Shopping Ads 8211 The Google Tool For A Successful Online Shop
Management Summary
Through illustrated ads, Google Shopping campaigns enable you to present your products in an eye-catching way. Especially in direct comparison to conventional Google Ads text ads, Google Shopping campaigns have proven to be an optimal way to attract users’ attention through extended product information such as prices, brands, product descriptions and product images.
In this blog post we will show you what exactly Google Shopping means and how you can benefit from it.
Google is without a doubt the best platform to promote your products. It is the most popular online search engine and therefore the place people are most likely to come to when looking for a product.
One way to apply is through classic Google Ads text ads. However, if you have a large product inventory, choose Google Shopping Ads!
What is Google Shopping?
Google Shopping Ads are a type of automated advertising on Google that can be used by online shops. The ads appear in Google search with an image, title, price and link to your website. Customers therefore have the opportunity to compare the product they are looking for from different sellers who are already in the search. After clicking on the selected product, customers are redirected directly to the seller’s online shop, where they can buy the desired product.
Shopping ads are popular with both users and advertisers, particularly because of the many advantages they offer advertisers over traditional text ads.
If you publish all the necessary product details in your ad, you will get customers who are more likely to complete the conversion because they already know which product they can find in your online store. Compared to text ads, experience shows that shopping ads have a conversion rate that is up to 30% higher.
What’s more, setting up campaigns in Shopping isn’t all that difficult. As you will see later in this article, all you need is a list of your products with the details (product feed) that Google Ads works with.
How do shopping ads work?
Google Shopping Ads work on the principle of classic ads on Google: you enter a range of products and set the price you offer for displaying them. And if that price is right, your products will appear when someone searches for them. Paying for an ad also works on a cost-per-click basis. You don’t pay when the ad generates impressions, only when someone clicks on it.
However, shopping ads differ from traditional text ads in the visual emphasis of the ad. Users see the image of a specific product, a title, a price, a store name and some additional information. So there is no need to create headings, descriptions or matching keywords. Instead of keywords, Google works with the name of the product and the information you provide.
So let’s now look at what you need to create a shopping campaign and how to run it:
Create a Shopping advertising campaign in eight steps
1. Create a Google Merchant Center account
Shopping campaigns consist of data about your products that you provide to Google through a Google Merchant Center account. Therefore, you should first create such an account, which then represents a virtual inventory for products in your online shop. To create the account successfully, you also need to check your e-store website.
2. Product gallery optimization
Although Google sources data about your products from Google Merchant’s inventory, the images used are those that you have linked to specific products on the web. Since ads in Shopping are based on visual view, Google may reject products with low-quality images or poor product visibility, such as watermarks.
3. Collect and insert the required data into Google Merchant Center
Upload your product data to Google Merchant by creating a new feed. This feed requires you to set your country and language for which products will appear when searched.
In the next step, you determine how data about your products should be uploaded. If you haven’t created your own product feed yet, you can do so via Google Sheets.
Google generally supports two feed formats in particular – .txt and .xml – and recommends the former for smaller retailers.
In terms of content, the product feed should contain the following information:
- Item (ID): The number under which you register the product in your online shop.
- A name that matches the name of a specific product in your online store, including color or model description.
- Product information: This should match the description in your online store link.
- URL of a specific product’s website, starting with http:// or https://
- Link to image: URL of the product’s main image, starting with http:// or https://
- Availability: Your product can only be advertised if it is available
- Price: The price must match that in your online store and be in the currency that corresponds to the country in which you are promoting the Google product category
- Brand: Product brand as known to customers
For optional information or information required for specific products, see the Google Merchant help page.
4. Linking to a Google Ads account
As already mentioned, Google Shopping is a kind of virtual shopping center. While Google Merchant stores data about your products, Google Ads takes care of advertising them. Therefore, it is essential to link these two accounts.
5. Create a Google Shopping campaign
The next step after successfully linking your two accounts is to create the Shopping campaign. You create these in your Google Ads account.
When creating a campaign through Google Ads, click the large plus sign (+) on the Campaigns tab. Select the option to create a new campaign. After selecting your campaign objective, select “Shopping” as your campaign type. Make sure you see your Google Merchant account and therefore Google Ads knows where the product data comes from.
