Want shoppers to quickly and easily find your products on Google? Google Shopping can help you get your products noticed.

Intro to Google Shopping and the Google Merchant Center

Businesses can post their products online using Google Shopping. The Google Merchant Center allows you to upload your store and product data to Google and make it available to Google Shopping. With Google Shopping, you can reach shoppers and attract more potential buyers. Online browsing can lead to a higher chance of online buying when product information, reviews, ratings, and specials are included.

Linking a business’s Google AdWords account with its Google Merchant Center accounts allows for Google to process the product data. Linking these two accounts is a requirement for shopping campaigns. On the Google Merchant Center, make sure to include the price and availability. On AdWords, set up your advertising budget and the amount you are willing to pay per click. Another requirement is complying with Google Shopping and AdWords Advanced policies.

Shopping Campaigns

Shopping campaigns will promote online and local inventory, boost traffic to both types of inventory, and find better-qualified leads. The best and highest amount of leads are generated because the ads feature product information directly in the ads. Already having so much information on the product, the viewer is already further down the tunnel and more likely to complete a purchase on your site.  Google Shopping uses easy retail-centric campaign management.  The shopping ads use product attributes you entered in Merchant Center data feed to show your ads on relevant searches.

On the shopping ads, Google will show the product, title, price and store name.  Google Shopping lets you enhance your ads with special offers with merchant promotions at no additional cost. You can add product ratings, reviews, 5 star, total review numbers. Your business will become a trusted store once these reviews and ratings come in. Your trusted store will receive a badge that is displayed across your store and products. The badge shows the shoppers that you ship quickly and provide excellent customer service.

Setting Up Your Google Merchant Account

On a Google Merchant Center Account, you will provide business information. You will need to enter your business display name, website starting with either http:// or https://, business address, and primary contact.  You can also add a tech contact and CSR, although these two are optional.

Tracking Performance

The Google Search Console will help you monitor and maintain your site’s presence on Google to keep your products relevant.  Monitoring and optimizing shopping campaigns can be done through the Dimensions tab, Product tab, Dimensions tab, or Product Groups tab.  An Auction Insights report compares your store’s performance versus other advertisers.  Bid simulators can also help you determine how bids are affecting performance.  By estimating the performance of the last seven days, the bid simulator will indicate how many impressions and clicks your shopping ads would get with a higher or lower bid.

Multi-Client Accounts

If you have more than one domain, use the multi-client accounts feature. This will allow you to submit items for more than one domain. Use a parent account login email for set up. A single person or company can submit data feeds for multiple domains. Each client must have a distinct store name and URL.

Product Attributes

Product group subdivisions have several attributes available to enter. These attributes include the following: item ID, brand, category, product type, custom labels, condition, channel, and channel exclusivity.  Below is an example of a Google search for a textbook on Public Relations. The shopping ads feature product information directly in the ads.

Campaign Priority & Determining the Bid

If you are advertising the same product for the same country in multiple shopping campaigns, you can use campaign priority. The highest priority campaign will bid. If the highest priority campaign runs out of their budget, the lower priority campaign bids. If several of your campaigns have the same priority, the highest bid is used.

At Red Shark Digital, our Google certified team can provide you with the setup and maintenance of Google Merchant Center and Google AdWords accounts. We can post your products on Google Shopping and monitor your shopping campaign. Contact us today for more information!