Image Credit: Unsplash @mjessier

Within all retail categories, Shopping Ads generate more impressions, clicks and conversions always at a better ROAS compared to Google Search campaigns. This only if shopping ads are managed properly.

A 2018 research showed that the UK’s total retail ad spend of 82% derived from Google shopping, responsible for 87.9% of clicks. This means that now, more than ever, e-commerce owners and agencies have a great potential to upskill their google shopping ads in order to maximise their overall sales.

However, from our experience, we’ve noticed a worrying trend amongst e-commerce companies: the waste of an exaggerated amount of money on google shopping ads on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. This is an ugly truth that unfortunately involves many digital marketers.

We’ve observed this tendency even closer and learned that often there is an excessive investment into products that aren’t converting in the first place.

Although the average wasted budget via Google shopping is higher than search campaigns, google shopping ads are still better performing because firstly, the Google Shopping Ads Cost per Click is far cheaper than Google Search. Secondly, Google Shopping Ads have a far greater reach into long-tail search terms which carry a much better conversion rate.

But don’t panic here, that is why we’ve put together this simple guide on how to maximise your google shopping ads avoiding budget waste.

1.   Optimise your product feeds

Product feed optimisation is a must if you want to cut down unnecessary costs. Start by optimising your product feeds to target high-converting search terms in your product titles and descriptions. As we cover thoroughly on our product feed optimisation page, product title optimisation can ultimately increase your shopping impressions, conversions and overall revenues. As PPC experts, we can confidently say that approximately 80% of all the search terms results for your Shopping Ads are matched to phrases and words that are located within your Product Titles. So, it’s extremely important that you pay attention to this aspect of your optimisation.

Now, of course this takes time. And while you want to help you cut down costs and minimize budget waste, you also want to ensure that you are maximising the time invested in each google shopping ad. This is the reason why many e-commerce companies and digital agencies are choosing to invest in a product feed optimisation software that will offer you the best of both worlds: fully optimised google shopping ads with maximum time efficiency. At Shoptimised, we can even go through a free demo with you so you can see how your business could benefit from our product optimisation management tool.

Optimising your product feeds does not end with product titles and descriptions. Ensure that you have added the relevant product types and all correct attributes such as brand, size, colour, gender, material, pattern and more. Read about the product attribute best practices.

2.   Use a Comparison Shopping Services (google CSS) Partner

Choosing to work with a Google Comparison Shopping Services partner could help you save up to 20% on your ad spend, cutting down the unnecessary waste. The rise in google CSS partners begun back in 2017 after Google was fined €2.4bn for abuse of search dominance. This meant that Google was required to increase the competition within the Google Shopping results and that’s when google CSS was introduced and a handful of official partners were selected.

We are proud to be one of the selected Comparison Shopping Services partners so we’ll be more than happy to assist you with your shopping campaigns that won’t break the bank.

3.     Add negative keywords daily!

We covered the 4 pillars of google shopping in our recent post, where also discuss the importance of negative keywords within your product feeds.

Generally, you don’t get to have much control over the search terms through which your Google Shopping Ads appear for, however, you do have the option to add what we call negative keywords. A negative keyword, also known as a negative match, is a type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase, meaning your ads won’t be shown to anyone who is searching for that phrase.

Adding Negative Keywords is essential if you want to increase your ROI and reduce your wasted budgets.

4.   Use Single Product Ad Groups (SPAGs)

An issue we frequently see in terms of shopping ads organisation is the choice to have a shopping campaign with something between 20 to 100 products in it. Cases like this see edits been made on a product group level or rules and bids set across the multiple products that have nothing in common, be it prices, CTR, margins, etc. Splitting your products out into single product groups, with the help of some amazing tools, can help you minimise time waste too.

5.   Keep Google Merchant Centre Monitored

The Google Merchant Center is essential to monitor Clicks, conversions, impressions, Click-through rates and the overall success of your Google Shopping campaigns. This data is entirely held by the Merchant Center and assigned to the unique Product ID of your products. Make sure it’s regularly checked so that, in the case of errors or disapprovals within your product feeds, you can quickly jump on a resolution.

6.      – Polish your campaign structure

It seems obvious, but the structure of your campaigns has a huge impact on your performance. Make sure your best-converting products get the most product visibility and optimise your bidding strategy to reduce your investment in poorer-performing products. Read more about the importance of campaign structure

What to do next?

If you never thought that the above could help you reduce waste within your google shopping campaigns, then you’ve just made a positive step forward. Sign up for a 14-day free trial of Shoptimised. Get in touch and give it a whirl – you’ll wonder how you ever worked without it.