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Hitting the Bullseye: Setup & Best Practices for Target Advertising · Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, this is Selling On Giants, the e-commerce marketplace show, where we chat with experts in the e-commerce industry about the latest insights and strategies and best practices you need to succeed on major e-commerce marketplaces.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Victor Dwyer, and today we have our amazing guest, Will Hare.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Will is co-founder in Bellovix, a leading full service marketplace marketing agency that has been garnering considerable attention in the industry.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Before we delve into our topic, hitting the bullseye, setting up and implementing best practices for target advertising.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Will, please introduce yourself to our new subscribers that don't know you yet.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Victor, thanks for the introduction.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's a marketplace management marketing agency three times fast.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a tough one.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a tough one start.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely is.com, and there's been a lot more people really talking about Target and things like that.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to start out with saying, why would someone really want to approach Target?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you're selling on Amazon, if you're possibly selling on Walmart.com, what might entice you to really start selling on Target?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Comes down to audiences and a good product market fit.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: So there is definitely room on Target, like any platform, to be the cheapest.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: There comes a certain quality standard and certain expectations from the audience of Target.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: So the first use case is like if you have physical product in Target, you're going to want to leverage advertising.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Similar to Walmart, the user experience for Target is buy online, pick up and store.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a great way just to get more eyeballs on your product from audiences searching specific keywords in category or related to the products you might offer.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: For somebody in the 3P world, where maybe you're not in brick and mortar Target, but you're online, it is a smaller audience.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: I equivalate it to like Walmart essentially, where Amazon is still the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can't avoid Amazon, but there's still an audience there.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's still money to be made.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I foresee, you know, in my great crystal ball I have here, that eventually Target is going to succumb to what Amazon and Walmart are already working on, which is a strong third-party presence and being able to have a user experience where they maybe buy online and it ships to their house from one of the stores, or the stores become half fulfillment centers, half in-store experiences.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: So putting myself out there, but I think the shopping of the future will be some type of blend of digital and in-person.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: But at the moment, you know, it's still an opportunity.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what's nice, it's invite only.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: So like if you're in Target and on Target.com, you were invited.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's still generally not open to the general public.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: You'll need to know a buyer to get onto the platform.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you touched on this, but would you be able to go into a little bit about the differences between the Amazon Walmart buyer and possibly the target buyer?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know there's going to be a little bit different between demographic-wise, uh what is different from a target person versus a possibly an Amazon person.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Can you go into the audience differences by chance?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I can only speak high level.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't done any very specific research on each of them.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: But what we have noticed compared to Walmart, target aligns more towards the Amazon shopper, which is slightly younger.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So the millennial generation, you know, between 29, 30 to 50 right now, which blends Generation X to, but it's a slightly older demographic.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: They have generally more discretionary income than your average person, and their habits, because they're younger, uh, align more to online habits.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So they're into convenience, they're into fast shopping, and they want quality products.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Similar to Amazon, that's something that aligns well with Target shoppers.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Walmart, as we know, cost saving.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's not cheapest, is the way that like lowest value is kind of what's gonna fit best in that marketplace.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, like we've had cases where we've launched products on Amazon and we brought them to Target, but we had a different model available for Walmart that was made to hit a certain price point in order to be more competitive.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just um a lot of its price sensitivity when it comes to Walmart, Target, and Amazon.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: You can showcase different unique selling propositions and the added value of just what that brand appeal brings to all the products that are associated with it.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are you an online seller struggling to navigate the complexities of marketplace management?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let Bellivix help.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Our dedicated team of professionals are passionate, innovative, and committed to excellence to growing your brand on marketplaces.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: With Bellovix, you can trust your brand where we're seeing personalized support and expertise that will help you stand out from the competition.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: We understand that every brand is unique, which is why we tailor our approach to fit your specific needs.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're ready to take the brand to the next level on marketplaces, contact Bellovix today.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let us help you achieve your goals to grow your brand.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Can you go into a little bit about how to possibly set up a product on target?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a different process from like an Amazon.com process?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is it similar?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, can you go into some of the differences but possibly setting up the product on target?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to setting up the product, we've primarily been focused on advertising.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: So for all the accounts we've taken over, the products have already been set up and exist.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: I could talk a little bit about setting up the advertising account if that's okay.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's go into that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we use citrus ads primarily for Target.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: There are other platforms that are like Randell, Round E L, Randell is another platform that you could use to set up advertising.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the way you don't advertise directly through Target, it's not like Amazon, where uh you set up an account and then access the advertising dashboard, bada bing, bada boom, your advertising.