Google Shopping Strategies for Ecommerce Growth

Strategically using Google Shopping Ads is an absolute must for ecommerce brands in 2024. These Product Listing Ads (PLAs) dynamically showcase any product feed you submit to the Google Merchant Center directly within Google’s vast network, including the Shopping tab, Google Search, Images, Display Network, YouTube, Google Lens, Gmail, and even the Discover app. Without Google Shopping Ads, your products won’t appear to many potential buyers on those Google platforms. 

Unlike traditional search ads, Google Shopping Ads do not rely on advertisers’ keyword bids, so brands need a deep understanding of the nuances of this unique and vital advertising tool. 

This article goes over the basics of setting up your Google Shopping campaigns as well as advanced optimization and budgeting tactics to ensure you’re making the most of Google Shopping.

Setting Up Google Shopping

Setting up Google Shopping and Google Feeds requires a blend of technical know-how and strategic insight. Here, we outline the initial setup of Google Ads Shopping:

Create Your Ecommerce Store

Your online store through platforms like Shopify or WordPress is the foundation for creating Google Shopping Ads. They have tools and add-ons to streamline the creation of your product feed, which you’ll need for the next step.

Create Your Product Feed

Your product feed is like a digital catalog or spreadsheet of your products. Each row presents a different product, and each column presents a different attribute for that product, like title, description, price, and availability. This feed can be generated automatically or manually through your ecommerce platform to meet custom specifications. 

Link to Google Merchant Center

The Google Merchant Center is the hub for your products’ presence on Google properties. You upload your product feed here, where Google will review, approve, and eventually automatically disseminate ads across its network. It automatically creates free, organic listings, but you have the option to pay for ad spots, too. 

Integrate with Google Ads

If you’re going to take advantage of Google Shopping’s paid advertising features, you’ll need to connect your Google Merchant Center with Google Ads. Google Ads will be your main source for creating your Google Shopping campaigns, making choices between standard shopping campaigns, or exploring other formats like Pmax, video, and demand generation. 

Campaign Creation and Management

Creating a shopping campaign in Google Ads is when a well-defined strategy becomes truly critical. Decisions made here determine how and where your products are showcased. The choice between different campaign types, understanding the auction system for ad placements, and optimizing bids all contribute to the complexity of Google Shopping. 

With the right approach, Google Shopping can become a powerful tool in your ecommerce arsenal, driving both revenue and profits through targeted, compelling advertising.

Best Practices For Product Imagery

Product images are the linchpin of Google Shopping Ads, so images that not only capture attention but also communicate the value and quality of your products at a glance are vital. 

• Aspect Ratio and Resolution: A square aspect ratio (1:1) is standard, with minimum dimensions of 100×100 pixels for non-apparel products and 250×250 pixels for apparel products. Google recommends using high-resolution images of 800×800 pixels.
• Image Composition: Your product should occupy 75% to 90% of the image area, minimizing white space and making the product the focal point. 
• Background and Clarity: A plain white background is standard, although transparent backgrounds are also acceptable. If your product is white, a black background can help make sure your product stands out.
• Multiple Angles and Consistency: Offering images from multiple perspectives—not just the front view but also the back, sides, and any unique angles—provides a comprehensive presentation of your product. They should be uniformly high-quality and maintain a consistent style.
• Avoiding Disapprovals: Text overlays and busy backgrounds can lead to disapproval from Google. 

By following best practices and continually refining your approach to image optimization, you can enhance your brand’s visibility, attract more potential buyers, and ultimately, drive significant improvements in your online sales performance.

Product Data Flow and Feed Management

Product data flow and feed management are crucial and complex elements of a successful Google Shopping strategy, requiring meticulous attention to detail and expertise in handling vast amounts of product information. Below are some strategies for managing the complexities of your product data flow and product feed:

• Source Management: Your ecommerce platform is the most direct and efficient source for managing your Google Shopping product feed strategy. As opposed to making manual updates in the Google Merchant Center or using separate software to adjust and upload feeds, direct source management ensures immediate synchronization between updates made to your product listings—including adjustments in price, stock, or descriptions—and your Google Shopping feeds. 
• Utilizing Merchant Center Capabilities: That said, the Google Merchant Center does offer tools for editing product details directly within the platform. These features can provide quick fixes for updating single attributes or products. But relying solely on this method for large inventories can quickly become unwieldy without a strategic approach. 
• Supplemental Feeds and Feed Rules: For more dynamic and nuanced adjustments, supplemental feeds and rules offer a rule-based system for updating specific attributes across your product listings. These tools are invaluable for making bulk changes or adjustments that reflect seasonal promotions or inventory shifts.
• API Integration: An Application Programming Interface (API) link between your ecommerce platform and the Merchant Center can facilitate near-instantaneous updates. Without an API connection, Google Merchant updates at most once every 24 hours. The level of responsiveness provided by an API is critical for maintaining the reliability of your listings.

Campaign and Bid Management

Navigating the intricacies of campaign and bid management within Google Shopping requires a blend of expertise, strategic insight, and continuous optimization to achieve the highest return on investment (ROI). This section delves into effective strategies for managing campaigns and optimizing bidding in Google Shopping.

Tailoring Bidding Strategies for Enhanced Performance

At the core of Google Shopping campaign management is the choice between two primary strategies: Target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS) and manual bidding. Maximize Clicks is an option but not recommended because it will drive traffic of lesser quality.

tROAS

tROAS leverages machine learning and AI to optimize bids across multiple networks in real-time, adjusting for factors like demographics, time of day, and more. This automated approach is highly recommended for its ability to efficiently scale campaign performance, ensuring that bids are constantly optimized for the best possible returns.

