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E-commerce, a very general term for almost all. Ecommerce knows now by the entire world it has introduced us to a whole new vision of shopping with ease. It’s one of those inventions that swept us all, and now we’re all addicted to it. Who among us doesn’t invest our time on the internet surfing to find the right prices and buy straight out? It’s almost become a daily habit to try out the latest sales, discounts, and items that have just been launched, and more often than not, we end up investing a lot more than we expected, with our fingers creeping towards the checkout tab.
Consumers worldwide will spend nearly $3.46 trillion online in 2019, and furthermore in 2020, up from $2.93 trillion in 2018. Global retail sales through all channels are expected to hit $21 trillion by the end of the year, up 3.4% from $20.31 trillion in 2018-2019, according to one of the report’s projections. That would increase the internet share of all retail revenue to 16.4% which would account for more than three-quarters of overall retail earnings. These figures indicate that e-commerce is growing rapidly.
This being said, it’s not easy to do business online. A variety of reasons, such as not being able to reach and feel the product, making online payments, trusting businesses with the quality of the goods they sell online, are some of the issues. Yeah, there are a few e-commerce companies leading the way right now, but that does not necessarily mean that every company will able to do good business online. You really need to improve your game, particularly with the enormous amount of competition.
You need a good Marketing plan to address these problems. A proper marketing strategy using various tools and methods available online will increase your traffic and conversion rates. And one such method is ‘Google Shopping Ads’.
What are Google Shopping Ads?
We’ve all must have searched for specific products on the google search engine. Now think about the first thing that’s going to catch your eye? The little ads with the photos that first appear, right? They’re nothing but Google Shopping Ads. Google shopping ads are the suggestions/ads you’ll see as you search for something on Google. Look at the following example:
It’s one of the most best strategies online right now, and yet it’s overlooked by many. It is a type of PPC campaign. It is the perfect approach to e-commerce optimization. They also go by the term ‘Product listing ads’. Google started out such ads in 2012 and is now one of the most effective methods for marketing and even to improve sales & revenue growth.
How is Google Shopping Ads effective?
Google Shopping Ads are very different from the normal text ads of adword campaigns. To begin with, Google has been on the rise for years. It’s hitting new heights and it’s breaking its own records. Almost everyone is using the Google search engine. And so, by using one of the tools centered around them, you’re automatically putting yourself ahead of the game. So much so that Google Shopping Ads has a share of 22 percent of the total paid search clicks.
It especially attracts the attention of the consumer to the fact that they stand out with the product image, the cost and the company name. It also specifies the reviews and the shipping details, all at one glance. This therefore tends to be a better marketing choice than any other approach.
How to use Google shopping ads for business?
Google shopping ads are primarily sourced by two different platforms: Google merchant center and Adwords. So, to implement Google shopping ads, you need to follow some steps. Let us go through them one by one:
First, setup a Google merchant center account. Using this, it will become possible to pass data to Google about the various products. There is an onboard guide to help with the whole process.
After the signup step, your next step is to create a shopping feed which includes the various items or products in your store. With the help of this, Google gains the data or information that will be added with the product listing ads.
The third step is to link your Google ads account to your Google merchant center account . For this, first navigate to the settings tab. Under this, move to the ‘ads’ section and then clicking on the ‘link account’ option.
After this, focus on creating your campaign using Google Adwords. Keep in mind that it is also possible to create your campaign your merchant center, but Adwords is a better choice. Use this link for a detailed guide to setup your shopping campaign.
On top of this, if you wish to setup campaigns for specific products, you have the option to do so. Go to ‘advanced shopping settings’ and make the necessary changes and adjustments to achieve this. You may come across an option called ‘campaign priority’. Using this, you can prioritize a specific product and also deploy multiple campaigns for a specific product.
They prove to be really easy to handle and there’s no need to rely on keywords. Google uses the product data feeds to show the ads for the relevant searches. And you don’t need to concentrate on the keywords. Google has strong data feeds for the standard keyword form for every specific product. Yet you’ll always be able to manage everything by modifying attributes including title, category and description.
Ways to optimize Google Shopping Ads for higher performance:
Use better images: Use high-quality pictures for best output. The photo of the product is what draws the interest of the consumer. And hence, emphasis on image quality, background, lighting and retouching to increase traffic and conversions.
Including ratings and feedback: The additional and display of ratings and reviews is of vital significance. It may be from your own website or from external websites. A minimum of 3 reviews for each product and at least 50 reviews for all products is must to activate this feature and display the ratings in Google shopping ads.
Concentrate on best-selling products: As described above, you can create specific and targeted campaigns for individual products. And also, prioritize these different campaigns. Use this feature to focus more on the best selling products. This will ensure higher conversion rates and more traffic to the website.
Readjust the bidding price: This technique is based on the principle of the PPC. This means that the company with the highest bid achieves the maximum reach. And if you don’t get the desired outcomes or conversions, concentrate on re-adjusting your bet. Study the results for a week or two and make the necessary adjustments. Also consider the concept of lifetime value of a customer. If it is a good value, raise the bid to a higher level as you are guaranteed a better profit in the future. Thus, make a calculated move on the bid and keep reviewing and changing the values till you reach an optimum one.
