Developed especially for eCommerce brands, Google Shopping Ads are the ideal choice for getting your products in front of customers right as they’re ready to make a purchase.

Showcasing product images, key information and price right on the SERP, shopping ads are much more engaging than traditional text based search ads – as evidenced by the fact that 85% of all Google Ad clicks are on shopping ads – making them perfect for driving shoppers to your site.

But to get the most out of their Google shopping campaigns, many retailers are adopting the use of comparison shopping services (CSS).

What is a CSS?

Described by Google as “a website that collects product offers from online retailers and then sends users to the retailers’ websites to make a purchase,” a CSS in simple terms helps eCommerce retailers advertise their products online.

Some CSS will advertise products on their own websites, displaying them alongside similar products so that consumers can compare the different products available. While others will advertise their retail partners’ products through other channels – in particular, we’ll be looking at comparison shopping services that specialise in Google shopping ads.

Essentially, CSS show shopping ads in Google search results, the same way that Google Shopping does, as illustrated below.

Aside from the channels through which they advertise your products, or if they specialise in a particular retail sector, CSS will also differ in their service offering. A CSS will offer product feed management and/or bid management tools to help optimise your shopping ad campaigns for improved performance.

Benefits of using a CSS

There are two main benefits of using a CSS for your ad campaigns (either instead of, or alongside Google Shopping):

Cheaper Bids

For anyone who is unfamiliar with Google’s CSS partner scheme, it’s understandable that you might doubt the legitimacy of any claims that your ads might cost less if you use a CSS.

However, Google was hit with a €2.42bn antitrust fine by the European Commission in 2017 for giving an unfair advantage to its own shopping service and favouring its own ads over competitors’ in search results. This resulted in Google opening up the auction to more CSS partners and offering incentives for more to join – the most notable being cheaper bids.

Merchants who use a CSS will receive an approximate 20% reduction in cost per click for their shopping ads. This reduction in cost, offers a couple of advantages:

• A cheaper CPC for CSS makes the auction more competitive, allowing CSS to appear and have the same opportunities as Google Shopping to serve ads in the search results.
• Because CSS create ads and submit them to the auction in the same ways as Google Shopping, the maximum bids that you set will be the same as if you didn’t have the price reduction. Your maximum bid will now go further, increasing your position in the results, and/or increasing your overall impressions without increasing click prices.

Scale Your Ads

Saving money on your bids also offers more opportunities for you to scale up your ad campaigns. You have the option to reinvest the money you save through reduced bids back into your ad account, which (when managed effectively), can be a great way to grow your account and generate more impressions, clicks and sales.

However, it is important to note that, as mentioned above, despite a reduction in CPC, your ad spend may not actually decrease. Instead, your budget may essentially be re-invested for you, by increasing your ad visibility without costing you more.

What Changes When You Start Using a CSS?

Aside from the reduced CPC (and hopefully better performance as a result), you are unlikely to see any significant changes once you start using a CSS.

You are still required to submit your product details to Google Merchant Center (which is connected to Google Ads). You will have the same campaign settings, targeting and tracking options as you would in Google Shopping, so you won’t lose any control over your ads.

In terms of how your ads are displayed on the SERP, again, this is largely the same. When a customer clicks on your ad, it will still direct them back to the product page on your website as before. The only difference will be that the name of your CSS partner will be displayed at the bottom of your ad instead of the default ‘By Google’ label that is assigned to ads created through Google Shopping.

How Many Advertisers Are Using CSS?

Depending on the retail sector you operate in, and how competitive your market is, the number of advertisers using a CSS to manage their shopping ads will differ.

In more competitive markets, you will likely find a higher proportion of brands using CSS to help them gain a competitive edge in the auction (either through cheaper CPC or the assistance of their CSS partner optimising their product feeds).

While in more niche markets where there isn’t as much competition, most of the brands appearing in search results may be advertising directly with Google Shopping.

We’ve had a lot of success using comparison shopping services for some of our eCommerce PPC clients operating in competitive markets, helping us to maximise their budgets and increase their return on investment.

The post Comparison Shopping Services: Why Use a CSS Partner for Google Ad Campaigns appeared first on eCommerce Marketing Agency | Go Amplify.

The core principle of AIDA is that your advertising should bring attention to your product or brand, make potential customers interested in it, create a desire for your product, and then spur them on to take action and convert.

