When it comes to Google shopping ads, it has revolutionized the way users search for any items they require or wish to purchase. A simple search offers plenty of results even within a second. It’s something that makes customers more excited and also creates difficulty for them to choose the right option.
On the other hand, if any big or well-known brands appear in Google search results, users prefer to opt for them rather than going to other options irrespective of quality and usefulness. So, it creates difficulties in being picked up by users, especially for small or lesser-known businesses.
So, what’s the solution? Of course, Google shopping ads help them to get noticed by customers.
This kind of advertising preferences allows you to make your product visible and thus get more clicks from potential buyers. It has increased the craze of Google shopping ads among businesses from multiple sectors. As per the data, shopping ads accounts for 76.4% of overall eCommerce spend.
Meanwhile, to get most of your smart shopping ads, you need to chalk out the right strategies to optimize it, apart from investing in it. Doing this indeed maximizes your chance of getting the target return.
In this post, we will understand the basics of Google shopping ads and also the top practices to implement them to maximize ROI.
Understanding Google Shopping Ads
Google shopping ads are one of performance max campaign types that help in the promotion of products with the response to various product-related input keywords. These ads are visible just at the top of Google’s search results.
Users can also visualize shopping ads in the shopping tab Google, Gmail, Google Display Network, etc.
In the above image, the displayed results appear when users search for the term ‘Mobile Phones’. All products are sponsored.
How Does Google Shopping Campaign Work?
Google shopping ads are quite different from traditional advertising where Google ads experts need to bid on search terms or keywords targeted with multiple campaigns. Quite the contrary, Google shopping ads involve uploading a data feed that contains complete product details.
After completing the entire process, Google displays the advertisements. Google shopping ads work based on using the cost-per-click (CPC) bidding model. Advertisers need to pay only when users click on their sponsored products.
Google Shopping Ads vs Google Search Ads: Key Differences
Whether it’s Google shopping ads or Google search ads, they are highly effective in promoting a range of physical products. Meanwhile, there are several major differences between these two advertisement formats. We have presented the differences through the following table that every Google ads experts must be familiar.
| Points of Differences | Google Shopping Ads | Google Search Ads |
| Type | Product based ad | Search ads are text ads |
| Goal | Promote products and increase sales | Promote products, services, and sites with the key objective of boosting website traffic, sales, and ROI. |
| Targeting | It targets user search queries and product feeds | Search ads target based on selected keywords and match types. |
| Visual Impact | Its visual impact is high with product images and price. | It has a moderate visual impact and depends entirely on persuasive text. |
| Appearance | It displays titles, product images, store names, prices, ratings, etc. | It displays only texts, including descriptions, headings, and URLs. |
| Click Intent | It has a higher click intent. | Its click intent varies according to intentional and transactional intent. |
| Ad Placement | It appears at the top of SERP in the shopping tab Google. | It’s visible on either the top or bottom of SERPs. |
| Feed Dependency | It needs a merchant center product feed. | It doesn’t need a merchant-center product feed. |
| CPC | Its CPC is generally lower due to less competitive keywords. | Its CPC is higher due to highly competitive keywords. |
| Customization | It offers a limited scope of customization in terms of ad appearance. | It gives complete control over ad copy and also CTAs. |
| Scalability | It’s a good option for eCommerce businesses with physical products. | It has full control over CTA and ad copy. |
Tips on Creating Google Shopping Ads
Creating a smart shopping ad is a process that involves multiple steps that serve specific purposes. Let’s discuss every important step in-depth that Google ads experts always follow.
- Sign Up with Google Merchant Center
The entire process of creating a Google shopping ad starts by creating a Google ads account with Google Merchant Center. You need this Google ads account to run the standard shopping campaign successfully.
You can ‘Sign Up’ for a merchant account for free with your selected Google account. Once you start the process, you will get several questions to answer.
You need to enter the required details and then click on ‘Continue’. After this, you will come across the following option.
To proceed, you need to click on “Go to Business Profile”. It will take you to another step where you need to provide your detailed information.
In the above image, you need to fill boxes by providing the required details with accuracy and then click “Next” to proceed further.
After clicking the “Next” option, you need to now fill in the following important details;
Once you complete the above information, the process of Google ads account creation will be completed.
- Craft a Product Feed
Now, the next step is to create a product feed, which is basically a spreadsheet that includes your product data. A large number of eCommerce platforms boast a range of apps, tools, plugins, etc. to automate the entire process. Let’s explore certain examples;
| eCommerce Platforms | Apps |
| WoCommerce | Google product feed extension |
| Shopify | YouTube app |
| BigCommerce | Google Shopping Feed and Ads app |
| Adobe Commerce | Google Shopping Extension |
Apart from using tools, you can also create product feeds manually. And for this, you need to go through a complete process of product data specification.
