I’ve been emphasizing on Google Shopping ads for a long now and there is a reason for the same. We recently started Google shopping a new brand and have been able to see massive results for them.
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Limit the Networks
By default when you create a Google shopping campaign, these networks options will be selected. Deselect these options to be more targeted.
Negative Keywords
Different Google Ads Experts may have different opinions about negative keywords. I like to go for the negative keywords, data-driven way.
- Go to the campaign search terms
- Sort the search terms by clicks in descending order
- Look for keywords with a high number of clicks but no conversions or low conversion value.
- For the above sample list, some search terms have more than 100 clicks with no conversions while some have very high or mediocre ROAS.
- Add search terms with the high cost and clicks with no conversions to the negative keyword list.
- If the product price is too high then, you might want to wait a little more before making the decision. For example, from the above list, I might keep on running sofa bed keyword a little more because I know one sofa bed costs around CAD $500 so I can wait up to, let’s say, a cost of $250 in this case.
Competitor’s keywords
Competitors brand name in the search term could be a double-edged sword. In my store visits campaign, they work like a charm but in the shopping campaign, they do not perform at all. So, you might want to wait and see before making a decision. Here the argument could be that
- If your products are better and cheaper than competitor’s then you might sell more
- If someone is looking for a particular product from the competitor then, they might nor convert sooner.
Shopping Campaign Structuring
This part is often the most talked-about part of setting up the Google Shopping Campaign Structure. Here are some basic suggestions regarding Google shopping campaign structures:
- Make sure campaigns are segregated properly based on product value, margins, and promotions.
- Identify top-performing products and set up them in the individual campaigns with a dedicated budget and high-priority settings to acquire at least 60% search Impression share.
Inventory Filter
- Make sure to use custom labels on every possible product for the segmentation based on promotions, seasons, best sellers, Profit Margins, etc.
Optimize Product Performance
I have seen in the past that some products will get a lot of clicks but there would not be any conversions from that product.
- Products marked within red had a lot of clicks but no conversions. If you want to give such products more time, you can decrease the CPC bid and wait for some more time instead of excluding them
- Products marked in yellow are products with some conversions but they are not closer to ROAS of 1 so I have decreased the bid and I am going to monitor their performance for some more time
- Products marked in green are products with good conversions. Recently, I tried increasing the bid on such products and conversions went high.
- Overall, this is a manual process but you can also write an automated rule to automate these things.
Avoid Internal Competition
If you are promoting the same set of products through different campaigns on different networks, then make sure that you set the campaign priority right.
- When I promote the same set of products on the search network and through Google PLAs, then I keep the priority as low because search ads perform better compared to PLAs for me in terms of ROAS
- However, when I promote the same set of products on the display network and through Google PLAs, then I keep the priority as high because shopping ads perform better compared to display ads for me in terms of ROAS
- For display remarketing and shopping ads, since the performance is comparable, I keep the priority as Medium. These tactics help in minimizing internal competition.
Google Shopping Ads Bidding
There has already been a lot of discussion around campaign bidding since Google ads platform offers multiple campaign bidding strategies. Here are some of the scenarios that you can use if your goal is ROAS.
ECPC
- If you have not run any Google shopping campaign before, start with Enhanced CPC. You can stick to manual CPC if your budget is tight and you want to control your budget.
Target ROAS
- Go for Target ROAS if you already have run shopping campaign before and you have enough data to make a decision for Target ROAS.
- For example, ROAS for my usual shopping campaign will be around 5.5 to 6.5. So, in that case, I can give Google ads platform a ROAS which is Realistic such as 750% or 800% and keep on increasing based on performance.
- However, if you are going to structure your shopping campaign based on products performance, it might fluctuate. In this case again, the campaign becomes brand new and start with ECPC and after enough data, switch to Target ROAS
Auction Insight
Taking a look at the Auction insight can give you a lot of ideas about the competitiveness in the market.
- If there are multiple big players like Amazon, Walmart, then you should know that the competition is going to be fierce.
- Look at the overlap rate with other brands and outranking share as well. If the overlap rate is high but outranking share is low that means you have bid very less.
- If your Impression share is not high, that means your products are visible on multiple occasions. So, either you need to increase the bid or optimize your feed more.
Shopping Feed Optimization
Product Title
- Try to keep the product title concise, descriptive, and informative at the same time.
- Product title and the product image are the most prominent things on shopping ads that make someone click an ad
- The number of characters in the Google shopping ads keeps shifting but you need to be concise and be mindful of character limitation. Here is a great guide from Datafeedwatch on google shopping title structure recommendation
- You can also refer to my guide on Product title for Amazon
You can follow one of the methods to optimize your product title
- Change them in your back-end
- Change them in your feed app
- Use a data feed management tool to make these changes in bulk
Product Description
For the product description, I will highly recommend you read this section from another blog on the Amazon product description guide. I am referring you there because the recent Amazon algorithm also addresses user’s intention and there is a lot that you can learn there.
Though this is not necessary, but, you can sit with an SEO person in knowing more about the page content, keyword, and organic ranking. This will open up another dimension of knowledge for you and you can relate more to it. Here is another article of mine on SEO and SEM.
Other Optimizations
- A little tweak in the product images can make you stand out. For example, look at the odd one out image of the shoe in the top right corner
- Besides, use Product Ratings and Seller ratings feature as well. They also make your ad stand out.
- Also, utilize promotion feed from the Google merchant account to get the additional competitive advantage as you can see in the above image such as price drop or free delivery
Beyond Shopping Ads
The above optimizations will ensure that your Google PLA is a success. However, to ensure further success, here are some tips that you can follow to get more success
- Run RLSA campaigns for the most frequent search terms. I have already covered here about the Google Ads RLSA Strateg in much detail.
- Also, run a dynamic display remarketing campaign with limited frequency cap to retarget the users who visited a particular product
- Again, run the dynamic remarketing campaign to get abandon sales with higher bidding.