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Google records billions of search queries every day. This is why you should create Google shopping ads that will help potential buyers quickly discover your products online before your competitors.
Online shoppers are now searching for products more than ever before, especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can boost your product visibility, get a positive return on ad spend (ROAS), and achieve your marketing goals by using Shopping ads.
In this article, we’ll explore this high-converting ad type and show you how Google Shopping Ads examples can increase product sales and improve overall marketing performance.
In this guide, we’ll cover the following:
Google Shopping ads are also referred to as Product Listing Ads (PLAs). These are ads that are displayed as results when an online shopper searches for a product on Google.
Creating Google Shopping campaigns allows you to display your product, give relevant descriptions, and tell potential customers the price before reaching your website. This means visitors who arrive on your site are more likely to make a purchase.
Google Shopping ads are displayed first before any organic results in search engine result pages (SERPs). These ads usually include product images, product descriptions, the price, product review stars, and the company name.
Google now allows not only free but fast shipping annotations for Shopping Ads. This feature lets you display your products and tell potential buyers that you offer free product shipping and quick delivery.
Two platforms anchor Google Shopping:
Merchant Center is responsible for hosting your inventory and product data feed. Your product data feed is a file that contains all the information about your products that your listings will include.
On the other hand, Google Ads manages your bidding, ad optimization, and advertisement of your Shopping ads. This is why you must set up both the Merchant Center and Google Ads account.
Even though Google Shopping ads are similar to Text ads, they have their differences. While Google uses your product data feed and search queries to determine how your Shopping ads show, you can create ads that target specific keywords with Text ads.
Google Shopping ads are designed to help you market your e-commerce business better and achieve your marketing goals in several ways. Shopping Ads can help you acquire:
Google has the maximum market share of the world’s search. The majority of online shoppers from every corner of the world use Google when looking to buy products online.
Compared to several other online shopping avenues, Google shopping makes it easier and more effective for online shoppers to begin their buying journey.
Shopping ads are intent-based ads. This means it allows potential buyers to find products they are searching for, discover relevant product information, and make a purchase.
More often than not, a visitor will reach your main landing page after seeing all the necessary information with high buying intent. The best Google Shopping Ads examples will make your ads visible to shoppers who are actively looking for your products and are ready to buy now.
When Shopping ads are properly set up and managed, you get an increased return on ad spend (ROAS). These ads are a more cost-effective and high-converting way to increase sales.
This is because Google also allows you to market your products in a way that attracts online shoppers without any cost when they click on those product listings.
An integral aspect of setting up a campaign is finding the right keywords. You need to do intensive keyword research for product titles & descriptions to analyze competitors and market behaviors to know what keywords will drive the most conversions.
With Google Shopping Ads, things are much easier. Shopping ads are easy to manage and optimize because Google automatically handles ad displays based on your product data feed.
Rather than targeting keywords, Google helps you market your products to shoppers based on product attributes that match their search queries. Its optimization is easier compared to other Google campaign types.
To get maximum sales from your Shopping ads, set up a Google Merchant Center account, and create detailed product data feeds that are optimized for conversion. Here’s how you go about the process:
To create your product data feed for your Google shopping campaign, log in to your Merchant Center account. Click “Products” in the left corner. From the two options that appear on the screen, click “Create product feed.”
Then, input your basic information, name, and input method, and do the setup.
Use a manual feed, usually a Google spreadsheet, if products are limited in number.
Manually input the following product attributes, which Google uses for product display information:
However, if you own a big store and need to upload a large number of products, use Google’s Content API to upload your product data to the feed directly. Do this also if your product data changes often.
You need to link your Merchant Center to your Google Ads account. This lets Google access your product feed and use it for your campaigns. So, click on the toolbar icon and select ‘Linked Accounts.
You will get to the ‘Google Ads’ tab. Then, link to your Google Ads account.
To create a Google Shopping campaign for your online store, follow this setup order:
Google Ads account > New Campaign > Sales > Campaign Type: ‘Shopping’.
Below is the list of Google Shopping advertising preferences and tips on how to use them to create high-converting campaigns:
Firstly, select which countries your products–that you want to run the campaign for–will be sold and shipped to.
Note: Once you create your Google Shopping campaign, your country of sale can’t be changed.
You can’t create a single campaign for all your products and expect to get high conversions. Segment your campaigns–based on best-selling products, the amount of traffic generated, returns on investment (ROI), etc.–for maximum sales.
Google will automatically display your products when your product attributes match search queries. The inventory filter is where you choose the criteria of the products you want to market in your Google Shopping campaign.
The inventory filter limits the number of products advertised through segmentation. This means that only the products whose criteria you chose for your ads will be displayed. It can be edited after you create your Google shopping campaign.
You can also use this feature for product grouping so that Google knows which product groups are in your inventory to match shoppers’ search queries.
Bidding is how you tell Google the bidding strategy for your Google shopping campaign. This is usually one of these two:
The bidding strategy you choose depends on the goals of the campaign. It is recommended that you start with an automatic Smart Bidding approach for Google Shopping campaigns.
Your daily budget tells Google how much you are willing to bid/spend on your Shopping campaign per day. By default, your ads stop showing when your daily budget is met.
