What You Need To Know: Shopping Campaigns

The holidays are fast approaching, and it’s time to step up your efforts on all fronts. Paid search can help – specifically, we’re focused on how shopping ads can make all the difference:

If you’re in the e-commerce business, maximizing visibility for your products can come down to a few strategies: encouraging individual product reviews by popular figures, being active and advertising on social media, maximizing the SEO of your website’s product pages, retargeting and remarketing, and last but not least: advertising your individual products on the Google search results pages. Google Shopping offers a relatively unique opportunity to advertise your products on a large scale to an audience that is specifically looking for them.

Consumers are Researching Before They Buy

Last year, 81% of shoppers researched online before making a purchase. That’s a staggering number – but it’s not all that surprising. With the amount of information available to us via the internet, we want to make sure we cover our bases and see all of our options before reaching for our wallets. That’s why online merchants need to do everything within their power to get in front of this audience; Google Shopping ads is an important tool for reaching these consumers.

Why We Care

According to Adobe’s Digital Index and data compiled in the beginning of the year, retailers spent almost 50% more on shopping ads than they did during the previous year. At the time of that report, these ads made up less than a quarter of retail paid search clicks. It was predicted that by the fourth quarter (here we are!), this number would hover around 30%.

What does this mean? At the very least, it means that the probability is high that your competitors are tapping into the power of shopping ads. Shouldn’t you be doing the same?

What’s It All About?

Google shopping campaigns offer detailed information about the products you are advertising before users even click. Clicks from shopping campaigns, therefore, are often coming in as highly qualified leads, and therefore offer higher conversion rates and higher returns on investment.

An example of Google shopping results.

This doesn’t mean that Shopping is the only avenue you should pursue for your paid search strategy. A balance between a text ad campaign through the search network and visually appealing shopping ads is likely your best bet.

Things to Remember

Prioritize

You can mark “standout products” as high priority to go beyond Google’s automatic work. Similarly, you can mark some products as low priority (or exclude them) to ensure the products you now people love are the ones getting the attention.

Images Should ROCK

Images are nearly everything in Google shopping ads – so make sure they are high quality and show off the best angles of your products. Your product details and prices should also be competitive with your peers – in some situations, standing out amongst the competition can be a bad thing!

Follow the Rules

Not only will you have to comply with Google Shopping specific policies, but you will also need to provide up-to-date product information via the Merchant Center at least once per month. See more about these rules here.

Mix It Up

As we’ve mentioned, a strategy that utilizes both Google shopping ads and text ads will likely be the most effective. As a paid search agency, however, we know that every situation is different – you will likely have to test both before making any determinations.

PS – Learn how to set up your shopping campaigns here.

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