Giving a Kiwi agency more control over client product data and A/B testing

Stanley St is a Kiwi agency that has helped countless organizations achieve sustained growth with its integrated approach to marketing.

For two of the brands Stanley St supports—Briscoes and Rebel Sport— part of that approach involves advertising on Google Shopping in the New Zealand market.

The agency has digital, media, and design teams to create and manage campaigns, but the product feed management side of advertising was a labor-intensive process.

Farbod Vaziri, a Search Specialist at Stanley St, said the agency pulled each brand's product catalog into Google Merchant Center and then tried to format listings within the dashboard. Because the product information came directly from website URLs, the team's efforts centered around data cleanup, not optimization.

"The websites we use to transfer the feed to Google Merchant Center required refining to ensure the product titles and descriptions adhered to feed best practices," Vaziri said. "Lots of filtering was involved."

While the team managed to upload listings to Google Shopping for both brands, Vaziri said the feeds were often missing the proper categories and subcategories, along with other attributes. As a result, there were instances where Google disapproved entire product assortments.

"It was a big stress. There were so many responsibilities, and we didn't have a position for it," he said. "I'm a search specialist, so I'm focusing on SA360 and Google Ads. With the feed limitations in GMC, we either needed to find the tools to help us, or create a new position, which also costs money."

Stanley St opted to find outside help, and for an agency that describes itself as fast, flexible, and specialized, it's no surprise that the team chose a feed management partner with the same qualities.

Since the agency started working with Feedonomics in March 2022, Briscoes' and Rebel Sport's click-through rate (CTR) and cost-per-click (CPC) have improved, Stanley St has saved up to 20 hours per month on feed management, and team members like Vaziri have gained peace of mind with the added help of feed specialists.

More control over product data

Feedonomics still imports Briscoes' and Rebel Sport's product data via website URLs, but its powerful platform has infinitely more optimization capabilities than GMC. With a dedicated feed manager and other experts at Feedonomics handling everything from feed build to regular maintenance for Stanley St, the right product categories and other required attributes were added to each brand's shopping feed quickly.

"We had some manual filters and rules written in Google Merchant Center, but it was maybe 20 rules," Vaziri said. "Now with Feedonomics, we have many more."

Vaziri and others have taken advantage of the increased control Feedonomics provides over product data by having their dedicated feed manager set up A/B tests and custom labels for them.

For example, Vaziri said the team ran a test a few months ago where it removed the size of bedding material—such as queen- and king-size sheets—from product titles, resulting in increased return on ad spend, CTR, conversion rate, and impression share.

Adding custom labels to products with no impressions or clicks over the past 30 days is another test Stanley St used to gather information and adjust its ad strategy.

"Those kinds of tests—we ran like three or four different tests for each brand—help us optimize titles and descriptions, not based on our assumption, but based on a real test and result from understanding user behavior," Vaziri said.

Time savings and improvement in key ad metrics

The combined impact of those tests and optimizations led to notable improvements in key advertising metrics for Briscoes and Rebel Sport. Despite a recession, Vaziri said the two brands achieved the highest CTR for shopping ads in their history over several months of 2023, and that success continued throughout the year.

In 2023, Briscoes' CTR on shopping ads increased by more than 30% and CPC decreased by 18%. Year-over-year, Rebel Sport's CTR also increased by nearly 33%.

While it's difficult to allocate a percentage of success to any single activity, Vaziri said the improved data quality and support from Feedonomics has made a significant impact.

"It's a high probability that most of this is from having a better feed," Vaziri said. "We had Feedonomics in 2022, but we made use of it much more effectively this year.

When problems occurred prior to Feedonomics, Vaziri said things got a little frantic because it took GMC support a long time to help resolve issues. Now, a dedicated team at Feedonomics helps Stanley St resolve errors and manage all feed-based initiatives more efficiently.

In Vaziri's estimation, this additional layer of service from Feedonomics saves Stanley St up to 20 hours per month, depending on the special projects it has planned. The team now uses that time to focus on other projects, providing much-needed relief to those who used to handle feed requests.

"For me, it's the peace of mind, especially during the sales season and around the holidays," he said. "I know I can just create a ticket, label it urgent, and somebody at Feedonomics will take care of it as soon as possible. It feels like extra force, extra help, and that's a very big advantage for me."

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