By Brett Cary
Marketing
May 24, 2022
25-minute read
What are Google Shopping Ads?
Google Shopping Ads are product ads that appear at the top of search results on Google. The two platforms that control these ads are Google Ads and Google Merchant Center.
Google Shopping Ads no longer just appear in the standard search results for Google. They can also be seen on the shopping tab, partner search sites, price comparison shopping services, applications (iOS and Android), and even on YouTube and the Google Display Network.
Since Google Shopping Ads are very useful for shoppers and popular among advertisers, Google has expanded shopping, which means more opportunities to reach shoppers.
How to Set Up Google Shopping Ads
Google Shopping ad campaigns rely on two platforms: Google Ads and Google Merchant Center. Google Ads is where your marketing campaigns live, where you set your budget, manage your bids, gain insights, and make optimizations.
Google Merchant Center is where your product feed is stored, along with shipping and sales tax details. We will explain product feeds later. For now, it’s simply information about your products organized in a format that Google likes. The product feed is what Google uses to build your ads in Google Shopping.
Setting up and managing Google Shopping Ads is quite different from setting up traditional text ads. With the shopping tab, Google uses your feed, your location, and more to determine the queries that will trigger your ads. Because of that, setting up your product feed has some strong similarities to optimizing the e-commerce shopping experience.
1. Create a Google Merchant Center Account
Google Merchant Center is where your feed lives. It’s also where you can set tax and shipping rules, all of which are required before running shopping ads.
Here are some tips for setting up your Merchant Center account:
- Make sure you have access to your domain registrar. You will need to verify that you own your domain name and then claim it for use in Merchant Center. The easiest way to do this is to log in to your domain registrar and grant Google access. This can all be done directly from Merchant Center.
- Understand your tax and shipping settings. You will need to set up tax and shipping rules in the general settings in Merchant Center. For sales tax, you can either enter prices directly or choose the states where sales tax applies and allow Google to determine the rate. For shipping, you can choose between a flat rate (which can include free shipping), a rate calculated based on the carriers you use, or a rate based on a pricing schedule or rules.
- Link Merchant Center to Google Ads. In settings and ads, click on Link accounts. You will need a 10-digit Google Ads ID, and you will need to log in with an email address that has admin privileges for both Merchant Center and Google Ads.
If you don’t already have a Google Ads account, you will need one. While this guide focuses on shopping, it’s also worthwhile to check out the Shopify guide for setting up a Google Ads account.
2. Choose the Campaign Type
Performance Max ads (formerly known as Smart Shopping) Log into your Google Ads account, click the + New Campaign button, select the Sales goal, set your conversion goal, select Performance Max
Then, choose the account that the ads will operate under and specify the country where the ads will be running.
Select
The name of the campaign, then click Continue. Make sure to choose a descriptive and distinctive campaign name. For example, use a name like “Black Gym Shoes” so you know exactly what campaign you are looking at.
Then you will be in the ad creation section where you will enter all the information related to your campaign.
First, enter the daily budget. The average for new advertisers is about $50 a day.
Then specify your bidding strategy. You can choose from:
- Conversions: actions taken on your website.
- Conversion value: which optimizes revenue.
If this is your first maximum performance campaign, leave the target cost per action box unspecified for now. This will allow Google to go out and find a new audience for your campaign.
Next, enter the campaign settings. In this section, you will add your location, language, and final URL expansion.
Final URL expansion is a new feature related to maximum performance ads. By clicking to send traffic to the most relevant URLs on your site, it allows Google to update the headlines for each ad to match search intent, sending traffic to the most relevant landing page for conversions.
Click Next to go to the asset group tab in your Google Ads dashboard.
This setup is different from traditional Google ads. You will need to add different versions of various ad assets, including:
- Images
- Logos
- Videos
- Headlines
- Long headlines
- Description
Once you provide that information, choose a call to action (like “Shop Now”) and add your business name. You will also want to create audience signals. These are custom categories that give Google a starting point to find the best audience to show your ads to.
Finally, add site link extensions to send people to specific pages on your site. For example, you can send people to FAQ pages or customer service pages from the ad. You can also add extensions for items like price and promotion.
Add as many extensions as you want. Maximum performance ads are a mix of search ads and shopping ads, so the more information you provide to viewers, the better.
3. Setting Up Google Shopping Ads
If you want to get the most out of shopping ads, you first need to create a great product feed. A product feed is the information that Google uses to build your shopping ads.
Regarding the feed, you can create a manual feed using Google Sheets. Just add the product details in the format required by Google. This option is great if you have a few SKUs, as entering information about each product requires some effort.
Another option is to use a feed tool like GoDataFeed or DataFeedWatch to automatically extract data from your store to create your feed. This is often a preferred method if you have hundreds or thousands of SKUs. Or you can use an app like this app designed for Shopify. Before you start building, here are some strong tips for the feed:
Top Tips for the Feed:
As we discussed at the beginning, with shopping ads on Google, you do not bid on your keywords. Instead, Google scans your feed and your product detail pages and then decides which keywords are relevant to your products. Therefore, optimizing the key elements in your feed is critical to ensure your product shows up for the desired keywords. While you should consider all of Google’s product feed requirements, let’s delve into what is most important and what will affect your ad performance:
Title
Product:
This is the most important part of your listing. The product title is important because (along with the product image) it instantly communicates to the shopper about your product. The title also tells you about your product, so you know when to show your products to shoppers.