Manual Bidding

Manual bidding offers granular control over bids at the product or SKU level, allowing advertisers to adjust bids based on specific product performance or other strategic considerations. While manual bidding offers more control, it requires a significant investment of time and expertise. For brands with only a few products or when total control over ad spend is crucial, manual bidding may be a better option. 

Strategic Product Grouping and Segmentation

Segmenting products into groups based on similar characteristics or performance metrics allows for more targeted bidding. By adjusting bids at the group level rather than for individual products, advertisers can tailor their bids to maintain profit goals.

Segmentation can be based on various criteria, including product category, brand, or profit margins. 

For instance, separating high-margin apparel items from lower-margin electronics allows for a differentiated bidding strategy that suits each product. Similarly, creating groups for clearance items or seasonal products can enable more aggressive bidding to clear inventory or capitalize on peak shopping periods.

Custom labels represent another powerful tool for campaign segmentation and management. Advertisers can create bespoke groupings based on unique business needs or strategic objectives. Whether it’s segmenting products by margin tiers or identifying high-priority items for aggressive bidding, custom labels offer the flexibility to tailor campaign management to the specific needs of your business.

Targeting POAS

Taking campaign and bid management a step further, incorporating cost of goods sold (COGS) into the feed allows for even more sophisticated bidding strategies, such as targeting profit on ad spend (POAS). This advanced approach enables businesses to bid based on actual profit margins, ensuring that advertising spend directly contributes to bottom-line profitability.

Budget Techniques for Google Shopping Feeds

Here, we explore sophisticated budgeting techniques that ecommerce brands should use to enhance their Google Shopping campaigns’ effectiveness:

Flexible Budgeting to Maximize Efficiency

A pivotal approach in Google Shopping is adopting a flexible budgeting strategy, particularly when utilizing tROAS. tROAS leverages Google’s machine learning capabilities to optimize bids for the best possible returns, adjusting ad spend based on performance and market conditions. Setting a strict daily budget can limit the algorithm’s ability to adjust bids effectively and prematurely cap your campaign’s reach.

Brands should manage spend through tROAS settings, allowing the campaign to adjust its spending based on performance.

Understanding Google’s Overdelivery and Seasonality Adjustments

Giving Google flexibility in Ad placement and spending can lead to spending variations day by day as you spend more on high-performance days and less during slower periods. 

Google’s budgeting system may spend up to double your set daily budget on a given day to capitalize on high traffic volumes or increased conversion opportunities. This system is designed to average outspend over the month, ensuring that total expenditure doesn’t exceed the monthly budget. 

Seasonality adjustments are another advanced tool that allows for temporary modifications to your bidding strategy to account for expected fluctuations in conversion rates, such as during a sale or special event. By increasing the expected conversion rate in the algorithm’s calculations, you can “turn on the afterburners” for your campaign, pushing for more aggressive bidding and spending to take advantage of these high-opportunity windows. 

Navigating Spend and Performance Variances

In scenarios where spending is consistently below targets despite flexible budgeting, factors like market seasonality, product-market fit issues, or competitive dynamics could be influencing performance. 

Lowering your tROAS target incrementally can sometimes stimulate spending and capture broader market share, but it can also potentially lower your overall margins or ROI. 

Navigating Google Shopping Ad spend is complex, with many nuanced decisions, but by employing these advanced techniques, brands can maximize their ad spend efficiency and ROI. 

Optimization Techniques for Google Shopping Feeds

Optimizing Google Shopping Feeds requires a blend of SEO principles, strategic product presentation, and data analysis. Below are some strategies for making your products stand out and resonate with potential customers in Google Shopping Ads.

Leveraging SEO Tactics Within Google Shopping

While Google Shopping relies less on keywords than traditional ads, you should still treat your product titles and descriptions with the same SEO care as your website. 

Perform keyword research to identify high-volume, low-competition keywords relevant to your products. Incorporating these keywords into your feed through titles, descriptions, and even attribute types can enhance visibility. Optimizing your landing pages with these keywords strengthens the relevance of your ads.

Improving Landing Page Performance

Speaking of landing pages, the performance of your landing page, especially its loading speed on mobile devices, directly impacts your Google Shopping campaign’s effectiveness. A slow-loading page can drastically reduce conversion rates and increase the cost per click (CPC). 

Conducting Market Research and Analysis

Tools like Google’s Best Sellers report in the Merchant Center provide insights into top-performing products and pricing strategies within your category. This data can inform your pricing, product selection, and promotional strategies, allowing you to position your products more competitively.

Utilizing Merchant Center Promotions

Google Merchant Center allows for special promotions, such as discounts or “buy one, get one free” offers, which are displayed alongside your product listings. These promotions can be a powerful tool to differentiate your products and encourage clicks.

By embracing these advanced techniques, brands can significantly enhance their visibility, attract more qualified traffic, and ultimately achieve a higher ROI from their Google Shopping campaigns.

Future Trends For Google Shopping Ads

The enhanced automation, AI integrations, and augmented reality (AR) visualizations that are anticipated for Google Shopping in 2024 underscore the critical need for ecommerce businesses to remain agile, innovative, and strategically aligned with the latest trends in technology and consumer behavior. 

Ecommerce businesses that thrive in this environment will be those that not only embrace the complexities of Google Shopping but also invest in the knowledge and expertise required to exploit its full potential. By employing these strategies for ecommerce growth in Google Shopping, brands can navigate the complex future of ecommerce with confidence.

About the Author: Shawn Assad is the Strategy Lead, Search, Shopping, Display, and Video at adQuadrant. He is a former US Marine who earned his B.A in Psychology from California State University, Northridge followed by an M.B.A. from Pepperdine University. Shawn has been working in digital marketing for 9 years with a passion for data and cats.