Google Shopping Campaign Optimization: The PPC Manager’s Guide

Google Shopping enables consumers to browse, compare, and shop for products among various retailers who have used paid advertising through Google Ads and Google Merchant Center. Advertising success with Google Shopping campaign comes from proper optimization.

Note: It is observed that the average shopping click-through rate (CTR) across all industries is 0.86% for Google Ads.

Here, we’ll outline how you can scale and optimize your Google Shopping Campaigns for the best results possible.

 

How Google Shopping Ads are Shown?

Shopping ads can appear in three distinct places on Google:

• General search.
• Images.
• Shopping tab.

 
They often appear within a search query for a product in Google. You upload your product feed to Google and then Google automatically displays your product ads based on searches it deems relevant.

Here’s an example of how such ads might appear, when looking to buy some “red shoes.”

 

• These ads are particularly effective because they showcase a high-quality image on the product listing, as well as the price of the product in question. Because these product listing ads tend to appear at the top of the search engine listings, your product ads are going to appear where searchers are going to be looking the most.
• This is also known as a Comparison Shopping Engine (CSE). Google Shopping results show up as thumbnail images that display each product’s retailer and price.

 

How Do Shopping Campaigns and Shopping Ads Work?

Instead of keywords, Shopping Ads use your pre-existing Merchant Center product data to determine how to show your ads.

The submitted product data includes your products’ details. These details are then used to match a user’s information to your ad for relevant searches.

You can manage your Google Shopping Ads through Shopping campaigns, which makes it easier to manage and promote your inventory.

For instance, if you sell accessories for mobile phones and run a shopping campaign:

• You first give Google product details within a product feed
• A user searches for “iPhone 8 charger” in Google
• Google’s algorithms choose iPhone 8-compatible chargers from your online store, then creates and displays an ad for searchers.
• The searcher sees the ad and chooses it, then heads to your product landing page

 
Google Shopping is similar to Google Ads, besides the bidding and keyword rules. General Google ad text ads target users with specific keywords, while Google Shopping targets users by serving up ads with your products for all relevant searches. For more refined targeting, organize your products into specific Product Groups.

Once you create a product, notify Google by giving the product attributes, such as:

• Brands
• Unique Item-ID,
• Product category (e.g. ‘phone accessories’’)
• Product type
• Product condition
• Custom labels
• A distribution/sales channel, and channel exclusivity

 
While product type is similar to category type, the categories are already defined by Google – and product types can be customized if you can’t find a relevant product category. Using product groups within ad groups enables you to set negative keywords for better targeting.

What is Google Shopping Feed and How Does it Work?

The Google Shopping Feed is essentially a spreadsheet used for organizing and describing the product catalog to help Google crawl effectively.

Similar to search campaigns based on queries, keywords are matched, and the result is displayed. For advertisers using shopping campaigns, this trigger control doesn’t exist.

Shopping websites are important here. Google will crawl sites and shopping feeds to determine which ads are most relevant for a specific search query.

Google Shopping feed’s Data Attributes include the data that describes a product. Describing your items effectively with attributes help users find your items easily

Understanding Product Groups in Google Shopping Campaigns

Product groups are subsets of your defined inventory. All the products within it use the same bid.

How Product Group Works

When first creating a Shopping Campaign, you’ll have a single ad group with a product group named, “All products.” This group comprises your whole inventory. It’s a smart move to split your inventory into smaller groups to make bidding more goal-specific.

How to Use Product Group Subdivisions to Bid More Strategically

You can subdivide a product group into a maximum of seven levels. It’s possible to have a product group for all your products with the same bid amount. You can also have smaller product groups organized by product category or brand.

Subdivide the inventory to produce product groups that fall in line with your best performers. Use conversion tracking for further Google Shopping campaign optimization through bids. For instance, if a product group comes with a low cost per action (CPA), increase your bid to see a better conversion volume.

How to Set-Up Google Shopping Campaigns

Main steps involved in Google Shopping Campaign:

1. Create  a Google Merchant Center account
2. Input product data feed
3. Optimize product images
4. Link your Google Ads account
5. Create a Google Shopping campaign
6. Place bids on your Shopping campaign
7. Schedule and target your campaign
8. Create ad groups based on product and showcase shopping ads

 

Google Shopping Campaign Optimization for Better Performance

So, what else can you do to optimize your Google shopping campaigns? Consider the following tactics:

Exclude Search Queries

Filter the poorly performing terms and pay attention to your Search Query report as it tells you how your campaigns and keywords are working together.

Boost Individual Products

Whether you want to conserve your budget or just maximize your returns, you should always seek to leverage any buying trends on your top products. Take a look at your shopping reports, and bid higher on better performing products. By investing more to advertise popular products, you can earn a better return on investment (ROI) from your Google Shopping campaigns.

One Shopping Campaign With One Ad Group

The simplest way to set up a Shopping account is by creating an ad group and a campaign, then dividing your product groups.

Account Structure

It should be noted that there is an Account Limit. As such, follow these guidelines:

• Google allows 10,000 campaigns, including paused accounts.
• 20,000 ad groups are allowed per campaign.
• 20,000 targeting items are allowed per ad group, including placements, keywords, audience lists, exclusions, and product group bids.
• 5 million ad group targeting items are allowed per account, including placements, keywords, and audience lists.
• Up to 1 million campaign targeting items are allowed per account, including negative keywords and location targets.
• 10,000 location targets allowed per campaign, including up to 500 targets.