Each stage of the AIDA model can be quickly summarised as follows:

• Awareness – an individual sees your advertising and starts to take notice of your product.
• Interest – they develop an interest in your product and begin to think that it could benefit them in some way.
• Desire – they move on from just being interested in your product to actively wanting to own it.
• Action – they turn their desire into action and make the decision to buy.

While AIDA sets out the decision making process, it can also be considered a communications model, rather than strictly a decision making model. AIDA is commonly used (whether consciously or subconsciously), to help marketers decide how to communicate with their target audience at each stage of the purchasing funnel.

How can AIDA be applied to your eCommerce marketing strategy?

Awareness

The first step in any successful marketing strategy is to clearly define who your target audience is. To draw positive attention to your brand, any marketing messaging you put out must resonate with the right people at the right time.

With any business, but especially in eCommerce, one of the most effective ways to do this is through micromarketing, which focuses on small groups of tightly targeted customers. The more specific you can be in your messaging, the more likely you are to strike a chord with your target audience and draw attention to your brand.

Once you know who you’re trying to reach, you can start speaking to them. To bring new potential customers into the purchasing funnel, it’s your job to present key messages and pieces of information that make people curious about your products and your brand.

Some of the ways you can do this are by:

• Identifying which platforms your target audience are using, and the most effective ways to use these channels to promote your brand.
• Identifying the main challenge faced by your customers, and how your product can offer a solution.
• Writing straightforward, attention grabbing headlines.
• Creating bold visual content.

Interest

Once you’ve attracted new people to your business, the next step is to pique, and then keep, their interest. To be successful in this stage of the funnel, your content needs to be informative and engaging. Your audience will want to learn more about your brand, how your products could benefit them and whether you fit with their lifestyle.

The more aligned your brand is with the individual’s needs and values, the more likely you are to generate enough interest for them to make a purchase. To generate, and hold, your target audience’s interest, try the following:

• Listen to their problems – during the attract stage you may have focused on the one key area of concern for all of your customers. But now you need to dig deeper into all the different challenges your audience face, determine the reasons behind these challenges, and how you can provide a solution.
• ‘Show, don’t tell’ is especially true when it comes to generating interest with your target customers. Don’t just tell your audience about your product’s features, clearly demonstrate what it is, how it works, and how it could benefit them.
• Get your customers actively involved. Use the different channels available to engage with your audience and create an interactive experience to help them closer to, and more invested in your brand.
• Utilise a combination of educational information and persuasion techniques when creating content for people in the interest stage.

Desire

There’s often some confusion around the desire stage of the AIDA model, and how it differentiates from the interest stage. Think of it this way: the interest stage is about getting your audience to like your product, the desire stage is moving that interest into want.

Customers buy from brands they know, like and trust. When communicating with those in the desire stage, you’re working on building that trust, and motivating them to complete the purchase.

One of the most effective ways you can build trust with your customers is through user generated content (UGC) and social proof. Showing real evidence of people buying and loving your product is a powerful tactic in reassuring potential buyers and persuading them to take action.

Some effective ways to utilise UGC and social proof are:

• Case studies and testimonials from customers giving detailed explanations of their experience with your brand and how your product helped them.
• Customer reviews.
• Encouraging your customers to post about your product on social media and share their posts onto your official channels.

Action

This is the final stage of the AIDA model: action. Once you have generated enough desire for your product, you need to give those in this stage of the buyer’s journey the opportunity to take action and convert.

In the desire stage you made people want your product. During the action stage, you should maintain the positive sentiment, and make sure that nothing stands in their way once they make the decision that it’s time to buy.

Make sure whatever content or messaging you deliver to customers at this stage of the journey is of high value to them. They already know who you are and what your product is, so make sure that whatever you present helps them in some way. Clearly show the value of your messaging, while motivating them to act.

Take note of the following to successfully encourage your audience to convert:

• Reinforce your previous messaging by summarising the problem you are solving for them, and how the product you are advertising to them solves that problem.
• Focus on conversion rate optimisation. Where are the calls to action positioned and how prominent are they? Are there any barriers to conversion that you could break down? For example, unclear delivery and returns info, mandatory account creation, high shipping fees, or shipping fees hidden until late in the checkout process.
• Utilise tools such as abandoned cart emails to remind customers who almost placed an order to come back and complete the conversion.
• Create a sense of urgency with sales promotions such as timed discounts.
• Offer product bundling or recommendations to encourage customers to place higher value orders.

Retention

While retention isn’t technically a part of the AIDA model, it’s an essential part of any successful eCommerce marketing strategy.

