An Ultimate Guide for a Winner Google Shopping Ads Campaign
Online shopping is the most convenient way to shop for customers. Hardly anyone does not love online shopping. According to the stats, there were 263 million digital buyers in the U.S. in 2019. In 2024, the figure is estimated to reach 282.7 million online buyers.
These figures make it obvious why businesses need to invest in Google shopping ads.
Google shopping ads are the ads that appear on the search engine results page when someone is looking for a product. However, Google Shopping ads can be highly confusing to set up if you are a newbie.
To help you with this, we’ll review how you can structure a Google shopping campaign and the important strategies which drive sales.
Google Shopping Ads for e-commerce are highly clicked ads that Google offers. Shopping ads take into account over 60% of their paid clicks for retailers. Out of all paid channels, Shopping Ads consistently deliver the highest return on ad spend.
Shopping ads on Google are steadily evolving and improving. These days, they are smarter, easier to set up, and provide you with a broader reach. We’re offering you a detailed account of setting up the products in Shopping Ads. Understand how you can leverage the benefits of the various Google Shopping Ads technical advances. A Small Business Advertising Agency can help you in dealing with all aspects of Google Shopping Ads.
How the user (person searching online) sees these ads is different when Google Shopping and Google Search ads. Not only do the two types of ads have a slightly different appearance, but their placements are also slightly different.
Typically, when someone searches on Google, the first 4 results and last 2 results at the bottom of the results page are paid-for results. It varies slightly for mobile search results. The text-only results are seen with the word ‘ad’ next to them. These are search ads that probably look like this:
As shoppers explore Google for a product, the merchants and advertisers who’re using Google Shopping can find shopping results that are relevant to the search they made. It looks somewhat like this:
Google Shopping provides users with a great shopping experience listing the products with features like:
This helps you to filter the results according to:
The results appear at the top of regular organic search results like a product carousel.
This arrangement gives several benefits to online retailers as they import the relevant product data into their free Merchant Center account. Paid ads are also known as Product Listing Ads or PLAs helping retailers that don’t want to rely only on organic search results to make their products appear in front of the searchers.
Shopping Ads or Product Listing Ads or PLAs are product ads appearing in Google Search results.
Google Shopping Ads are present in the form of similar products present at the top of a SERP and require taking care of the commercial search intent. It helps you easily and quickly check the right kind of products to click through for making a purchase.
They are simple ads with short descriptions. The Ad needs an
An additional row also typically displays snapshots of the product reviews. Additionally, a Google Shopping Ads Agency uses text that may also show benefits (such as “free delivery”).
Google Shopping Ads Agency- in paragraph content.
Shopping ads won’t appear in Google’s standard search results. Additionally, they are visible on the:
The Google Search results include image results.
In the price comparison, shopping service and apps (iOS and Android):
The Shopping Ads are also very useful and popular with the shoppers and advertisers. Google is gradually expanding Shopping’s reach. It gives a higher number of opportunities to the shoppers. The Google Search Shopping tab is displayed in 99 countries from Asia, Europe, USA.
Google Ads and Google Merchant Center are the two platforms powering Google ad campaigns. Google Ads helps to sustain shopping campaigns, allowing retailers to
Google Merchant Center helps the product’s feed storage. You should take care of the details of the sales tax and shipping. Here is an insight into the product feeds. As explained earlier, PLAs provide you with important details about your products in a Google format. Google uses the product feed to build your Shopping ads.
Google Ads Ecommerce setup and management is slightly different from the traditional text ads setup.
Text ads allow you to:
Google uses the shopping tab, feed, your site, and other things to understand search queries triggering the ads. In this way, it is similar to the Google Ads product feed which is search engine optimized.
Google Shopping Ads or Google Product Listing Ads are a highly effective way to drive sales and revenue for a catalog. Google focuses on making major strides for improving Google Shopping for consumers. It releases new tools, ad formats, and other things that make things accessible for your audience on different Google properties.
Visibility accounts for the largest difference between Search Ads and Shopping Ads. Check the screenshot of whereby typical Google search results page lest you understand better about how things are going on:
The Google search results do not allow much room for organic results. However, search ads get pushed further down the page due to this.
Shopping Ads secure a premium spot in the search results, with the visual format attracting many clicks. The higher number of clicks translates into a higher profit for Google. However, it is also helpful for retailers.
More retailers are driving ad budgets right from search to Shopping Ads. According to research by Merkle, ad spending increases by 38% on Google Shopping as compared to last year for lowering it by 12% for Search Ads.
Google Shopping accounts for 65% of Google Ads clicks and 89% of non-branded Google search ad clicks of retailers. Shopping Ads are highly profitable for the same period offering advertisers 12% higher revenue for every click as compared to Search Ads on a desktop for non-branded keywords.
Consider this. If you want to buy your new Nike Air Max shoes, would you prefer to click on the Nike Search Ad or go for products displayed on Shopping Ads?
Nike may be doing an excellent job using a Search Ad, but the Google Shopping Ad describes a product. On the flip side, Shopping Ads show you the actual products. When you are looking for such a product, you’re likely to click on carousel Shopping Ads due to the visual display.
