomplicated, rules end up being overridden and sometimes completely bypassed.
Scripts can be a great option for some retailers with a small catalogue and a small number of SKUs. They work very well with a limited number of rules. However, when your inventory does grow and you struggle to maintain growth or hit those targets. Scripts do become overcomplicated and rules end up being overridden or completely bypassed.
Some PPC agencies rely on Smart Shopping to manage all their clients campaigns. It's an entry level automated bidding system. It's quick and easy to set up, but has a very limited number of configuration settings - that makes bidding choices limited. And some agencies are rewarded the partners programme Google offers as an option for their retailers. However, a big drawback is that Smart Shopping is completely black boxed. So you're losing out on a lot of valuable campaign data. Search terms and insights. That makes it very hard to optimise your approach to shopping in the future. Fees for agencies are typically based on a percentage of advertising spend or as a flat monthly fee. These can vary from around 5 to 15% and sometimes a sliding scale is applied.
Paying a fee based on a percentage of spend can cause a conflict of interest, as typically you only want the account to be growing as the performance is there. So paying a flat monthly fee is often a better option for most people.
As the account then grows, you can renegotiate a feel to take this into consideration. When considering using an agency, what matters most is the quality of the team and which channel is right for your business goals, whether that be brand awareness or direct sales. Automation platforms work best when combined with that human expertise.
To us, the most valuable insights come from those with the most intimate knowledge of your company's products and services. To take advantage of those insight we have regular meetings with our clients or with their PPC agencies to make sure that knowledge is being applied to the campaigns in order to get the best results. Our data analysts and experts share very granular data from those campaigns, and using these insights, to optimise campaigns on other channels, such as organic search or social campaigns.
To summarize, agencies can provide you with a really personalised service. And more importantly, take the pains of bid management off your shoulders, leaving you time to focus on other aspects of running your business. Having said that, your business may need optimisation, at a much more granular level, which simply humans cannot realistically achieve.
At Bidnamic, we use machine learning to fully automate the bidding process of Google shopping. We take advantage of fluctuations in the market and place the most accurate, calculated bid for all of your products around targeted search terms.
If you are looking to reach a higher target ROAS, reduce CPCs and increase your market share it might well be worth booking in a call with one of our Google Shopping specialists who will be able to talk you through Bidnamic in more detail and see if we are the right fit to help you grow your experience on Google Shopping.
