Beauty was once considered one of the few verticals in which sales wouldn’t shift from brick-and-mortar to e-commerce. Beauty shoppers would always want to see, touch, and try the products on themselves, wouldn’t they? Not anymore. With the online global beauty market expected to grow 17% each year through 2020, beauty shoppers have bought into the convenience of e-commerce.
As more beauty retailers vie for a larger share of shopper wallets online, a winning Google Shopping strategy is paramount to staying competitive.
Read on for tips to look your best in Google Shopping and beyond.
Bid Up on Branded Searches
When beauty shoppers know what they want, Google Shopping is a great place for retailers to score conversions. But when shoppers browse and click without purchasing, those impressions can grow costly. If you notice your cost rising without corresponding conversions, you’ll want to focus on reaching more decisive shoppers.
When shoppers find a brand they like, they’ll search by brand name to find products. These are the shoppers to target. To reach them, try increasing bids on branded product searches and decreasing bids on non-branded searches. This will help your products surface for shoppers with higher intent to purchase, rather than for shoppers who are just browsing.
Allocating more spend to branded searches and less to non-branded ones will help you convert customers lower in the purchase funnel and control your cost.
If you notice your cost rising without corresponding conversions, you’ll want to focus on reaching more decisive shoppers.
Remember to keep an eye on your search terms report, within the Dimensions tab, so you can catch any up-and-coming brands shoppers are searching. And for more on valuing branded searches, check out our E-Commerce Marketing Minute video on the topic.
Invest in High Customer Lifetime Value
When mapping out your bidding strategy in Google Shopping, consider the lifetime value of the customers you acquire.
Shoppers who buy their color-safe shampoo, keratin conditioner, and texturizing hairspray on your site are making cyclical purchases. If shoppers buy this month, they’ll be back in another two or three months to re-up their supply. These customers have high lifetime value to your business.
To account for customer lifetime value in Google Shopping, consider lowering your target ROAS for cyclical purchases to get them more exposure and a stronger shot at conversion. This will help keep your products surfacing in Google Shopping when it’s time to replenish the supply.
On the other hand, shoppers who buy a hair straightener (which lasts for years) have lower lifetime value to your business. Items such as hair dryers and curling irons are more likely to be one-time purchases, so there’s less of a chance that customers buying only these items will be compelled to return anytime soon. For non-cyclical purchases, you can set a higher target ROAS to minimize your spend.
If you’re not using target ROAS, you can simply increase bids for cyclical purchases and decrease bids for items more likely to be one-time purchases.
Invest in Mobile to Build Your Brand
If your store is new to the marketplace and your brand needs exposure, invest in mobile. Yes, mobile conversions still lag behind desktop, but shoppers are starting their journeys on mobile devices. In the US, more Google searches take place on mobile than on desktop. If you’re not making an impression on mobile early in the funnel, you could be missing out on sales down the line.
If you’re not making an impression on mobile early in the funnel, you could be missing out on sales down the line.
Increasing your impression share on mobile will help build your brand and increase traffic volume to your site. To do this, keep a low mobile ROAS goal.
Eventually, those mobile impressions should beget desktop conversions.
Set Up Merchant Promotions in Google Shopping
Google Merchant Promotions offer a way to get your products noticed on the SERP. In the beauty space, many items have low price points, and that can mean your AOV hovers at the low end, too. A customer can only buy so many eyeliners and highlighters at once, after all.
Offering free shipping on orders over $50 can help boost your AOV. And if that offer is advertised right in the Shopping ad, your products are more likely to get shoppers’ attention. Get clever with your promotions by offering a gift card after first purchase, or a pairing up sample products as a free gift, to entice a first-time shopper to give your store a try.
Ready to set up promotions? Here’s a step-by-step guide.
Use Remarketing to Keep Shoppers Coming Back
When shoppers have visited your site or purchased from you before, you should invest in regaining their attention. Google’s Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) offer powerful remarketing tactics for beauty retailers
With RLSA, you can re-engage site visitors based on particular pages they’ve visited and value them differently with bid adjustments. For visitors who haven’t made a purchase, try bumping up bids by 25% as a starting point.
In addition to getting back in front of shoppers who haven’t purchased, be sure to win back past purchasers for upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
For example, if a shopper buys a dark lipstick shade in the winter, you could entice that shopper to return to your site and buy a lighter shade or gloss in the summer. Adding an audience bucket within AdWords for past purchasers and including a positive bid modifier (say, + 50%) will give you a strong chance at re-engaging familiar shoppers.
If you’re new to RLSA, check out this comprehensive guide, RLSA & Customer Match for Google Shopping: The Ultimate Guide.
Use these tips to engage and convert beauty shoppers in Google Shopping. To re-engage and foster loyalty, incorporate the remarketing tools available from Google into your tactics. Strive to get noticed and build your beauty following.
