Google Shopping said to show immediate returns for SA retailers
Google Shopping in South Africa is reportedly producing four-figure return-on-investment percentages for some retail advertisers less than a year after the service's introduction. Digital advertising agency NMPi predicts the positive trend will continue in the nation, with more and more online businesses designing their sites and optimising data in line with a Google Shopping-first strategy.

Google Shopping delivering in South Africa

Get it right from the start

The holy grail of Google Shopping

Google Shopping made a low-key entrance into the South African market late in 2016, with many people still not even aware of its existence. The product ads appear either directly above the regular adwords adverts or to the right of search results, and most people would not have noticed a significant difference in their browsing experience.The attraction of Google Shopping for any company that sells goods online, however, is obvious. The feature-rich ads, including pictures, descriptions, prices, and ratings works for consumers looking for everything in one place. It allows them to click through to your website and buy the goods directly from you, without any third parties involved.As local companies look hard for more measurable ways to spend their marketing money, focus on targeted digital campaigns is picking up sharply. Digital leaders at some of the more forward-thinking retailers now see Google Shopping as a strategic addition to the digital marketing bouquet.NMPi clients who are running Google Shopping campaigns have seen immediate benefits. Although an early entrant into the Google Shopping game, one local e-commerce retailer saw a 4 000% return on ad spend (ROAS) since they signed up in March.Another large retailer is seeing Google Shopping delivering 70% of its impressions week-on-week. At the moment, the conversion rate is a little lower than Search, but NMPi believes this will improve as local consumers become more familiar with the offering.These results are in line with what NMPi is seeing with its Australian clients. The Australian office benchmarked results of six clients and found that year-on-year return on investment was up 9% and revenue had jumped a significant 68% since they had initiated Google Shopping campaigns.Setup and implementation of Google Shopping campaigns are relatively painless when working with an experienced team. We ensure that we supplement Google Shopping with re-marketing on display and it’s easily integrated with analytics. The latter is important as it allows us to identify top performing products.We have found that, especially for the larger retailers, it makes sense to focus on the top 1 000 performing products, for example, rather than the full 15 000 products they may have on offer.This stops the top performing products losing out on search impact because of generic bidding. Based on data, we develop a specific strategy for top performing goods and then apply a base strategy for the rest of the products, ensuring efficiency of spend and optimising return.Product feed optimisation requires you to input as many data fields about the product as possible. Descriptions, prices, and most especially product titles mean your product will be seen and clicked on ahead of your competitors. What’s more, the better the quality of the feed, the smarter you can be when refining your strategies.NMPi works with technical partners, Liquidbox, to deliver Google Shopping campaigns. Working through a checklist, we can assist companies that may not have everything in place – and this happens more often than not. We have seen retailers struggle for months to get their feeds right. We can now do a same-day turnaround using FeedsUp from Liquidbox and deliver a full, working feed in 24 hours.One of the biggest challenges we are facing in South Africa is that companies are still reticent about handing over any part of what they see as their core business. They would rather try to handle all digital marketing in-house, which often results in poor delivery and, ultimately, in companies dropping Google Shopping as part of their digital offering.Evidence from international clients, meanwhile, shows that global retailers are much happier to outsource their feed management, allowing the technical professionals to work according to an agreed strategy, taking care of the finer nuances of this complex delivery and seeing results far faster.Looking forward, we believe Google Google Shopping will grow quickly in South Africa. In fact, NMPi believes that the efficacy of Google Shopping will be so significant that online retailers will soon change the way they build their websites – optimising data and designing sites with a Google Shopping-first strategy.However, with that growth will come more and more competition. There is no doubt that the early adopters will reap the rewards. There is also no doubt that companies that want to get up and running quickly, and that want to outmanoeuvre their competition, will need to know how to use data to their advantage. This will require technical insight into how to manipulate their offering on the fly.For more information, visit www.nmpidigital.com . Alternatively, connect with them on Twitter