- Add your Product Feed to the Merchant Center
Once you create your product feed, you can add the same to the merchant center by uploading it. To do it, you need to tap on “Products”. After this, you need to click finally on “Add Products”.
Once you add the product successfully, you will now get the following option.
In the above, you will follow three options to choose from;
- Add products from the file
- Use a Google sheet template
- Add products one by one
You can go with the first option and then hit “Continue”.
You will also get an option to select a country and language. Once you do it, you have to submit the URL of your product file. Alternatively, you also get an option to upload the file directly from your computer.
After creating a Google ads account and logging in for the first time, you’ll see the default Google Ads onboarding flow. To speed up the process, click the “Switch to Expert Mode” link.
Now, you can either enter the URL or upload the file to complete the process. It allows your products to be visible in the Google Merchant Center.
- Create and Launch your Campaign Successfully
After you complete the process of uploading your products, it’s time now for Google shopping ads campaign settings.
To start the process of launching a new campaign, you need to first create a Google ads account. If you already have, you just need to sign in to your existing Google ads account.
Once you create a new campaign, you will get the following options to select from.
Since you want to sell products through Google shopping ads, your primary target should be to increase sales of your same products. So, you need to select the “Sales” option to pursue the core objective of running your standard shopping campaign.
Once you hit the “Continue” button, you will get an option to choose the exact campaign type.
You need to click select “Shopping” and then hit the button “Continue”.
Now, you can use your existing Google Merchant Center Account to take the process further by selecting the type of campaign you wish to launch.
The most important thing you can do is to select the right and smart campaign subtype. You will come across two important options.
- Standard Shopping
This kind of promotion involves the marketing a variety of products across the Shopping tab, Search, Maps, Google Images, Search Partner websites, and more.
- Performance Max
You can use Smart Bidding to boost conversions across Search, Gmail, YouTube, and many other important channels. It’s important to go for conversion tracking to see smart shopping results.
For instance, you can choose the Standard Shopping ads subtype. All you need to do is to add a name for your campaign and then hit the button ‘Continue’. It will take you to the new page where you need to configure the following important settings;
- Daily budget
- Bid strategy
- Campaign priority
- Ad placement and targeting
- Start and end dates
Tips to Optimize Your Google Shopping Ads Effectively
You can get various clicks and more qualified leads only when you optimize your shopping ads most effectively. Let’s explore various important steps that most of Google ads experts perform;
- Perform a Thorough Product Research
Before you proceed, it’s a good idea to conduct a thorough research. It ensures a higher possibility of success of your performance max ads. Before you craft your campaign, you need to have a complete understanding of your target audience signals and also their preferences.
Product research is a process that includes various activities such as getting an overview of market trends, identifying gaps in the market, getting details of your competitors, and more.
You can start the entire process by exploring the demographic data to get an insight into the location, gender, age, interest, and more of your potential customers. The next thing you can do is to get details of your competitors and analyze their products and strategies. You need to know their strengths and weaknesses in detail.
Consumer behavior is another important factor you should never forget to take into account. You need to get details of motivations and also pain points that improve purchasing decisions. By getting details about factors that trigger conversions, you can easily create your product listings to address these important factors directly.
Tools to Use for Product Research
You can leverage the following tools to perform product research properly. Let’s explore all of them;
- Google Trends
- Social Media Insights
- Keyword Research Platforms
These will help you get valuable insights into the current market demand. You can use them to refine your campaign with attractive descriptions, titles, etc.
- Optimize Product Feed
A perfectly optimized product feed is essential to enhance your product’s visibility in search results. It’s crucial to make it convenient for Google to ‘read’ the information related to your product. Make sure you insert complete product data and optimize various important factors to make your campaign successful.
Let’s discuss these factors one by one.
Images
Images are one of the vital elements of shopping ads. While optimizing images, you need to keep in mind various rules and regulations by Google. For instance, A/B testing, helps you find out what works well for the audience. Apart from this, you need to measure your images with accuracy to check whether they fit with your product feed or not. You can do it easily with the help of a feed management tool.
While inserting images, you need to also follow specific Google Image guidelines;
- Your image should be able to highlight the entire product with minimal staging.
- Meet minimum size requirements.
- You should always avoid generic images, placeholders, promotional text, etc.
- Always use a transparent or white background
- You need to submit a unique and appealing image for every variant
- You should highlight the correct variant in every product image
It’s also necessary to insert more images of your products rather than only one. Customers always prefer to see various product’s images from different angles before they make a final purchasing decision. By using DataFeedWatch, you can just add several additional images by inserting an optional field to your product feed.
