Most of J&C Homewares traffic and sales were coming from their social ad campaigns. They had tried running Google Ad campaigns previously with another agency but weren’t happy with the ROAS they were achieving.
They wanted to see what Local Digital could do differently for their Google Ads. Our objective was to drive more sales and 4:1 return on ad spend for J&C Homewares.
Firstly, what J&C were doing right:
1. J&C had a great product offering, they had competitive pricing and they sold a niche product. They also offered free shipping Australia wide on orders over $100. These are all unique selling propositions that add perceived value for the customer.
2. J&C’s product pages have been designed with conversion rate optimisation in mind. As a result, their product pages were clear, highlighted their unique selling points, used great images, had clear shipping information and product details.
The challenge Local Digital faced was making sure their Google Merchant Center was set up correctly and that we were able to put the product in front of people who were searching for it and reduce wasted ad spend where applicable.
Some of our biggest initial challenges came from working through any errors generated by the feed in Google Merchant Center. We use third-party plugins to generate feeds for Google Merchant Center so initially, there were issues with price and tax not pulling into the feed correctly.
Ongoing communication with our direct contacts at Google and the third party plugin providers helped fix price mismatch issues in Google Merchant Center. To fix the tax not pulling through correctly, we created an automated rule which multiplied the price by 1.1, this solved the issue.
Over the next few months, we collected data on the performance of each of the products. We began excluding products where the cost per acquisition was higher than 2:1 return on ad spend. This allowed more ad spend for their better performing products, which led to an increase in sales.
The bidding strategy plays an essential role in shopping campaigns. Choosing the right bidding strategy involves understanding where you are in your campaign’s lifecycle and knowing your account goals and objectives.
For instance, our client’s main focus was to drive a higher return on ad spend rather than increase sales. However, if your campaign is in its early stages, a Target ROAS bidding strategy will chew through your budget.
It’s best to run a maximise conversions bidding strategy for 1-2 months and then switch to a Target ROAS bidding strategy once sufficient data has been collected on your products.
Over a three month period, we were able to outperform J&C Homewares expectations. Using a combination of a strong product offering, a conversion rate optimised product landing page and an optimised Google Smart Shopping campaign, we were able to achieve a 33.33% increase in conversions and a 9.22 return on ad spend.