Moreover, the product ads help you as the consumers are unsure about what they’re looking for. Several consumers use product ads as a research tool to understand the various product prices, models, types, colors, and the stores where consumers can purchase the products.
Advertising has been interruption-based in the earlier times. It means that if the customer is doing an activity, like watching a YouTube video, and suddenly an ad pops up:
As this ad by Purple shows up, the viewer may have no intent to buy a new mattress. But if a person wants to buy a mattress later, they’ll remember this ad by Purple.
Now, let us look at the Shopping Ads, which are more or less intent-based. It means that the ads get displayed when a buyer wants to find a solution.
When searchers are looking for “Nike Air Max 270”, it is advantageous for retailers to run ads about the exact shoe:
Detailed Mobile Google Shopping Ad
The click-through rates and conversion rates are much higher for such ads. It is seen in the form of the cost of a click on any of such ads. This means that while a YouTube Ad costs a few cents, a click on a Product Ad will be ten times more expensive. This means this Shopping Ad has a higher tendency to get clicked.
How to Set Up Google Shopping Ads
Step 1 – Creating Your Product Feed
Step 2 – Setting up Google Merchant Center
Step 3 – Creating a Google Shopping Campaign
So, now comes the question of how to set up Google Shopping Ads. Here are the steps you need to take to set up and run.
The first step is to advertise on Google Shopping is to turn the store’s products into Shopping ads with a process comprising four important aspects, including
The various parts are interrelated and assist in the efficient working of Google Shopping Ads. However, the entire process may appear like a “Google Shopping Puzzle” if you are new. This guide can help you to go through the process for the first time.
In the subsequent sections, you will learn how you can add various products to Google Shopping. Briefly, here is the step-by-step process for setting up a Google Shopping campaign.
The product feed is vital for a Google Shopping campaign. Overall, it is a platform or spreadsheet containing all your product data.
Google is highly restricted about the information you should include and the format you must use. So, you are not likely to mess up things while creating them if you follow a step-by-step approach.
When you do that Google approves such products and you cannot advertise them. Fixing the errors in your current product data is important, you can advertise them again.
Follow two approaches to create a product feed in Google Shopping Ads. You can generate the feed using an extension, app, tool, or create a spreadsheet to carry out the function manually.
Download an app to speed up the product feed setup. The major e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce help you share the products using the best apps suitable for each platform.
Google Shopping app link is useful regardless of the poor ratings. However, the official Google Shopping app is helpful for Shopify and works like a charm. So, you can make a lot of changes to it.
Do not go for the “Smart Shopping” option while configuring an app.
Google helps to automate a huge share of its work with the best apps and extensions. Export your product data feed, and in general, it informs you that something is wrong.
The product feed in the e-commerce back-end may not be in the right shape. You can make a few changes to it before uploading it to Google Merchant Center. This in-between zone involves the use of product feed management tools. Here is an insight into a few examples:
When your feed is ready, just create a Google Merchant Center account. As you accomplish all these steps, you have to claim your ownership and verify that this is your store. Add a meta tag to your website using the Google Tag Manager in Google Analytics.
First, set up the Google Merchant Center, where you can upload your catalog and product feed to integrate it with the Google Ads account. Navigate to Google’s Merchant website to set up a Merchant Center account.
Now that the Merchant Center account is set up, log in and create your shopping feed.
The product feed has a detailed list of the product catalog in Excel-like format. It informs Google about the products the retailers are serving in the Shopping Ad campaigns.
Create a product feed in Google Merchant Center
A powerful product feed is vital for successful Shopping. Here are some ways in which you can go for optimizations of the list in your product feed. Here are a few things you need to take care of for your Google Shopping Ads for eCommerce.
1. Organize your feed content according to Google’s specifications.
2. Optimizing product titles, so they are search engine friendly.
3. Using longtail and short tail keywords in titles and descriptions to rank for important queries.
4. Leveraging product extensions and Merchant Promotions for increased visibility and click-through.
5. Making sure images are high-quality.
6. Setting up product groups for campaign segmentation.
7. Setting up Shopping Actions for specific products to surface beyond Shopping (Google Express, Voice, etc.
A study by Salsify 88% of shoppers considers product content as an “extremely” important part of their decision to buy.
Content gives you a deeper place in the shopping engines. With product feed optimization, you can get greater insight.
As you get more time, you can dive deeper and leverage the benefits you get with such a guide:
Here are a few best practices for optimizing Google shopping titles. Your product titles should not only be clickable but also search-friendly. This helps your product to rank on search engines such as Bing or Google. Otherwise, the product titles do not appear in user queries results.
The factors you must consider to take into account your rank on Google Shopping, including
Closer attributes like the brand or MPN are present to the left, the more they are towards this side, the more significant is their importance. Generally, it is best to ensure that all your product identifiers and product variants are present in the Merchant Center.
Google pulls the information from the supplier’s catalog with the help of GTIN for placing a product in an auction using competing products. As you look into the details, these points prove useful.
First, dig out the keywords your products are ranking for.
Run a Search Terms report in AdWords to determine the top-performing queries.
Note: They may not include the keywords you are bidding on in Adwords or PPC. Moreover, these search terms depend on users’ actual requirements or words they actually type in the search bars.
