In a recent livestream, Jacques and Loren explored the PPC trends of 2023, providing valuable insights on how to develop effective PPC strategies for 2024. Drawing from the Multichannel Marketing Report 2023, this dynamic discussion delved into the tactics and data essential for retailers looking to sell across multiple channels.
We’re unpacking the key takeaways from this engaging livestream discussion and exploring the tactics for how to optimize your multichannel strategies for success, including:
- The rise of social commerce platforms for advertising, like TikTok and what kind of retailers might want to expand there.
- How to prepare for the opportunities and challenges of AI in the digital advertising space.
- Practical steps retailers can take to optimize their product listings for more conversions.
Watch the full livestream replay here:
6 key areas to optimize multichannel selling performance
Creating a successful multichannel selling strategy requires careful consideration and a well-thought-out approach.
1. Creating the right discount strategies
Discounting has proven to be a successful strategy in recent years and is expected to continue in 2024. With an increase in the importance of discounts, offering attractive deals can drive sales and customer engagement.
As of Q2 2023, 30.66% of products advertised were on sale. This is an almost 14% increase from the year before meaning that retailers have started to adopt the strategy of discounting more of their inventories to stay competitive.
Consumer tools like Google Shopping Insights have also increased in popularity. It allows consumers to track products they’re interested in and get alerts when those products go on sale. The growing interest in this tool shows that consumers are increasingly interested in saving as much money as possible when shopping online. It also shows they are willing to wait to make purchases until the price is right.
2. Choose your channels wisely
One key factor is the choice of channels, which should be based on the specific category and buyer intent. Search channels are effective for capturing the bottom of the funnel, while social channels are ideal for branding and impulse purchases, including retargeting.
It’s also interesting to note that from 2022 to 2023, the popularity of search channels among retailers decreased while social channels increased. The only outlier in this trend is Google Shopping, which remains in the top 3 most used channels for almost all product categories.
It’s crucial to choose the channels you advertise on wisely. One way is taking into account a given channel’s popularity and relevance to your target audience, as indicated in the Multichannel Marketing Report 2023.
The number of channels you choose to advertise on is also important. From 2022 to 2023, retailers decreased the average number of channels they’re selling on. This shows that with tightening advertising budgets, retailers strategically chose to focus their resources to maximize their results.
3. Optimizing key product data, like images
While creating your multichannel selling strategy, it is important to address potential barriers to success. This includes managing vast amounts of data across multiple platforms. Each platform has their open requirements for how the data should be formatted, so it can get messy quite quickly. This can result either in disapproved products or limiting campaign performance.
The best way to combat this is through data feed optimization and using a solution like DataFeedWatch that allows you to create error-free product feeds for wherever you want to sell. Product feed errors, particularly missing data, can hinder performance. Enhancing your data will ensure accurate and complete information for your products.
What are some of the most important product attributes to pay attention to? Images play a crucial role in attracting customers, so it is essential to include additional images and conduct A/B testing with various types, such as lifestyle and stock photos.
Along with optimizing product titles and descriptions, custom labels are another form of product feed enhancement that is popular with retailers. They allow you to segment your products based on any criteria of you choosing. You can then prioritize and have greater control over how you bid on these products.
Ultimately, data feed optimization remains a fundamental aspect of successful multichannel selling, ensuring accurate and up-to-date product information across all channels.
4. Making use of all the data you have access to
In addition to these strategies, retailers should consider incorporating data from other sources into their multichannel selling approach. This can provide valuable insights and further enhance performance. While shipping data may not have a significant impact, it is beneficial to have this information for a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey.
You can also add data like profit margins to determine which products are the most profitable. Then you can create custom labels using this data to prioritize those items.
5. Which products should you advertise?
When implementing a multichannel selling strategy, retailers should evaluate whether advertising all their products is truly beneficial. Excluding unprofitable products can help optimize campaigns and ensure a focus on the most valuable offerings. In fact, 66% of advertisers exclude unprofitable products.
You can also get more specific, and exclude products from certain countries that you know they don’t sell well in, or exclude seasonal products during the time periods they aren’t popular in.
6. A/B test to optimize campaign performance
Continuous testing is also crucial in Google Shopping, allowing retailers to experiment with different approaches by duplicating feeds and analyzing the results. You can test attributes like product titles to see which get shoppers to click more often, or different types of images to see if lifestyle or stock photos perform better.
The rise of TikTok in the Beauty and Fashion sectors.
According to the Multichannel Marketing Report 2023, Beauty retailers have increased their use of TikTok by 5x and Fashion retailers have doubled their use of TikTok. This indicates a significant opportunity for retailers in these sectors to reach and engage with their target audience on TikTok.
For retailers wondering if they should start advertising on TikTok, it is crucial to consider the platform's increasing popularity and the industry's recognition of its advertising potential. Considering TikTok's growing user base and its appeal to specific product categories, retailers have the opportunity to connect with a wider audience and drive business growth.
Consider beginning with advertising a strategic selection of products, like ones that are trendy or going viral, rather than advertising all of your products at once.
AI in advertising: More opportunities or challenges?
With AI at the top of everyone’s minds, how will it affect the future of online advertising? How can retailers take advantage of all the new technology, and is there anything they should watch out for?
Opportunities: Quick product image creation
Google Product Studio is a powerful tool that presents retailers with an opportunity to revamp the way they produce product images. With its advanced AI capabilities, retailers can now generate high-quality product images in a matter of seconds.
Retailers will be able to save time by cutting out the logistics of photoshoots and be able to place their images in any scenario they can imagine. Providing Google Shopping with more images can help your products sell better, especially when those images are varied and show your products actually being used.
Challenges: Lack of control over PMax campaigns
Google is steering more towards AI-powered, automatic campaign creation as we’ve seen with Performance Max campaigns. Advertisers are realizing that they are beginning to have less and less control over the inner workings of their ad listings.
As campaigns become more automated, there are still two areas that you have influence over. These include advertising budgets and the quality of the data you’re feeding into Google.
Conclusion
At DataFeedWatch we’re passionate about product data optimization and how it’s the foundation for helping brands grow in the ecommerce space. That’s why we decided to create the Multichannel Marketing Report 2023.
We created this report with anonymized data from over 16,000 online stores across 60 countries and 20 sectors to give retailers of all shapes and sizes the information they need to create successful advertising strategies.
You can use it as a resource to better understand the state of ecommerce as well as benchmark where you stand among your competitors. For example, you can check popular channels by category, how many channels retailers sell on by inventory size, discount strategies by product category, and more.