 

Manage SKUs With Consolidation Mindset

Regardless of how big your business is, you should make it a regular habit to analyze your Stock Keeping Units (SKU). You may find some just don’t deliver any ROI. In that case, they should be dumped.

When you want to consolidate your inventory, organization is vital. Here are a few tips to make sure you aren’t pulling your hair out:

• Create easy to understand SKUs. You should always pay attention to size, color, season, and type as they should be included in the SKU to help with identification.
• Organize words based on importance. Don’t use letters to resemble spaces, numbers, symbols, or accents.
• Avoid using the letter O in the names of your SKUs as it can be mistaken as 0 (zero)

 

Optimize Your Shopping Feed

• Create a business objective-based feed.
• Evaluate your feed’s quality score to help your ads appear often.
• Monitor your feed’s data quality.
• Update your data feed often.

 

Creating Custom Campaign Label Filters for Google Shopping Campaigns

Custom labels enable you to create Shopping campaign filters to help subdivide campaign products based on custom values.

For instance, use custom labels to show seasonal, bestselling, and clearance products. You can use these values to guide your shopping campaign reporting, monitoring, and bidding later.

These labels can also be used to keep track of your campaign and all its areas requiring organization.

How To Create Labels in Google Ads

Click the Labels’ drop-down menu and select the option “Create New” to view your ad groups, campaigns, or keywords.

Try applying an existing label by choosing the appropriate box. Google Ads allows you to use more than one label at once for convenience.

Managing Google Ads Shared Library

This library allows retail, e-commerce, or fashion enterprises to manage targets and shared settings for either multiple or individual campaigns. This provides more time as your campaigns and ads grow since multiple changes across many campaigns are possible.

The Shared Library helps you manage campaign, audience, negative keywords, and placement exclusions to help you understand where your efforts should be focused.

Considerations For the Shared Library

Make sure to understand what ad groups or campaigns share the same characteristics. Once these shared features have been included, monitor the impact, they have across your campaigns.

How To Scale Your Google Shopping Campaigns

When you want to take your Google Shopping campaign to the next level, follow these steps:

• Re-allocate your budget
• Set up new product feeds
• Review your Search Term Reports to see the searches that triggered your ad.
• Filter out low performing queries.
• Create a negative keywords list for increased ad relevance.
• Test all new ads
• Maintain competitive pricing
• Segment campaigns based on user intent
• Create ad extensions for a conversion rate increase
• Provide promos and discounts in your campaigns for value

 

Price Tracking

This feature allows users to track product prices. Users receive notifications when item prices have dropped. Enabling this will help scale your Google Shopping campaign.

Local Inventory

Users can filter searches based on what’s available at local stores for fast purchasing convenience and more in-house sales for local businesses.

Buy Directly Through Google

Users can buy straight from thousands of stores with Google Shopping, right from Google itself. Each order is protected by a guarantee that users will have access to Google’s customer support if refunds or returns are required.

It’s vital to optimize your site for ecommerce. Two-thirds of users who purchase Google Shopping ad products purchase a different product from the one they actually clicked. This is why you should also feature similar products on your landing pages.

Setting Competitive Pricing

Test the price elasticity of each of your products. For some, setting lower prices than your competitors can make a big difference. For others, products with a certain design may influence customers’ buying decisions. Either way, your ad prices must match your landing page prices.

Product Titles and Images

When setting up product titles, you should be using brand product titles with high search volume keywords.

Accurate and quality photos will also provide more information than descriptions and titles. Make sure the photos don’t look too far off from the product images you have on your website. The ideal size for product photos through Google Shopping ads is 172 by 172 pixels.

Use Bidding for Mobiles

Even though you’re not allowed to differentiate your bids between tablets and desktop, you’re still allowed to decrease or increase bids for mobile.

First, you must understand how users purchase your products, your competitor’s behavior, and then post your bids according to this information.

Certain items sell better on mobiles, especially with younger consumers who are more open to mobile commerce. However, other items may have a longer sales cycle, as consumer’s research on mobile but purchase on a desktop later.

What If Products Aren’t Showing in Google Shopping Campaigns?

Google shopping campaign optimization involves taking care of common issues. If your products aren’t displaying through Google Shopping campaigns, make sure all images, items, and your website are adhering to Google’s policies and rules.

First, head to the main dashboard, your email, or full account to check for any messages sent from Google. You should also check the site’s log-files to make sure Google has already crawled through your images and website.

Feeds can take 24-72 hours to process and have each item and image crawler through before you even begin seeing the ad campaign. Make sure the Merchant Center account or your sub-account is linked correctly.

Then, make sure the browser-window feed file and individual items with our products tab will match the inventory filter.

Make sure your remaining products that go through your filter are included in the product group within the ads account. You can check this by clicking on “view full list of products.”

Wrap Up

Google shopping campaign optimization requires a deep understanding of your campaign at multiple levels. It’s only through a consistent approach to reviewing and updating your campaign accordingly while staying up to date with relevant information, tips, and tools that you can hope to maximize Google Shopping campaigns.

When you have the dedication and a growth mindset, you’ll be able to tackle problems and create successful campaign after campaign to help scale your business far into the future.