At ShoppingIQ, we work with retailers of all sizes, from ambitious start-ups to some of the world’s leading luxury brands. In this Google Shopping case study, we explore how ShoppingIQ helped Creed Fragrances improve Google Shopping performance, increase sales and strengthen ROI without relying on product price discounts.

 

The Challenge: Competing on Google Shopping Without Discounting

One of Creed Fragrances’ key challenges was competing with other retailers on price.

While competing retailers regularly discounted Creed products-not only during key trading periods such as Black Friday and Christmas, but throughout the year-Creed maintained consistent premium pricing across its product range.

This presented a particular challenge on Google Shopping, where product price is highly visible and can significantly influence a shopper’s decision to click and purchase.

ShoppingIQ identified an opportunity to help Creed differentiate its Google Shopping ads in another way: by making its product imagery more compelling and using creative optimisation to communicate the additional value of its promotional offers.

 

The Opportunity: Standing Out on Google Shopping

Google Shopping is a highly visual advertising format, so ShoppingIQ analysed the product imagery being used by other retailers advertising Creed fragrances.

The findings were clear: the majority of advertisers were using very similar creative, consisting of standard product shots against plain white backgrounds.

With little visual differentiation between competing Google Shopping ads, there was limited reason for shoppers to choose one retailer over another based on imagery alone.

ShoppingIQ identified an opportunity to make Creed’s Google Shopping ads stand out visually, capture greater shopper attention at the point of search and communicate more value through the product image itself.

 

The Strategy: Making the Offer More Visible and Product Imagery More Appealing

During Black Friday, Creed did not discount its products. Instead, it offered customers a free gift with orders over a specified value.

Although the promotion was active within Google Merchant Center, the offer was not particularly prominent within the Google Shopping ads themselves.

ShoppingIQ’s real-time technology enables retailers to dynamically optimise product imagery with customisable promotional callouts and enhanced creative elements.

ShoppingIQ proposed adding a prominent “Free Gift” badge directly onto the product imagery while replacing the standard white backgrounds with more colourful, premium backgrounds featuring visual elements inspired by the fragrance ingredients.

The objective was simple: differentiate Creed’s Google Shopping ads, communicate the promotional offer at a glance and give shoppers an additional reason to click, without reducing the product price or compromising Creed’s premium positioning.

 

The Results: Higher CTR, Sales and ROI

For the products where the enhanced Google Shopping imagery was implemented, the results were significant:

• 12% increase in click-through rate (CTR)
• 369% increase in sales369% increase in sales
• 236% improvement in ROI

These results demonstrate how stronger product imagery and clearer promotional messaging can improve Google Shopping performance even when competing retailers are using aggressive price discounts.

 

The Takeaway

This case study demonstrates how ShoppingIQ’s dynamic product imagery and Google Shopping optimisation capabilities can help retailers differentiate their ads, communicate additional value to shoppers and drive stronger performance while maintaining a premium pricing strategy.

For Creed Fragrances, enhancing the product imagery helped make the brand’s promotional offer more visible while creating greater differentiation within competitive Google Shopping results.

This is just one example of how ShoppingIQ’s technology can help retailers overcome the limitations of traditional Google Shopping, optimise product feeds and creative, and unlock new opportunities to improve advertising performance.

Want to identify more opportunities to improve your Google Shopping performance? Request a free Product Feed Audit from ShoppingIQ and discover potential improvements across your product feed and Google Shopping campaigns.