Generate Traffic and Drive Sales with Google Shopping

There’s probably never been a more exciting time for online merchants. Marketing channels abound and new ways to focus on , reach, and woo potential buyers crop up all the time. But it’s also a time crammed with obstacles. Competition is fierce and customers have high expectations for his or her shopping experiences. Technology has leveled the playing field in some ways, while in others its led to consolidation that has given giants like Amazon an enormous advantage.

One excellent source of traffic for online merchants is Google Shopping, also referred to as Product Listing Ads, or PLAs. Google Shopping ads appear along the highest of, or often on the upper right side of, an enquiry results page when a user searches Google for a product. (Shopping ads can also be found by clicking the Shopping tab.)

Your success as a web merchant hinges on your ability to draw in new customers at an inexpensive cost. Google Shopping ads are during a ll|one amongst|one in every of"> one among the leading traffic sources for giving merchants a foothold in a competitive landscape. Here are a couple of recent success stories of shops who used Google Shopping ads. The results these merchants saw aren't unprecedented , but they aren’t necessarily typical either.

A company within the watersport industry who is generating $12 in revenue per click with a mean cost per click of only $.24, spend $.24 and obtain $12 reciprocally ...not bad. A parts company who averages $12 to $14 in sales for each $1 spent with Google Shopping ads. and therefore the coup de gras - a corporation within the outdoor space, who I helped generate $19,000 in sales from 165 transactions with an experimental campaign that spent a complete of $67. Yes, you read that right - $19,000 in sales on $67 in total spend….no kidding. Yes this one is just like the half court shot at the buzzer - doesn’t happen fairly often in the least , but pretty cool when it does.

Want some more conservative examples? How about 300-600% return on ad spend (ROAS) on the average across all the campaigns we managed last year? Would you be willing to spend $1 to urge $3-$6 in sales in return? i feel most merchants would. So how does one do that? That’s what this guide is all about. From set up–to ongoing management and optimization, we’ll walk you thru the X Factors which will help set you up for fulfillment .

Over the past few years, Google Shopping has become a longtime and critically important channel for many online retailers. In Q1 of 2017, Google Shopping accounted for 52% of click share for retailers, marking the primary time shopping clicks exceeded search clicks. For non-branded terms, Google Shopping click share may be a staggering 75%. (Google Shopping is competitive—it’s still possible for you to market your products profitably, but it’s almost as easy as wont to be.

It should come as no surprise that Google Shopping clicks on mobile devices are growing at a good faster pace than desktop clicks. In 2016, 29% of Google Shopping revenue came from mobile devices. That was up from 17% in 2015. Also, Google Shopping revenue accounted for 16% of online retail sales in 2016, up from 9% in 2015.

What is Google Shopping and the way does it work?
Google Shopping is powered by two platforms: Google Ads and Google Merchant Center. Google Ads is where your shopping campaigns live and where you set your budget, manage your bids, gain insights, and make optimizations supported performance. Google Merchant Center is where your product feed—the details of products organized during a format Google likes—is stored. 

The setup and management of Google Shopping ads is sort of a touch different from the setup traditional text ads. With text ads, you create campaigns, ad groups, and ads focused around chosen keywords. With Google Shopping, Google uses your feed, your site, and your bids to work out what search queries trigger your ads. due to this, fixing shopping ads has some strong similarities to SEO.

Success with Google Shopping usually boils right down to three main strategies:

Feed creation and optimization. Also referred to as feed mastery. This covers tons of ground, including your product data, product images, and price. 
Bidding. There are several ways to bid successfully (more thereon below).. Bidding are often complex—shifts in bidding strategies can double the return on ad spend for various campaigns. 
Monitoring and optimization. one among the good benefits of Google Shopping is it gives you the power to ascertain granular performance data and make granular optimizations. Proper monitoring and optimization can take an honest campaign and make it great.
We’ll probe the step-by-step details of using Google Shopping shortly. First, let’s lay some foundational elements which will greatly improve your chance of success.

Solid proper preparation and a transparent course map are even as crucial to your advertising strategy as doing the particular work of setup and management. to offer you a foothold over the competition, let’s check out three important components of your strategy: goals, keywords and competition.

Goals
Setting goals keep you on target while supplying you with the liberty and creativity you would like to problem solve and achieve what you originally began to try to to . Here are a few of things to think about when setting your goals.