The benefits of Google Shopping Ads
Now, since we know what it is, let’s move on to focus on the benefits of Google shopping ads and how it will improve your business.
Immediate attention from customers: This is something which stands out from other search results. They are the first results on top of all the other organic search results. Apart from this, these are the only ads with product pictures. They catch the eye of the customer and good quality pictures will give them an insight into how the product actually is. And thus, Google shopping ads prove to be one of the best. Your ads will appear when people are looking specifically for your products with a strong intention to buy. With attractive pictures and useful information, you can attract the right audience and stand out among your competition. It is also highly targeted and offers simple and straight product details. A clear and short description of the product is obtained to the customer. Along with this, they also get an idea of the cost and the company. Thus, it gives a clearer picture to the customer. They can easily choose if they want to buy the product or not.
Better quality leads: The customers investing their time to search on Google about a product are already a bit inclined towards the product. They have done adequate research and possess useful information. When they come across a related Google shopping ad, they are most likely to visit the site. This gives way to better quality leads for the business. Along with this, they have a better idea by just looking at the ad. They know the looks of the product and they know the cost and can decide if it falls in their budget before even visiting the site. Thus, these people have a stronger intent are more likely to make the purchase if they visit the site.
Broader reach: These type of ads tend to give you a broader reach. They reach maximum number of potential customers by tapping into all sorts of buyer personas. One of the reasons being that they appear on top of the search results. The customer’s eye goes directly to these results. And they also display pictures which compels more users to notice the site. Visual content is always more enticing and inviting for customers. Along with this, for a single query search, multiple ads are displayed and thus, the more chances of your product being displayed. This will increase your exposure. Thus, all in all, you can tap into a lot of buyer groups and influence them greatly.
Powerful reporting and competitive data: Reporting proves to be amongst the leading fields that businesses focus on. It’s of pivotal importance as it will tell you the progress, strengths and weaknesses. Especially for online businesses, it is important to keep track of your activities and the effect of various strategies. Using this strategy, one of the biggest advantages that you’ll experience is going to be in the field of reporting. You can view the performance of your products at various levels of granularity. Let us consider an exam. From a vast array of products, you can spot and find out the number of clicks a particular product received, by just filtering the product view, without the need of new product groups. Benchmarking data can also be used to gain insights and points into the competitive landscape. It is also possible to get to know about the growth opportunities using impression share data and the Bid Simulator tool.
Updating the products according to inventory: Google shopping ads make it possible for the companies to make use of automatic inventory updates. As and when the details and information of the various products are updated on the e-commerce website of the business, the Google ad PLAs are also updated at the same time, automatically. This will make sure that there is consistency a=between the google ads and your website. That is, it won’t happen that a product is shown to be available according to ads but is actually not present. Thus, you don’t have to worry about updating and it happens automatically.
Higher conversion rate: Since this produces better quality leads, it is only obvious that the conversion rate is also higher because of this. This gives a way higher conversion rates as compared to the rest of the text only ads . To be specific, conversion rates are higher by 28%. The customers who visit the site through Google shopping ads have knowledge about the cost and the looks of the product. Thus, the chances of missing out on conversion because of the budget and the looks of the product is reduced. This is why Google shopping ads are advantageous in this respect.
Increase in ROI: All these advantages are linked to one another. The basic fact that these ads are most out there and stand out from the rest of the search results along with the fact that people get more attracted by the Google shopping ads because of the information and the picture gives rise to higher conversion rates . And on top of this, CPC has also decreased by 25%. Thus, in a combined way the ROI is increased. This will have a huge impact on your business and the profit is shot up to new values. When you’re investing in ads, it is always important to note the return. And in the case of Google shopping ads, the profit is tremendous.
Visibility for mobile users: The number of customers using mobile phones are increasing exponentially. And in such cases, when PPC ad campaigns are used, only 2 ads are displayed with product photos and cost descriptions. If your product appears in one of these 2 spots, then the amount of traffic that’ll be directed to your page and the profit you’ll experience is going to be tremendous. But on the other hand, if you don’t pop up in these two positions, then you lose out on a lot of potential customers and the profit also decreases tremendously. This has a huge effect on the business. On the other hand, when Google shopping ads are being used, around 15 results are displayed. This increases the chances of your product being displayed. This will guarantee a certain amount of traffic and risk is reduced. The amount of profit gained will be higher due to high CTR and less CPC. Thus, especially for mobile users, Google shopping ads is the best option to reduce risk and gain guarantee to a certain extent.
Conclusion:
E-commerce is an ever emerging and growing industry. And one of best strategy is ‘Google Shopping ads’. It belongs to the family of the PPC campaign. And as we discussed, it is a long list of products which are displayed before the organic results when you search for a particular product on the google search engine. Thoroughly follow the steps to set up Google shopping ads and also the steps to optimize it for the best results. So, what are you waiting for? E-commerce has not seen any strategy better than this one to boost up marketing as well as sales. Start using this strategy and we assure you that you’ll observe results in no time, with your customer base increasing magnificently.
