Google Shopping Ads Basics For Print-on-demand Merchants

In previous article, we have mentioned Google Ads and its most powerful tool to market print-on-demand. However, there’s a new rising tool that will definitely catch your interest: Google Shopping Ads.

Also developed by the giant tech Google, they have successfully grown a marketplace for consumers all around the world. Google Shopping, along with search ads, subsequently becomes another most powerful ads tool for online business.

In this article, we will be going through all you need to know about Google Shopping Ads, from definition to instruction.

What is Google Shopping Ads?

Google Shopping Ads is a special ads type whose Google developed to specialize ads for shopping purposes. It helps consumer to look for product information easier and quicker.

Google Shopping Ads, though, will display the products that are running ads campaign in search results, using the Google Ads system. From product image and title to product vendor, Google Shopping can optimize and deliver the most-worth info of product to your customers.

How Google Shopping Ads Works?

It is operated based on two tools, which are Google Ads and Google Merchant Center.

If you choose Google Shopping Ads as your marketing tool, Google will automatically identify the time range that your ads is allowed to display. Based on the quality of info resources, website and bid price, Google thence uses a learning machine to adopt this info. After that, Google will automatically calculate when and where your ads will be activated to show to consumers.

Where Does Google Shopping Ads Display?

Regularly, Google Shopping Ads will display on top of the first page of search results. It will display 25 search results in a row, using a carousel to optimize the look. If a visitor uses a PC device, Google will show 5 out of 25 results on a screen. With mobile devices, Google will show only 3 results on a screen for user-friendly interface and aesthetic reasons.

Besides showing ads on top, for some cases, Google can display ads on right, next to search results. This display type only shows on PC devices, with a maximum of 9 results to be displayed.

Benefits of Using Google Shopping Ads

It can help to lock your target audience more precisely. It means that you can boost your conversion rate and your sales even more with it.

In fact, according to Smart Insights, across US online retail, Google Shopping Ads win 85.3% of clicks and had generated 76.4% of retail search ads spent. Moreover, recent research shows that Google Shopping Ads has taken place in helping online business to significantly grow. The results is shown as follows:

• 35% of ads clicks are increased
• 40% of conversion rate (CVR) is increased
• Up to 25% of the cost per click (CPC) is reduced
• 1/2 of the regular advertising budget is cut down

With Google Shopping, both entrepreneurs and consumers are benefiting from it. Whereby, a consumer gets to receive more useful information for the products. This reduces the negative feelings of consumers when seeing other types of ads which makes them more willing to buy. Online businesses, thence, can take advantage of these pros to make more profits.

How to Optimize Your Google Shopping Ads

To actually have an effective Google Shopping ads campaign, you need to assess and prepare for different factors awaiting.

Configure an Ads Campaign

You need to pass through these 5 basic steps:

1. Create an account in Merchant Center
2. Verify your sign-up and authenticate your webstie
3. Create data resources and import data (should use Google Sheets to do this)
4. Link your Merchant Center account with your AdWords account (See instruction)
5. Configure your account settings (Note that you will need to link your Google Analytics account to Google Shopping)

Essential Configuration Settings for Google Shopping Ads

1. Product categories

Different from transferring keywords to queries like Search Ads, shopping ads depend on customer behavior to appear. In case you want to narrow down the target audience, you need to distribute your products in specific the product categories. The price bids will be based on the level of the product categories hierarchy.

2. Product attributes

When you create a new product, you need to inform Google about requiring product attributes. Product attributes include one item ID, brand name, category (e.g. Clothing > Jacket/Top/Bottom/…), product type, price, label, condition, distribution channels.

Amongst these attributes, you will see that product type is quite similar to product category. Unlike product category that is limited by Google’s setup options, you can configure your own product type. It means that if there isn’t anything closely related to your product, you can make one.

3. Ad group

Putting product category in the ad group will help you to scale down the scope of the keyword. Thus, it will help to target more precisely.

4. Create campaign using CSV import

If you don’t wanna go through each step to create a shopping ads campaign, you can use CSV file to import your campaign. Thus, you would need to follow the formatting for CSV template, as follows:

You can also learn more about creating and editing shopping campaign using CSV here.

Measure your Google Shopping Campaign Performance

After setting up your Google Shopping campaign, what you need to do next is optimize the ad. As accordance, you need to pay attention to these listed factors:

• Return on ad spend (ROAS)
• Impression rate
• Cost per click (CPC)
• Clickthrough rate (CTR)
• Cost per action (CPA)

There’s difficulty in measuring these factors since Google automatically generates when and where to display ads. Thus, it will be hard for you to control the CPC, CPA and CTR. That is why for Google Shopping Ads, what you need to focus on measuring is the ROAS.

For example, you spent $5 on your Google Shopping campaign. Then, you converted $10 of revenue. Now assuming that you don’t have any other expenses, except ad expense. It means that you have a final profit equal to $5.

The result indicates a good result by using Google Shopping. However, if you didn’t covert any sale, then you have a loss of $5, then it means that your ROAS linear is negative. You can pause the campaign, revise it before re-launching it.

Source: Google

Besides, you should test on 30 regular products before running ads for winning products. The purpose of this is to help you in getting on with using data resources and acknowledging the ROAS.

This will make a base for running official ads for winning products. After that, you can focus on optimizing your advertisement to improve your ROI (Return on investment).

Additional Notes For Print-on-demand Sellers

Google Shopping Ads Requirements

Google Shopping includes several crucially-strict policies. These policies will play a role in assessing your ad campaign and products whether to have adequate conditions to run an ad. Thus, to make sure that your ad campaign will adopt all necessary policies, remember to check these factors as follows:

• Display all contact information on your webstore. A contact form won’t be enough, you should include your real phone number and also address as well.
• Make sure to list all valid payment methods. E.g. “We accept Visa, MasterCard, PayPal”.
• Mention Refund and Returns policy. Google Shopping needs this information to understand your process of handling mis-cases. Also, it’s a way to confirm your store’s transparency with Google. In this policy, you need to update all detailed information, from the processing date range of these kinds of cases, to methods that you will refund and receive returns from customers.

Ad Content Requirements

When you run an ad campaign for Google Shopping, you need to provide this information:

• Product images
• Product title
• Price
• Webstore

Out of the 4 information that you need to provide, pay attention to your product images since that’s a converting factor. If consumers find attractive with your product images, your CTR and CVR will tend to increase.

Other Requirements

Additionally, Google Shopping Ads will also require some other conditions for your ad to successfully launch. Thus, you need to assure that you can comply with the requirements, as following:

• Your website needs to have e-commerce functionality, including product info, cart page, checkout, and make payment
• Clarify your store policies: payment methods, shipping, refund and returns, warranty
• Your website needs to have an SSL certificate (HTTPS)

Summary

Above are the detailed definition, instructions and cautious notes that you need to prepare before heading your marketing activities to Google Shopping Ads. I hope this article can well help you in using and taking advantage of this powerful tool for your store’s benefits.

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