When crafting your product title, it’s important to use the actual name of the product, along with the most important keyword and other key information such as color, model number, size, etc.
Simply put, you want to include the most important product details that shoppers want to see. You have a maximum product title limit of 150 characters. Google places more weight on the words that appear first in your title, so you should carefully consider the structure and word order here.
Weak title: Breville Espresso Machine
Strong title: Breville Barista Express BES870XL Espresso Machine with Dual Boilers – Stainless Steel
If you are using manual feeds, you can craft the desired product title. If you are using a feed tool, you can create rules to combine different attributes to form a strong title. For example, you could create a rule that combines the product name, brand, color, model number, size, and more to form a strong and detailed title.
Product Description:
The product description is an interesting part of your listing. Initially, it was considered a very important part. Then, for a few years, it was speculated to be not important at all. Now, it has returned to being considered important once again.
This field is primarily visible to shoppers on the shopping tab. Your description does not appear on Google’s main search results page, but Google scans it as well to understand it. If you are using free ads, it will appear on the shopping tab, so descriptions are important. (Free ads must contain a product description, so they may be beneficial.)
Make your descriptions relevant and mention one or two key terms. Think about the most important features and benefits and mention them here. You need to keep it simple and concise.
Product Category in Google:
For your product category, you choose from Google’s classification. Choose the closest match to your product to help Google understand your product so it knows when to display it to shoppers. This is an important field, but it’s not as crucial as the product title or product type. For example, if you sell dresses, you can use the category of Apparel & Accessories. But it’s appropriate to choose the category of Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses.
Product Type in Google:
This is a free-form field, which means you can do whatever you want with it. It also truly reflects the keywords you show up with. So use it wisely! I recommend putting the most important keywords in your product type. The product type is not visible to shoppers, only to Google.
Images:
Aside from price, your product image can greatly affect the number of clicks your product receives. Google prefers product images with clean white backgrounds, but images of the product in its intended environment also work.
Remember that your image will appear as a thumbnail, so be sure to crop it correctly to show off the important features of the product. It’s hard to emphasize the importance of good images. I recommend thoroughly reading Google’s requirements and recommendations.
Product Highlights:
If you sell on Amazon as well, consider using highlights as bullet points for your product on your product detail pages on Amazon. You can include up to 10 highlights per product. Google recommends four to six highlights. Each highlight can reach up to 150 characters.
Sale Price Comments:
If your product is on sale, Google will highlight this fact and that there is a discount. To maintain the integrity of merchants here, Google requires that you have a base price (think of the non-sale price) that has actually been charged for 30 non-consecutive days in the past 200 days. Then your sale price must be at least 5% lower but no more than 90%, and Google will display the sale comment.
Details
Product:
Here you can provide additional information about the product that is not covered in other attributes. This is a great place for technical specifications like product dimensions or compatibility if that data is important and not covered elsewhere in your feed.
Price:
While a good image will attract a person’s attention, the price usually has the biggest impact on whether they will click on it or not. This is especially true if you are selling the same product that other sellers are offering. It is also true if you are selling products in an area where customers are price-sensitive.
In these cases, having a higher price can severely hinder your listing. If your product is unique or has clear advantages over the competition, a higher price can help attract the right clicks.
For example, many high-end consumers will target the same search queries used by shoppers looking for deals. In this scenario, a higher price compared to the competition can help them get clicks from the right buyers.
Other Important Feed Items:
Brand: Whether you are offering your own brand or reselling another brand, you should specify the product brand for each item in your feed. Many products are searched by brand, especially by people with high purchase intent. Also, having your brand name in shopping ads is good for your promotional efforts.
Clothing Categories: If you are selling clothing, you should provide some additional data points, including the following (for a complete list of requirements for different clothing products, see Google’s guidelines):
- Gender: Male, Female, Unisex
- Age Group: Newborn, Infant, Child, Toddler, Youth, Adult
- Size: Number or Small, Medium, Large, etc.
- Size Type: Regular, Petite, Plus, Tall, Maternity
- Size System: US, UK, EU, etc.
- Color
Manufacturer Part Number and Global Trade Item Number:
In North America, the Global Trade Item Number is usually the UPC barcode (or ISBN for books). In the past, Google only required two of these three fields for all products in the feed: brand, MPN, and GTIN. Now, GTIN is required for any product assigned to a manufacturer. If you are reselling products, you should ask the manufacturer about GTINs/UPCs or items may be disapproved by Google.
Sales Tax and Shipping:
You can specify pricing and the states where sales tax applies, as well as shipping rules, in the account settings within Google Merchant Center. For both, it is usually best to set rules in Merchant Center rather than filling in fields for each product. In Merchant Center, you can set up free shipping, flat rate shipping, and calculated shipping based on carriers.
Other Required Information:
These data points are quick and easy to add. They are also required – if you leave one out for a particular product, that product will not be eligible to appear in shopping results.
- Availability. Accepted options are “in stock,” “out of stock,” and “preorder.”
- Condition. Accepted options are “new” and “used.”
Custom Labels:
Custom labels are for your benefit only but can be very helpful when trying to build campaigns or optimize bids. When launching a new campaign in Google Ads, you can group your products by brand, category, custom label, or some other attributes.
Labels are optional, but in many cases, it’s helpful to create labels for your products.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/google-shopping
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