There are many ways to promote your products with online marketing. Many webshop owners start with the "Promote" button on Facebook, but soon notice that it doesn't yield any results. (Tip: don't do it!). Many also notice that advertising on Facebook is becoming increasingly expensive. Increasing competition in every industry and product category drives up the cost per click. And the algorithm that determines where and when your ads are shown is constantly changing. This causes a lot of frustration for webshops.

It is not just on Facebook that the cost per click is increasing - advertising with "regular" text ads in Google can also add up significantly when you advertise on general search terms. After all, there is also enormous competition for those.

That is why I am going to talk about Google Shopping ads here - a missed opportunity for many webshops, especially when you sell your own brands or unique products.

 

What is Google Shopping?

Google Shopping ads is a type of advertising campaign that you can set up in your Google Ads account. Unlike the text ads that appear with a search query, Google Shopping automatically shows the image, price, product description, reviews, shipping costs, etc. This allows someone to compare the same product from different providers (if there are any).

The ads appear at the top of the regular search results in Google in the form of images with titles and prices. When you go to the "Shopping" tab in the search engine, you see all products with the providers, product filters, and more. You can therefore actually compare products from Google without visiting the webshops one by one.

These are the benefits of advertising in Google Shopping at a glance:

• People who use it are ready to make a purchase as opposed to people looking for information or inspiration.
• If you have unique products or brands that other webshops are not advertising on in Google, you have less competition, which usually results in lower costs per click.
• You can choose to update your assortment and inventory automatically, ensuring you never advertise a product that is out of stock and you always include the latest products.
• You only pay when someone clicks through to your webshop. This means someone has compared prices and seen reviews. As a result, the chance of a sale is very high.
• Everything is measured and you can immediately see from the ROAS (the number of times your investment is earned back) whether it pays to advertise in Google Shopping.
• You have control over which products may or may not be included. For example, you could choose to only show your bestsellers in the ads.

 

What do you need to advertise on Google Shopping?

Before you go all out with Shopping ads in Google, you must first have the following matters in order:

1. You must have a product feed that meets Google's specifications. Usually, you already have a feed URL in your backend, or it is very easy to generate. The feed is actually just all your product data, images, prices, product variations, etc., in one textual overview. This information is needed to show the right data with your ads.
   
   At Lightspeed, you will find your Google Shopping feed URL in your backend menu under "Settings" - "Feeds" - "Google Base".
   
   In Shopify, you can download the "Google Shopping" app and sync it with your shop.
   
   At Mijnwebwinkel, you need an external tool, such as Channable. (Feel free to contact me if you would like to know more about this.)
   
   
2. You must have a Google Merchant Account (also free).
   This is where you link your webshop, verify your domain, and upload your product feed (or enter the URL provided by your webshop). You then link this account to your Google Ads account so that you can create Shopping campaigns in it. Google Ads is where you build and manage campaigns; Google Merchant is where you specify which feed to use, in which country you will advertise, which currency you use, and what your shipping, delivery time, and delivery costs are.
   
   You also keep track here of the status of your product feed and whether there are problems with the feed that need to be resolved. When you upload a feed for the first time, it can take 1-3 days for all your products and photos to be processed. The more products, the longer it takes.
   
   
3. You must have a Google Ads account (#obvious) and it must be linked to your Merchant Account. This is where you will soon set up your first Shopping campaign and view the results.
   
   If you dare to create a campaign yourself, I will briefly explain the steps you need to take: You click on "New campaign" and select "Shopping". Choose the campaign objective "Sales".
   
   Then you go through the steps and choose yourself which brands, categories, or specific products you want to include. You also set a bid for each product. In the beginning, it is easy to give all products the same bid because you don't yet know how much you will pay on average for a click, and because this will fluctuate. If you choose the "Manual CPC" bidding strategy with the "Enhanced CPC" option turned on, I would start bidding very low, e.g., €0.10 per product and a max CPC for the ad group of, for example, €0.50.
   