What is your target cost per acquisition (CPA)? If your average order value is $100 and your average margin is 35%, would you be willing to spend all $35 of take advantage of that first order to shut a deal? Maybe that’s too rich for you, or even you’ll be willing to spend more if you recognize the typical lifetime value of your customers. Determine what you're comfortable with and set that number as a maximum target.
Build a customer or make a sale? There are two sorts of merchants: those that want to get sales and people who want to get customers. Both approaches can make money, but only the later can really build an enduring business and brand made from customers you'll sell to again and again—and who hopefully will refer more customers to you. Google Shopping could work for you either way, but your goal will dictate how aggressive you'll be in your bidding and approach. 
Keywords and top products
What does one want to sell the most? Your initial answer could be “everything,” but it’s best to think strategically so as to maximise sales.



Entry products. Maybe you sell a particular line that isn’t your core or most profitable products but is an excellent entry point for your company. Maybe these are lower priced products that your customers need more often, or that they're going to need before they create an outsized purchase. 
Consumables. a bit like companies who sell low-priced razors with the motivation of then selling costlier blades, or supplement sellers who want to urge you “hooked” on their products, it often pays to advertise products that folks will order again and again. 
High price and/or high margin. The products you create the foremost on–either in terms of total profit or profit margin–are the products you ought to focus time and energy on selling through your Shopping campaigns. 
Products with low competition but decent demand. If you happen to be during this coveted position, cash in of it.
How to get your products ahead of potential customers
The length and content of an enquiry query can say tons about intention. Longer, more detailed searches usually indicate someone is looking to form a sale . Someone who searches “Nike” may be killing time, but someone who searches “Nike running shoes” is probably going a lively shopper, and someone who searches “black Nike Air Zoom Pegasus shoe” is perhaps able to buy.

Want to understand what your customers are literally searching for? Here are three great tools:

Google Keyword Planner. this is often Google’s free tool, available inside Google Ads, under the Tools tab. you'll enter words and phrases associated with your product and Google will offer you a slew of keyword suggestions, also as estimated search volume for those keywords and therefore the monetary value per clicks you'll expect to buy them. Unfortunately, neither the quantity estimates or the CPCs are exact, but they are doing get you within the right ballpark. 
SEMrush. SEMRush may be a marketing toolkit that provides you detailed insights about keywords and domains. It, and provides helpful data faster and during a better format than Google Keyword Planner.
Keyword Tool. Keyword Tool provides you with keywords associated with the keywords you're targeting, pulled from Google’s autocomplete suggestions. this will be helpful in writing feed descriptions or page copy. Using a number of the related words that appear relevant to what you’re selling can assist you show up during a wider sort of search queries.
Competition
INever start running ads without getting a pity who your competition is and who seems to achieve success .

Start by searching Google for your required keywords. See what pops up within the shopping results, and note of the products, prices, images, and retailers. search for product searches that return multiple results from an equivalent retailer—this may be a symbol that they're rather well optimized, but often it means there aren’t many other good choices, leaving a chance for you.

You can also use one among the tools mentioned above, like SEMrush. Type within the names of your competitors to ascertain their ads and top Product Listing Ads placements (PLA data is merely available on SEMrush’s paid plans). this may show what keywords an opportunity has Google Shopping placements for. You’ll also see screenshots of your competitors’ Shopping ads, including title, price, and image.

Setting up Google Shopping
You’ll need accounts for Google Merchant Center, Google Ads, and Google Analytics to form Google Shopping work for you. Here’s a fast check out the fundamentals of fixing all .

Google Merchant Center
Google Merchant Center is where your feed lives. It’s also where you'll set tax and shipping rules, both of which are required before running Google Shopping ads. A feed is just data about your products presented during a format Google can read and understand. There are two main ways to create a feed: manually, by entering your product information into a spreadsheet consistent with Google’s specifications; or by using an extension, plugin, app, or service that pulls data from your site and formats it during a way Google likes.

Here are a couple of tips for fixing your Merchant Center account: 

Have access to your domain registrar. You’ll got to verify that you simply own your site then claim it to be used in Merchant Center. the simplest thanks to do that is by logging into your domain registrar and giving Google access. this will all be done directly from Merchant Center.
Know your tax and shipping settings. You’ll got to found out both tax and shipping rules under General Settings in Merchant Center. For nuisance tax , you'll enter your rates directly or pick the states you charge nuisance tax in and permit Google to work out the speed . For shipping, you'll choose from a flat rate (which could include free shipping), a rate calculated supported the carriers you employ , or a rate supported a rate table or rules.
Link Merchant Center to Google Ads. Under Settings and Ads, click Account Linking. You’ll need a 10-digit Google Ads ID, and you’ll got to be logged in with an email address that has admin access to both Merchant Center and Google Ads.