Here are a few pointers to follow before finalizing the keywords:
As this is a continual process, you also have to update the product titles and descriptions as you find new and profitable queries in Adwords.
Official Google Shopping Product Categories are seen in the Google Product Taxonomy (GPC). It is important to match your products depending on the taxonomy. Also, leverage the “product types” section in your datasheet to get a detailed insight.
Here’s an example of a GPC in comparison to the Product Type column.
GPC
Home & Garden > Decor > Throw Pillows
Product_Type
Baby Kids & Teens > Crayola Kids > Throw Pillows > Crayola Crayon Bolster Pillow – Lemon Yellow
The greater the number of details you can provide, the higher is the visibility for adjusting bids on the granular level.
On making a search query, you will find that related products appear below the ad and are present in a plus box formation. It is seen in the product feed in Google Merchant Center’s account.
To roll out product extensions, optimizing the product feed is highly important. Note every other step as it will help you to form a detailed and up-to-date product feed which gives you a higher chance to spot product extensions in the PLAs or product listing ads.
You can also add product extensions to your product listing. Navigate towards the Merchant Center and then “Ad Extensions.” Now, you can easily add a new extension and choose a relevant product feed.
Google provides for the addition of nearly 10,000 characters for their descriptions.
Leveraging those characters is best done using the right best practices.
If you are ready now, create a campaign for Shopping ads or Product Listing Ads.
Your Merchant Center account and product feed let you create a setup for your Shopping campaign in Google easily, even if it is the first time.
Here are ways to set up your Google Shopping Ad campaign:
Target return on ad spend (ROAS)
Making a customer versus making a sale
Setting goals is an important step to keep you on track. It provides you with the great scope and creativity needed for problem-solving and realizing your goals. Here are a few things you need to understand for goal setting.
Another thing to understand is how much you can generate with every dollar you spend on ads. This will answer your question if you can get influenced by several factors such as
And your growth goals.
Here’s a scenario. You’re selling a product for $100 with a margin is $50. Suppose you get a 100% return on ad spend (ROAS). Then you will be losing money.
$100 in sales – $100 in ad cost – $50 in cost of goods = -$50.
So, to start earning, in this situation, you need to generate $150 in sales for every $100 ad spend. We can also say that you require $1.50 in sales per $1 ad spend. This calculates to 150% ROAS.
Now, to generate $3 per $1 ad spend or have a 300% ROAS.
Experts recommend calculating the break-even point for setting the ROAS target. A highly aggressive ROAS target means you will be bidding aggressively for generating greater sales volume with the Shopping campaigns. A highly conservative ROAS goal provides for efficient and focused Shopping ads at a smaller scale. You have to choose according to your requirements. It is not possible to generalize a correct or an incorrect approach on the whole.
Merchants work with two major kinds of goals-
Both approaches are useful for making money. However, it will be useful in building a lasting business and brand comprising customers who can sell again. They also refer more customers to you. The Shopping Tab could work for you in both ways. However, your approach also dictates how aggressively you can take to your bidding and optimization efforts.
Shopping Ads are an advanced form of Google Shopping Ads working to simplify advertising on Google Ads as you use automated bidding, creative ad customizations, and ad placements depending on Google’s machine learning.
Smart Shopping campaigns comprise:
They are eligible to appear on the:
Smart Shopping provides businesses with smaller bandwidth and the advertisers’ large catalogs). This allows Smart campaigns to generate PLAs with minimal assets and, therefore, a minimal need for input.
Over the years, we’ve checked Google’s Machine Learning which became highly effective in optimizing and streamlining a campaign performance. However, you should also focus on the various Google Shopping issues.
The use of Smart Shopping gives a two-fold advantage
Automation features help advertisers in several ways.
Brands need to take care of Google’s new tools for opportunities streamlining performance, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution for every situation.
Brands should be mindful of the “learning phase” needed in automated Smart Shopping campaigns for delivering performance. To learn about data and time in smart campaigns, you’ll find that your performance is becoming better and better in the long run.
Google will be using highly refined automated tools in the upcoming year. So, advertisers need to be aware of the way how such changes affect performance. And you always require a human element to guide and monitor campaigns running on autopilot.
Even in Search Ads, you should pay every time someone clicks on one of your Shopping Ads. Here is a pictorial representation of the typical cost of such clicks.
Average CPCs for every niche on Google Shopping – source
It is possible to understand the average cost per click for Google Shopping for the various niches. Overall, the average CPC is $0.66, which is a bit higher than the average Google Ads cost of $1.16 in e-commerce stores.
The clicks generally cost quite less. Moreover, the average Google Shopping conversion rate is 1.91%, lower than the average Google Ads conversion rate of 2.81% in the e-commerce industry.
Other favorable factors
The Shopping Ad clicks are also comparatively low cost, with a lower Cost Per Action (CPA), $38.87, compared to $45.27 for various Google Ads clicks.
The statistics show you an average Google Shopping cost which means the REAL performance of shopping campaigns is highly useful.
Google Shopping campaigns are worse than regular Search Ads. However, with the right tweaks, there is great room for improvement.
Google must understand the shipping costs to make an accurate price comparison with several vendors. One needs to configure shipping with a Google Merchant Center.
