How I Use Google Shopping Campaigns in 2023

Up until very recently, Google shopping campaigns were a core must use campaign for any e commerce brand who was spending money in Google Ads. But Right now in 2023, Google Shopping campaigns are not the go to must use core strategy that they once were. And the simple reason for this is because Google shopping campaigns are no longer giving the same level of results, so the same level of revenue and the same level of profitability what they once were. And that is because they've been replaced by performance max campaigns. Let me show you exactly what I mean. Now this is a flow trend that I've seen time and time again where you had accounts that were previously performing really, really well with shopping. Now I also do want to stress that at the back end of this 2021 was the tail end of the COVID trend, which did change some things for a lot of e commerce brands where they saw their biggest years on record for 2020 and 2021. But what you can see is that as they moved into 2022, they were unable to replicate anywhere near the same level of results that they were getting before Google introduced performance max campaigns. And I just want to show you another screen that this one is shopping only. When we're looking at these dates as well, you can see that from the 15th of May through to July this year we switched over to performance max. And you can see that we have now started to build out some really good results. We're not at where we were previously, but when we look at for 2023, this is comparing the 1st of January up until the 14th of May from the results from the 15th of May. And the why that is significant is because the 15th of May is when we started these performance max campaigns. And what you can see, as we said, we know we've got a long way to go but they are providing much better results with our ROAS or our conversion value cost going from a 0.5 all the way to now being above 2 and then for half the cost of ad spend we've got double the amount of sales. And you can see especially over the last seven days we've been getting better and better results. Now in this video let's talk about why this is happening. And then I also want to go through and take you through what, where and how I use shopping campaigns in 2023. But before we get to all of that, just in case we haven't met yet, my name is Aaron Young, I'm from Define Digital Academy and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads Master. And now it does Go without saying that if you are going to see any level of success with Performance Max campaigns, you do need to make sure that they are actually set up correctly. And to help you with that, if you want to see the exact process that I use to set up my Performance max campaigns in 2023, I want you to go down and follow the link in the descript so that we have the correct context. I just do want to give you a bit of a background of the relationship between shopping campaigns and Performance Max campaigns. And to explain that fully, we need to look at the recent history over the last two years. Now, many of you may know that Performance Max was launched at the end of 2021 and then midway through of 2022, which was last year Google phased out smart shopping campaigns, making Performance Max the main and dominant campaign for E commerce brands. And I do want to take you through some of the important differences between smart shopping campaigns and Performance Max campaigns. Now, smart shopping campaigns were a campaign that really focused on two core areas. And what would happen is, is that a user will complete a targeted search which is very specific for your product. Your ad would then be shown in the shopping feed and then from there that smart campaign would continue to remarket that user so that whenever they performed that search again, they would see your ad. And the smart shipping campaign would bid more aggressively for someone who has already interacted or seen your ad. Now, Performance Max is different and there are two core main differences. The first one being that as many of you may know that with Performance Max campaigns, it's not just focused on the shopping feed because Performance Max campaigns will show your ad across the search display, shopping, also Gmail, and also the video networks. But what will also happen is that in Performance Max, unlike the shopping campaign, your ads start to show to users even before they complete a targeted search for your products. So someone may not even know about your brand or they may not even know about your product, but they could be initially seeing your ads. And then if they do come through and complete a targeted search, Google would then bid more aggressively within that Performance Max campaign. And then if they click on your ad, it becomes even more aggressive in the remarketing so that functionality is taken to a whole nother level that it becomes even more aggressive. And before the user completes that initial search term. Now we are going to keep going, but I do want you to remember that core element because it'll become very important later in this video. Now I've had some really in depth conversations with shopping feed specialists from Google, both here in Australia and the uk. And in those discussions we've gone through this process which we all agree on and that is that when Performance Max campaigns were first introduced, shopping campaigns were still giving better results. And the reason for why shopping campaigns were giving better results was for two core reasons. Firstly is that they had better conversion data inside not only the user's account, but also all of your competitors Google Ads accounts. And then secondly, the majority of the campaigns that your shopping campaign was going up against were other shopping campaigns. Now that has all changed since about August of last year and around about the time where Google removed smart shopping and enforced us to all use Performance Max. Now there's been a lot of people going around and saying that Performance Max now gets an extra benefit or a priority when it goes into a live ad auction. Now I'm not saying that that is not the case. It'll never be confirmed and we won't ever really know. But remember how I said I wanted you to remember a core functionality of the Performance Max campaign because this is where it becomes highly significant. And the reason for why many people are seeing better results with Performance Max is because of this reason. Remember when it comes to the functionality of Performance Max that Google is going at and showing your ads even before they show interest. And then if they come down and perform a targeted search, if that user is within your catch or the the user history within one of your audiences, your Performance Max campaign is going to bid a lot more aggressively to get that higher position. So if you're a shopping is going up against a competitor's Performance max campaign and the user has already gone into your competitor's audience, their Performance Max campaign is going to bid a lot more aggressively, which is why they'll win the high position and get a better chance of that conversion. So the way that you need to think about it is that it's not necessary that Google is giving a higher priority to a Performance Max shopping ad over just a standard shopping ad. It's actually got more to do with the fact that that Performance Max campaign ad may already have one, two or three interactions with that individual user. Or if it's a more mature Performance Max