We'll explain why data-driven automation in Search Engine Advertising (SEA) can increase sales in ecommerce and explore which 3 levers have the biggest impact on your success.

Data-driven automation is the future

Across industries, it's becoming ever more important to use the data available to you to achieve the best results. The reality is that companies that don't do this will ultimately get outcompeted, as their competitors will always be one step ahead of them. In the ecommerce world, where there is a ton of data available, being data-driven is a critical success factor that will ultimately separate the winners from the losers — and this is particularly true if you are using paid advertising to drive traffic and sales to youronline shop.

Being data-driven is one thing, but when you throw no-code automation into the mix, then things get really interesting! By using an automation platform like Shopstory, you can create an almost constant connection between your generated data and your paid campaigns, putting you ten steps ahead of anyone trying to use data without automation. When it comes to Search Engine Advertising (SEA), it's all about placing the right ads in the right place at the right time. If you do it right, it means lots of sales, relatively low advertising costs and (insert clapping sound! 👏) booming success. But if you get it wrong, it means poor sales, high advertising costs and (insert that womp womp woomp trombone sound) tragic failure. So how can you use data and automation to ensure you place the right ads in the right place at the right time? We've got some best practices for you to consider.

1. Optimizing your campaign budgets based on performance, costs, and external factors

Whether it's classic Search Ads, Shopping Ads, Display Ads or other advertising campaigns, it's critical to ensure you change your budgets based on cost and performance. What does that mean? Spend more money on campaigns that bring you great results and less on those that bring you poor results. It sounds obvious and you're probably already doing it already, but how can you supercharge your efforts with data-driven automation?

The more granular you go, the better it gets. This is particularly true for online shops with lots of products and categories, for whom the best practice is to split these into a variety of tailored campaigns. But doing so means more campaigns to manage, with more metrics to evaluate, more budgets to change, more effort from you and more room for error!

That's why automation is the key to success. Automation tools like Shopstory allow you to create customized rules that increase or decrease budget based on performance and/or cost metrics — usually Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS) is usually used here, but depending on your goals, it can also be Conversions, Clicks, or even Impressions. With these automations in place, you can sit back and allow the software do the work for you, as it will ensure you are constantly putting your budget to the best use possible.

It's also possible to further optimize your budgets based on external factors that correlate with demand. If you sell sunglasses, you'll probably get a higher conversion rate on sunny days and a lower conversion rate on rainy days. In this scenario, it would be ideal to boost your budget on sunny days and lower it on rainy days. Of course, this can be done manually, but if you have a large set of campaigns, then this can get really time-consuming. With the right flows in place, this can be 100% automated too!

2. Adjusting your Google campaign bidding strategies based on performance and cost

Google Ads requires that you set a goal or strategy for each campaign and this ultimately determines the kind of traffic Google pushes your way. Set your strategy to maximize clicks and Google will send lots of traffic your way, but whether or not they make a purchase will not matter. Set your strategy to maximize conversions and Google will send traffic to your shop that they believe will convert, but whether those conversions are large or small in monetary value will not matter. Set your strategy to maximize conversion value and Google will try to attract visitors to you who are most likely to spend a lot of money.

So that means you should immediately set the strategy of every campaign to maximize conversion value, right? Wrong! Google doesn't instantly know who will convert at a high value and who won't. For Google to figure this out, it needs to learn more about your audience and then adjust who it focuses on. First, the strategy should be to focus on maximizing clicks, so Google can see what kinds of users actually want to make purchases. Once that's clear, focus should be set on maximizing conversions, so Google can see what kinds of users want to make large purchases. Finally, strategy should be set on maximizing conversion value, so Google can gear campaigns toward the users that actually make large purchases - and it can do this now that it knows who they are. 

So how can you ensure that you change your strategy at the right time? Yes, you guessed right: through automation! Shopstory has already pre-built a flow that analyzes your campaigns and then changes your bidding strategy based on results. Of course, you have full control over the thresholds at which these changes occur and can tweak these at any time! You have ten, fifty, one hundred different campaigns? Doesn't matter. These flows can iteratively work through as many campaigns as you need, ensuring you don't have to work tirelessly to get this done right. In addition, this also reduces the risk of errors.

3. Shifting products in your shopping campaigns based on sales

There are a few reasons why online shops split products into different campaigns. One common reason is to split based on performance with a high-budget campaign for best-seller products (often called heroes), a low-budget campaign for low-performing products (often called zombies) and sometimes a mid-budget campaign for products with mediocre performance. Bestsellers sometimes lose their appeal and become mediocre -performers, other times low-performers become really popular and start outperforming other products, and so marketers who know what they're doing shift products between their campaigns accordingly. Another reason for a campaign split may be margins - with different campaigns for low- mid- and high-margin products - and if shops change their prices regularly, then it's important they shift their products based on their changing margins.

So how are you supposed to handle this if you have hundreds, or thousands or even tens of thousands of products that you advertise? Some marketers still review performance manually and shift products accordingly. Others have found ways of streamlining this with bulk editing, but it still takes a lot of time. And besides the time it takes to make these changes, there is always a lag between when the initial change occurs (e.g. a low-performer becomes a best-seller) and the shift of the product between campaigns. In addition, scripts can break and are often unreliable. In ecommerce, time is money, both in terms of the time spent making the changes and the time wasted while products sit in the wrong campaigns.

Cross-channel automation is key here. The data needed to differentiate high-performers from low-performers, or high-margin from low-margin products, generally sits in your shop system (e.g. Shopify, Shopware, WooCommerce), while the changes need to be made in your Google Ads account. With Shopstory, rules can be set in place with thresholds that categorize products based on their performance and then change labels for them accordingly. Then, based on the changing labels, products can be moved between campaigns. This ensures that you have the right products in the right campaigns at the right time - fully automated!

Conclusion

These are just three examples of how data-driven automation can be used to optimize paid advertising – there are many, many more ways it can be done! But what should be clear now is that there is a clear business case for using data-driven automation to optimize your paid campaigns. When used correctly, the increased sales and performance will far outweigh the cost of automation - and that's before you even factor in the time saved! Of course, you need to have the right strategy in place and know what kinds of automations best suit your business case. Once you have that figured out and you harness the power of an automation tool like Shopstory, then the sky's the limit!

Interested in learning more about how you could use Shopstory to increase sales with automation and search engine advertising? Find out more in our white paper “The Future of Automation in Ecommerce & Marketing” or book a free demo call with one of our experts to find out if data-driven automation makes sense for you:

‍