How to Use Google Shopping Ads

Online shopping is an essential part of our daily lives helping us to order and buy things with style and ease. Competition among sellers on this market is beyond fierce so that’s why any kind of tip on how to improve and solidify your presence would certainly be helpful. Here’s one from our team and it’s about getting featured in Google Shopping.

Google Shopping is a service by (who would’ve thought) Google allowing its users to search for products offered online and compare their prices to find the best value.

It really is a great service that helps customers make their choice faster and easier. It’s even better for vendors since it opens up access to new audiences and creates possibilities for greater exposure.

How to get the best of Google Shopping if you are a vendor? Read on to find out.

How to market your products in Google services

In a nutshell, Google Shopping ads are nothing but nice little banners with product info displayed in Google.

Let’s say you have an e-shop that offers its clients a wide range of Apple products at great prices. Next time one of your potential clients will be searching for something like “buy a new iPhone”, they will be shown a bunch of relevant ads, including yours.

One great thing about this is that the users don’t even need to go to your website - they can see everything they need on the banner: picture, price, and product description.

Other great things about Google Shopping are:

1. The colorful, striking image immediately draws the attention of your target audience, which significantly increases their chances to buy the featured item. When they click on that ad in order to be redirected to your website, you know you’ve got some targeted traffic.
2. These ads simply cost less than the regular ones on Google AdWords - and they could be more effective! In fact, we at Zwebra often use this type of ads to promote our clients’ businesses.
3. Instant results that don’t require months of waiting.
4. Any changes you might introduce in the product description (price, quantity, etc.) will be automatically updated.
5. Easy to manage - mainly due to the fact that you don’t have to waste your time creating the ads as the system will be automatically using already existing pictures and information based on the data you uploaded to Merchant Center.

If you’re not quite sure you can pull it off all by yourself (which is totally fine), our specialists will be glad to help you out. Contact Zwebra for professional ad setup and promotion that will give you instant results and a nice sales boost.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, it’s time to answer the question - who can benefit most from Google Shopping?

Google Shopping works best for e-shops with a wide range of products, often-updated lineup or prices: Merchant Center allows you to sort out all the problems that most e-shops face in this situation.

Which begs the next question…

How to Add Your Products to Google Merchant?

Google Merchant is a tool used for uploading and storing the data about the products offered by your e-shop. That data will be later fed into Google Shopping.

Here’s how to add your e-shop products to Google Merchant:

• First, you need to register your company at Google Merchant Center and read the terms of service. Unlike many other similar documents, you actually have to READ this one. Violating one of its rules may simply result in getting the removal of some of your ads. In the worst-case scenario, your whole account will be blocked.
• During the registration, you provide the name of your e-shop - not the legal name of your company. It can be changed in the settings after the registration.
• Use Google Tag Manager to claim the rights for your website.
• Link your Google AdWords account with the Merchant Center account. If your email is the same for both accounts, they will be linked automatically.
• Next up is adding your products to Google Merchant. You can transfer all the information about the product via data feed - a file containing detailed information about the products on your website. Supported formats include XML, TXT, ZIP, GZ, and BZ2.
• If your company is not big, TXT will suffice. As a rule, the feed should contain the following information: product ID, product name and description, product page link, availability status, price, brand, etc.
• Before uploading the feed, you need to register it. To do so, go to “Data Feed” tab, click “+” and then “register.”
• In addition to the product data feed, you will have to create another feed responsible for updating the information on the assortment containing fields like availability, price, discounts, etc.
• Finally, we need to create and set up the ad campaign. Click on the “+” next to the Campaign and choose the Google Shopping option. Here, you will need to tweak all the necessary settings, save them and then click “Continue.” Now you can choose the products you wish and write the appropriate text for them.

Google Shopping ads are a nice, modern tool for promoting your e-shop, especially if you carry a wide range of products with often-changing prices.

It’s also great for your potential customers since they can get all the info they need in one small ad while you get access to new audiences and markets.

If you’d like to get some expert help and professional advice on how to get the best of Merchant Center for your business, please contact our team.

We will be happy to provide you with a full set of services - from analytics to account setup to creating Google Shopping ads that are guaranteed to boost your sales and take your e-shop to the next level.