Is Google Smart Shopping beneficial for a men's casual apparel brand?

[ChardIr]

I've been running a smart shopping campaign for our men's casual apparel brand. It has been performing well for our needs with about a 3.5 ROAS. I've been hearing that this could be reporting conversions we would have gotten anyway. I'm also aware of the lack of transparency when running smart campaigns. I'm not sure that I need to continually update my key words when I know how to properly title and give descriptions to the products we sell. They are graphic tees, sweatshirts and hoodies.

Are there any thoughts or direction I can get from anyone about this?

Would a regular shopping campaign perform significantly better than a smart campaign as long as I pay close attention to my feed? I'd be able to focus more on devices targeted and do some Bid adjustments based on the data I can see in a regular shopping campaign. I'd be able to see the search words that trigger a click. I'm just not sure if the difference would be very much.

So, anyone have any experiences or thoughts about this?

Thanks!

[ChardIr]

Just a bit more info about my situation. Our Merchant Center is in good shape running all items active. A product ratings feed has been approved showing the review stars on our Google Shopping products. We are a Google "Trusted store" and have the blue check mark showing below the review stars. Getting all that set up and running was a bit of a hassle and took some time to figure out and jump through all the hoops. Now, I'm hoping to, not quite "set it up and forget" but not need to do the fine tuning needed with a regular shopping campaign... unless the difference is worth the effort. Thoughts?

I think that covers my situation pretty well.

Thanks again!

[EmmanuelFlossie · Accepted solution]

If you want to use standard shopping, you then need to also set up dynamic display remarketing. Considering Smart shopping targets both shopping and display remarketing.

Please note that smart shopping will be sunset this year and replaced by performance max.

If you use standard shopping, you need to control and manage the search terms, bidding, locations, ad scheduling and audiences yourself.

Yes standard shopping gives you more control, and if you are able to understand what you need to do, can get you better results.

However if you don't know how to manage standard shopping, then you either need to learn, or instead try out performance max. 

For my clients it's 70/30 70 standard 30 automation.

Every account is different, some accounts can get good results with automation some don't. Some accounts require standard shopping while others it's not so important.

Unfortunately, there is no 1 setup that fits all merchants. By testing and experimenting, you will figure out what works best. But also remember that the skill level for standard shopping plays a role in what works.

[flareAI]

Hello @ChardIr,

You have to make sure your ads are optimized. This will increase your sales and help avoid wasting your money on products that don’t perform well. 

1. Optimize your product feed
2. Optimize your campaign structure
3. Divide products into ad groups
4. Don't make drastic changes
5. Find your winners and losers
6. Exclude unprofitable products
7. Add negative keywords
8. Sub-divide negative keywords
9. Bid adjustments

Up to 40% of paid ads are clicked by competitor bots, according to Adobe research. Also, SEO often promises the moon and delivers little. Every marketing channel demands more $$$, except one. Consumers trust Google and rely on it even more and are using at a rate that exceeds the growth of display and organic social. flareAI actively grows your store presence on Google Search. flareAI will help to scale your site sustainably at NO Agency fees, NO Pay-per-click, NO paid marketplaces. With flareAI, your site can access the world's dominant Free eCommerce services in one Shopify App.

Hope this was helpful,

Gina
Add flareAI Shopify App today!