When Google Shopping was originally introduced, it was a great boon to “e-tailers” wanting another great avenue to market their products. The newest way to do so is through Shopping campaigns using Product Listing Ads on the Google Search Network. But do you know what these Shopping campaigns are all about, and how your e-commerce company can benefit from using them?
In short, Google Shopping campaigns take PLAs to a whole new level by mimicking how a company’s online store would actually be managed. Shopping campaigns consider the store as a whole instead of concentrating on specific products. They also work to streamline how online retailers manage products, report on their performance, and find opportunities to increase traffic with new bidding metrics—and it’s all integrated with Google AdWords. The ability to access all of your product data within AdWords combines easy inventory viewing and organization with the ability to drive informed marketing choices.
Here are some key ways your e-commerce company can benefit from the new features of Google Shopping campaigns:
- Improved product management. Directly from AdWords, you can peruse your entire product inventory in your data feed and create product groups for the items you want to bid on. And categorizing products has never been easier. Instead of organizing your inventory into broad groups using AdWords labels and auto targets, Shopping campaigns automatically use the product attributes in your e-commerce site’s data feed (including product category and product type) to efficiently organize your inventory into product groups. This way, you can track performance using your own categorization, as well as Google’s specific categorization.
- Detailed reporting to measure product performance. Google Shopping campaigns allow you to measure product performance at any level of granularity, as meticulously as by individual SKUs. What’s better, since performance metrics are tied to specific items and not to product groups, Shopping campaigns’ new reporting structure offers the unique ability to filter performance data by product or product attribute. Impressions, clicks, and click-through rates are available at the brand, category, and product level, or any combination thereof. That means you can see which Home & Kitchen categories generate the most traffic, without needing to separate your home furnishings category into a distinct product group.
- Competitive data and enhanced optimization. Get new insight into your marketing strategy with Google Shopping campaigns’ new competitive metrics: benchmark max cost-per-click, benchmark click-through rate, and impression share. This benchmarking data will let you see how your ads stack up against the competition, allowing you to adjust your settings to improve performance. Benchmark max cost-per-click and benchmark click-through rate simplify bid management by aggregating and averaging competitors’ bids and click-through rates, and making such performance data transparent. Instead of wildly guessing if increasing your bids will change your impressions, clicks, or conversions, you’ll know more certainly, so much that recent research has shown Google Shopping campaigns to increase conversion rates by 16 percent and return on advertising spending by 25 percent. As for impression share, this metric shows the percentage of impressions your ad received out of the total impressions it was eligible for. Impression share, together with your total number of impressions, can help you identify the products generating the most search volume, which can then help you optimize your advertising strategy.
You’ve seen Google’s vision for the future of PLAs: Shopping campaigns featuring competitive metrics, increased transparency, and innovative tools to help you stay ahead of the competition. Don’t get left behind! SoCalWizards can help you create Google Shopping campaigns optimized for your unique e-commerce company.
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