You need to take care of the shipping and returns settings in Google Merchant Center. Go to the wrench icon in the top bar. Select “Shipping and Returns.” Now, you can create a new shipping service while defining the shipping costs. From the flat rate to the order size based, integrate it with carrier pricing like UPS or FedEx.
Configuring of sales tax applies if you are selling within the US. If you’re not, you can skip this part.
You should know the following things about configuring tax settings in Google Merchant Center.
Click the wrench icon in the top bar to find this menu and select “Tax.” You can set up different tax rates depending on the country and state you are selling in, depending on its location laws. Ensure that you take care of the local sales tax regulations in the states where you will be doing business.
Here are step-by-step details for Shopping shortly. It is essential to discuss your goals. It can be challenging to create a strategy and a road map without understanding your goals.
Lately, Google announced that they want to return free shopping listings to Shopping results. Many e-commerce merchants treated it as a flashback towards days at Froogle—when one could list products for free. These included free product listings into the Shopping results helping new commerce entrepreneurs greatly. It is beneficial and necessary to go for Shopping ads even if you want to make the most of Google’s online shopping traffic.
Here is a brief description of free and paid listings. It is essential to understand why paid listings make perfect sense and are valuable.
Using prominent positions in Shopping results means that they should be paid. Importantly, all the results appearing on the main Google Search results page are 100% paid. The product listings have an important share of the clicks in product search. You may be looking for some volume in utilizing your Shopping efforts. Regardless of this, you need to take care of the paid approach.
You can find free Shopping placements are on the Shopping tab and Google Images, Google Lens, and others. With the introduction of free listings in April 2020, Google has seen:
On average, free listings and ads on the Shopping tab in the US help in various ways. Though it is impressive, the traffic from free listings can be quite limited for most merchants. The most prominent listings are still paid on the Shopping Tab. The top row of product results comprises sponsored listings, while the free listings begin underneath them.
The Shopping listings cannot transform your business entirely, but they sure make a difference. And as the listings are free, they give the best way for you to benefit from the Google Shopping waters and check your potential for paid ads.
In the Merchant Center, navigate to reporting for surfaces to measure your free listings’ performance.
Shopify’s Google channel facilitates the retailers in getting their first sales in the Shopping Ads. The Google channel app for Shopify also assists you to keep your feed running fast. You can easily get your products in front of the customers with the Google channel on Shopify. A Smart Shopping campaign can make it easy for you to list your products for free.
Shopping Actions lets the retailers display the products to shoppers on various platforms. It also helps the shoppers to “Buy on Google.” Buy on Google will help shoppers to give you important information like the credit card to Google for order processing. Following this, Google sends the order info to a merchant allowing order fulfillment. Buy on Google items generally feature a famous icon.
Typically, ads appear in Standard Google Search results in the:
How do Google Shopping Actions Work?
Google works for your requirements, and you must determine if you are eligible for the program. You need to offer a consistent shopping experience to your shoppers. To leverage the benefits of Shopping Actions, make sure that you are completely committed to Google’s requirements. The conditions are as follows:
Your product feed is at the center of your Google Shopping campaigns; it’s the way you communicate your inventory and product data so that your Product Listing Ads display relevant shopper search queries. You want titles and descriptions in your product feed that accurately describe your product and is also relevant to broad search queries.
Organize your feed content according to Google’s specifications.
2. Optimizing product titles will prove helpful to make them search engine friendly.
3. Using longtail and short tail keywords in titles and descriptions to rank for
important queries.
4. Leverage product extensions and Merchant Promotions for increased
visibility and click-through.
5. Making sure images are high-quality.
6. Setting up product groups for campaign segmentation.
7. Setting up Shopping Actions for specific products to surface
beyond Shopping (Google Express, Voice, etc.
Most retail brands like to maximize product exposure for top-converting search queries while decreasing spending for unprofitable ones. Though you can’t target keywords directly with Google Shopping, you can leverage negative keyword lists in an alternative campaign and use priority settings for funnel searches into the right campaign.
An “isolation” strategy can help you make the most out of each Google Shopping Ad campaign. This pertains to the use of priority settings and negative keywords to isolate and push aggressive bids and budgets in high-value searches.
Most retail brands require maximizing their product’s exposure for top-converting search queries and decreasing their Ad spend on unprofitable ones. Though you can’t target keywords directly with Google Shopping, you can leverage negative keyword lists in an alternative campaign and then use priority settings to funnel searches into the right campaign.
We use an “isolation” strategy to make the most out of each Google Shopping Ad campaign. This means we also use priority settings and negative keywords for isolating and pushing aggressive bids and budgets to high-value searches.
Also, divide campaigns and use the product groupings to give you greater control over your listings, bids. It enables you to target every part of the Google Shopping funnel. Here’s an example below.
Some of the useful activities:
An insight into each part of the funnel can easily drive various ISO campaigns. At the same time, it is important to manage a full-funnel approach to Shopping.
Google Shopping Actions provide online shoppers with brand products on several Google surfaces and later purchase from them using a universal shopping cart and instant checkout.
The order gets shipped to the customer directly. Google promotes this in the form of a streamlined and frictionless shopping experience for its users. And it is surely the right one as you carefully consider this approach. Shopping Actions works on a pay-per-sale model.