While, of course, you need to make sure you bring in a steady stream of new customers to your business, you don’t want to put all this effort into attracting the perfect customers, just to lose them after their initial purchase. Plus, retaining your existing customer base costs less than acquisition, and can offer you a greater return on investment.

Here are some tips for creating a robust eCommerce customer retention strategy that keeps your customers happy and loyal:

• Email campaigns highlighting new product releases and sales promotions are one of the most straightforward ways to encourage your customers to return.
• Loyalty programmes where users collect points every time they place an order are beneficial for both you and your customers. They earn discounts, free gifts or other perks, while a tiered system will encourage them to place higher value orders.
• Refer a friend programmes help with both new customer acquisition and repeat purchases through rewarding the referrer.

When planning a campaign, many marketers follow the AIDA model without even realising. However, once you have a good understanding of it, AIDA is a powerful tool for informing your marketing efforts. And once applied to all aspects of your eCommerce strategy, the AIDA model is invaluable for helping you consistently, attract, engage and convert your ideal customers.

The post What Is The AIDA Model & How To Use It For Your eCommerce Marketing appeared first on eCommerce Marketing Agency | Go Amplify.

This is where marketing attribution models come in.

What is an attribution model?

Marketing attribution analyses the numerous brand touchpoints a customer comes across, or the actions they take, that contribute to them completing a conversion, and assigning a value to each of these events.

Depending on the attribution model you choose (we’ll get into some of your options shortly), the way you assign value to the different touchpoints in a customer journey will vary. But to put it simply, marketing attribution helps you understand which brand touchpoints are effective in encouraging customers to take action, and which should be given the credit for each conversion.

Why use attribution models?

Effective marketing attribution offers valuable insight into how your customers interact with your brand, and how your marketing efforts are influencing buyers. This enables you to alter your marketing tactics to better cater to the needs and behaviours of your customers, as well as to get full credit for the impact of your work.

But to do it properly, marketing teams must utilise advanced analytics platforms to aggregate customer data from across channels to ensure that each interaction in the sales journey is given the appropriate amount of credit.

Single touch vs multi touch attribution

Smaller companies, with simpler marketing and sales systems (if you only use a couple of marketing channels, for example) may benefit from using a single touch model, such as first click or last click attribution.

Multi touch attribution models, on the other hand, are more appropriate for businesses that use three or more marketing channels, or have a longer or more complex sales cycle. Most marketing teams will benefit from using a multi point attribution model, as this will give you more valuable insights into the effectiveness of your communications strategy.

Single touch attribution models

First Click Attribution

In a first click attribution model, all credit for a sale or conversion is given to, as the name suggests, the very first channel that a customer interacted with – their first click.

What does this look like in practice? Say you see an Instagram ad for a pair of shoes you like, so you click through on the ad to the website. You look around the site for a while, but don’t make a purchase.

A couple of days later, you receive an email from the same brand promoting their shoes. You click through on the email and this time decide to buy a pair.

In a first click model, your purchase would be attributed to the Instagram ad you clicked on, as this was your first interaction with the brand that kicked off your journey to purchase.

If your aim is to identify the channels and tactics that drive the most new customers to your brand, then a first click attribution model can be useful. However, when it comes to analysing effectiveness for conversion, the first click model isn’t typically the best choice, as it doesn’t take into account any touchpoints or actions taken after this initial interaction.

Last Click Attribution

Alternatively, in a last click attribution model, all credit is given to the very last channel a user interacted with before making a purchase.

What does this look like? Let’s go back to the previous example where you bought some shoes.

Again, you see an Instagram ad for the shoes you like, you click through but leave without buying anything. Then when you receive the marketing email, you decide to click through and buy the shoes.

This time, with the last click model, all of the revenue for the sale is attributed to the email, as this was the last thing you interacted with before completing the purchase.

This model is useful if you want to identify which marketing channels are providing the most conversions, however, as with first click, it fails to take into account any of the other interactions a customer may have before coming to the decision to buy.

Last Non-Direct Click Attribution

This attribution model is similar to the last click model, however, the difference is that any direct traffic is ignored.

What does this look like? Again, we’ll go back to our previous customer journey example. So you’ve clicked through on a shoe brand’s social media ad, and then you received a promotional email and clicked through on that too. But this time, you left the website a second time without making a purchase.

Then, a little while later you decide you do want to buy the shoes, so you type the website URL into your browser and go straight to the site where you make a purchase.