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you have to go through a third-party provider that kind of overlays with the target experience.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And with Citrus Edge, which is the software that we use, it's pretty straightforward.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: You create an account and then you attach it to your seller account essentially, uh, which is you know through the seller ID, so it's pretty quick and easy.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're setting up your wallet.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And your wallet essentially acts as your ad budget.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you're putting funds into the wallet and the wallet will spend.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: There are no fees associated with the wallet and your ad spend, the fees are on the back end.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: So super easy to set up and quick to get going.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, obviously, once you have the products listed and and you're able to kind of be in a point where you're ready to sell products on target.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you talked about the steps there.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any key important steps that are important when it comes to setting up your advertising campaign on target using Citrus?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, absolutely.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: So uh a big thing is uh it's associated with the budget.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: So like the wallet will spend indiscriminately without proper barriers put in place.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: So once the account's set up, you add your users, you put associated email addresses you want with it, you're pretty much good to go.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: What I will say compared to Walmart and compared to Amazon is very rudimentary.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like we'll kind of get into this when we talk about some of the challenges around it, but you know, have relatively low expectations when you go into this system.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll give you an example for most of the brands we work with, while we do advertise and we we try to be as efficient as possible.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we run some experimentation.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what we found is that spend is directly tied to total sales, but it doesn't always attribute to ad sales.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of times we'll be advertising and what we would consider poor results compared to an Amazon or Walmart, when you scale back that spend, it directly correlates to total sales.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we do think that there's some attribution issues.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we come across a lot of product and setup errors and even campaign adjustments.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: We get a lot of errors uh in terms of being able to change out keywords or input proper products or change up a product lineup.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of account management side of it.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, but setup is fairly easy, getting going is fairly easy, but a lot of it has to do because it's a really simplified system for getting started and starting the ads process.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And can you go into a little bit some benefits of running advertising versus just setting it up on the target.com marketplace and the differences between setting it up and then advertising it?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Setting it up, I'm not sure there's that much of a difference because at the end of the day, the benefit of advertising anywhere, it's getting more eyeballs or qualified shoppers.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because at the end of the day, the person who's searching on Target is searching your brand, your products, they're inside your category and they're showing intent.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it is it's a marketplace, it's a it's a platform where shoppers are engaging with the goal of making some type of purchase.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the benefit is just driving total sales and brand growth on the platform.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: It will evolve already of making investments on the back end.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: They've added some new reporting features, which is great.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a little bit of a slow burn.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully that answers your question, Victor.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that definitely does.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what are some common pitfalls to avoid when setting up the ads through Citrus on target?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'll name a couple of them.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: The first one is keep your campaign nomenclature relatively simple.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta think whatever you put into that system should be API friendly.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what we have found is that if you're gonna use uh special character spaces or decimals, as crazy as that sounds, you'll get errors as you try to make adjustments and upload campaigns.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you gotta you know stick to numbers, stick to letters, and stick to hyphens or underscores uh in order to properly set up a campaign nomenclature, which can be painful.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: You can't use competitor keywords, so they actually frown upon it and will penalize your campaigns.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you want to make sure that when you set up your campaigns, is that you're not including competitor names inside there.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's the PDP, which does not stand for product detail pages, it's for in-market shoppers or category shoppers, or people are searching similar products, like those types of ads is what you would use, and it's very automatic and kind of set up for you.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: But without going too much, you shouldn't include competitors inside your keyword lineup.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: You also shouldn't use the same keyword across multiple campaigns.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Not only is it cannibalization, but it causes issues inside the back end.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: You see a degradation of performance across multiple products and multiple campaigns.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: The only keyword type you can use is exact match.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: So this is like Google early 2000s, late 90s.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Have plural, have as much misspellings as you can because it only does like literally exact match for exactly what you search.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the biggest pitfall of what I would say, and this kills me, Walmart just moved away from this, but it's on a first price auction system.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: So what it means is what you bid is what you pay for.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of times when we set up campaigns, we recommend setting up with the suggested bid and then incrementally working it up, going being aggressive on bids is a really fast way to spend all your budget.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: But those are some of the common pitfalls we've noticed on accounts that we take over or as we launch accounts just to kind of be aware of as you're trying to maximize your value on the platform.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So this is gonna be a pretty in-depth question, but how do you do the campaign structure?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you can get into that just because you can't have the same keywords, is what it sounds like for each particular campaign.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: So is there a particular way that you structure your campaigns?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you put them all the products in the same campaign?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know if you can go into a little bit of that about the campaign structure and how you set it up.