As Shopping Ads are easy to set up, they are challenging to master if you don’t have the right strategy in place. Create customized campaigns utilizing the negative keywords.
Create customized campaigns using negative keywords. If you create multiple campaigns, you can divide them into high, medium, and low priority.
One strategy is using several campaigns with varying priorities to target certain searches. To do this, you should develop a negative keyword list for each campaign so you can control the searches for which your product shows up.
This means that you design a campaign for creating generic searches with high intent for branded searches.
In this strategy, you will understand the searches which are more likely to convert versus those that aren’t.
In Google shopping ads, your ad will compete with several other products. That’s why it’s important to consider your pricing.
In the example below, you can understand in detail the Google shopping ads which show up in the search for example, “Fabletics leggings.”
Some of the products are known a Fabletics are present in fewer quantities than the other brands. The Fabletics leggings are priced around $45-60. However, Old Navy leggings for $28 and SHEIN leggings for $10.
You will find that price plays a significant role in purchasing things. Therefore, you need to keep the cost competitive for increasing your sales.
While designing a new strategy for your marketing campaign, the A/B test proves vital. Google shopping ads help you to try various techniques.
Check various ad groups and priority settings, negative keywords, and bids. Apart from that, also test the product groups and pages that are likely to convert better.
It’s necessary to balance a campaign structure with a bidding strategy as you use Google shopping ads. Run A/B tests to understand what can bring the right results and improve the sales for your company.
Google shopping ads do not target specific keywords. Nevertheless, it is crucial to optimize your product pages, signaling Google about the product keywords it should consider.
Use keywords in the:
And product description copy.
This helps Google decide the right time to show your product.
You may have been looking at a product online while scrolling through Facebook. And then you find the ad for the same product. This is an example of retargeting. One can also use retargeting for Google shopping campaigns.
For this, you can use remarketing lists, giving you the ability to segment the site visitors with site engagement earlier on. It is possible to customize the bids depending on the earlier engagement characteristics like loyal customers, shopping cart-abandoners, and repeat visitors.
This strategy helps you to increase your sales tremendously as people are much more likely to convert if they’ve visited your site earlier.
Having Similar Audiences is the right way to segment your traffic and cater to specific audiences which are so much like your returning customers. They may have a similar behavior online and are so much inclined to purchase things from you.
Google Shopping campaigns also help you to set up Similar Audiences. This lets you build, connect, engage audiences, and get loyal customers.
It is necessary to take care of the price using a single strategy in Google Shopping Ads entailing the inclusion of a special offer or deal bundled with your products. Also, consider using the free shipping tag to your ad.
To set yourself apart from everyone else, use strategies like including a special offer in your ad. It improves your ROI.
Google Shopping campaigns appear to be a complex process. However, this is not the case. You need to think strategically about the campaigns and understand the useful things for your company.
Include Merchant Promotions with your Shopping ads.
Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs) helps target people who have visited your site or have purchased earlier from you. Find out about audiences who have interacted directly or indirectly with your business.
You need a cement of people providing you with a powerful opportunity to drive repeat purchases for accelerating lower funnel conversions.
Conversion rates can be higher for audiences who already know your brand or the ones that have visited your site in comparison to normal users. Focus on the users which are carrying out the searches. This proves much more valuable than focusing only on the keywords. And this is why RLSA is so valuable.
Remarketing lists assist the retailers to connect with customers leaving a site while they’re still searching for what they need on Google.
Note: Make sure you have global sitewide tagging installed on your website.
If you fully use the data collected in your remarketing initiatives, you can ensure that you track a customers’ sitewide behavior and conversions with Google’s new sitewide tag.
2. Use Similar Audiences to target new visitors
Similar Audiences can attract new visitors to a site and is related to people having a similar search and browsing behavior which is present in the existing members of the remarketing list.
It is important to use Similar Audiences to spot other audiences that will be quite similar to the best-performing users. It helps in taking care of the audience matching the online personas of the past buyers.
Using Similar Audiences in your campaign or ad group targeting shows the ads to people having a similar search behavior to the ones who are your site visitors. They are highly likely to become your potential customers.
What are the Benefits of Similar Audiences for Shopping?
It is important to understand that Similar Audiences may not purchase immediately from your site. Rather, they will be added to your remarketing list as you use the remarketing tag to your site.
3. Make the most of the Customer Match data
Customer Match helps you to use and make the most of the customer phone numbers and email address lists in your Google Ads.
Retailers can use these email lists to build campaigns or design ads for targeted advertising to reach the audience. It proves amazingly useful to get an ability to add phone numbers and mailing addresses for Customer Match, especially in a catalog-based business having a long list of phone numbers and mailing addresses.
How does Customer Match Benefit?
Customer Match is vital to help advertisers reach the highest-value audiences who are highly likely to convert. Advertisers may employ Customer Match to adjust bids or customize their messages or products on the Google Shopping platform. This helps to take care of the different segments of earlier customers.
The Google Customer Match helps retailers reach their “highest-value customers”.
How?
Customer Match fosters your connections with a suitable customer base on Google Search. Retailers can create new relationships on several platforms such as Gmail Native Ads, YouTube, TrueView.