6. Addition to product price offers
Once you’ve created your campaign, Google Ads will ask you to set a bid and daily budget for your ads. Advertisements are placed on an auction basis. Therefore, your bid depends on whether and in which position your ad appears. The size of your daily budget determines how much you can invest in advertising every day.
7. Campaign targeting and planning
The final step to successfully complete your campaign is to set up targeting and plan your campaign. For good ad targeting, only include websites that you can supply your products to so that they are not unnecessarily shown to users who cannot buy them (and therefore you do not pay for unnecessary clicks). Finally, specify the start and end of the campaign if you do not want it to be played out continuously and save your settings.
8. Creating ad groups
After successfully setting up a campaign, Google Ads will ask you to organize the campaign into an ad group to determine what type of campaign you want to run.
Three steps to successful advertising on Google Shopping
To reach as many people as possible with your Google Shopping ads, you should focus on three key areas: quality product feed, optimal bidding, and campaign monitoring and optimization.
Creating a quality feed for your products is almost similar to working with SEO. Assigning specific product information to your feed is important to ensure your products appear for the right searches. When they appear in the right searches, they appear to users who are genuinely interested in your products, increasing your conversion potential.
The basis is the correct product name. We have defined the order of parts of the product name we recommend for different industries:
Clothing: Brand + Gender + Product Type + Attributes (color, size, material)
Consumables: Brand + Product Type + Attributes (weight, number)
Electronics: brand attributes, product type, model
Seasonal: Occasion + Product Type + Attributes
Books: Title + Type + Format (Hardcover, eBook) + Author
Setting the optimal bid level can be challenging. Different bidding strategies produce different results. Choose one that will help you achieve your goal – depending on whether it is the highest conversion rate or return on investment. And don’t be discouraged: it may take several weeks to find the optimal bid amount.
You can choose the following Smart Bidding bidding strategies for Google Shopping ads:
Maximize clicks:This bid focuses on getting the most clicks on your product ads in Shopping. We recommend using this offer for the first three to four weeks and switching to Target ROAS later.Auto optimized CPC:This is an extension of manual CPC, where the manual bid is automatically increased or decreased. The algorithm adjusts the bid based on the probability of conversion for each click.Maximize conversion value:This bid focuses on maximizing conversion value. The budget set should be fully utilized.Target ROAS:If you want to achieve a high number of purchases while maintaining a certain ROAS, use this bidding strategy. It’s a good idea to use the ROAS bidding strategy when your Google Shopping campaign has achieved at least 30-40 conversions/purchases in the last 30 days.
Finally, keep in mind that the initial settings you make are not final and need to be constantly monitored and optimized. The advantage of Shopping Ads is that you get very detailed reports on how your ads are performing and can use them to do things like adjust your bid levels or inventory. Lastly, try to optimize each ad group in your campaign by splitting them into higher margin products where you can bid more and lower margin products.
Types of Google Shopping campaigns
You can promote your products in Shopping in three ways: as product ads, as showcase ads, or as local inventory ads. Each of these three campaign ad types works on a different principle and allows you different functions.
Product Ads are classic Shopping ads based on data you entered through the Google Merchant product feed. They consist of an image, a title, a price, and a product name that Google Ads pulls from your product feed. You don’t have to create a separate ad for each product.
Showcase campaigns also allow you to create and promote groups of similar products for customers to choose from when they see an ad. Showcase ads are particularly suitable for customers who are looking for a general product group, such as “shoes”. Already in the search, users can see your offer and find out whether they are interested in one of your products.
Finally, local inventory ads are an engaging format to draw attention to the products you stock locally in your stores.
Get the most out of Google Shopping with SA360
To make the management and optimization of your shopping campaigns even more efficient, we recommend using Search Ads 360. SA360 is a product of the Google Marketing Platform and supports you in optimizing your Google and Bing campaigns to meet your business goals.
Manually creating and managing shopping campaigns can quickly become confusing and error-prone, especially with large data feeds. The solution is to link your Merchant Center and Google Ads account with SA360.
The tool not only automates the bidding of your campaigns based on your individual business goals, but also offers the ability to automatically create inventory campaigns based on your data feed. This not only saves enormous time, but also prevents sold-out or unavailable products from having to be manually paused.
You can find out more about this in our blog postSearch Ads 360 for PLA / Shopping campaigns!