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: I could definitely do that.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so what we would do is two twofold.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we we mix a lot of the same products and the same category in one campaign.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: This way, multiple products can benefit from it.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: When we gather enough data around the products, we may pause certain products.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then same thing if we have keywords that are spending a ton of money but not getting sales, we'll just kill those.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then what we end up doing is like evergreen or top products, we'll just pull out and put in their own campaigns.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it's better to have like a very specific relevant keyword to go for a whole bunch of products.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: We might say, you know, let's lead with our best foot and just advertise on the best product that's going to get the best results, and then use variations or synonyms or different ways of getting that.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we do keyword read, like there's no target keyword research.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we end up using a lot of the same tools we use for Amazon, Walmart, and Google just to kind of get keyword ideas and lists together and then kind of just pump it in.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: If a keyword works and we have healthy bids, we'll see impressions, we'll see spend, and it'll pick up.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: If a keyword doesn't have any impressions, we'll play with bids.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: If it never gets impressions, we'll just kill it.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it means it's something that's not searched a lot on the platform.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: So what we end up with a lot of times are what I would consider compared to Amazon and Walmart, are kind of bloated campaigns, but it's kind of just the nature of how the platform is set up.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: So your hands are kind of tied in terms of setup.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so from what I kind of understood from all that, it sounds like a lot of your product grouping is under a lot of one campaign.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when it comes down to the keyword research, you choose, you kind of use like a helium 10 version and you base it either off Amazon or basically probably Amazon searches for keywords and then loading that up into the target campaign.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's kind of how you kind of set it up, and then you raise and lower bids from there.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Did I get that right?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty much nailed it.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, and just gather data, experiment, you know.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're regular data scientists over here at Belvik.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: So just test, test, test till we figure out what works and what doesn't.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, ideally we're driving the ship and getting good returns.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then I bet this is a big benefit about using Target, but what are I bet the cost per clicks are dramatically lower than Amazon?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I imagine that you would get a lot more bang for your buck when it comes down to like on Amazon, an average cost per click is like$2.50.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I imagine a target click would be dramatically less.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that's going to differ by lots of clients.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any data by chance on the cost per clicks on Target?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, we have internal data that's super high level, and we can see it's pretty much about half the cost of Amazon, give or take.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: But this is, you know, handful of clients in very specific categories.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: So unfortunately, take it with a grain of salt.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: But what we did notice it takes a lot more clicks and a lot more traffic to get a sale.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And as mentioned earlier, we can't always measure the sale directly through the attribution, which is 14 and 30 days, depending on the report.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: What we do is we see it measured against total sales as we scale back spend, we'll notice that decreases.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there's layers to it.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: So although it's cheaper to get a click, it takes more clicks to get a sale.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious someone how Citrus measures ad performance and like what metrics should advertisers really pay attention to.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So there's two types of reports that you can measure.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: The first one's like your basic ad report, it's in the platform.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: You could separate by timelines of whatever data you're trying to analyze.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And in this specific report, it's a 14-day sales attribution window.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this has all your basic information.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like click, sales, cost per click, cost per acquisition, conversion rate, add sales at add costs.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like it's how your ad the health of your advertising campaign.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And this report is great.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: You could also segment on this level of report, it's like the main reporting, campaign level performance.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: We can look at specific campaigns and how they perform.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Product level performance.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: We can look at specific products and see how they perform.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then search term performance.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to get you too excited.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: There is no search term report.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's literally the keywords you put in there.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: You can see how they perform and how they drive traffic.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, everything's exact match.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: So your search term report's not going to be that interesting anyway.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: But those are the basic components inside the main report.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then they have an advanced report, which is even simpler.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: But what's nice about this report, it measures the last 30 days.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: It includes total sales.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you're able to get that tacos number.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: You can see how many sales are on the account.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: And another feature that we really like is the brand halo effect.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you can actually measure how many sales your ads drew from products that you weren't directly advertising on, but still got a sale from.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that is a pretty cool report.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's actually brand new.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: So they released it relatively recently.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we're enjoying getting access to that data and seeing what it does.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: That is really cool.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And can you provide any other insights into budgeting and bidding strategies for maximizing your added impact on Target?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: So bidding, as I said, first price auction.