Google Ads
This guide focuses on Google Shopping, but it’s worth also finding out Shopify’s guide to fixing a Google Ads account. Here are a couple of recommendations on getting the essential settings in situ to run Google Shopping campaigns.

Create a replacement campaign. Click the Campaigns tab, then click the red +Campaign button and choose Shopping.

Name your campaign, choose your country, and choose your priority. Naming is vital if you propose to possess multiple campaigns, which many merchants will, for things like seasonal sales or testing purposes. you've got the choice of setting your campaign to low, medium, or high priority. Changing the priority is merely important if you've got multiple campaigns.
The default priority is low, which is ok for your first campaign. If you run multiple campaigns and if you've got an equivalent product advertised in additional than one among them, Google will decide which campaign (and its corresponding bid) will show up in search results. Google shows products supported campaign priority first and bid second. So, if an equivalent product is in multiple campaigns with an equivalent priority level, then the very best bid will win the impression. If an equivalent product is in multiple campaigns with different bids and different priorities, Google will accompany the upper priority campaign first.

Networks and locations. you'll be opted into the Google Search and Search Partners networks by default. Search Partners include sites like AOL and other Google properties, like YouTube and Google Maps. It’s good to stay Search Partners on to start with, because the results are often decent and CPC usually are less than within the Google Search Network. However, you’ll want to return back and run some Search Network reports. Also, don’t skip the situation portion, or your ads will show up worldwide.

Default bid, budget and delivery. We’ll talk more below about advanced bidding, but initially you’ll got to set a default bid. Somewhere within the $.10 to $.85 range is sweet , counting on the worth and competitiveness of what you’re selling. This default bid only applies to products you don’t specify a bid for later. Start out with a reasonably conservative bid and watch performance closely. 
We recommend using accelerated instead of the default standard delivery. Accelerated delivery will get your products exposure faster and for all the queries that Google finds relevant for you. you'll get data faster and determine sooner when campaigns need more budget with this setting.

Linking analytics and fixing conversion tracking. you'll generate a Google Ads tracking code and drop it on your order confirmation page, otherwise you can pull in conversions from Google Analytics. Either way, you'll want to link Google Analytics to your Ads account so you get Analytics data inside Ads and Ads data inside Analytics. To link your Google Ads and Analytics accounts, click on the wheel within the upper right, by your email address and account ID.

Next, click on Linked Accounts and Google Analytics and follow the steps. Then click on Merchant Center and follow the steps there. you'll got to have an equivalent email address with admin access to Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Google Merchant Center.

Google Analytics
We’ll check out Google Analytics reports and the way to optimize them below First, here are a number of the explanations why you ought to connect Google Analytics to your Google Ads account.

More options for conversion tracking. you'll slice and dice your Analytics conversion data many alternative ways . Shoppers often visit your site quite once before buying. In Analytics, you'll see where your ad clicks occur along the trail to conversion. Did someone click on your ad first then come later from another source to get (first click). Or, did they click on your ad right before purchasing (last click). Google Analytics defaults to showing last-click attribution, or giving all of the conversion credit to the last click, but you'll also see first-click and assisted conversions. watching the entire impact on conversions is vital as you evaluate Google Shopping as a channel.
Customer engagement data. Conversions are the foremost important metric to point out the success of your campaigns, but they’re not the sole datum you ought to consider. watching engagement metrics like time on site, average pages per session, and bounce rate also can shed light on overall performance. These additional metrics provide helpful insights into your onsite experience. Taken along side conversion numbers, engagement data provides a well-rounded picture of the vital signs of your site and campaigns. 
Remarketing lists. We’ll discuss remarketing lists and the way they apply to Google Shopping below but Google Analytics integration gives you ample opportunity to make new remarketing lists supported how users interact together with your site. you'll create lists supported pages someone visits (collection page, product page, etc.), goals they’ve completed on the location (like filling out a form or watching a video), or maybe time they’ve spent on your site. As we’ll see, having segmented lists instead of just an “all visitors” list, gives you more options for smart targeting later.
Setting up your data feed
As mentioned above, your data feed contains information about the products you would like to sell, formatted during a way Google can read and understand. You don’t pick the keywords that trigger your Product Listing Ads; Google crawls your feed and determines if one or more of your products has relevancy to a specific search query. during this regard, Google Shopping is analogous to SEO. you would like to structure the varied elements of your feed so Google can add up of it and find it relevant for the acceptable search queries.