campaign, Google knows that users from certain sets of audiences convert a lot better. So Google will become much more aggressive in that Performance Max campaign in that initial bidding when that person completes a targeted search. Now I hope you're still with me. But that now also makes sense for why you generally see with Performance Max campaigns that conversion data and the performance gets better over time. Let me show you right now. So the example I'm showing you here is of a Performance Max campaign that has been running around about 45 days. So from mid May through to the start of July, and this is what you would generally see now you will sometimes see a little spike of conversions right at the start of the Performance Max campaigns. And that will happen especially if this account had previous shopping campaigns running, because the Performance Max campaign will automatically go and retarget any people who are in that current process. And then it's quite often that you will see a bit of a below and then you'll start to see better results if we break this down. So you can see, just looking at the pure conversion value cost or if we change that to our actual ROAS, you can see over the last 45 days that's been running at around about 213, which I know is not amazing, but remember for this account which I showed you early in the video, that the previous five months from January to May, they'd been running at a ROAS of 0.5. So while a ROAS of 213% is not amazing, it is much better and at least it is now profitable. But as we go through, go through and have a look at what's been happening over the last 14 days, that ROAS has gone up to 290. And then look at what's happening over the last seven days where that ROAS is now up at above 400%. And also remember that this data is likely to get better because the acquisition windows or the time that it takes for a conversion to appear can be up to two or three weeks for a Performance Max campaign. So it's highly likely that when we come back and look at this data in another seven days that this ROAS will be above 500. So I do want to make that clear with the Performance Max campaigns is that sometimes you do need to be a patient, especially for that first four weeks, for two reasons. One, because the data does get better over time. But also secondly, because the data that you may be looking at for the last 7 days or last 14 days may not actually be accurate for sometimes up to three weeks. Once again, because in that Performance Max campaign, if a user goes through and sees your ad or clicks on your ad today, then they come back and convert three weeks from now, all of that conversion data is encountered three weeks from now, it will assign some back to the initial impression or the initial click, which could have happened, as I said, 14 or 21 days previous. And that's why with Performance max you will see a gradual increase and then you'll start to see a real increase in the results of your performance max campaigns where you can get campaigns that are giving ROI of over 10 times. So with all of that said, and me giving you the background and some context for why performance max is now outperforming shopping campaigns, in many cases, I do want to take you through the three times or the three ways that I use shopping campaigns, and that would be standard shopping campaigns in 2023. Because even though performance max is very much the core campaign to use for e commerce brands now in 2023 and going into the future, shopping campaigns are still an important campaign. And I use shopping campaigns in three core circumstances. And the first one would be is that if you are in a highly regulated industry in Australia, we have some really highly regulated industries, and for example, that is the health supplement or the health vitamin industry, and especially on the health vitamin industry, if you're giving any type of claims around your product, your ads can only appear for very specific types of searches and your ad copy has to say very specific things. And your ad copy, a lot of time needs to appear with warnings. And for that reason, performance max campaigns are not appropriate because you don't have exact control over the search terms which your ads appear for and you don't have exact control over the ad copy. So that's the first instance of where I use shopping campaigns. The second circumstance that I'm using shopping campaigns in 2023 is that when I've taken on an account or I'm coaching a student and they're transitioning from shopping campaigns across to performance max campaigns. I don't do that all in one foul swoop. And it's not something that I would recommend where you're turning off your shopping campaigns and turning on performance max straight away. Unless of course, your shopping campaigns are actually losing money. But if you are seeing any level of profit with your shopping campaigns, what you want to do is you want to enter into a transition period and this can be anywhere from two weeks through to three months where you have both your shopping and your performance max campaigns running. And what you'll generally see is you'll see the performance of your shopping campaigns diminish and then you'll see your performance max campaigns increase in performance. And then when you're happy with the level of performance of your performance max campaigns, you then pause those shopping campaigns. And the reason for why I do it that way is that I've seen much safer results for clients and also students so that they're not seeing a lull in sales for a good three or four weeks. Because for some businesses, they can't afford just to turn off all their shopping campaigns in order to wait for Performance Max to start performing. I know that same performance a lot of times. And as a side note, can I say that I still don't like the whole name of Performance Max. I just think it's a bit corny. But hey, it's what we're stuck with. And then the third reason for why I use shopping campaigns in 2023 is if that I see that Performance Max is starting to sway towards search and we're not getting much spend in the shopping network. Because what can happen inside of Performance Max campaigns is that if the algorithm sees that you're getting much better conversion rates and much better ROAS scores in the search campaign, it will start to target the search network more and you can see a diminishing or a really rapid decrease in the spend on the shopping network. And if that is the case, after you've checked your data in Merchant Center, I will go through and set up a secondary shopping campaign which has a high priority and it is set to really go through and target those remarketing or those audiences which were getting great results inside the Performance Max campaign. So there are three circumstances and where I would use a shopping campaign in 2023. Now, as I said at the top of the video, for you to be able to see success with Performance Max, you do need to make sure that you set up your Performance Max campaigns correctly. And in order to do that, remember to follow that link in the description below to download a copy of my Performance Max setup guide. And then the next important step for success with Performance Max is you need to make sure that you're optimizing your Performance Max campaigns in the right way. And to help you with that, all you need to do go through and watch this video right here. Once again, thank you for joining me. It's been a pleasure having you and I look forward to seeing you in this video right now. See ya. Thanks.