A Detailed Guide to Shopping Ads to Start splendidly as a Beginner!

“When in the world of PPC Advertising, Shopping Ad campaigns are an aspect that one cannot ignore!”

What are Shopping Ads?

In the world of PPC Advertising, Shopping ads serve tailored product information. It shows it with the help of the product image, product size, type, price, and various other attributes. Here all the information is gathered and distributed through the product data feed. The products, along with their specifications, appear along with the search results when someone searches for such type.

“Yes, for the beginners, the things explained in the first paragraph may seem alien, but don’t leave hope, we have the entire google ads shopping guide yet to be read!”

Comparing Shopping Ads to the Search ads, that would be like comparing apples to oranges, as the two of them are poles apart. Both may provide the wholesome remedies of PPC advertising but differ.
Interestingly, in spite of being poles apart, both of them are the essentials to determine whether your paid search advertising campaign would either “sink” or “swim.”

While going in-depth in the paid search campaigns, you cannot be just cutting off the corners, and as if you do so, you can just hit the sack. You are trying to say that the Search Ads show one aspect of the paid advertising campaign, which is totally based upon keyword-level bidding.

On the contrary, when going back to the drawing board, Shopping Ads are the other important aspect of making your business prominent through Advertising. Well, we’ll cross that bridge while we go through the entire google ads shopping guide.

As in the previous blogs, we have been focusing on Search ads and have been so far so good at it, isn’t it?. But now we will unfold the other aspect of the paid ads(shopping ads).

Check it out!!

Owing to a completely different format, The Shopping Ads are not at all dependent on the keyword-level bidding(proving to be the other side of the coin of PPC Ads when flipped)

Instead, here you do not have to be wrapping your head with such complicated procedures extending to the keyword targeting!

Owing to the smartness with which Shopping Ads work, away from the traditional vanity metrics, they stand on these three main pillars:

• Feed setup and management
• The Shopping Ads campaign setup
• Organizing the Product Groups and setting up the Bidding strategy

Now, if you do not go through them in detail, you would be into guesswork, and those guesses would be as good as mine.

“When learning the ropes in the world of PPC Advertising, these functionalities matter!”

Do you know about Feed Setup and Management?

Do you want your Shopping Ads to be a successful marketing campaign for you? Pull yourself together and work on a proper feed setup and the apt management of it. Shopping Ads are automated with reference to the data you send to the engines; shopping feeds are crucial to achieving success in Shopping Ads.

Here comes the role of the mediator for the sending of the feed setup.

Do you know who does this? It’s the Google Merchant Center.

It’s an important term! Let us check it out!!

Google Merchant Center is the core ingredient to get things off the ground. Being the intermediary link between the feed management, it’s set up and the advertising, all in all, Google Merchant Center, wears many hats!

Now that was just a gist, knowing about the Google Merchant Center is a fascinating topic, so going through it in detail could certainly prove to be the trick of the trade, for a refined and goal-focused ad campaign setup.

You know that if you enter the world of PPC Ads without knowing about the Google Merchant Center, YOU ARE ASKING A LOT FROM YOURSELF!!

Google Merchant center is a hub, where all the magic lies.

To nurture your PPC Advertising campaign, in case of search ads, the backbone is bidding on keywords through precise targeting. But in shopping ads, the product data feed lives in the Merchant Center(the core of the entire google shopping ads guide).

Now, what is the above paragraph trying to say?

Google Merchant Center is a centralized platform where the product lists are formed according to the feed set up specifically for each product.

Product data feed, alternatively known as the product list, where tons of attributes and parameters define your products. As it is said that good things come to those who wait, so be patient and keep reading!

Now to go through some of the attributes of the product data feed list that are:

• Title
• Description
• Id
• Product category
• Product Type
• Price
• Sales price
• Availability Status
  (and many more such parameters)

It is really awesome to know that the feed data is automatically consumed and the Shopping ads are created, proving Google Merchant Center to be a unique entity.

No doubt, you are in the driver’s seat with the PPC Campaign, with a strong backbone named the Google Merchant Center.

Isn’t the Google Merchant Center the backbone of the shopping Ads?

This question cannot be ideally answered until you get to know the role of maintaining the product data feed, thereby providing the necessary thrust to propel the Google Merchant Center.

Is maintaining the product data feed so important, for the Shopping Ads to run perfectly?

Yes, it is but obvious that you are good to go with Shopping Ads, and will be on the ball, effectively creating the Shopping Advertising Campaigns on Adwords, with a thorough product data feed.

All in all, this Google Shopping Ads Guide states the fact that you are being cross-checked on every parameter by Google eventually! Therefore, if the product data feed doesn’t match your website, your Shopping Advertising Campaigns would just get bent out of shape, with your ads not getting displayed!

What if surplus products?

Are you dealing with a surplus amount of products? Or are you just concerned with some of them? Do you know why this question is being asked from you? Does it relate anywhere to Shopping Advertising?

It is affecting the product feed data which is the core of shopping advertising! With a gigantic product list featured, the product data feed would increase, and simultaneously, the same amount of data is being integrated with the Google Merchant Center. This data is also being compared with the website for relevancy for sufficing the search engine.

Loading feed data in the Merchant Center!

Now with less data feed to spare, making use of Google spreadsheets is the best option to integrate directly with the Google Merchant Center. But for a fairly large company with data in bulk, using third-party software to perform the same task is a better option.

Using a third-party feed provider is undoubtedly a better option, but that could be the last straw, still, needing your assistance. As we all know by now that a potential data feed is required for a successful Shopping Ad setup. However, there are a few other things that need to be kept in mind:

• The product data feed or the product list should contain a product with keyword-rich product titles, as there is no direct keyword targeting as in the search ads.
• Also, for greater relevancy with the target audience to attract potential buyers, the product description should be appealing, to establish the authority of the ads, strengthening prospects.