In a last click model, the sale would be attributed to direct traffic. However, in a last non-direct click attribution model, the direct visit is ignored, and the credit is given entirely to the promotional email.

Often, direct traffic are users who have already interacted with your marketing efforts numerous times. So this attribution model is useful for analysing the effectiveness of the final stages of your customer journey, without direct traffic diluting the data. But as with last click, this model also fails to take into consideration any other touchpoints prior to the final action.

Multi touch attribution models

Many marketers may not find value in using an attribution model that only gives credit to one channel. A customer will likely interact with a number of different brand touchpoints before converting, so each of these channels should be given credit for the sale.

Linear Attribution

In a linear attribution model, each interaction is weighed evenly, and given equal credit for a conversion.

What does this look like? So imagine a customer first clicked through to your website through a Google search ad, then a social media post, an organic search result and then finally a display ad before completing a purchase.

With a linear attribution model, each of these touchpoints would receive 25% of the credit for the sale.

A linear attribution model is beneficial if you are looking for a holistic view of your customer journey. However, linear attribution is often not advisable as if every interaction is given equal credit, how can you determine which channels are the most effective?

Position Based Attribution

A position based model (also sometimes referred to as U-shaped attribution), is a multi touch attribution model which prioritises the first and last interactions before a sale, but still gives some credit to any clicks in between.

So 40% of the credit is attributed to both the first and last touchpoints, and the other 20% is split evenly between the rest.

What does this look like? To keep things simple, let’s stay with the previous four point customer journey: the customer clicks through on a Google search ad, then a social media post, then an organic search result, and then finally a display ad.

With a position based attribution model, the Google search ad and display ad are seen as the most significant touchpoints in influencing the sale, so 40% of the credit is attributed to the search ad, and 40% to the display ad.

10% is then attributed to both the organic search result and the social media post.

A U-shaped attribution model is useful for giving insight into which channels are best for attracting new customers, and which are best for conversions, while still giving an overview of the customer journey as a whole.

However, because all interactions between the first and last are treated as equal, this may not give you a fully accurate picture of how much each channel contributed to the sale.

Time Decay Attribution

The time decay attribution model acknowledges that different interactions have different values, so each interaction is given a different amount of credit for the sale. Brand touchpoints that were interacted with closer to the time of conversion are given a higher percentage of the credit.

What does this look like? Again, let’s go back to our four point customer journey. In this scenario, the click through on the display ad which prompted the purchase session, would be given 40% of the credit for the sale. The organic search result before it would be given 30%, the social media post 20% and the initial Google search ad would be assigned 10%.

The time decay model is beneficial in identifying which marketing or sales channels are most effective at converting customers, and which are primarily acquisition channels. However, if your marketing activity centres around top of the funnel campaigns, a time decay model won’t be the right option for you as top of these actions will be the furthest from the point of conversion.

Data Driven Attribution

Data driven attribution is a Google attribution model which assigns credit based on how users search for a product or service using collected data. Google compares the click paths of customers who convert, and those who don’t, to identify patterns and assign attribution based on this.

Data driven attribution uses data from your Google Ads account to determine how people searched for your business, how each campaign, ad group, ad and keyword actually contributed across your customers’ conversion path, which had the most influence on the purchase decision, and which are the most likely to generate more sales for your business.

This is typically Google’s most accurate attribution model, as it’s specific to each ad account and takes multiple factors into account when attributing credit. However, data driven attribution requires a certain amount of data, and is only available to high traffic ad accounts that get a large volume of conversions (15,000 clicks and 600 conversions) each month, so it’s not an option that’s available to all marketers.

Choosing an attribution model

Unfortunately, when it comes to marketing attribution models, there is no correct choice or ‘one size fits all’ – each model has its own advantages and disadvantages that you’ll need to consider.

As a general rule, a multi point model is typically your best choice for insight into the different stages of your customer journey, with a position based model proving valuable to many marketers. However, if your main goal is new customer acquisition and brand awareness, you may find it more useful to focus on a first touch model.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is, does this model give you the information you need to meet your goals?

Take a look at the different marketing tactics and channels you use, and what your overall objectives are, and try to find the attribution model that will most effectively help you achieve your goals. Each model works, it’s all about trying them out and finding which one fits your strategy best.

The post Marketing Attribution Models: How To Choose The Right Model appeared first on eCommerce Marketing Agency | Go Amplify.