It is advisable to consult experts to learn more about the Customer Match program for addresses and phone numbers.
4. Include Geo-targeting modifiers
With geo-targeting modifiers, you can run a more aggressive Google Shopping ad campaign. Geography-based bid modifiers are features letting the advertisers change bid percentages according to their locations.
While setting up Geo bid modifiers in the Google Shopping Campaigns, you must understand a few things:
Based on the situation, you can get more specific by utilizing the city/zip code level in Google Shopping Ads.
5. Get Competitive with Auction Insights
As advertisers increase their spend amount in Shopping than in earlier times, it will be necessary to foresee if impression shares start rising. Google’s Auction Insights helps compare your campaign’s performance with other advertisers’ campaigns for similar auctions.
Retailers can use such information to make strategic decisions for budgeting and bidding. Auction data shows where they are succeeding and missing opportunities to give you a better performance.
Make sure that you check the Auction Insights every month. But, if you are in a very highly competitive niche, carry out weekly checks. Often, other things are equal (for example clicks, CPCs, avg. position, and the like), but if the conversion rates drop, competition may lead to the change.”
New competitors will be quick to grab your traffic quickly in Shopping, especially when they have better pricing.
Checking the reports can prove vital because you can see the impression share of your competitor and the overall rate. The other details you can get in handy include:
You can use these details to understand if your competitors are increasing their bids in your competitors’ impression share gives you a glance into the same.
6. Reach More Mobile Shoppers With Showcase Shopping ads
Several marketers consider Google Shopping an important revenue driver to draw more customers and convert them to buyers. Google Showcase Shopping Ads will prove helpful in targeting the upper-funnel search queries.
Google Showcase Shopping Ads helps shoppers in their non-branded searches for exploring and finding what and where they want to buy certain things. “Showcase Shopping Ads” are indispensable for monitoring and going in the direction of growth.
Google Showcase Shopping ads generally appear at the top of Google Search as users search using high volume and broad keywords on mobile devices. Consider this: Google gets more than 40% of shopping-related searches for broad terms such as “women’s handbags”
7. Applying Merchant Promotions to Your Shopping Ads
Merchant promotions significantly impact the performance of a Shopping campaign, especially when there are Big Bulls like Amazon and Prime shipping in the market.
Merchant Promotions or special offers are helpful to retailers in highlighting their products. They give the retailers a better chance at improving their click-through rates and conversion.
Advertisers can feature coupons and promotions in the search with the product or store information present on the PLA grid of Google.
A Google study showed that Google promotions could lead to a nearly 28% increase in conversion rates.
Go to the Promotions tab to create a promotion. To find the merchant promotions tab, you need to fill the merchant promotions form first. It is possible to run these promotions for about 3-4 months after you create them once.
More reasons to use Merchant Promotions.
Here are the Google Product Listing Ad Merchant Promotions you can use:
Split the ad groups by product strategy to set up a Google shopping campaign. You may want to group certain products. For example, a vendor may be selling scrunchies and wine together. But, in this case, it would not be right to target the appropriate keywords because the products are highly different.
The vendor may also focus on the scrunchie ads rather than the wine, as the scrunchies drive higher brand sales.
As you split the ad groups by-products, it will help you to set the priorities and budgets for the campaigns.
Using only one ad group is the easiest way to set up a Google shopping campaign. While setting up a Shopping campaign initially, you’ll get one ad group alongside a product group which can be “All products,” which includes your whole inventory.
This straightforward approach will help you bring success to your Shopping campaign without requiring complex optimization techniques.
However, if you want to customize your bid depending n the products you’re selling, this is not the most suitable approach.
You can also run multiple campaigns and learn about them, depending on your bidding strategy.
You may set up a campaign to target unbranded keywords based on a negative keyword list, including the brand name.
You may make this campaign a low or medium priority one if the searchers do not use branded keywords in the earlier phase of their research.
Also, set up another campaign targeting branded keywords while setting a high priority as these users are pretty advanced in their buying journey and highly likely to convert.
You can use several ad groups for their optimization with negative keywords. It helps you exert control over the search terms for which your products show up.
But, you understand that you cannot choose which keywords for which your product will show up. You can only fish them out and use them to optimize your campaigns. While you can choose negative keywords and customize bids, but you can’t choose target keywords.
Another thing to do is to set up various campaigns for various groups. Set up a priority list for campaigns based on the products that can convert better.
This method offers you higher more control; you must organize and plan the phase.
Also, something that works for one company may not work for another. It means that you have to test it out find if things work for you. Once you get an idea of the campaign structure you wish to employ, the net thing will be to form a campaign strategy to drive sales.
Target Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) Bidding
Target Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) Bidding
Google has made it clear to the advertisers to implement the right bidding strategies for years. Thanks to updates and improvements in Google’s machine learning.
Smart bidding strategies are getting more and more sophisticated over the years. Performances can improve, and the bidding options will become more and more important in the coming years. So, you should start leveraging the advantages currently rather than at a later time.
• It is important to take care of various signals helping in contextual clues for tailored bids in the unique account for the users.
• Getting an agile control over performance controls directs the bidding performance with an attribution model you choose.
• Provide custom reports and updates, letting you understand the status of your bidding strategies.
