Founder of Social Connection, a leading social media marketing agency in Australia.
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I’ve spent five years implementing and testing Google Shopping advertising strategies. Let’s take a look at how this platform can help you encourage consumers to buy your products.
What Is Google Shopping?
Google Shopping is a visual platform that allows consumers to research, discover and compare products on Google. E-commerce businesses can use Google Shopping to display thumbnail images of products and information for users. This information can include current product pricing, features and availability details. Linking an online store to Google Shopping is free; merchants are charged per click on their ads based on customizable bids.
What Are The Benefits?
Google Shopping helps a business target consumers that are actively seeking specific products, which means they will be further into the purchase journey and therefore more likely to buy. The visual format of product thumbnails helps captures their attention, and the attached information allows easy comparison of products from different e-commerce sites. The Google Shopping thumbnails appear at the top of search engine results and link directly to a business’s e-commerce site. This increases the likelihood of conversion, which can lead to more purchases.
Google Shopping can create a broader presence for products; your ads can appear multiple times in one relevant user search. By using Google Shopping alongside other Google advertising services, products can appear in multiple formats (website results, Google Ads and Google Shopping) for the same search. This means that you can increase your reach for every single search.
Through a Google Shopping campaign, you can use tools to measure the reach and impact of each of your ads. You can then use this data to customize ad content and optimize campaign performance.
Top Tips For Using Google Shopping
Creating a Google Shopping campaign for your business is simple, but optimization can be complicated. Drawing from my and my team’s experience in working with clients, we’ve compiled the following tips to help your business achieve maximum benefit from the Google Shopping platform.
Optimize Your Listings
Google Shopping works best when linked to a strong e-commerce website, and Google has requirements to ensure the quality of Shopping ads. It’s important to follow the guidelines because Google can suspend accounts whose ads don’t meet the standards. You can quickly address any issues in your campaigns by regularly checking the Merchant Center.
High-quality, appealing images tend to work best in Shopping ads. Ensure that your products are competitively priced and have strong titles and descriptions using appropriate keywords. Assign your products to the correct Google product categories.
Start With A Test Campaign
To get started, simply set up a Google Shopping campaign with all your products and a relatively low bid. This test campaign will allow you to monitor the success of the products while maintaining profitability. You can use this information to adjust campaign segmentation and bids accordingly.
Create Shopping Campaign Segments
Experience a greater sense of control by dividing your Google Shopping campaigns into segments. You can use the data from your test campaign to create segments that focus on the most successful products. Shopping segments could be based on product type, keywords or product performance. Segmenting will allow you to bid with more precision.
Optimize Your Campaigns
You may need to undertake some trial and error to optimize your campaign. Start by slowly exploring different bidding strategies and bidding amounts to see what works best. It’s important to frequently review the products tab to monitor product performance and adjust your bids accordingly.
We’ve found that it’s best to batch your changes; this gives Google an opportunity to learn and adjust to your campaign. Limiting your changes to once a week, once every two weeks or once a month can also help you make the best decisions based on performance over time.
Focus On Products With High Search Volume
Increase sales by monitoring which products are getting the highest search volume. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner allow you to type in any keyword and see search volume for that keyword and other related terms. If people are searching for it, Google Shopping can help you highlight your relevant products. You can use search volume information to adjust your bids to focus on the more popular items. This technique can be used to jump onto current product trends and even predict future ones.
Optimize Your Search Terms
Regularly examine your search terms report, which you’ll find inside your Google Ads dashboard. This will allow you to see what search terms your ads appeared for and monitor the performance of your Google Shopping ads. Seeing what search terms have triggered people to click on your ads will allow you to adjust your bids accordingly and focus on terms that have yielded high click-through rates and more purchases. Using negative keywords can also help optimize your search terms.
Use Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking is crucial for monitoring customer interactions with your Google Shopping ads. You can use this information to customize bidding, determine your return on investment and monitor which keywords, products and campaigns are driving the most valuable customer activity. Using conversion tracking isn’t complicated at all — you can follow Google’s step-by-step instructions.
By implementing these tips, your business can achieve great results from Google Shopping. To take full advantage of this platform, it’s important to consistently monitor your campaign performance and trends. By using Google Shopping data to update product bids and search terms, you can produce consistent, measurable results.
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Author: Sam Founda, Forbes Councils Member