   When you choose this bidding strategy, Google itself will determine per search query how much the bid should be for the click. When it notices that someone who has visited your webshop before is looking for a relevant product, it can bid more than when it is a new visitor. And that is, of course, smart because that visitor often has a higher chance of a purchase than someone who does not know you yet.
   
   In the beginning, "Manual CPC" with the "Enhanced CPC" option is a good bidding strategy to choose because your bids run on autopilot, in principle. This way, Google learns faster what does or does not work for your webshop and how much it should bid for the best results. After a month or two, you usually have enough data to be able to see where improvements can still be made and whether an adjustment in bidding strategy is needed. But that also depends a bit on the number of products and your daily budget.

How much budget do you need to advertise in Google?

I get this question often. The answer is: you can already start on a mini budget, for example, with €5 - €10 per day, BUT keep in mind that it is better not to include your entire assortment then. Since you spend budget on every click to your webshop, a small budget is quickly exhausted when you advertise a lot of products with it. Each product is shown on different search terms, and the more popular the search term and the product, the more clicks you will get in a day.

In this case, for example, choose your 5 bestsellers of the last month or two, or a few products of which you know that not every webshop is advertising with them on Google, or a product for which you have the lowest price of all providers. The chance of a sale is then much higher.

From my own experience managing client accounts, I know that what sells well via other channels does not necessarily run just as well on Google Shopping. After all, it is a completely different channel and sometimes also a different target group than, for example, on Facebook or Instagram. The visitors from Google are specifically looking for your products; on social media, people are not occupied with this. That makes Google a high-converting channel.

Above you can see an example of the cost per click (Avg. CPC), product revenue (Conversion value), and the ROAS (Conv. value / Cost) results from several Google Shopping campaigns.

Know what you measure

Also, ensure that you know for yourself when you can say that a campaign is successful. The easiest way is to look at your ROAS (return on ad spend). If you know your margins and your other marketing costs, you can use this to determine what your minimum ROAS must be for your ads. The formula is Total product revenue / Total advertising costs. The number you get is the number of times your investment in Google Shopping has been earned back, before your other marketing costs, etc., are deducted, of course. Measuring is knowing. If the average ROAS of all your campaigns is high enough, then you are on the right track.

How long do you have to advertise before you know if it pays off?

With Google Ads, I advise you to advertise for at least 1 month before you make a choice to continue or stop, and preferably longer if your budget is very small. This is because the search engine learns better and better with every interaction with your ad what works for your campaigns and the bidding strategy you have chosen.

With a small budget, it learns more slowly, so you also have to give it some time. Every time you change something in the campaign, it has to adjust and relearn - so leave your campaign alone as much as possible in the first month. If you don't do this, you might sabotage your own campaign success, and that would really be a shame.

What you can and may do more often during this period is look at which search terms were used and exclude the irrelevant search terms. This ensures that you don't spend budget on search queries that are too general (for example "children's clothing") or have nothing to do with your product range ("second-hand children's clothing"). It is very smart to already have a list ready with words that you certainly do not want to be found for. You then link those to your Shopping campaign.

 

How do I optimize my Google Shopping campaigns?

In general, Google Shopping campaigns often require less work than text ad campaigns. This is because you don't have to create the ads yourself or write the texts. Google retrieves all titles and data from your webshop itself. You also cannot choose the keywords you want to be found on; this is automatically matched based on your product information. Only irrelevant search terms can be excluded, as mentioned in the previous section.

What is very important is that you provide clear, descriptive product titles for your products, that your description is correct, and that you use the right keywords in your titles and descriptions. This increases the chance that your product is shown with a relevant search query. Actually, Google Ads therefore go hand in hand with your SEO. When you have an SEO-optimized webshop, your Google ads will also perform better.

Getting started with Google Shopping

Do you want to try this out without spending a lot of budget before you know if it works for your webshop, but do you want to be sure that you are tackling it correctly?

No worries, I have put together this service package with Google Shopping trial month especially for you.

Questions? Ask them below or email support@linamarketing.nl

Are you already advertising via Google Shopping? Why or why not? Let me know below! I love reading your experiences and answering questions.