How Apparel Retailers Succeed with Google Shopping

Share:

Apparel retailers face a common challenge ― high inventory turnover. As seasons change, new trends evolve, and products sell out, retailers must re-stock their shelves with new merchandise and liquidate poor sellers. Google Product Listing Ads are a great way to feature new products and promote discontinued inventory, but they require a solid management strategy. The biggest PLA challenges for apparel retailers include the ongoing creation of new product targets, ensuring that the right ad is delivered based on consumer intent, optimizing the bid process, and managing a program with limited resources.

What may seem like an overwhelming challenge for many teams was solved by one apparel retailer―Need Supply Co. The fashionable brand specializes in unique, hard-to-find apparel and accessories. They turned to Google Shopping in order to connect shoppers to their products.

Need Supply Co. needed a solution that could help them optimize their feed. In doing so, they could improve target matching and increase impression volume. With these challenges in mind, Need Supply Co. and Adlucent employed four key strategies to achieve triple-digit growth in their program’s performance.

1. Set up an intent-based foundation:
   The majority of the traffic for Need Supply Co. was coming through the “all products” target, which is great for coverage but not for efficiency. Adlucent created over 3,000 new intent-based targets. Targets can be created at the category, subcategory, product line, model, and SKU levels.
2. Shift traffic to the right products:
   By understanding intent, Adlucent was able to shift traffic to the right products. Start by highlighting top site sellers, exclusive items, and new merchandise.
3. Show up for the right customers:
   In order to show up for the best customers, retailers must optimize the feed for intent. This can be done by including top text ad queries in the titles and descriptions.
4. Create a feedback loop to merchandising:
   Need Supply Co. delivers valuable data to the merchandising team. They use Google Shopping as a testing ground to liquidate inventory, uncover gateway products, and test price elasticity.

Each apparel retailer is unique and so are their PLA strategies. For more insights into how to take your Google Shopping program to the next level, download our complimentary report, Four Advanced Google Shopping Strategies.

[custom_author=Andrea Stout]

Andrea McFarling