Today, we look at another opportunity for your E-commerce income – Google Shopping Ads. Let’s see if this program is for you.
What is Google Shopping Ads?
Google Shopping is an E-commerce platform that allows customers to search for products, compare them and opt for the most suitable choice. Google Shopping Ads gives potential clients an overview of the product and the opportunity to see the reviews and opinions, which often is the benchmark for the number of clicks and leads.
You could see Google Shopping Ads in a Google search. They look like this:
These ads showcase a high-quality image on the product listing, the price of the product, as well as the description where you can add special features of your shop like free shipping.
Advantages of Google Shopping Ads
1. Opportunities for placement
Google Shopping Ads feature your product at the top of the Google search engine results page, even before organic listings for some keywords.
Moreover, customers don’t need to be familiar with your business to find you through Google, as your products can appear whenever Google matches them to the user’s search keywords. It is convenient for small businesses that have not established their names yet.
Your products are displayed to users who are already interested in what you sell since potential customers are matched to your product based on the keywords they typed in.
2. An informative and concise format of ads
The format of an ad consists of an image, name, price, brand name, and star rating. This informative format is attractive to customers since they have all the needed data in a concise form. If they already know what to expect, they’re less likely to bounce when they visit your site.
Disadvantages of Google Shopping Ads
1. You cannot target keywords
Ads run automatically without keywords. Google thinks itself what will work best for your product based on its description, title, and other information. That means that you have no control over the search process. You can just hope that Google algorithms will display it in a desirable way.
2. Managing campaigns is harder
If you attempt an excellent level of optimization in Google shopping, you will find that maintaining the campaigns is a nightmare. You would need to add new products to your shopping campaigns constantly. You have to pause or unpause products based on their availability. Change bids based on how each product is working, etc.
3. Competitive environment
The average cost per clicks continue to rise over the year making attracting new customers more difficult
General advice for your Google Shopping Ads
In case you do not have enough clicks, you can readjust bids.
Google Shopping ads is based on a bidding system, meaning that whoever pays the most for a product listing ad, receives the most exposure. Therefore, if you raise bids, your product will get better exposure.
There is also a possibility to use Automated bidding. Google’s machine learning tests and learns from previous performance to set optimal bids based on your marketing objectives.
Change the format
Probably the image does not attract customers and should be replaced. Also, the description may luck uniqueness. Test beforehand the format of your ad.
Retargeting is a great strategy you can use to maximize revenue when using Shopping Ads.
With retargeting, what you need to trigger a tracking pixel when someone visits your site. You’ll then show them ads using other Google Ad products.
Use audience signals
By using Customer Match, remarketing lists for search ads and similar audiences, you can segment your traffic to cater specifically to returning customers and those like them. When you use audience lists, it allows you to reach the most valuable customers – those who have already visited your site or have signed up for the newsletter.
Google Shopping Ads for affiliates
It is not friendly for affiliates. In October 2018 Parallel Tracking was rolled out which does not support redirect URLs. Consequently, you will not be able to redirect URLs in your ads.
Moreover, Google cares about its reputation and it trusts more to the direct advertiser.
Therefore, an affiliate should be very accurate in their description of the product. He/she also has to be creative in order to be valuable for the visitors and for Google. It is also important to comply with Google politics if you do not want to spend a lot of money just to be banned in return.
ZorbasMedia spoke with Amrit Pal, a digital marketer who works with Google Shopping ads.
What would you advise for beginners in Google Shopping?
Well, it’s not available in some countries, so the first thing is to check if it’s available in your country. Then it’s all try and test. For example, Finland is new with Shopping ads and not many people doing it. It’s good to do it now and try it out while there is not a big competition.
Were you successful with Google ads? Why so?
I don’t know if I call it successful. It’s a learning process and it’s ever-changing.
Why would you advise marketers to use Google Shopping ads? What are its advantages? What are the difficulties?
The advantage is that ads are at low price and there is no competition. The disadvantage is that they are still in beta. It might work well and may not. No one knows.
If you want to reach new GEOs and audiences, maybe it is all waiting for you on Telegram? We’ve prepared some material about Telegram audiences. What are the messenger’s users like this year? How old they are, what they do, and what they are interested in!
