The travel industry was among the hardest hit as most countries announced a lockdown to contain the spread of the virus. The retail sector was also hit as shoppers stayed home during the lockdown. E-commerce, however, picked up during this time as millions of people turned to online shopping during the pandemic.

People are looking for methods to make their businesses bounce back into action and Google shopping ads have proved to be a respite since the world has suddenly become dependent on online sources. What makes these Google shopping ads extremely helpful is that they are absolutely free of cost with a surface across the Google program google.

Their myriad shopping categories make them extremely useful and approachable over a plethora of surfaces all across the Google platform in the US. With the current surge in the need for more online options to establish businesses and get back into the game, it does not come as a surprise that Google ads are now planning to expand globally to the best of their ability.

Let us understand how these ads help in the growth of businesses.

What are Google Shopping ads?

The reason why you will find so many Google shopping ads guides is that the tiniest of details matter a lot about how your ad looks on an online portal. Google shopping ads are the biggest online portal to showcase your products and do it just the way you want them to look to your customers.

The age of technology has made it much easier for those with a knack for business all over the globe to get started in a much more suitable way, by coming up with impressive ads.

The common basics in these ads are that they contain a good quality image of the product you are selling and contain all the basic necessary information that will be needed to make sure that your customers get all the essential information about your product- such as merchant's name and price.

All these details are created based on the information you feed into the Merchant Center data feed. Feeding these data essentials means that your product will pop up for any customer who hits the search button for products that have the same features as that of your product.

Google Shopping Ad Types

Technology has opened the floodgates for various opportunities for successful businesses. However, it is important you know to use the right tools and in the right way to ensure maximum benefits. Google shopping ads are an excellent way to make your product available and known to a lot of people in a very short span of time.

however, you need to understand what type of advertising is going to suit your product and your store. It is not necessary that every type available on this platform will be suitable for the brand identity of your product or how you would want it to be received by your customers.

5 Effective Types of Google Shopping Ads

1- Ads for product shopping are made solely based on the information that you put into the Merchant Centre. This is the most suitable type of ad for individual products. There are various enhancement features available as well to make your product look more enticing to your customers. Different kinds of manipulations like cropping of images can be undertaken to bring more focus towards the image of the product.

2- Ads for Showcase Shopping ads that you get to group products that have similar features. This forms a collection of products with the same beneficial features and gives the option of comparing multiple products in your range and then selecting or choosing one that your customer finds the most convincing. This type of ad gives the opportunity to explore a wide range of products from an even wider range of retailers and then pick the one most suitable as per their choice.

3- LCAs are very good to ensure maximum traffic driven to local businesses. It is very effective and makes sure that local stores gain more recognition and traffic. Not only does this type of ad help you to display your product, but it also helps in storing the necessary information about your products for nearby shoppers. All of those who will be searching with the help of Google. It is a very thoughtful form of ad, where if a potential customer clicks on an ad of your local store, they are instantly directed to your store It is handled by Google and this is called the local storefront. This local storefront has an in-house store inventory, directions, and other details.

4- Shopping Ads that enable TrueView are made more interesting when they have a certain interactive quality in them. This is where TrueView for shopping is used to make ad videos. YouTube is the most-used video website and it can be very beneficial for making video ad campaigns. These videos help in providing information about your product and store, directly to your consumers and bring them one step closer to purchasing your products. You can filter and choose the best products that you would like to showcase in these video ads, which is going to have the maximum impact.

5- These campaigns for smart shopping do the job of tracking the conversion of events related to the sale of your products. These events would include all the purchases that have been made online, or through phone calls, signing up forms, or by visiting the store. All these types of purchases are taken into consideration. The plus point here is that every time a budget value is set for a specific product, the conversion value gets maximized to a great extent which is always beneficial.

Uses of Google Shopping Ads

Having an online portal to sell your products always has its benefits. The reach is much bigger and the profits also maximize when compared to your conventional methods of making an advertisement to sell your products. Let us have a look at the various benefits that are entailed when one uses Google shopping ads:

a) More consumer Traffic

If you can figure out which tools and enhancing features support the selling of your products the best, it is your first step to generating traffic. A good ad campaign is what amplifies the possibility of generating more traffic to your store and products.

Make your advertisements intelligently so that they provide all the necessary information that will be needed to convince consumers to visit your store and check out your products.

Once these specifics are figured out, the specifics help in forming a niche targeted audience and making your products available to them in a much quicker and more effective way, Google ads ensure exactly that.

b) More potential customer reach

This is where the Google shopping campaigns ad type comes in very handy. This type enables the possibility of flashing your advertisement more than once for a query asked only once.

Google also provides the benefit of providing keywords for your products, this enables you to discover a bunch of related keywords of your products that were previously unknown to you, and that makes your product attain a much wider potential customer reach.

c) Increase of Return On Ad Spend

Google ads make the return on ad spend multiply. The returns are much more compared to times when your advertising does not have so many features.

The role of return on ad spend is that the more it is, the more are the chances for your business to earn a large sum from a paid form of advertising Google ads ensure that high return on ad spend to make your business grow, it also makes you eligible for a higher ad budget which gives you ample ways of making your business grow.

d) Easy optimization for Ads

Going digital gives you the option of making changes as many times as you want and it is for free once you have your account and store made. With time you would want to enhance your store and make changes in your advertisement by updating information related to your products.

The ads for the same can easily be managed and optimized to make it updated and interesting to potential customers.

Techniques to make Google Shopping work

There are a few rules and regulations or rather specifics that need to be kept in mind to understand how exactly Google shopping works. All the information that you get to see about the product is made visible to potential customers through Google Shopping.

