Google Smart Shopping is a modern e-commerce tactic used that uses AI to optimize the shopping campaign or make bid adjustments based on your goals. It helps minimize the wasted spend and make sure that the advertisers get the most bang for the buck. Therefore, it makes sense to think about the best practices to optimize the Google Shopping campaign.
What Are The Basic Things Needed For A Smart Shopping Campaign?
Before you start on making any specialist campaign, here are few things you might need:
· A Google Ads account
· A Merchant Center account
· A product data feed that is uploaded on your Merchant Center account. This will give insights into the data related to Google Ads to create ad descriptions.
· Conversion-trackings
· You must have a good audience with at least 100 users and those who have tagged your website so that you can look for dynamic remarketing.
· You should have at least 20 conversions over the last 45 days on most of the smart shopping campaigns.
· There should be banner image to increase brand awareness
· You adhere to the requirements for different shopping campaigns and also follow the shopping ads policies
In this article, we’ll tell you various tips and tricks to implement in your campaign to reach your goals.
Limit The Networks
When you set up a new Google Smart Shopping campaign, Google checks the checkboxes of YouTube and Search partners. You need to make sure to switch both of them off. The reason is, Google search partners enable the shopping Ads to be displayed on the partner websites, like Walmart. While it could be interesting later, initially, you need to get an idea of the campaign’s performance.
YouTube, Discover on Display network allow your Ads to show up on YouTube. The reason why you should switch it off is, people who see your Ads might not be interested in your products. As a result, the sales will be low. Therefore, it is advised to limit the networks to improve the quality of the Ad viewers.
Keep Data Integrity In Mind
Google requires a lot of data about the performance of KPIs. The more data you gather, the better it will be for your ROI. In addition to the quantity of the data, you should focus on the quality of data too. The data you provide should be accurate and complete. If there is any error, it may affect the AI process.
Optimize The Bids For Shopping Ads
After you set up your Google Smart Shopping campaign, most of the optimization work is about CPC. Though it should be high enough to get you enough clicks, it shouldn’t cross your budget. It sounds easy to bid right, but it is actually one of the most challenging tasks in paid advertising.
So, when should you raise your budget?
If your shopping campaign is profitable, but you are being limited by budget, it’s time to raise your budget. In case you are using an automated bidding strategy, Google will need to re-adjust the new budget and spending level.
Sometimes, Google doesn’t spend the budget set by the advertisers. In that case, you will have to increase the maximum CPC.
When should you raise your maximum CPC?
There are several bid optimization tools that can help you adjust your CPC to meet your goals. These tools use techniques like machine learning or AI to improve the campaign’s results. However, make sure to choose a reliable tool.
Remove Unnecessary Steps In Customer Journey
Paid PPC marketing is a customer-centric era. If customers have to wait while your website’s landing page is still loading or navigate through the complex processes in the sales, they will end up going back. Therefore, it is essential to reduce all the steps that don’t have any use. Doing so will help you provide the customers with a smooth route. In turn, it will reduce the bounce rate and increase the likelihood of conversions.
Target All The Products
You can create a shopping campaign and use it to target all the products. It will help improve the campaign’s performance, making it easy to compare data between the products. Also, use product categorization to narrow down the Ad targeting so that you can offer the right products to the audience. This way, you can optimize the Google Ads to show to your target audience.
Focus On Improving Quality Score
Quality Score is an important metric Google uses to rank the Ads on the SERP. For this, Google considers several factors, including Ad relevance, user experience, CTR, and many more. Pay attention to all these things and try to create more relevant Ads for your audience.
Use Categorization:
The product categorization will help you narrow down the product ads that you need to target to a specific audience. This will help Google Ads to optimize your ads and how it is to be served to the most relevant audience.
Focus on the Return-On-Advertising-Spend:
Having a good ROAS is one of the best things; however, don’t set a specific limit to the ROAS figure as it may hamper the ability to spend in budget. By minimizing this, you can generate high conversions and leads from the Google Ads Smart Shopping Campaign.
Beware of ‘Landing page not found’ Errors:
This is one of the most critical errors, as it will affect your bounce rate and hamper the account’s credibility. By keeping up with the issues like broken URLs, server crashes, and broken URLs, you can reduce this issue.
Conclusion
Working your way through the tips mentioned above will help you improve your Google Shopping campaigns. With consistent effort and patience, you will be among the top advertisers on Google Shopping in no time. But the work isn’t done. You need to make constant tweaks in your strategies and remain competitive to monitor your campaign’s performance and results. Also, Google makes changes to its shopping platform continuously. Stay on top of all these features or policies to get an edge over your competitors.