Low effort, maximum performance: boost your online marketing with AI tools
These days, everyone is talking about tools like ChatGPT, that are based on artificial intelligence (AI). Many of them have already been determining our lives for a long time: What we wear, what news we consume, who we are dating online.
The consequences which can be drawn from AI are immense. This also applies to challenges in the ecommerce ecosystem: online marketing tools equipped with artificial intelligence bring great potential for small and medium-sized businesses. For example, through automatically controlled Performance Max campaigns, merchants can maximise their success on Google without much prior knowledge. We’ll show you how to connect relevant Google ads features to your online shop and take your sales to the next level with the help of AI.
What makes Performance Max so effective?
With recent tracking challenges such as significant limitations with iOS 14, online retailers need to find new ways to monitor their campaigns for better success. With shopping ads on Google powered by Performance Max, your ads become simple, affordable and flexible. The AI-driven technology focuses on conversions to improve your online presence and generates more purchases with minimal effort on your end.
One campaign for all channels.
Performance Max includes multiple campaign types to help you get started efficiently with online marketing. The campaigns are set up once and then distributed on all channels: As a shopping ad, search ad (the search within google.com), display ad (outside google.com) and more. The innovative algorithm based on AI automatically tests and optimises the campaign for best results.
If you have linked the campaigns to your online shop for maximum performance, the shop data is automatically imported and tracked to achieve even better results. For example, retargeting campaigns (i.e. advertising to potential buyers who have already been in contact with your products) can be generated automatically.
Real-time performance monitoring.
In order to control your performance, campaigns with Performance Max provide real-time insight so that you can track your data even better. Of course, you can also launch several campaigns at once and divide them according to project and target group.
Always keep an eye on your budget.
With Performance Max you can start successfully with a low double-digit daily budget. By setting a daily budget, you have full control over your spending and can adjust your activities at any time.
How to use Performance Max for your online shop
To use Performance Max for your online business, you can set your campaigns live in just a few steps. To maximise the performance of your online shop, first connect your Google Ads account to your online shop.
After you have linked your Google Ads account with your online shop, you can start your first campaign with Performance Max. To do this, select the campaign type “maximum performance”.
Next, select the conversion target: In the case of an online shop, this is usually purchases.
To create campaigns from your online shop, link your Ads account in the administration area. Online shops based on ePages Now already have all connections to Performance Max pre-installed, and the remaining settings are done in no time. So you don’t need programming skills or an expensive agency to do the linking for you.
How do I start a campaign?
As a beginner in online marketing, you have the option of choosing a simple setup for your campaign. There are some basic rules they can already follow as for better performance of your campaign:
Define target group. If you only ship your products within UK, you don’t need to extend your ads throughout the European region. For a clean setup, you should therefore specify your exact location and the language for your campaign.
Schedule advertising times. In order to better reach your target group, you can define advantageous times (days of the week and times of day) at which your advertising will be sent out. Tools such as Google Analytics allow you to see the time of day your online shop is mostly accessed to have a rough orientation of your target group. Alternatively, you can also analyse the times of your most recent purchases to increase the chance of sales.
Exclude pages. Legal pages or content-focused pages like a blog rarely lead to a direct purchase. Therefore, you should manually exclude them in your Performance Max settings.
Optimise material for campaigns. The so-called assets, i.e. image or video material for campaigns, are automatically imported from your online shop by Performance Max. The AI always keeps the focus on your products. If you don’t have your own product videos yet, Google automatically creates an animated slideshow from your images. To optimise videos for your online marketing, we recommend as the next step producing your own videos for the campaigns. That enables you to position your products to your target group in an even more focused way.
How the Raiffeisen online shop successfully switched to Performance Max for its online marketing
Jannek Arends from the German online shop Raiffeisenshop knows what advantages Performance Max brings to smaller online retailers in their daily business. The shop uses the direct connection of Performance Max via their ePages shop. We talked to Jannek about his start in online marketing and experiences with the AI-supported campaigns.
Your business began as a physical retail shop in Nordhorn, northwestern Germany. When did you start with your online shop and what was particularly important to you?
“Our traditional business in the home and gardens markets has existed since several years. To expand this into online markets, we built up an ePages online shop from scratch. Our webshop team currently consists of 4 people. For us, simple and clear handling was particularly important to be able to set up and manage the shop without external resources. This was especially advantageous for tapping into online business.”
Which tools have you used so far for your online marketing?
For a long time, we used most of the integrated tools of Google (Google Ads, Google Analytics, etc.) for our online marketing. For Google Ads we focus on search engine advertising (SEA). For this, we run campaigns via the web shop and also place ads in price comparison portals.
How did you start with campaigns for shopping ads on Google?
In the beginning, we didn’t have a complete online marketing team and just a basic ads knowledge. The approach with our small team was to test different campaigns, including Performance Max. The setup of the campaigns was very easy, as most of the important information is automatically imported from the online shop. As additional tools, we are now using Google Trends for research and the keyword planner via Google.
How successful are your campaigns with Performance Max?
Compared to self-created campaigns via Google we have created in the past, we are very satisfied with the success of our campaigns with Performance Max. In the future, we would even like to have the possibility to create different campaigns on different articles and assortment segments, as we offer a broad and, above all, somewhat seasonal assortment.
To whom would you recommend the Performance Max integration through ePages?
I would definitely recommend Performance Max to companies that are just starting their online business. In my opinion, the integration especially pays off for ecommerce experts who want to achieve initial success with a relatively small budget.
Sell products online now with AI-based support and secure £400 free advertising budget!
As a new Google Ads customer, you can now secure an additional £400 advertising budget for your campaigns. The prerequisite for this is a new Google Ads account. To receive the credit, start with at least £400 (excluding taxes and fees) of advertising budget via Shopping Ads on Google within the first 60 days. A further £400 of advertising budget will be credited to you automatically by Google, no voucher code is required. Learn more about Performance Max on Google’s website and sign up directly.
Als Content Manager bei ePages ist Sarah für redaktionelle Inhalte und Videocontent zuständig. Im ePages-Blogstellt sie Onlinehändlern Marketingtipps, rechtliche Updates und Infos zur ePages-Software zur Verfügung, um ihnen den Einstieg in den E-Commerce zu erleichtern.
This post is also available in: German