Google shopping makes it possible to view all related and necessary product information of the searched products to its users, directly from the merchants. Since these merchants are constantly updating the information, it is possible to show all the latest products with their price range, availability, and beneficial offers to their users.

Google Shopping utilizes Google search technology. Hence it is possible to show a list of products on the term of relevance from online stores across the globe. Once all the options are showcased to you, Google Shopping helps you by guiding and telling you which store to pick from.

The image of the product and a succinct list of information on the store or product page is a very attractive way of driving traffic and that is why Google shopping has gained so much momentum and popularity when it comes to online shopping. The reach is vast and the benefits are immense.

Tips to Make Google Shopping Ad

As mentioned in the first introduction itself, it is all about being smart and knowing what works for your advertisement that will help in promoting your store and bringing your products into the view of your potential customers:

1. Product Photos and Listing needs to be done smartly

Since it is an online platform for shopping, it is imperative that your product image is of high quality without any blurriness or pixelation. The product image as well as the description given about them needs to be in sync with the Google guidelines that are listed.

There are very specific product photo details that you need to keep in mind such as the background color needs to be in gray or white or a minimal background shade. Borders and watermarks are the kind of things you need to take distinct notes on as they should not be present on the product image.

2. Policies under Google shopping ads should be adhered to

In order to create shopping ads, you need to be able to set up shopping campaigns in the first place. To do that, there are certain requirements you need to tote the line with. First and foremost, you need to set up a Google merchant center and Google ads and make sure to interlink them.

Any content or information that you set up for your shopping campaign needs to be on the same tangent with Google shopping policies. Updated product data is a must and the quality of Google standards needs to be maintained in them. The update needs to take place every 30 days.

3. Cannot go forward without a Google merchant center account

This step requires you to go to the merchant center and follow a few quick steps to set up your account. Have a glance through the Google merchant center guidelines so as to not go haywire in setting up the account as it determines the next steps in the process of making ads.

4. Creation of your feeds with your product details

Products feed and then the ‘+ ” icon – a simple 3-step guide to set up your shopping feed. Once your Google shopping feed is created, you need to select the best quality image and feed in the required data of your product.

If the number of products you plan to showcase is minimal in number, then the information can be fed into the feed manually. For a larger collection – the Adnabu Easy Google shopping feed is the easiest and most effective way.

5. Both ads and center accounts should be linked

After all the basic steps mentioned above are done, one of the penultimate steps requires you to link your merchant center account to your Google ads account for the entire process to function.

It is only after this step that Google can be able to access the products you have listed on your feed. All you need to do is find the option of ‘Linked accounts’ which will be present in the Merchant toolbox. The Google ad tab is what helps you to link your Google Ads account.

6. Settings Regarding the Campaign

There are a few preferences you need to take note of regarding your Google shopping advertising. For this, it is important for you to understand the steps involved in creating a Google shopping campaign. Have a look at the list of preferences that need to be updated:

Country of Sale: Choose the countries your products will be sold in as you won’t be able to update them once your shopping campaign is in action.

Inventory Filter: Fix criteria for the listing of your products as that will determine the particular products that get listed.

Bidding: Pick between automatic and CPC bidding. Automatic bidding has more benefits such as maximizing conversions and their values.

Daily Budget: Fix a campaign budget for each day, the shopping campaign comes to a halt when that budget is exhausted.

Campaign Priority: Very useful for multiple campaigns where you can set the priority as low, medium, and high which enables Google to decide which budget to use.

Networks & Devices: Google’s default setting features your campaign in every Google network. In order to disable this, you need to deselect the ‘Any networks’ box.

Locations & Local Inventory Ads: These two options are only applicable if you are selling your products offline as well.

7. Your Google shopping ads are live.

This is the last step under this category where you need to determine what kind of delivery options you would be going for. It can be accelerated or the standard mode of delivery as per your convenience. And after this is done, your Google shopping ad is ready to be launched and go live.

Top Google Shopping Ads strategies to get more sales

A few Google Ad strategies that ensure a great increase in sales:

• Make sure to put the most searched word or most important information in the beginning. This is the most effective way of optimizing your product titles.
• Use the right keywords, the ones that are most easily accessible or searched for so that your product gets listed as soon as those words are used. Product feed description should have very concrete and to-the-point information about what your product delivers and choose the right Google category in accordance with Google guidelines.
• Specifics such as the image size and the product angles should be selected very thoughtfully as to how you want your product images to be visible to your customers and establish a good relationship. The right color background and clarity are also important for optimization.
• Add extensions for your ads as this will enable you to add some more valid information in your product information which will convince your consumers to opt for your products.
• Give importance to product ratings and reviews as when consumers spot some positive remarks and ratings on your products, there is a certain satisfaction that they get and also the trust to order your products.
• Always go for the strategy that involves negative keywords as they will help you to use keywords that are most used by the customers and that matter to them
• Determining bids will guide you as to how often your ads are searched based on the location, timing, and frequency of what people search.
• Optimization of location helps in enabling the amount of traffic that you can get from a particular geographical location that is most likely beneficial for your products.
• Find out the most popular products in your store, the ones that are most searched for, and then you can increase bids on them for more profit.
• The feature of the remarketing list is used to show your shopping ads to people who have previously visited your website and are back yet again.

Conclusion

Test the above ways on your Google shopping ads and grow your business. This ultimate guide to Google shopping ads has proven to be very beneficial and is fruitful for the growth of your business through impressive online shopping ads.

Guest Post Contribution from AdNabu

AdNabu helps improve sales in Google Ads for Shopify stores. If you are running Google search, google shopping, or display campaigns in Google Ads, Their apps help to increase your sales.