Make sure that you get specific bidding strategies that fit the various marketing objectives. It means there is nothing like a one-size-fits-all bidding method.
Different Google Smart bidding strategies do not cover all of the things. But, you must shine a light on various essential bidding strategies which help the growth-focused shopping campaigns:
Target CPA
Target ROAS
Target CPA is an automated bidding strategy helping you to adjust bids to get the maximum number of conversions in the target CPA.
Setting the Target CPA at the ad group level works well as you get ad groups using highly controlled and organized ad group themes.
You can adjust or optimize the bid to get an acquisition using historical CPA information and real-time contextual information.
Target CPA can be of great help if you:
Target ROAS is also a smart bidding strategy to achieve the desired conversion value with the set target return on ad spend.
An automated bidding strategy is the best for retailers that want to enhance their ROAS efficiency in the various shopping campaigns.
To achieve the ROAS targets, Google uses signals present in your
Historical data,
Real-time contextual data.
It improves efficiency at a lower volume cost and brings about a revenue decrease.
Target ROAS will help you with:
Overgeneralization of an automated bid strategy in a campaign with a huge number of products using a Target CPA or ROAS can lead Google to distribute disproportionate traffic.
A diversified campaign structure gives a greater chance to your campaign and its products. This means you can achieve goals easily.
The Global Trade Item Number or GTIN is now an essential part of the optimization process. Generally, Valid GTINs are supplied by manufacturers. Though the GTIN is a required attribute, surely it is worth the time and effort.
Answer all the “Whys” of GTINs
First of all, you need to answer all the ‘whys’ backing the processes even for things you need to do, obviously. You need to get a complete picture of the optimization process and becomes easier to do things you actually need.
Here’s a look into a few examples if you did not have a GTIN available for addition if you are dealing with:
Few Bonus Benefits of GTINs
You must show up in searches to shoppers looking for the right products you’re selling. The shoppers should choose you or your products if they’re searching for the best version of a specific product.
Google requires you to use GTIN to pull out from the supplier’s catalog and place your ad into an auction with the other resellers using the same product. The ads are meant for attributes within the supplier’s catalog to optimizations present in the feed.
GTINs provide you with placement in searches for words such as “Best” and “Top”. Such types of searches help you to reference customer reviews to determine the position ad advertisements. The better your reviews, the higher your chances are to show in top positions.
Google also employs third-party review companies such as Trustpilot and Verified Reviews to ascertain your brand’s position.
You may know that product title optimizations are important to make your ads relevant to users’ searches. They are also highly important attributes in your feed, and they are places where we must spend a great portion of our time.
Moreover, you can keep the titles for the last moment, especially as you find that all other traits have been optimized well. You may also use product titles to ensure that the titles are optimized properly.
The attributes you want to include are based on your field. Here is a guide about structuring the titles according to the category:
Here are some important aspects for optimizing the titles, which take care of crucial keywords that can be included. A search term report will help you see the converting queries with the use of the titles.
It’s important to go for keyword testing in one’s feed to master the crucial keywords for your store. The Google Shopping Ads information should show the same product information as present on the website. Therefore, as users click the ad, they find the same information on the site, building their trust.
Test what is present in your feed first, and go for things that are working to their best capacity in a website. Put down helpful information at the start of the titles. Suppose your titles get truncated on the results page, all the vital information shown earlier.
Here is a vital tip for you.
Also, these things are a great example to offer you vital information which the shoppers are interested in.
Go for shoppers having a specific vision for products they’re looking for. When they are looking for a product of a certain color, you will be able to deliver the same.
In some countries, product information is the most important attribute for Apparel & Accessories. Here are a few such countries:
Avoid Mismatch Disapprovals.
Here are a few best practices to take care of in your feed to things as the user likes to search for them. They include color and other such attributes.
For example, to sell a product in the “Pomegranate” color, a retailer likes to change the color to “light red” or only “red.” This can be something which you have been doing earlier.
Getting disapprovals for mismatched landing page information, Google uses the microdata present on landing pages that match color attributes in the feed and the color value on the landing page. When you use this as best practice, you can switch back to the colors and let them be what they are.
Here are the Best Practices.
Competitive pricing has a key role in an e-commerce strategy.
Several changing solutions let you understand things related to price fluctuations in your shopping space. Third-party solutions such as DataFeedWatch and Price Watch tool help you run price checks. You can find out how you can compare your pricing with the competitors.
Pulling this data into your feed enables you to create a dynamic pricing tool for your feed. Export a file from the pricing tool to merge it with the product data feed and use it to match with the id.
Now, create customized labels to assess how you want to bid depending on how competently you’ve priced the things.
Using a feed optimization platform helps you to create rules for certain custom labels. This means that the products can jump from one label to another as they become more competitive for their price.
Every day, you can set labels for high, medium, and low, depending on the product price that day. In the Google Ads account, you can bid on the products priced the lowest and bid down on products that are not price-competitive.
That being said, you need to be careful about the way you can use this. And also, note that this may not be the right strategy in a few niches. Think of a situation where a shopper buys a product on your site, sees the price has dropped. They may feel defrauded. Consequentially, they may just return the product.
So, what is important?