Setting up your feed properly is vital for 3 reasons: it ensures your ads show up for the proper search queries, it earns clicks (to make prospective buyers want to click your ads), and it makes optimization and management easier.

You can either build your feed manually, by entering your product information into a spreadsheet consistent with Google’s specifications, otherwise you can use an extension, plugin, app, or service that pulls data from your site and formats it for you.

If you simply have a couple of products, you'll prefer to create your feed manually employing a Google spreadsheet. If you've got hundreds or thousands of products, then a manual feed is perhaps out of the question.

13 key feed elements
Your feed will have different requirements counting on the category of products you sell. Cutting corners or missing steps can cause your feed to be rejected or cost you valuable clicks, so here are the items , so as of importance, to form sure you get right. 

Product title
Your product title is, arguably, the foremost important element of your feed. If your product title isn’t accurate and descriptive, Google will have a tough time knowing when to point out your ad. If you’re conversant in SEO, a product title is analogous to a webpage’s title tag. Here are a couple of dos and don’ts for creating an excellent product title:

Do:

Include top keyword(s). What keyword does one want to point out up for the most? Include that keyword within the title.
Use the name of your product. this might be obvious, but using the foremost commonly known name of your product is vital . 
Use color, brand, gender, and size to differentiate. Longer searches usually indicate buyer intent. Someone checking out “blue Adidas Climalite polo” is more likely to convert than someone searching the term “shirt.” Create an in depth title for your product so as to point out up in additional detailed searches. 
Front load important information. attempt to put the foremost important information first within the title tag. to draw in someone searching “business cards,” you'll name your product “Business Cards—14 pt. High Gloss Standard Size” instead of “14 pt High Gloss Standard Size Business Cards.”
Use model number and other descriptors. counting on the merchandise , searchers might be trying to find details sort of a specific model year or edition. 
Remember Google’s 150-character limit. there's no magic formula for the perfect length of a product title, but, usually, the more detailed the higher .

Don’t:

Keyword stuff. Only use a keyword once per title.
Add promotional text. “Business Cards—50% Off Now” isn't allowed as a title. you'll run promotions, but your title isn’t the place to advertise a purchase .
Be vague. Don’t name a product “Nike trainers ,” but rather “Nike Pegasus trainers 2015.”
Use all-caps. Over-capitalization will get your product or feeds disapproved by Google.
Product description
Google pays close attention to your product descriptions to assist determine what keywords will trigger your Product Listing Ads. Get this wrong, and you'll miss valuable impressions.

Do:

Concisely and accurately describe the item. There’s no got to write a novel—justthink in terms of what the customer would wish to understand to form a sale .
Think keywords.
Front load important information. Information toward the front of the outline carries the foremost weight, so put emphasis and a spotlight on the opening sentence or two of your product description.
Here’s a product description for an Orca Ccoler that's decent but features a little an excessive amount of fluff at the start . Cutting right to the features is best for a Google Shopping description.

Don’t:

Keyword stuff. Only use a selected keyword once in your description.
Be vague or poetic. Think more in terms of how would you describe your product to an individual who couldn’t see it instead of telling a story about why the merchandise is great. Stories are often effective when selling on your site or during a video, but they won’t help with Google Shopping. Your description is primarily for Google—most shoppers will never see it.
Be too long winded. While there doesn’t seem to be a penalty for extra long titles, they don’t help either. Concise, descriptive, accurate descriptions help create shopping gold.
Google product category
Google features a fairly exhaustive list of categories and subcategories that your products can fall into .This is a crucial (and required) step in getting your products to point out up for the proper search queries. 

View Google’s taxonomy. Google currently has quite 6,000 categories and subcategories to settle on from, so it’s an honest idea to download the available Excel file and search to seek out the category that most accurately fits your product.
Choose the simplest category. you'll only choose one, so chose wisely. As an example, let’s say you sell visors for motorcycle helmets. you'll choose the Google product category Vehicle Parts > Vehicle Parts & Accessories, but it might be much better to settle on Vehicle Parts > Vehicle Parts & Accessories > Motorcycle Accessories > Motorcycle Protective Gear > Motorcycle Helmet Parts & Accessories > Motorcycle Helmet Visors.

Get as close as possible and let product type do the remainder . you would like your product category to be as specific as possible, but in some cases what you’re selling won't fit neatly into Google’s taxonomy. therein case, get as close as you'll then let your product type further clarify for Google.