What is irrelevant should be excluded, isn’t it?

“Here the negative keyword can also be controlled, but for that, just concentrate and keep reading the blog!”

• The prices allocated to the different products have to be estimated and kept accurately and should be diversified internationally. The currencies differ from country to country basis, and therefore, the prices should be in alignment with that.

Also, in case the products are being sold to multiple countries, Shopping Campaigns should be country-specific.

• To take you through the other end of the spectrum with scintillating Shopping Ads campaigns, the images could be a matter of sink or swim for you. High-quality, attractive images are a symbol of the perfect product description, and therefore a greater emphasis should be laid on that.

This is how google shopping ads work! In case you have finished dealing with all the above factors, make a smart move, and focus to start building the Shopping Advertising Campaigns. Good Luck!!

Now let’s go further ahead with the Shopping Advertising Campaigns!

Do you know what should be the first step in this?

Actually, you need to link your Google Merchant Center to the Adwords account. To kick off the Shopping Campaign on a high, you need to have a polished product data feed!

From the very primary stages, creating a Shopping Advertising Campaign is a simple yet detailed process to go with. You need to have Google Merchant Center product feed and country-dependent sales.

The essentialism lies in the manner of division of the Ad groups within the Campaign. Ad groups pose a real threat and can be the determining factors for a leading or nullifying Shopping ad campaign.

Do you know “why”?

Now, this seems interesting! Let’s give some briefs to get the answer to “why.”

Settling for only one ad group in a Shopping campaign could cause you great troubles, as it restricts the products from dealing with specifications, upto a particular brand level. As there is a deep-routed bifurcation of the products, finding the right genre is difficult.

Now in the case of a single ad group for a particular ad campaign, the bigger companies with the product data feed in bulk can hamper their Shopping campaigns drastically.

But why?

Companies with larger product data feed sometimes split ad groups by brand or category. Now with multiple ad groups for a particular ad campaign, they offer abundance in the variety of products to be showcased.

This method, when tailored, reaps results for them. As with the display of the right match of the product with the right category audience, they find apt places to drop their ads to.

A lengthier division of the ad groups ensures a proper segmentation deep down the funnel of conversion and is sure to maximize the profit of the advertiser.

Cutting a long story short, proper segmentation of the ad groups in the specific campaigns upto the product level ensures you are in essence setting one bid for scores of queries of varying levels of intent.

As the control check on the bids is necessary, indicating how you can bid as you consider setting up your Shopping campaigns. A loyal separation of the top brands ensures better control of the negative keywords, thus controlling the bids individually.

The Bidding Part:

“You can dictate how much Shopping Ads cost by increasing or decreasing your daily budget and your PPC bids.”

Once the ad group at the product or the brand levels are created within a campaign, it’s time now for the bidding process. A process is determining the direction where the tables of fortune would turn!

When the classification is done on the product basis, bidding can go precise with bids on each product group or just a product individually. Defining a more lively or an active form of bidding, the bid procedures in Shopping Campaign provide you a huge amount of control.

Now when adjusting the bids on the product or product group level, if in case all the products in the same group, then whatever the bid would be for the product group would be the bid for the individual products lying in it.

However, it may be a conclusive process, but it is to be remembered that different products have different importances, profit margins, different quality, and different physical presence. Therefore, they should be judged on segmented criteria for bidding.

To facilitate the bidding process, the single product group can be subdivided into various other product groups, further deepening down to the brand or product level. Keeping in mind the capability of each product.

As a part of how shopping ads work, this segmentation is by far the most complicated division in setting up the Campaign. Proper segmentation and further deepening in the product groups to individual products would ensure highly efficient bid management and control.

Also, remember that the way you organize your product groups has ZERO bearings on whether or not Google considers your product relevant to a search query. Product groups are strictly used to set bids.

Does the voyage of the Shopping Campaigns end here with the ongoing procedures or whether it should be taken a step further? Let’s see!

How can it be without the optimizations of the Shopping Ad Campaigns?

In terms of performance, it is necessary to keep track of how your shopping ads work and this should become a part and parcel of your daily life!!

Don’t just forget to keep testing the waters and in order not to let the grass grow under the feet. One of the essentials is to monitor and take action on your search query report in Shopping campaigns.

In order to balance or to compensate when the Search campaign is not that successful, this method of acquiring the desired audience through the Shopping campaign becomes a smarter idea altogether.

Another aspect of Shopping Ads is that you can optimize on an ongoing basis in the product feed. The ongoing optimization primarily focuses on the product group level or to the product or the brand level as well.

Optimizing your Shopping Ads resonates highly with a valuable PPC Campaign.

The parameters in consideration with the ongoing optimizations include the title, the description, the prices, the images, the product group bidding, etc.

On a concluding note:

To be on level terms with the competitors when in the world of PPC Advertising or the PPC Ads to be specific, imbibing a refined and goal-focused Shopping campaign building has to be followed up with regular campaign optimizations. How shopping ads work is a bit direct and much more advantageous with a huge amount of control. Herein, you can set the bids on actual products that you are selling giving a cap on the budget exhaustion and so shopping advertising becomes really cool.

These ads give users a strong sense of the product you’re selling before they click the ad, which gives you more qualified leads. Shopping Campaigns have a great scope as here you can also find opportunities to power up to your Search campaigns demonstrating positive results for some queries that you may have missed targeting with the text ads. Paid Google Shopping ads are worth it for businesses that want to get the most bang for their buck.