Selling Apparel Products? Get more from your Google or Bing Shopping campaigns

With apparel products predicted to exceed $500billion in sales this year, the online fashion industry continues to thrive, resulting in all-time high levels of competition. E-commerce fashion websites now depend on the performance of paid advertising campaigns more than ever, and ad performance has the power to make or break an entire brand. With online shopping platforms such as Google Shopping being the preferred way to shop for clothing and accessories online, it’s currently the most important platform to optimize for profitability.

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Paid advertising challenges for online fashion brands

When it comes to selling fashion online or offline, there are a few variables which can influence user behaviour and conversion rates such…

Where to place your online ads: How to use scripts to filter your ad placements to select the most effective

This article is useful for those who would like to place advertisements on sites across the Internet, e.g. on YouTube, forums, mobile apps, and sites devoted to a similar subject. When you are using different targeting on the Google Display Network, Google selects placements for ads automatically, except placements added manually. After a short period of time, you can find interesting statistics, which shows that some placements perform well and some not so well for you. [si_quick_block id="124322" title="How to set up a Google Display Network campaign" description="Unlike search ads, which are text only, ads on the GDN can use a combination of text and images, and can be static or included animated elements. Learn how to start taking advantage of the Google Display Network with this quick win."] Try the following guidelines…

Prevent costly errors with Google Ads by not falling foul of these classic mistakes

Google Ads is probably one of the best tools you can use to generate leads, sales and grow your business. However, most business owners end up wasting hundreds, if not thousands of dollars each month as a result of inadequate account management. A poorly configured ad campaign could easily be shown to the wrong target audience or simply get buried under the competition. Here are eight common mistakes business owner make when setting up their campaigns, and tips on how to avoid them in order to make the most out of your ad efforts.

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1.    Using ad groups for multiple keywords

Creating ad groups which contain up to 20 loosely related keywords…

Chart of the day: A comparison of the effectiveness of paid search marketing contrasting Google's search network with the display network

This chart gives an update to historical data on conversion rates in Google Ads from the Google Ads management platform Wordstream. It's part of new benchmarking paid search marketing mobile statistics by industry. If you're considering paid search it gives you an idea of the conversion rates you can expect when making the business case. Of course, tests will show you rates specific to your market, type of keywords (Brand, generic, product, long tail, etc) and your proposition, but this gives an indication. The full report also covers clickthrough rate and cost to help you build conversion rate funnel spreadsheet revenue models which are provided as resources in Excel for our premium members.

Mobile Google Ads conversion rates by sector

The new 2018 cross-industry Google Ads clickthrough rate and conversion benchmarks shows that: The…

Is Google's AI and Machine Learning intelligent enough to deliver Smart Campaigns that gain results?

Did you manage to watch Google's Marketing Live Keynote speech? The Smart Insights office had some mixed opinions about Google's "new products" and whether or not, Google's Marketing Platform does, in fact, live up to marketers' expectations of delivering ads, or whether it's the same features as before, but in one place under a new name. Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President for Ads, introduced the keynote with a striking message: "Advertising that works for everyone" This has never been more important than it is today. Not only do we, as marketers, need to be better with how we create and target our ads, we need to be creating ads that consumers can trust. It should be advertising that works for everyone: Advertising at its best always puts people…

Google AdWords – Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform – has recently rebranded and is now known as Google Ads

The name may have changed, but the underlying principles of the system are the same now as they were 18 years ago when AdWords was launched. You write an ad for your business, choose keywords that determine what sort of searches your ad will appear for on Google, and say how much you are willing to pay each time someone is directed to your website as a result of clicking on your ad. [si_quick_block id="121881" title="How to set up a Google Ads campaign" description="When used correctly, Google Ads (previously known as Google AdWords) is an excellent way of driving potential customers to your website. Learn how to set up your first Google Ads campaign correctly."] It’s pretty easy to set up your first Google Ads campaign, but it’s also very easy to do it…

Whether they realise it or not, most people will have been exposed to remarketing ads whilst surfing the web

Remarketing ads are text, image or video ads which appear all over the internet to encourage you to return to a website you visited previously. The theory behind this is that if you didn’t covert (buy something, make an enquiry, etc) on your first visit to that site then you might do if you return for a subsequent visit. As an advertiser, there are a number of platforms you can use to display your remarketing ads, such as Facebook and Google AdWords. Of these, AdWords is probably the one that will give you the widest reach. Using remarketing in AdWords is a fairly straightforward process. First you need to create  an audience list – i.e. define which people you want to remarket to. This could be, for example, everyone who has visited your website…

A three-step approach to check for paid search campaign mistakes

In an ideal world, enterprising entrepreneurs would only need to set up shop, open their virtual doors, and find customers lining up to buy their products. Of course, it’s never that easy. Digital marketers have to actually go out looking for them. And once you find them, you need to convert them. While conversion methods vary, many digital marketers arrive on a seemingly perfect solution when looking to invest to boost their visits: pay-per-click campaigns. PPC campaigns can work, and some work quite well. But they can be minefields for mistakes, and the most common is the marketing equivalent of 'keeping up with the Joneses.' Many digital marketers think they should run a PPC campaign because everyone else is doing it. [si_guide_block id="79626" title="Download FREE Resource – 10 costly AdWords…

Review how link retargeting can help improve your reach and potential site visitors

As the new year gets into full swing, ecommerce businesses and entrepreneurs look to find the latest trends in order to keep up with the ever-evolving world of technology, and solve any challenges they as a business might face. One of the biggest challenges to date, is reaching new online customers, and fast. Targeting the right consumers, at the right time, can be tricky in an online world where consumers are bombarded with advertising that isn’t always relevant to them. While getting new customers to find your website is unfortunately not an exact science, one recent trend looks set to help businesses out in this regard, and it’s known as link retargeting.

What is link retargeting?

Those who have already delved into the world of online marketing will know that…

Smart Insights Alert: The new tools include a single multi-country feed

If you've ever run an AdWords campaign you'll be familiar with the process, but now the AdWords platform has introduced new Merchant Centre tools: Adding or overriding product data with supplemental feeds A single multi-country feed modification of your product data from the content API with Feed Rules Driving more clicks via opportunities Add your entire team The new features have been implemented before the holiday season and well benefit retailers that advertize on Google Shopping. [si_guide_block id="5739" title="Download our Google AdWords Guide – How to get better ROI from your Google AdWords campaigns" description="All the questions you need to ask to audit and optimize your Google AdWords campaigns"/]

Supplemental feeds

Instead of relying on one feed for product data, it is now possible to change your data from multiple sources - giving…