What are Google Shopping Ads

While there’s a variety of Google ad types, Google Shopping ads are the best way to boost your website’s inventory to qualified leads. As the product-centric, visually-formated ads on the search engine results pages, they show the name, description, store, image, price and reviews, all within a quick glance.

Our client, Dugout Mugs, has found success when targeting prospective buyers with Google Shopping Ads.

5 Steps to Creating a Campaign with Google Shopping Ads

1. Ensure the product’s information on your website is accurate.

Creating Google Shopping ads is relatively easy since it pulls the ads’ information directly from your website’s product pages. Make sure each product’s feed, like the title, price, URL and other metadata, are correct. This is because you can’t change the text displayed on your Google Shopping ads unless you modify it on your website’s product pages. However, if you are using a Shopify website, you can connect to an app called ShoppingFeeder, which allows you to adjust your product’s ad information without altering it on your site.

2. Connect to Google Merchant Center and configure your settings.

If you haven’t already, sign up with Google Merchant Center, then verify and claim your website to connect it. Once you’ve done that, enter your shipping details and set up your tax info. Even though these fields are optional, we recommend filling in as much known information as possible, since this will make your ads look more trustworthy.

3. Create a product feed on Google Merchant Center.

If you have multiple products you’d like to show through Google Shopping ads, you should create a product feed. For your data to connect to your Merchant Center account, select “website crawl”. Not only will this automatically upload all the products from your site to Google, but it will also categorize all the information. If a product isn’t approved or wasn’t pulled correctly, you can always input products manually.

4. Link your Merchant Center and Google ads accounts.

First, from your Google Merchant account, link to your Google ads account. Then, go to your Google ads account and approve the linking request. From here, you’ll be able to create Google Shopping ads for the products on your Merchant account.

5. Create a Google Shopping ads campaign.

In your Google ads account, within the “All Campaigns” section, click the blue plus symbol to create a new campaign. Next, select a goal if you have one, but feel free to just create a campaign without a goal’s guidance. Then, choose the campaign type, Shopping, and the Merchant account with the products to advertise in this campaign. Enter in the country the items are being sold from and the campaign subtype, either Smart Shopping or Standard Shopping.

Smart Shopping vs. Standard Shopping Campaigns

If you want automated bidding and targeting as well as your ads displayed across Google Search Network, Google Display Network, YouTube and Gmail, select Smart Shopping. If you want more control over the campaign, Standard Shopping lets you pick your products, bid strategy, budget and targeting. And unlike Smart Shopping, it also allows you to exclude certain keywords and customize your ads in different groups.

Setup your Google Shopping Ads Campaign

Name your campaign and select your preferred bidding, budget and targeting settings. Google will automatically choose the keywords you’ll bid for, although you can take out phrases that don’t make sense. Once you’ve made the campaign live, feel free to split test different versions of these ad groups to see what settings convert best. Before making any changes, be sure to wait at least a couple of weeks to see how the campaign performs in order to gather enough data for an informed decision.

Google Shopping Ads with Enventys Partners

Google Shopping Ads is a good way to showcase your products to the most qualified buyers. If you don’t have the time or desire to run a campaign on your own, reach out to Enventys Partners, a team of advertising experts, ready to take your online retailer to the next level.