If you're a business that sells products online, you are more than likely already familiar with running Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads to drive sales. However, you may be wondering how you can leverage Google's platform to help your business increase online sales.
For most traditional businesses coming to Google to advertise, Search ads would be your obvious answer to help grow your business. Now, suppose you're an e-commerce company or have an online store selling any combination of products (clothing, electronics, home hardware, etc.). In that case, Google Search ads remain a reliable advertising option to help drive more business.
Why not take up as much real estate on Google's Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) by having your website potentially displayed in a variety of different placement's, ranging from organic listings, paid ads, Google My Business, Maps, and Shopping ads. Additionally, Search ads are a great option to help with promotions through site link extensions, generate various impressions, and assist with remarketing campaigns.
However, I gave a little sneak peek in the previous paragraph of a great marketing campaign option you can run through Google's platform, and that's Google Shopping!
If you're not familiar with Google Shopping, many online retailers can be skeptical about launching Google Shopping campaigns. It can be a common misconception that Google's "bread and butter" are Search ads and SEO, so why invest in Google Shopping when you're competing with other advertising goliaths, such as Amazon or Facebook, for e-commerce sales.
However, just as successful as Amazon or Facebook Ads are for online sales, Google shopping campaigns offer just as much value to drive revenue for any product catalogues. Google continues to innovate with new tools and ad formats to help Google Shopping campaigns reach a variety of profitable audiences.
Let’s discuss what exactly Google Shopping Ads are and how they can benefit your business.
What is Google Shopping
Google Shopping Ads are product-based ads that show up for product searches across Google and Google Shopping.
Google Shopping Ads include:
- Product Image
- Price
- Brand
Additional information can be entered into the ad, including:
- Reviews
- Shipping Information
- Promotions
Shopping Ads are different from Search ads, as they display product pictures and prices directly on the ad, visible on the SERP when a user enters a keyword search to trigger your ad.
Google Shopping campaigns are pretty straightforward, so let's get into a few reasons why your business should be utilizing Google Shopping to help increase online revenue.
Better SERP Presence
As soon as your Google Shopping campaigns are set up, any search query that triggers your Shopping ads are shown directly at the top of the SERP. Moreover, Shopping ads are displayed at the top of image results and have a dedicated page for your ads to display under Google Shopping campaigns.
With this increased presence on Google’s search platform, your business is guaranteed to increase brand awareness and be visible within the eye of your ideal consumer.
Increase Return on Investment (ROI)
Google Shopping ads are known to perform better than traditional Search ads regarding click-through-rates (CTR) and conversion rates. Shopping ads can display high-quality images, brand name, and a headline briefly describing the product, stock availability, discounts and sales, etc.
With this information present within the paid ads, it is more attractive for shoppers to click on a Shopping ad than a Search ad, if set up correctly. Google Shopping Ads generate 26% higher conversion rates and 23% lower cost-per-click than text ads.
Higher CTR will generate more clicks to your ads and provide more data. With the more data you collect, you can optimize campaigns to increase conversion rates and lower CPCs. Managing this data for Shopping campaigns helps deliver a healthier ROI as your advertising budget will deliver more online sales at a cheaper rate.
Better Quality Website Traffic
When setting up Google Shopping campaigns, you have to fill out a variety of product information such as product SKU, product image, title, description, size, colour, availability, price, discount, gender, condition, etc.
Having these data attributes available within your ads displayed on Google's SERP will provide users with quality and relative information so that they are familiar with your product before entering your website.
Users who land on your website from a Shopping ad are likely to be further along the buyer's journey and have higher intent to purchase. Given this, it is likely that you will see this traffic have healthy page analytics regarding average time on site, bounce rate, and average page views.
Improving your website analytics can help with both PPC and SEO campaigns. Page analytics, as mentioned above, are ranking variables for certain SEO requirements. Moreover, having strong website performance will help PPC campaigns due to a better landing page experience that helps increase your Quality Score and ad rank, to increase your position in certain ad auctions.
Simple to Manage
As opposed to your traditional search ads, shopping ads, you do not enter and bid on certain keywords. So no extra time invested in keyword research and keyword bid optimizations. Once your Google Shopping campaigns are set up properly with all the necessary product information, your ads automatically show when a search query matches your product information.
Moreover, Google enables you to pull product data directly from your e-commerce store with its Google Shopping API. So, for example, let's say you have all your products installed on your online store that's most likely built with Shopify or WooCommerce. If data is accurately entered on your website, this will migrate all the necessary product information to your Google Merchant Center. With this migration complete, it will automatically update your Google Shopping Ads to display your ads on the SERP, reducing the amount of work on your end to set up these campaigns.
This particular feature helps update your product inventory automatically. If properly set up, the inventory of a particular product on your website will sync that information directly to your Google Shopping campaigns. This is extremely helpful when certain products sell out; this will update your Google Shopping Ads to prevent misleading potential customers.
Mobile Benefits
Compared to traditional search ads in which your text ads will display at a maximum of 3 spots at the top and bottom of a SERP. Shopping Ads on mobile are placed within a carousel of ads that can show up to 15 or more different products right at the top of Google’s SERP.
This provides the potential for much-needed brand exposure and assists in generating more impressions and clicks.
With the importance of mobile on search ever-increasing, this is an excellent opportunity to exploit the amount of traffic that comes from mobile.
Conclusion
Google Shopping is an excellent advertising platform and tool for online retailers. This gives advertisers the option to be creative, effective, efficient, and collect as much data to boost online revenue.
Google Shopping Ads offers clear benefits for your business that are parallel to or greater than the success you can experience with Amazon or Facebook Ads. Contact TechWyse to help your business increase online sales with Google Shopping today!
