If you are looking to increase your sales through your online shop then Google Shopping Ads are the ideal investment to include in your marketing strategy.
Google Shopping Ads are proven to deliver both quantity with high traffic to your online store, whilst providing quality with the traffic received to your website having a high purchase intent. This will in turn provide a high return on ad spend.
Therefore Google Shopping Ads are a powerful marketing tool as part of your digital marketing strategy to increase sales for your business. In our blog post we will look at what Google Shopping Ads are and what the benefits are to running Google shopping campaigns for your online store.
Ben Webster
Creative director at 1PCS. Addicted to design, SEO, pizza and helping companies big and small succeed online.
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What are Google Shopping Ads?
Google shopping ads first launched in 2010 and have become increasingly popular year on year with eCommerce businesses. Google shopping ads feature at the top of the page on Google search results, with the shopping ads shown both at the top and right hand side on the first page from the search query completed on Google.
Google shopping ads are product shopping ads which is why they are used typically by businesses with an online store so their individual products can be featured in the Google ads. Each product shopping ads features the relevant product data which includes product name, description, price, reviews and a product image.
Google shopping ads are often seen as a comparison shopping engine as it provides a quick way for potential customers to compare products before even clicking through to your online store, helping to speed up the customer sales journey. Whilst ensuring the traffic to your website is from the right potential customers who are most likely to make a purchase.
Google, from the product data in your Google merchant center account such as product titles and descriptions, will know the relevant information which matches with the keywords entered by a customer on Google for their search.
With the user entering keywords at this point in the customer sales funnel such as colour or specification, it gives Google good starting data. This means when your Google shopping ad is shown in the search engine results they already have a high purchase intent as they are specifically looking for your product and are ready to buy.
Now let’s look deeper at why a shopping campaign is a fantastic idea for any online store.
Shown above is an example of how Google Shopping ads appear on a Google search
Attracting prospective customers
One reason Google shopping ads work so well for online shops is because of the visibility it creates for your business. When looking at search and shopping ads, Google shopping campaign settings means your product image is always shown when the shopping ad appears in the results.
The impact of this means Google shopping ads take up more space in the search results and rather than only showing text information like search ads and text ads provide, it shows your product images along with the product data which makes it easier to capture their attention.
For a product based business with an online shop, being able to show potential customers what a product looks like rather than purely a text description is going to be more powerful and improve the conversion rate.
As the going says, a picture says a thousand words. Smart shopping campaigns do just that and brings the right website traffic for your business.
Boosting Your Business Reach
When you create ads sometimes you might be limited on how many people realistically will see your advertising. However, when you create a Google shopping campaign there are many locations your advert will be seen, giving your business many opportunities to increase your sales. This includes:
Shopping tab on Google search
Google images
Google search partners websites
Google Display Network: including YouTube and Gmail
Another benefit to increase your reach and visibility is to use both search and shopping ads together. Within the Google ads dashboard, if the product data feed and keyword information has been set up correctly, for the same search your business can be seen multiple times. In doing so, it will put your business ahead of your competitor and maximise all opportunities to increase website traffic and increase conversions.
Delivering Google shopping ads can also help to improve your SEO. As part of setting up your product feed within the Google merchant center account, it is important the product pages are structured correctly so the information pulled by the Google ads account will match with the right keywords.
Doing the relevant research to ensure Google shopping actions works effectively to show your shopping ads with the relevant search terms, this research in turn can be used for your SEO campaign to help improve your organic traffic to drive more website traffic and generate sales.
Quality and Quantity
Google shopping ads give you the best of both worlds with both increased website traffic and high-quality leads that have a high intent to purchase. When search queries are entered into Google, shopping ads are shown when the search query uses relevant keywords for product based adverts to be shown.
For example, if someone searches ‘brown leather sofa 3 seater’ and if your online shop has products matching the search term which have been entered correctly in the product feed, the shopping ad would be considered by Google to then be shown.
Other factors are taken into account when Google Ads are shown, for example, your bidding strategy. It is recommended for your bid strategy for your first shopping campaign to test and optimise your product ads first using Google Analytics, then increasing the ad spend for the best performing adverts.
In the example above the searcher is already towards the end of the sales funnel as they are ready to make a purchase and looking for a specific product. Google shopping ads allow them to efficiently review and compare different products with product ads shown as a carousel, which is easy to use both on desktop and mobile.
With essential product data and reviews included in the shopping ad, once they click through on an advert they have already narrowed their search down and decided which company met their criteria for the product. Therefore the quality of the lead is superior, with the conversion rate high for Google shopping ads.
Google Shopping ads are an effective way to reach people with a high purchase intent
Return on ad spend
Google shopping ads are a pay per click advertising model, therefore you only use your ad spend when someone clicks through on your advert. As opposed to paying based on impressions, which is each time an advert is seen. The benefit here is that by the time someone is clicking through to your online shop, they are a high quality lead with a high purchase intent. This in turns will likely lead to a higher conversion rate.
Due to most essential information being provided on the product ads, Google shopping ads cost can be lower in comparison to search ads for eCommerce businesses. At this stage in the sales funnel, potential customers have already identified if your product meets their criteria before they click through.
This can improve your return on ad spend as no marketing budget is wasted on people clicking through and not finding the product they are after. An additional benefit is the opportunity to increase the conversion value.
With increased website traffic as a result of your shopping Google campaign, this could be used to collect customer data for upselling in the future. For example, offering free delivery or a 10% discount if they sign up for your newsletter.
They also may go on to look at other products on your eCommerce website and not only purchase the product from their initial search on Google but buy other relevant products from your online shop.
How can we help?
We hope you found our blog post useful to show how running Google shopping ads for any online shop can deliver impressive results to help your business grow with increased sales.
1PCS Creative is a Google partner which means we have the right knowledge and expertise to deliver successful Google ads. We are experienced working across many industries and would be more than happy to discuss with you how we can help. Please feel free to get in touch with one of the team.