Product Titles
You need to take into account that images tend to catch the target shopper’s attention automatically. Besides, titles also hold their own weight. You need to catch interest just by putting the most crucial keywords first. It’s important to keep in mind to disburse your titles with the most relevant information related to your product. Make sure your description doesn’t include any repeated phrases.
Price
Getting price is something that also impacts heavily on the quality of the product listing ads. You need to ensure Google always pulls the accurate price, especially when you sell on-sale products.
- Optimize Product Titles
When it comes to product titles, they have a higher impact on click-through rates. Make sure your titles are descriptive and clear, and include appropriate keywords. Apart from this, you also need to implement the following important things to make your title meaningful.
- Include the most appropriate information and keywords at the beginning of your title.
- Make sure your title is 70 to 100 characters.
- You should prevent yourself from using promotional information and all caps including shipping details or prices.
- Do a Proper Optimization of your Campaign Structure
Another important step is to create ads that ensures your long-term success. Your primary goals should be to get a higher control over your product listing and as much as possible.
It makes you capable of bidding differently for different products. Meanwhile, it’s not possible from the start. Of course, you may not be interested in bidding for every product since all products have different margins. You need to take into account that some products are more popular compared to others whereas some have different conversion rates.
That’s the reason why Google Ads allows you to divide your products into various ad groups. You can divide the entire ad group by brand, category, condition, item ID, and more.
Ways to Divide your Google Shopping Campaign Structure
You can divide your Google shopping campaign structure by the following steps;
- You can start from one product group called ‘All Products’. You will get an ‘edit’ option and choose the attribute you seek to use to divide your products.
- You can see a complete list of available values. All of these details are gathered from your data feed. It’s crucial to create separate product groups either for some value or also for all of them at once.
- You can now easily categorize and subdivide these product groups once again. It’s crucial to edit them and choose attributes that you seek to use. It’s advisable to repeat the same process several times.
- Set Competitive Budgets and Bids
For bidding, you will come across two important options such as manual bidding and automated bidding. They get Google shopping campaign support. You can start the entire process by determining your product margins first and also conversion rates for determining a complete bidding strategy.
It helps you align your goals perfectly. You need to use smart bidding tactics, which indeed improved over recent years. It’s important to keep in mind that smart bidding is highly effective. It indeed requires proper and careful monitoring and management to ensure it works effectively while letting you achieve your specific objectives.
- Add Product Ratings
Product ratings and reviews are one of those factors that impact directly on purchasing decisions. When your products appear with star ratings, it makes a significant impact on increasing click-through and also conversion rates. If you wish to show product ratings in the list, you need to fulfill the following conditions;
- Your products should have at least 50 reviews to appear with star ratings
- You can request product ratings by submitting the interest form to Google.
Once approved, your ads will reflect ratings and thus encourage many shoppers to click and purchase.
- Use Negative Keywords
To make your Google shopping campaign result-oriented, you need to refine your targeting to pinpoint your audience. The right strategy is to use negative keywords that let you filter out irrelevant searches and thus avoid wasting your budget on clicks that will not convert in any way.
You can review your relevant search terms regularly to find out several keywords that trigger your performance max ads but don’t align perfectly with your offerings. You need to add these terms with a proper strategy to your negative keyword list to prevent your ads from becoming visible for unrelated searches. For instance, if you sell top-quality furniture, you need to omit the terms such as ‘cheap couches’ or any ‘used furniture items’.
Apart from this, negative keywords contribute directly to increasing click-through rates and minimizing wasted ad spend. To identify the irrelevant search terms, you can use the search terms report. You can add these terms as negative keywords so your ads are not visible to them. If you find any terms that maximize clicks without any conversions, you can consider adding them as negative keywords.
- Use Ad Extensions
You should never forget to use ad extensions that ensure the relevance and visibility of your ads. These snippets give users many reasons to click on their listings and thus maximize the chance of conversions. Let’s explore some of the top examples of user ad extensions;
- Price Extensions reflect the prices of products directly to your advertisements.
- Promotion Extensions display many special offers and discounts
- Location Extensions provide important physical storage information
The major objective is to provide more details to users even within search results. These extensions are capable of building credibility, luring customers, and improving confidence to click through.
Wrap Up
Whether you own a physical shop or online store, running a full-fledged Google shopping ads is necessary to boost sales and conversion rate. The most important thing you need to do is to ensure shopping campaigns are in the best shape with the above-mentioned strategies. With time, you can easily find better qualified leads, higher conversion rates, and increased ROI.
Additional resources:
- Google Merchant Center SEO: Optimize Product Listings to Drive Sales
- How to Optimize Instagram Business Page for eCommerce (Step-By-Step)
- SEO for eCommerce: How to Boost Your Store’s Online Visibility?
