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What Is Google Shopping And Do I Need It?

01st
November
2019
Clearwater

Google is the most dominant search engine today with a market share of 90.46% – hosting over 63,000 searches per second on average.

This shows tremendous opportunity for retailers all over the world to increase their ad spend and generate higher conversions with Google Shopping.

What Is Google Shopping?

google shopping imageAlso known as Product Listing Ads (PLAs), this is a service powered by Google to give online users an in-store shopping experience. Simply put, this allows customers to search, compare and shop for physical products from different brands.

Since these ads are generated through the store’s feed data, marketers don’t have to directly type the ads in Google Ads.

A report based on the analysis of 40 million ads from 26,000 retailers in the US and UK showed that Google Shopping ads drive 76.4% of all retail search ad spend – and generates approximately 85.3% of all clicks from Google Ads or Shopping campaigns.

Needless to say, Google Shopping has upped the game for businesses today. However, the success of a campaign depends on three main factors:

Product Feed And Its Optimisation

Creating a visually appealing product feed is key for attracting the right audience and converting them into customers.

But this is not just a simple list of your products; it has to be in a specific format that includes information like:

  • Unique ID
  • The title/name of your product
  • A brief description
  • Product category
  • Product type
  • Link to the product page on your sites
  • Current availability
  • Price etc.

Bidding

Finding the sweet spot with bidding is the key to running a successful campaign.

In Shopping campaigns, you don’t bid on keywords; for this, you set the bid on individual products or on groups of products – called ‘product groups.’

Remember, if you bid too much then you might end up spending more than the returns and if you bid too less, you will not get any traction on your campaign.

Performance Data And Monitoring

One of the biggest advantages of Google Shopping is its ability to give you insights right down to the granular level.

For instance, you can track your product performance, percentage of revenue and traffic to your site, multi-channel conversions, etc.

Do I Need Google Shopping?

As a business, you can reach your target audience and get better quality traffic with Google Shopping. Since these ads show at the very top of the SERPs, it allows retailers to insert themselves in the buyer’s journey early on – thus, driving conversions directly from the search results.

In addition, the platform gives you an edge over your competitor, especially if they still haven’t explored the benefits of this platform. In short, this is your opportunity to present your customer with a convenient way of shopping online in one simple step.

Now that you know the benefits of Google Shopping, you can start by increasing your ad spend on product listing ads. Make sure that your feed is optimised and compelling enough for users to click on your products.

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