There is one fundamental truth about Google Shopping Ads:
Every campaign is hands-on.
Setting up an effective Google Ads shopping campaign involves constant checks and balances.
But all too often, entrepreneurs in the e-commerce space take an uncalculated approach to paid search and wind up on the margins, peering in at success but unable to achieve it for themselves.
On the one extreme, ambitious retailers rush to launch an ad campaign that lacks a clear set of macro and micro-goals. No surprise then, when the results don’t come in. On the other extreme, cautious retailers avoid paid search because they don’t see quite how to monetize the platform.
In the middle are the e-commerce retailers who create shopping campaigns on a strict budget with a clear set of goals. These entrepreneurs see strong returns because of a laser-eyed focus on measurement and adjustment. But folks in the middle are few and far between.
While paid search can draw high traffic practically overnight, so many small and medium-sized retailers find themselves struggling to see positive returns.
If you want to see an overnight boost to site traffic with an Ads Shopping campaign, these components must absolutely be present:
1. Material Goals
Write down on paper the specific goals you want to achieve with each product type. Get as specific with your metrics as possible, including tactics and a timeline.
2. Locations Strategy
Are you looking to draw traffic from a local region? If you have a physical location, then your shopping ads can be optimized for local search (including a profile on Google maps). This puts you in front of shoppers the minute they are searching, and instantaneous access is what people expect these days.
3. A Bid Strategy
The opportunities for segmenting your bid strategy are endless. This is truly a complex area, and might just be the reason why you avoided paid search in the past. The hard truth is that, absent a bid strategy, you can wind up throwing money at the platform without lowering your cost of customer acquisition one cent.
4. Add Extensions
Extensions are the icing on the cake as far as your ad displays are concerned. It is hard to fit much in the current iteration of a Shopping ad, but a seller rating panel is a great place to start.
5. Compelling Titles and Images
If extensions are the icing, then compelling titles and images are the actual cake itself. The resources for choosing the most conversion-friendly titles are all within the Google Ads platform, you just have to look for it.
6. A Commitment to Measure
Last, but certainly not least, running a successful shopping ads campaign requires a commitment to measure results. Measuring results involves deciding on the most important metrics for each campaign, tracking their status over time, and running ample A/B tests to see what type of extensions and titles work best for your products.
Conclusion
With these components locked down, you are able to track performance against a stated goal. Without them, your ad dollars may just be spent in vain. Compared to other types of marketing, an Ads campaign will deliver immediate results and provide crystal clear insight into what is drawing customers in, ultimately making it easier to boost the bottom line.