Google Shopping Campaigns

Google Shopping (previously known as 'Google Product Search 'and 'Froogle' before that) is a service that allows consumers to search for products and to compare prices against different retailers. This is all done through Google's all-conquering, powerful search engine. It is driven by two platforms; Google Ads, which is responsible for the management of the campaign and Google Merchant Center, which holds the details of products, organised in a format that is enjoyed by the search engine.

When it comes to advertising your products on Google, you may have already heard of text ads; these are adverts that are targeted towards certain keywords that users may enter into the search engine. With Google Shopping campaigns, Google will choose when and where the ad will be displayed – everything from the product feed, the website and the bids are considered to determine which search queries will trigger the ads. Potentially, it allows for the better placement of ads – whereas text ads will have to done manually, based on keyword research, Google Shopping automatically picks the search query.

Essentially, the mechanics of a Google Shopping campaign can be divided up into three parts:

• The creation (and optimisation) of a Google Shopping feed covers the product data, images and the price.
• The bidding can be done successfully in a number of different ways; although it is very complex. It isn't strictly about how much is bid, more to do with how well optimised the advert is. It actually isn't that uncommon for ad campaigns with small budgets to glean more than double their targeted ROI – and a big budgeted campaign to return very little. It's all about the optimisation.
• Monitoring how well ads are performing is one of the joys of a Google Shopping campaign; not only can performance be measured but it can also provide an insight into the different aspects of the campaign that are working, items which need to be tweaked and those that need to be taken out. This can only make for a better-optimised future ad campaign.

When faced with all manner of advertisement options, it can be difficult to decide which one best fits your needs. Understanding what benefits can be experienced is the ideal place from which to form a decision;so here are the benefits provided by Google Merchant Center and its adverts:

1. Shines the spotlight on your products – When a shopper searches for a product,they'll be much more likely to visit the listings that appear at the top first,before working their way down. This is why it's vital to optimise your ad to get it placed in the right keyword search, at the top of the page. Even if shoppers are unfamiliar with your brand, the trust factor will come into play; you being at the top of their search will assure them that they are dealing with a reputable service.
2. Get better leads – By feeding Google relevant information about the product, it will be able to place your ads in a better, more-refined marketplace; where the browsers are waiting to buy. These shoppers are looking to make a purchasing decision on the information that they can garner from their search – therefore,if their eyes are met with an attractive ad, that is rich in information,revealing that they have what they want, they will click on it. Think of it like a window display – being able to buy something that they can see is the reason why Google Shopping campaigns garner much higher click-through rates than text ads.
3. Easy to understand and manage – The process of running Google Shopping ads has been purposely designed to be much simpler; the elimination of the manual keyword entering that's at the heart of a text ad campaign is a prime example of that.Google exists to match their users (the shoppers) with the exact services/products they're searching for – the advertisers (those who give Google money). Therefore, it's in the search engine's best interests to find the right(and most used) search queries for their advertisers – something they can achieve with a well-optimised product data feed.
4. Attract an even-wider audience – The trick with finding the right keywords to match the queries that shoppers use, is that there will always be related terms used by an even wider audience. As an example – say you're a sports retailer who has a new range of a 'certain teams' football shirts out. The main query would be'certain teams football shirts' – around this, there would be other search terms, such as 'certain teams football kits' or 'certain teams jerseys'.Different brand names, sizes, amounts, editions etc all need to be thought about. This is something that Google Shopping can do; matching your products with the best related search terms; shouting about what you have to sell to an even wider audience.