Most ecommerce retailers realize the importance of search engines in acquiring customers for their business. The products sold online are searched by users and the keywords they enter are matched with the product information. Google shopping ads formerly known as Google Product Listing Ads (PLA) are one of the most important ways for ecommerce websites to get more customers and sell more products. Google Shopping enables an ecommerce store to directly list their inventory in the form of a product feed, which is shown on the Google homepage. Its not just better visibility with Google Shopping ads but you also achieve higher click through rates and lower cost per click compared to Google paid search ads. Many top ecommerce retailers spend over 65% of their ad budget on Google shopping ads. Ecommerce websites can definitely increase their reach and benefit from Google shopping ads.
To get started with product listing ads, you must have a Google Adwords account and a Merchant Center account. A product listing ad includes an image of your product, name of product (title), product description and price. Suppose a user searches for an item on Google and your product description matches it, then it will be shown to the user as product listing ads from your campaign.
The process to set up product listing ads for your Ecommerce website is explained in the following steps. Follow these steps and you can set up Google Shopping Ads easily:
Step 1: Link your merchant account with your Adwords account. You are good to go to the next step if they are already linked. If your accounts are not linked, you can link your Adwords account by signing in from the Merchant account and adding the Adwords customer ID. Click on link account tab and your accounts will be linked.
Step 2: Making a Google product listing ad campaign is the next step. Create your campaign by including the products you are targeting and then choose the countries you want to target with your Google Shopping ads. Give your campaign a suitable name and click to create your Adwords campaign.
Step 3: Now you have to bid for your campaign. Set up your bid for cost per clicks and also add the daily budget. The bid is what you pay Google when someone clicks on your ad and is redirected to your store. Save your campaign now and click on finish to complete. The last page will show you statistical information regarding the campaign you are running. This information is useful as it indicates the performance of your product listing ads.
Step 4: Once your bids are set and campaign is created, you are all set to add products to your campaign. This is an important step because all the visitors who can be your potential customers are going to see this product feed on Google homepage. Click new data feed in your Google Merchant Center. Here add products and all the related information about the products you sell. A good quality image and discount price is a great way to attract the customers to your ecommerce site.
Step 5: Name the product feed file you make in step 4. Using Google Spreadsheet to store and edit your products makes your life easier. Once the product feeds are saved, generate a template spreadsheet and hit save.
Step 6: The spreadsheet contains the blanks for you to fill in product information about your product listing ads. Here the information about the product like name, description and price should be filled. You can modify it accordingly and your Google Shopping campaign setup is complete.
This is the simplest way to set up Google Shopping campaigns for your products for your ecommerce website to increase your sales.