Keep in mind that your repricing strategy is set as per the goals you require achieving. Luxury brands also achieve a higher value as they maintain a constant price while competing with certain retailers.
It might seem stressful to keep up with a competitor’s prices, but it is worth the while. One of the biggest hurdles which merchants face is setting the wrong prices for their products.
Product Images are an essential thing shoppers see as their ad is shown. So, you must ensure that they look great.
Some steps to optimize the image link:
When the variants do not match a picture, things like a wrongly placed mismatched product can occur:
And of course, this is likely to turn off potential customers who won’t like to carry out a purchase.
Plus, you need to understand how to choose the correct image, add more images, and go for other information.
Expansion can be done with the Power of Google Shopping Images
This one requires you to delve a bit deeper. You need a regular expression, or RegEx, which will surely require a sequence of characters to define your search pattern to match the strings. Using “find and replace” like operations can prove greatly useful for data feed optimization as it allows one to match several characters using just one string.
Regular Expressions like this require finding and replacing duplicate words are useful in several ways. Fix multiple sizes in one go or remove spaces present in between the words.
When your title features extra spaces between the words, not just in the end, or the beginning, the Regex string may match the excess of spaces between the words: replace_pattern ( \s, ‘ ‘, [title] ).
Use the ‘Edit Values’ option with a similar regex rule in DataFeedWatch:
Alternatively, you need to have multiple promotions which you change frequently. You can use the Google Promotions Feed to upload the Promotions to the Google Merchant Center.
What is the Google Promotion feed?
A Google Promotion Feed can be in the form of a spreadsheet
Google Sheets takes care of all your online promotions and the related data. You need to include several attributes:
You may be familiar with using custom labels in your listings? But, here are some uses you might still be missing. Custom labels are great in that they offer several benefits, such as
Lower CPAs with better Profit Margins
things can get unprofitable very quickly if you’re selling products at varied price ranges while paying the same cost per Acquisition (CPA). Understanding your profit margin data or calculating it can surely make a difference in a campaign when it comes to creating a custom label. It can further help to optimize your bidding strategy.
You can set it up in just a few steps:
See the example below to set it up for the products in the DataFeedWatch app:
Design custom labels depending on the price comparison with the competitors’ prices. Here again, Price Watch proves useful.
Divide your products into 3 categories of
Categories according to the information gathered in the price data. Compare the price position with other retailers selling the same or similar products as you.
The next thing to do is set up a campaign for each of the three categories. Note that products in all three categories will have separate rules. Low-tier products can perform well if you formulate distinct rules for them to make them thrive.
Now is time for budget planning. Test and decide how much you must allocate to each product in the ‘excellent’ tier.
The errors in the performance of the products accumulate, and it can negatively impact future performance. It is especially true and a must-do if you’ve optimized products which were not performing well. You may not get the desired results.
If the past bad performance of your products is dragging your campaigns down, here is a solution. Whenever you change your product, the earlier history of the campaign gets wiped, and the search engine treats it like a new product though all the earlier parameters remain the same. However, this is not an ideal situation as it requires nearly three business days for product reapproval.
This is the right solution to get rid of the bad product performance track.
The Shopping ad campaigns surely put your products in front of potential shoppers. But, you must use the right strategies to get optimal results. Here’s what e-commerce businesses like you are doing to improve their conversion rates and sales.
The keywords you select for your ad campaign must match the potential customers’ intent. The wrong keywords make the ad spend in vain on low-performance product listing ads (PLAs).
Though most customers use four or a few more keywords in their Google search, it makes sense to use long-tail keywords. A reputable eCommerce SEO Agency can help you with this in the best manner.
At the end of the day, you will realize that all ads do not give favorable results. Therefore, make sure that do away with the low performers. It helps if you reinvest the dollars into the ads with higher conversions rates.
Also, find out how you can identify the “losers” in the ad campaigns. There are two types of losers you need to take care of.
For the first type of conversions, customize the columns reflecting the campaign structure and add product details like product type, brand, and more. Look at the costs for all groups of products. Find the losers by filtering the products.
The second group type requires you to know the profit margin first. Scan through your bids as you come to understand the profit margin. Ads exceeding your profit margin are labeled as losers.KNowing the winners and losers, you can change your bids.
Images will improve the click-through rates and the user experience. Ensure that you choose high-quality images for feature photos to promote clicks. Include various product pictures taken from multiple angles in your product listing. Take pictures with a high-resolution camera and proper lighting and make them highly appealing.
Unique photos can surely give a higher value than stock images, especially than commonly used stock photographs. Product listing ads using human models, props, and different backgrounds will stand out.
Getting several ad clicks does not mean a lot when people do not want to buy your products. High traffic with lower conversion rates hurts your sales and also depletes your advertising budget.
Leverage the negative keywords function so you do not show for given keywords. It is useful as it cuts down a great deal of the traffic that randomly lands on your page.
Google Shopping Ads are a great channel to generate revenue for retailers. If you employ advanced Smart bidding to target tools, improved inventory such as Showcase), and the best strategies for feed optimization, you can enhance the impact of your Shopping campaigns.
Overall, the ROI of your Shopping Ad Campaigns’ success improves if you use a test & learn approach for mastering the areas of
