[PPC] – How to make a Smart Shopping campaign. Complete guide.

How to make a Smart Shopping campaign. That was the first question I asked myself when I found out Google Ads had begun to launch this type of campaign, which together with Dynamic Search Ads or DSA, had created a tandem in which dejábamos que la IA y el algoritmo de Google vaya gestionando y optimizando sus campañas en base a los datos que van recopilando.

In other words, a whole declaration of intent by Google to start “taking jobs” (to call it what you will) from all of us who are PPC “x” in any agency or company. And this work now relying on Google’s algorithm.

Although well, this also depends on how you take it. So I see it as a perfect complement to shopping and search campaigns. As they can complement each other very well and have a very good performance.

The only problem is for those people who want to control 100% of the campaigns, so: this is not your post, nor your campaigns. Although… maybe if you read this post about how to make a Smart Shopping campaign. You might start thinking about doing this kind of campaign.

And if you think about it, it’s because there are more and more e-commerces that do this type of campaign because you get really good ROAS. So let’s start with this guide on how to do a Smart Shopping campaign.

What are Smart Shopping campaigns?

The Google Smart Shopping Campaigns, or Smart Shopping Campaigns, we could say that they are atype of campaign within Google Shopping.

This campaign subtype combines Google Shopping and Display Remarketing campaigns. They also include lookalike and remarketing audiences. So it is a very complete all-in-one for Shopping.

Combine your product feed, with the data and elements that your Google Ads account has, all under automatic learning, to show the ads to that most qualified audience for sale.

How does it work?

Smart Shopping campaigns work by giving great weight to the algorithm.

The algorithm tries to collect data, in this data it tries to obtain those customers who are more willing to make the purchase of such products offered within your product feed, which you will have uploaded to Google Merchant Center.

The objective, on which the Smart Shopping campaigns work, is quite clear. You can go to maximize the value of the conversions or you can go to optimize a ROAS that you have previously set.

My recommendation is that you go step by step. First maximize the value of conversions so that you collect data and then move on to target ROAS.

Where do the Smart Shopping ads appear?

Your Google Smart Shopping ads will appear in different locations such as the Search Network, Display (GDN), Gmail and Youtube. Always trying to optimize these sites with the most effective ads and bids.

Advantages and disadvantages

Before knowing how to carry out an Intelligent Shopping campaign, in order to get the most out of it, you should know the advantages and disadvantages.

As in all types of campaigns, aspects and different points of Google Ads They always have a series of advantages and disadvantages that must be taken into account in order to try to alleviate those disadvantages, and to take advantage of the advantages as much as they leave us.

The advantages you get when doing Smart Shopping campaigns are the following:

• You will not have much management work on the campaigns you create. In the end, the only and most laborious work (which is not much) is to create the ads and let them work. But don’t relax too much either, you can see by looking at it.
• Goodbye to ad optimisation. The Google Ads AI will do all this work for you.
• You will get more conversions and your ROAS will increase to the same level.
• You will have more potential customers because the searches and qualifications in relation to the sale that they have are taken into account. And they will also generate much more traffic.

The “bad part” of this type of campaign is the following:

• They will eat up your normal shopping and display campaigns, specifically your remarketing campaigns. Since they work with the same objectives.
• You will have no control over the ads. You leave everything in the hands of Google Ads. Yes, everything.
• Few bidding options, unlike normal shopping campaigns.
• If you have never liked Google partner networks, perhaps this is not your type of campaign.
• Negative keywords cannot be added to campaigns.

Prerequisites

I know you want to know how to do a Smart Shopping campaign, but like all this “cool stuff” from Google Ads… there are always a few aspects you should take into account before launching this type of campaign.

The requirements for smart shopping campaigns are as follows

1. You must have, in all your shopping campaigns, a minimum of 20 conversions for each of them in the last 45 days.
2. You must also have a remarketing list of at least 100 users.
3. You must comply with Google Shopping’sprivacy policy.

There are not many requirements, but if you want to get off to a good start in your intelligent shopping campaigns you must meet them.

How to make a Smart Shopping campaign?

The part you were waiting for has arrived: how to make a Smart Shopping campaign.

First of all you must go to the account in which you want to create a Smart Shopping campaign. In the “Campaigns” section you will find a blue “+”. Well, you have to click on it and then on “New campaign”.

Following this you will see a screen that looks like this:

I have chosen to target this Sales campaign. I have selected the type, which is Shopping, the Google Merchant Center account. The country where you want to sell, be careful with this, your feed must be from that same language. And finally I have chosen the option “Intelligent Shopping Campaign”. That’s when you have to keep going.

The next point is where you should set up your campaign. Name it, you can enable or disable local products. And then you have to set a budget as well as a bidding strategy. The default is to maximize the conversion value. But you can select to go to ROAS and set a percentage of ROAS yourself. You can also decide what day the campaign starts and what day it ends.

Remember that this number is not very different from what is usual in Google Ads.

Now let’s get down to what really matters: creating the ads.

The first step will be to choose the group of products you want to advertise in your smart shopping campaign. Or select all the products.

If you are going to suppress, with this new one, the normal shopping campaign I recommend you to select all of them. But you can play with both and put different groups in each type of campaign.

Now comes the most important part. The creation of ads with images, text, descriptions and HTML5 (so they weigh less and load faster).

In order for you not to have problems you must take these aspects into account:

• With the logo, these are the measures that you must comply with: square image (1:1), if possible in 1200x1200px and with a maximum weight of 1MB.
• For the “marketing image that represents your shop’s brand” it should be in a horizontal format (1.91:1) 1200x628px and a maximum size of 1MB.
• The texts can be: the short title with a maximum of 25 characters, and the long titles and descriptions with a maximum of 90 characters. And don’t forget to put the final URL.

And now all that remains is for you to save and wait for the conversions to come. If they don’t arrive… maybe you should do a Google Ads audit.

Las mejores prácticas

Now that you know how to do a Smart Shopping campaign I’m going to give you a series of tips that if you implement them I’m sure you will make your campaigns much more effective and get good results.

• If you’re going to ROAS target. You must calculate a ROAS according to your Google Ads account data, nothing that is disparate because you won’t get it.
• Pause your Shopping and Display campaigns, as the Intelligent Shopping will eat them up. So you can take advantage of the budget of both for this new campaign.
• Uses a well-optimized Product Feed approved by Google Merchant Center (link)
• Have Google Ads pixels properly installed, as well as the one from Google Analytics. In order to trace everything well.
• See which copies have generated the best resultsfor you to put into practice in this new campaign.

You can also review these most common errors (link) on Google Ads to make sure everything works.

With this guide you will have learned how to make a Smart Shopping campaign in a fast way and with all the requirements and tips to make its creation and performance a success.

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