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'll beat the dead horse one more time.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Go with suggested bids and work yourself up.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: From like a budget categorization, we have like PDP, which is your relevant products.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: We have your category, and then you have your search.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And what we found typically search spends the most, and we try to allocate like 70 to 80% of the budget.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Category is going to be the second biggest opportunity due to relevancy.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we try to do like 10 to 20%, and then your PDP.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: So those in-market relevant searches, like 10, 5 to 10%, if we could squeeze it out.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we want to make sure we're obviously occupying each of the audience types that are available.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: But we're we're really pushing a lot of our budget towards search.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Tends to be where we get the best return on our investment.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing, so there's budget caps.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: So what we found is you could set budget constraints as total spend, and you could say, you know, don't spend more than$1,000 a month.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Not even, just don't spend more than$1,000, no timeline.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Or daily budget caps, which is like don't spend more than$50 a day.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: What we have found is that ideally we like using daily budget caps because we have more control and we can pace out our budget.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: When you use the total spend caps, Target will just spend your money as fast as they can.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: We have gone through some wallets pretty quickly learning this the hard way that you need to have daily budget caps in place.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: But for some brands, that's what they want.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like when we had the circle sales going on, we just set a total spend and we were just trying because it was like their version of Amazon Prime.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we were just trying to get as many in-market shoppers to view and buy our products as we could.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we saw pretty good returns on the sale day.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it was definitely worth the additional investment.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and then there will be errors on the platform.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And like we pretty regularly, like we have a campaign we'll run and we'll want to change something about the campaign.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And like we won't be able to remove a keyword, we won't be able to swap the product out, we won't be able to adjust bids.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times we're going through account support to make some of these updates because the platform is so far behind.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: So keep in mind the interface, there's issues with it.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it makes it hard for advertisers to act responsive and be proactive.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes we'll just minimize bids or pause it altogether and wait, you know, the seven days it takes them to resolve this issue and then ramp it back up.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the last tip I'll leave you with is um the category targeting.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: So category targeting is actually pretty powerful.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: You get some nice impressions, you'll show up in search results.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: You'll also show up on product detail pages for very similar products.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things that is required is they set a minimum bid to bid on category keywords.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes those bids are like way more than what you want to spend on a bid compared to like what you're doing on the keyword level, and you won't be able to set anything lower.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: So just be aware that if it is a high bid, you may have to adjust some of your daily budget caps to really get enough volume to test out if a specific category keyword is worth the or a specific category around products is worth the investment.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: But those are just um some things to consider when budgeting and bidding and just the platform in general.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I need your real talk opinion.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: So is it worth being on target right now, or is it worth waiting till the platform matures in the future if you're a new seller and wanting to get on target?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, do I go now?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: What is your opinion?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: I've never turned down the opportunity to have a presence on a platform like similar, like if you ask anybody to this day if they could have got on Amazon in the early 2000s, all of them say, heck yeah, Target similar to Walmart, they have a lot of stores, so they have lots of abilities to do same day and two-day shipping.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna see Walmart and Target slowly start eating more of that e-commerce marketing share because they have the ability to do fulfillment.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: So if I had limited budget to be perfectly transparent, I would put it all into Amazon, to be perfectly honest.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: But if I had enough budget where I could at least get some products on there and allocate, you know, as little as$250 on a single product, you know, that's not breaking bank.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And at least you're in there experimenting early, they are gonna make changes and it's only gonna get better.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my story.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sticking to it.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked about a lot of different things like campaign structure, keyword research, uh, some issues with it, the benefits.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything else that you want to make sure that we cover today that is gonna be important for that person that either is thinking about getting on Target and really setting up their advertising campaigns?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any other advice that you have for that person?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the only other advice I'd have is that it's a very manual process.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: So keep in mind Walmart and even Amazon, there's like software solutions that you can use to really be efficient with your time as you go in and out.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, Target doesn't have that just because of how it's set up.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, what you'll find is you're spending a lot more time than you would expect for sometimes minimal results.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, not trying to dissuade anybody from advertising on Target.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: There was great opportunities and great Product market fits, but I think you need to have a person who has the time to really dive in deep or agencies who have the experience and they can kind of speed up some of that testing process and getting you the data you need to be efficient.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the only other thing I'd say.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: From a team setup standpoint, let's say if I have 10 products, I want to set up on target.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: How many hours do I expect that team member to dedicate toward advertising those 10 products on target, roughly?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know it depends on the particular niche, just so that way that person can kind of understand and estimate like, is this a new person they need to get?