It is advisable to start with smaller budgets since Shopping campaigns generally have lower CPCs compared to any other Google campaign type. More so, it is better to be sure your campaign is doing well before throwing in a large chunk of your marketing budget.
For new campaigns, you can start with a daily budget range of $10-50. When your Shopping campaign is performing and well-optimized, you can edit and set a new daily budget.
Overlaps occur in Shopping campaign settings. You can have a single product in multiple campaigns assigned to the same country of sale. Campaign priority allows Google to choose the campaign budget to be used when this happens.
The campaign priority has three options for Google Shopping campaigns. The low, medium, and high options. Below is a new Shopping campaign structure using the three campaign priority options:
By default, the priority for any beginner campaign is low. You can decide to either change it to medium or high. Google gives three rules regarding how your campaign priority determines bid:
It is recommended you use high or medium campaign priorities for specific subsets of your products. For example, your best-sellers, promotional products, etc. This makes it easier to manage your bids and optimize your campaigns for sales.
Your Google Shopping campaign automatically gets featured in Google Search Network, Display Network, YouTube, and Google Discovery. To limit your ads network placement, uncheck the ‘Any networks’ box.
Your Shopping campaign also gets displayed on all devices, including desktop and mobile. However, you can exclude devices based on your preference. You can edit both sections after your campaign has been created.
These are the last two preferences you set for your shopping campaign. “Locations” is where you adjust the places where your ads will show.
You only need to bother about local inventory if you are going to sell offline as well. It allows you to choose if you want to add products sold in local stores to your campaign.
How you structure your Shopping ad groups will decide product grouping and bidding. You could create an ad group for only your best-selling products, for instance.
Google gives this list of the types of filters you can apply to your Shopping ads groups:
Google allows advertisers to choose their Shopping ad groups from two options: Product or Showcase Shopping ads. If you are a beginner advertiser, start with Product Shopping ads.
It is vital to optimize your campaigns by diverting your ad spending to relevant platforms and search queries to get a high return on ad spend (ROAS). The following points are necessary when optimizing your shopping campaign.
Google Shopping campaigns are much more complicated than other ad types. This is why it is essential to audit your campaigns for optimization and conversion opportunities.
Auditing involves in-depth examination and analysis of the current campaign setup; and the proposition of a more profitable strategy.
This means you get high clicks, and a high amount of traffic but few or no sales at all even though you have good bids and relevant products.
You can re-channel that traffic into remarketing campaigns to convert to sales if you’re running an awareness campaign. If you’re not, you need to:
When your shopping ads get good impressions but low clicks, you need to review these two things:
Ads with no impressions can be mind-boggling. If your active ads are not getting any impressions, you need to continuously raise your bids until you see results. Generally, ads get low impressions when bids are relatively low.
A well-optimized landing page does a lot in the conversion process. Format your landing page for reading, use high-quality but low-size images, write excellent copy, and add a clear call-to-action (CTA) button.
Also, include all relevant information in your Shopping ad so that potential buyers can readily make purchases.
Make your ad more targeted by adding negative keywords you don’t want to trigger your ad. These blacklisted keywords guide your Shopping ads display process and generate only high-value and relevant traffic for your page.
Provide clear and correct details to potential customers. This will increase both your relevant traffic and lead retention. Google penalizes businesses that use false representations in their brands and products.
If you optimize the best 10% of your products, it can potentially generate 75% of your revenue. This small percentage comprises your top-selling products, so focus on them and make them known. If you market them correctly, you will get a higher return on investment (ROI) than if you try to promote every single product in your range.
Product titles play a significant role in ad conversions. Write attention-grabbing ad titles. You can also include relevant keywords in your product title and description.
Google has shopping ads policies you must adhere to for smooth and productive advertising. Using prohibited content, misrepresentation of business and general abuse of Google Ads network can result in ad bans.
Using promotions boosts your Shopping Ads and leads to increased conversions. Potential buyers are more likely to be interested in your product ads that highlight Special Offers, free shipping, 10% percent off, etc. This will quickly make you stand out from among your competitors.
While automated (targeted) bidding gives great conversion value and meets your set returns, manual (rule-based) bidding lets you set target ROI, impressions, and conversion rates.
Manual bidding is a more popular and transparent approach that allows advertisers to analyze and optimize their campaigns. Choose the right bidding, depending on your marketing goals and budget.
You can use the “Similar Audiences” metric to target new people with search behaviors similar to those of your existing customers’ data for your Shopping ads. It also works for remarketing campaigns to target people who have already interacted with your product.
Geotargeting allows you to target specific regions. Do not target the whole world or even a country. You can also add negative keywords for areas you don’t want your shopping ads to show.
As an eCommerce brand, you will get the most return on investment (ROI) for your marketing effort if you utilize Google Shopping Ads. It is a super-effective method to show your products to an interested and ready-to-buy audience.
However, only a well-optimized shopping campaign can achieve advertising goals. Take time to create your Google Ads and Merchant Center accounts, set up your shopping ads, and configure your advertising preferences.
When you optimize your campaigns for conversions, you can look forward to driving sustainable business growth through paid advertising.
Always monitor your campaign performance through PPC reports and achieve high ROI.
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