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Is this a person that maybe has some extra hours in their day?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what would you say is like a good estimate on a weekly basis of how many hours to dedicate it toward the advertising?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it varies, but I guess I'll say from an agency perspective, because we'll actually go into the account every day.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: We will spend on a small account anywhere from three to four hours a week, nearly almost an hour a day, Monday through Friday, because uh going in, checking, making adjustments, and and trying to understand.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're also doing a lot of experimentation on the platform.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, I would say probably expect three to four hours a week, give or take, or an hour a day.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: But we have taken over some accounts where like they check it once every other week just to top off their wallet and they let it run.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it comes down to like what you expect from it.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess there's a bit of a range.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's valuable though.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it sounds like if someone is running their like either Amazon advertising account and they have a couple of hours, three or four hours, that they could possibly tag that on eventually somewhere in there from a team standpoint.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that are using internal agency.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it sounds like part-time too.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you could hire somebody part-time to do target, solely target, but I'm sure you'll find other stuff for that person to do.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, is there any other advice that you have for the person that's coming on target and really starting to kick off advertising?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about a lot of different advice, best practices.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: We talked a little bit about like the possible pitfalls that they could run into and reasons to why possibly not get on it.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Any other advice that people should or shouldn't do on Target?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh with Target, what I would say experimentation.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: So because it's the the setup the way it is, is like I would say be curious and making sure that you're setting up experimentation and you're running something every four to six weeks that you're trying to figure out that's gonna drive total sales.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't even look at ad sales all the way because there's a direct correlation between spend and total sales.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: So any advice to somebody starting out on the platform, go in curious, figure out what you want to test.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe in multivariant testing because I think it's difficult to narrow down what would you flip that actually drove results.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: So split test, roll it on four to six weeks, try to gather as much impression, share volume as you can, making sure you're adjusting bids pretty regularly to get traffic and that you're looking at the impact it has on total sales for category search terms and relevant searches.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then I assume that do you use tacos for your uh total A cost for your analysis on the KPI?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, especially that we've run the test already and we know for a fact that based on several clients in several different categories, that total sales is impacted by spend.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we definitely look at tacos.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any other KPIs that people should be looking at?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I guess impressions in there.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, then you hit it, impressions, like similar to like anything else.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's like uh you want to try to get it's got low volume, so at least 500 impressions, 20 to 30 clicks on a product before like you have enough data to make an informed decision.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: You could also tie it to spend, so I would say minimum comes out of like what the cost per click is, but generally like ten dollars or more is I'm using like super generic numbers, your category is gonna be different.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Once you have some baseline data on popular products, it's easy to figure out like what those thresholds should be.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: But outside of total sales and tacos, which is what we measure, you know, impressions, clicks, cost per click, these are all indicators on like do I have enough data to make informed decision about around hypotheses that we're testing on the platform?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's very valuable.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: And before we sign off, is there any other thing that you want to mention about target and advertising or touch up on any other subject that we talked about to leave the audience with their final piece of advice there?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess the final piece of advice, while we talked a lot about the platform, it's still a great opportunity.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Target does have a specific audience, it could go toe-to-toe with your Walmart account.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's not as large as Amazon.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And for anybody who's in brick and mortar and they're looking to push sales, Target Advertising is a great opportunity to get more eyeballs in front of your product.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: So this conversation was around just some of the pain points.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it comes down to like it's just an immature advertising platform that you're working with.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, it does drive results, it is a good opportunity.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: And for anybody in the advertising space, it's a fun platform to be on.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's really enjoyable to do experimentation and understand like what you can do to impact sales, and it's generally less competitive because they control the number of sellers on the platform as opposed to Amazon, which is pretty opened up.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: So there's some great opportunities on the platform, but I want to be real with all the listeners and viewers on here that there are some challenges that come with it.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're resilient and you have the right attitude, it can be really beneficial for you, your brand, or the companies you work with.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, that's all we have time for today.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Will, please tell the audience how to find you, how to find more about Bellovics and everything else like that.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for having me.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: You could definitely check out our website, bellovics.com.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty active.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: We have a newsletter that we post weekly on news and updates that affect sellers.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can sign up for that directly on our website and check me out on LinkedIn.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Will hair, like hair on your head, but with an E.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Victor, thanks for having me.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is always fun.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Love to talk about what we're learning and get to share some of our insights together.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, Will, thank you so much for joining again.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And this is Selling on Giants, the e-commerce marketplace show.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: We'll catch you next time.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for watching.